INVENTING MILITARY HISTORY TEACHING IN ESTONIAN MILITARY EDUCATION 1919–1940: APPROACHES, TOOLS, AND METHODS

Abstract

This article analyses the teaching of military history in the Estonian army during the interwar period. The author argues that the basic concepts of military history teaching—the purpose, thematic distribution, and teaching methods— were developed by the former professor of the Czarist military academy, Gen. Lt. Aleksei Baiov, who stressed that history, along with strategy, constitutes the core of military science. However, Baiov and other Russian émigrés were heavily criticised by the Estonian commanders, particularly Gen. Nikolai Reek who estimated that a small country such as Estonia does not need a school of strategy. In the background, there was a theoretical clash between the old generation of bayonet tactics and the new generation of fire and movement transferred from pre-war Czarist Russia. Even though Baiov was fired in 1926, Reek’s reforms that subordinated history to the needs of tactical training remained incomplete even by the end of the 1930s. A number of questions about the utility and substance of military history remained unresolved. These have not been settled in Estonian officer education even today