A report on Estonia and Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were invaded and occupied in June 1940 by the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Stalin and auspices of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that had been signed between Nazi Germany and the USSR immediately before the outbreak of World War II.

However, the Soviet Union never formally acknowledged its presence in the Baltics as an occupation or that it annexed these states and considered the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republics as three of its constituent republics.

Konstantin Päts (23 February 1874 – 18 January 1956) was an Estonian statesman and the country's President in 1938–1940.

On 21 July 1940, the Estonian SSR was proclaimed and it is claimed that only then Päts realized the essence of the Soviet occupation.

Pärnu is the fourth largest city in Estonia.

Pärnu then continued as being part of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1944 to 1991, when Estonia restored its independence.

The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a modern unofficial geopolitical term, typically used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

In all three countries simultaneously, rigged elections (in which only pro-Stalinist candidates were allowed to run) were staged in July 1940, the newly assembled "parliaments" in each of the three countries then unanimously applied to join the Soviet Union, and in August 1940 were incorporated into the USSR as the Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR, and Lithuanian SSR.

The University of Tartu (UT; Tartu Ülikool; Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia.

The university was named Ostland-Universität in Dorpat during the German occupation of Estonia in 1941–1944 and Tartu State University (Estonian: Tartu Riiklik Ülikool) in 1940–1941 and 1944–1989, during the Soviet occupation.

The Estonian government-in-exile was the formally declared governmental authority of the Republic of Estonia in exile, existing from 1944 until the reestablishment of Estonian sovereignty over Estonian territory in 1991 and 1992.

The "People's Riigikogu" met on 21 July, with only one order of business–a resolution declaring Estonia a Soviet republic and petitioning to join the Soviet Union.

The three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – are held to have continued as legal entities under international law while under Soviet rule and German occupation from 1940 to 1991.

Most of the countries in the Western Bloc refused to recognise the incorporation of the Baltic states de jure and only recognised the Soviet governments of Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR and Lithuanian SSR de facto or not at all.

Internationally, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state in 1920 only by bordering neighbors of Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic in Ireland.

Within the Soviet Union, the RSFSR bordered the Slavic states: Ukrainian SSR (Ukraine), Belarusian SSR (Belarus), the Baltic states: Estonian SSR (Estonia), Latvian SSR (Latvia) and Lithuanian SSR (Lithuania) (Included in USSR in 1940) to its west and the Azerbaijan SSR (Azerbaijan), Georgian SSR (Georgia) and Kazakh SSR (Kazakhstan) to the south in Central Asia.

Narva (, Нарва ) is a municipality and city in Estonia.

The Russian Federation, however, considers Estonia to be a successor of the Estonian SSR and recognizes the 1945 border between the two former national republics.

In Estonia, the population of ethnic Russians is estimated at 320,000, most of whom live in the capital city Tallinn and other urban areas of Harju and Ida-Viru counties.

The country remained annexed to the Soviet Union until 1991, except for the period of Nazi occupation between 1941 and 1944.