Facts about Estonia
Estonia has become a constitutional democracy, with a president elected by a unicameral parliament in which elections are held every four years.
Estonia maintains conscription for military service for men aged 19 to 28.
Estonia has a long, shallow coastline (1,393 kilometers) along the Baltic Sea marked by numerous bays, straits, and inlets, with 1,520 islands dotting the shore.
Internet voting has been used in political elections in Estonia, beginning in the local elections in October 2005.
The average annual temperature in Estonia is 40° Fahrenheit (4.5 ° Celsius).
Estonia cooperates with Latvia and Lithuania in the joint infantry battalion BALTBAT and naval squadron BALTRON which can be deployed for peacekeeping operations.
Estonia utilizes many weapons produced by Israel Military Industries, including UZI submachineguns, Galil rifles and IMI Negev machine guns.
The country was occupied by Germany from 1941 to 1944 and many Estonians joined the German Armed Forces.
Estonia is divided into 15 counties; these are then divided into rural and urban municipalities.
At the same time, Denmark attempted to take possession of northern Estonia.
Estonia is a member of the Coalition of the Willing and in 2007 had 35 soldiers stationed in Iraq.
After the Soviet Revolution in 1917 (and the failed Estonian Revolution of 1905), the Estonian economy was subject to centralized control, and some would argue, stagnated.
Estonia has a modern market-based economy with strong ties to the West.
Human settlement in Estonia became possible 11,000 to 13,000 years ago, when the last glaciation receded.
The transition to farming, still the core of Estonian economy and culture, was the most significant.
By the early thirteenth century, Estonia was divided into eight large counties—Saaremaa, Lддnemaa, Rдvala, Harju, Viru, Jдrva, Sakala, Ugandi, and many smaller ones.
The ministry directly manages Production Units, the manufacturing plants of the Indian Railways.
An outgrowth of the Nationalist movement of the mid-nineteenth century, the re-assertion of Estonian folkways emphasized traditional, or peasant, music and literature.
Estonia was Christianized when the German "Livonian Brothers of the Sword" conquered southern Estonia (German: Livland) as part of the Northern Crusades in the early thirteenth century.
The United States is among the countries with which Estonia cooperates closely in the defense and security fields.
Estonia now has one of the strongest economies of the new member states of the European Union.
The reactor building passed to Estonian control a year after the Soviet troops left.
During the Livonian War in 1561, northern Estonia submitted to Swedish control, while southern Estonia briefly came under the control of Poland in the 1580s.
Estonia has a long cultural identity despite sequential occupation by its more powerful neighbors.
Estonia was occupied by Soviet troops in June 1940, as a consequence of the secret amendment to the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany.
Estonia is in a humid zone in that the total amount of precipitation is greater than total evaporation.
Estonia joined NATO on March 29, 2004 and the European Union on May 1, 2004.
Estonia has few natural resources that include shale oil (kukersite), peat, phosphorite, amber, cambrian blue clay, limestone, and dolomite.
Estonia's export partners are Finland (26.3 percent), Sweden (13.2 percent), Latvia (8.8 percent), Russia (6.5 percent), Germany (6.2 percent), and Lithuania (4.6 percent).
After independence in 1991, the Estonian economy was detached from former Soviet controls.
Estonia lies in the northern part of the temperate climate zone and in a transition zone between maritime and continental climate.
Bone and stone artifacts similar to those found at Kunda have been discovered elsewhere in Estonia, as well as in Latvia, northern Lithuania, and southern Finland.
Estonia imports (annually) machinery and equipment (33.5 percent), chemical products (11.6 percent), textiles (10.3 percent), food products (9.4 percent), and transportation equipment (8.9 percent).
The Estonian economy is growing quickly, partly due to a number of Scandinavian companies relocating their routine operations to the country and Russian oil transit through Estonian ports.
Many younger Estonian people can speak English, having learned it as their first foreign language.
The Estonian language, along with closely related Finnish and Hungarian, is one of the few official languages of the European Union that is not of Indo-European origin.
Estonians not living there were restricted from traveling there without a permit and could be punished if they did so.
Following the Great Northern War, the Swedish Empire lost Estonia to Russia (1710 de facto, and 1721 de jure, by the Treaty of Nystad).
In 2004, Estonia joined NATO, which had been a goal since the restoration of independence.
Estonia (older English spelling Esthonia), officially the Republic of Estonia (Estonian: Eesti or Eesti Vabariik), is a country in Northern Europe.
Soviet forces reconquered Estonia after fierce battles in the northeast of the country on the Narva river and on the Tannenberg Line (Sinimдed).
In 1343, the people of northern Estonia and Saaremaa rebelled against German rule in the St. George's Night Uprising, which was put down by 1344.
The predominant religion of indigenous ethnic Estonians has traditionally been Christianity, with 13.6 identifying as evangelical Lutherans; however, less than a quarter of ethnic Estonians define themselves as active believers at present.
