Doctoral defence: Lauri Kann "Revolutionary events with human casualties in Estonian towns in 1905"

On 19 December at 16:15 Lauri Kann will defend his doctoral thesis "Revolutionary events with human casualties in Estonian towns in 1905".

Supervisor:
Professor Tõnu-Andrus Tannberg, University of Tartu

Opponent:
Professor Mart Kuldkepp, University College London

Summary:
The revolution of 1905 was an important turning point in the history of many nations in the Russian empire. Mayor developments took place both in the centre of the empire as well as in the borderlands. Later on, these developments contributed to the fall of the tsarist state and the independence of new countries. Unfortunately, violence was also part of the 1905 revolution both in Estonia and in the Russian Empire in general. The Revolution of 1905 was not as violent as the upheavals that followed the Bolshevik coup d’état of 1917, but, nevertheless, the first Russian Revolution had thousands of victims. This dissertation focuses on violence in the 1905 revolution.
Traditionally, the revolution of 1905 in Estonia has been viewed primarily in the context of the developments that took place in Russia-proper. The dissertation places the revolutionary events that took place in Estonia in the context of the western part of the Russian Empire, i.e. Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. The dissertation focuses on revolutionary events with human casualties in Estonian towns in 1905. It seeks to answer, who were the main perpetrators of violence with human casualties and under which circumstances did such tragedies take place. The focus of the dissertation is on shootings at protests. Shootings at protests have been studied as individual events, but these events have not been examined from a comparative perspective before. The dissertation supports the view that the shootings at protests in the western part of the Russian empire had actually a greater impact on the revolution than it has been acknowledged in the general studies of the revolution so far.