| Abstract: | This article offers a reassessment of the All-Estonian Congress, held in Tartu in November 1905, focusing on the background to this key event during the Russian Revolution of 1905, the most controversial aspects of the Congress itself, and its immediate as well as long-term significance. The split of the Congress into two wings reflected the fragmentation of Estonian political and social thought in the heated atmosphere of 1905, with one side calling for an evolutionary solution to the crisis facing the Russian state while the other demanded revolutionary change. In the longer perspective the Congress must be seen as a key element in the first broadly based political mobilization of the Estonian population in modern times, laying the groundwork for more sweeping change after 1917. |