Following the German victories against the ((Russian Army of 1917 and the Russian October Revolution, Estonia declared itself an independent republic on February 24, 1918.
Snow cover, which is deepest in the south-eastern part of Estonia, usually lasts from mid-December to late March.
The largest of them, Lake Peipsi (1,372 miІ or 3,555 kmІ), forms much of the border between Estonia and Russia.
Estonia was formally annexed by the Soviet Union in August 1940 as the Estonian SSR.
The country's official language is Estonian, a Finno-Ugric language that is closely related to Finnish.
The epic, Kalevipoeg, was written to create a unified Estonian mythology.
Estonia also exported over two billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2004.
In 1987, a group known as the Estonian Heritage Society formed with the mission of volunteer restoration of cultural landmarks.
Historically, large parts of Estonia’s north-western coast and islands have been populated by an indigenous ethnically Swedish population known as "rannarootslased" ("coastal Swedes").
Nearly 75 percent of Estonia's air pollution was reported to come from two oil shale-based thermal power stations operating near Narva.
The report described extensive contamination of Estonia's topsoil and underground water supply by the systematic dumping of jet fuel at six Soviet army air bases.
Indigenous Estonian-speaking ethnic Estonians constitute nearly 70 percent of the total population of about 1.3 million people.
In 1999, Estonia experienced its worst year economically since it regained independence in 1991, largely because of the impact of the August 1998 Russian financial crisis.
Estonia has been struggling to recreate itself since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the last Russian troops left in 1994.
Cultural influences from the Roman Empire reached Estonia, and this era is therefore also known as the Roman Iron Age.
Estonia is a low, flat country covering 17,462 square miles (45,226 square kilometers).
When the German Operation Barbarossa began against the Soviet Union, thousands of young Estonian men were forcibly drafted into the Red Army.
The Estonian military is a defensive force and is made up of four branches: a Land Force, Air Force, Navy, and a volunteer Defense League.
Located in central Estonia, Vхrtsjдrv is the second-largest lake (104 miІ (270 kmІ).
The two islands are favorite Estonian vacation spots and are large enough to constitute their own counties.
Attempts to collect, study and disseminate the folklore of Estonia began in earnest in 1996 with an online, bilingual in English and Estonian website based in Tartu, dedicated to that purpose.
Online elections have earned mixed reviews in other parts of the world, but it is believed that Estonia's relatively small voting population allows for smaller risk of fraud.
By any analysis, Soviet rule significantly slowed Estonia's economic growth, resulting in a wide "wealth gap" in comparison with neighboring democratic countries such as Finland and Sweden.
The latter, mostly Russian-speaking ethnic minorities, reside predominantly in the capital city (Tallinn) and the industrial urban areas in northeastern Estonia (Ida-Virumaa county).
Estonia until this time retained a pagan religion centered around a deity called Tharapita.
During the Viking era, Estonian pirates conducted similar raids, sacking and burning the Swedish town of Sigtuna in 1187.
The majority of Estonia's Swedish population fled to Sweden in 1944, escaping the advancing Soviet Army.
Traditionally an agricultural society from earliest times, Estonia developed a commercial sector when its urban centers joined with German mercantile interests in the Hanseatic League in the 1500s.
Due to its strategic location, Estonia was dominated by foreign powers through much of its history.
Estonia joined the WTO in November 1999, the second Baltic state to join.
During the demonstration, a human chain of more than two million people was formed, stretching through Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (both Lithuania and Latvia having been occupied and aspiring to independence as was Estonia).
Estonia regained independence on August 20, 1991, after four contentious years, following the attempted coup d'etat in Moscow and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.
Estonia's first native language newspaper was launched in this era; it served to promote a national cultural identity.
In 1994, Estonia became one of the first countries in the world to adopt a flat tax, with a uniform rate of 26 percent regardless of personal income.
The first country to diplomatically recognize Estonia's independence was Iceland, closely followed by Denmark.
Officially, there are four types of populated places in Estonia: towns (linn), boroughs (alev), small boroughs (alevik), and villages (kьla).
Estonia is a low, flat country covering 17,462 square miles (45,226 square kilometers).
Bone and stone artifacts similar to those found at Kunda have been discovered elsewhere in Estonia, as well as in Latvia, northern Lithuania, and southern Finland.
Estonia also boasts numerous bogs, and 2,357 miles (3794 km) of coastline.
After winning the Estonian Liberation War against Soviet Russia (the Treaty of Tartu was signed on February 2, 1920) with the help of German Freikorps volunteers, Estonia maintained its independence for 22 years.
Estonia was administratively divided between the provinces of Estonia in the north and Livonia in southern Estonia and northern Latvia, a division that persisted until the early twentieth century.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking migrants (mostly from the Russian Federation or Ukraine) were relocated to Estonia by the Soviet administration and Communist Party to conduct the aforementioned industrialization and militarization.