5 - The Politicization of the Temperance Movement in Pre-independence Estonia

Summary

The early phase of the temperance movement, which was dominated by religious concerns, aimed to limit the abuse of hard alcohol. The pioneering countries in this fight during the first half of the nineteenth century were the United States, Great Britain, and Sweden. In the 1840s Germany also tried to limit the usage and abuse of hard alcohol.

In most countries wine and beer were not considered alcoholic beverages and as such were not targeted by abolitionists. A change in attitude can be witnessed from 1832 onward, when the Preston Temperance Society, or the “Seven Men of Preston,” established the first temperance society in England opposed to any alcohol. At approximately the same time a similar initiative emerged in Sweden. The new movements aiming for teetotalism were initially rather modest in numbers and influence, until a new outburst in the temperance movement took place in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. From then on the rhetoric of the movement was increasingly influenced by natural sciences and medicine, the increasingly popular sources of arguments for political ideologies.

The biologizing of national discourse reached the Baltic shores relatively early, mostly due to the German intellectual domination in the region. The main gateway for German influence in Scandinavia was Sweden. Swedes after all constituted one-sixth of the membership of the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassenhygienie established in Germany in 1905.

For Russia the gateway for the introduction of German-related ideologies was the Russian Baltic provinces with their German-speaking elites. Yet the acceptance of new ideologies in the Baltic realm must not be oversimplified. The Baltic community was complex: besides the German-speaking upper and middle classes there were the indigenous Estonians and Latvians, who belonged to the peasant layer of society at the time and whose national emancipation ideas and ideologies were steadily growing. This process created tension within the society, which took an ethnic character, to the extent that the 1905 Russian revolution there was even characterized as an anti-German pogrom. In addition to the local players, the Russian central authorities increased tension in the region with their Russification initiative.