The Estonian Land Reform Act 1919 was a
land reform
Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural ...
act passed in
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...
on 10 October 1919, shortly after the country had gained
independence
Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...
in the previous year. The act expropriated land from the mostly ethnic
Baltic German
Baltic Germans (german: Deutsch-Balten or , later ) were ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their coerced resettlement in 1939, Baltic Germans have markedly declined ...
landowners which had previously made up much of the local landowning elite. As part of the implementation of the act the government distributed the nationalised land to mainly ethnic
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also ...
small farmers.
Distribution of Land
The reforms expropriated 1065 manors (96.6% of large landowners were affected) of which only 57 manors came from ethnic Estonian owners with the rest owned mainly by Baltic Germans along with land which had been previously owned by the state (former
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
) or by the church. The amount of land in total nationalised came to over 2.34 million hectares of land which accounted for 58% of the total agricultural land in Estonia. Manorial industrial enterprises were also nationalised by the state and sold (this included 225 vodka factories, 344 mills, 74 sawmills, 64 stone and clay industries, 18 dairies and 7 breweries). Overall about 53,000 Estonian settlers received expropriated land with 1.2mn hectares going to the 23,000 individuals affected by the land reform (though 3.6% of the expropriated land was returned to the former owner).
Compensation
In 1926 the previous landowners affected by the reforms (mostly large native landowners) received a small amount of compensation.
See also
*
Land reforms by country Agrarian reform and land reform have been a recurring theme of enormous consequence in world history. They are often highly political and have been achieved (or attempted) in many countries.
Latin America
Brazil
Getúlio Vargas, who rose to presi ...
*
Estonian Land Reform of 1991
The Estonian Land Reform Act 1991 ( Estonian: 1991. Eesti maareform) was passed in Estonia on the 17 October and came into force on the 1 November shortly after the restoration of independence in 1991. The act involved the transfer of land from s ...
*
Latvian Land Reform of 1920 The Latvian Land Reform of 1920 ( lv, 1920. gada agrārā reforma Latvijā) was a land reform act expropriating land under the Republic of Latvia in 1920 (during the Latvian War of Independence shortly after independence). The agrarian reform law o ...
References
{{reflist, 2
Land reform in Estonia
1919 in Estonia
Nationalization