{"id":152430,"date":"2025-11-05T00:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/?p=152430"},"modified":"2025-11-04T16:20:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T14:20:03","slug":"naissaar-an-island-of-war-plague-and-anarchism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/naissaar-an-island-of-war-plague-and-anarchism\/","title":{"rendered":"Naissaar\u2014An Island of War, Plague, and Anarchism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Ville Hyt\u00f6nen, writer and chair of the Finnish Writers Union, 
living in Suurupi, Harku, Estonia.



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Three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets violated Estonian airspace in September 2025. According to media reports, they flew as far as Naissaar. Many people recognise the island\u2019s name\u2014some may have even visited it, while others have simply gazed at it through the window of a car ferry.<\/p>\n
Now it lies before me. I watch Naissaar in the early evening from my village shore, feeling a touch of melancholy. The narrow strait between our village and the island has often set my imagination racing. I\u2019ve wondered how, during the last war, people might have rowed across here\u2014perhaps to fetch food for the island, or to carry over lamp oil and petrol.<\/p>\n
Naissaar is indeed well acquainted with military affairs. Estonia\u2019s sixth-largest island is best known for its role in the Gulf of Finland\u2019s artillery barrier plans. Between the two world wars, Finland and Estonia devised a coastal defence system at the narrowest point of the gulf: overlapping fields of fire from coastal guns, armoured ships, submarines, and sea mines\u2014anything that might stop Soviet warships from moving freely.<\/p>\n
The plan was based on Peter the Great\u2019s old naval fortress, built some twenty years earlier. From that era, both my home village and Naissaar still bear artillery platforms and fire control towers.<\/p>\n
From one of my own visits to Naissaar, I remember the narrow-gauge railway. It remained in use until 1994 for transporting heavy Soviet military supplies. But when the occupying army finally withdrew from Estonia, the old trains were left behind. A lucky tourist might still get the chance to sit inside the TU6A-1930 diesel locomotive.<\/p>\n
Yet Naissaar\u2019s history is far stranger than railways or coastal defences.<\/p>\n
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During the summer, the island offers a wide range of guided tours. Here, a group of tourists travels around the island in an open truck.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The forested island was mentioned by the chronicler Adam of Bremen in the High Middle Ages as Terra Feminarum<\/i>\u2014the Land of Women. The bold explorer wrote that the island\u2019s warlike women conceived their children by drinking water, raised their daughters as warriors, and sold their sons into slavery. The truth, however, is likely more mundane: the men were away fishing or seal hunting, and the German visitors failed to understand why the island seemed to hold only women.<\/p>\n
Another story of the island\u2019s name tells that in 1710, the plague spreading from Tallinn reached Naissaar, killing all its inhabitants except for one old woman.<\/p>\n
Every tale about Naissaar seems tinged with mystery\u2014confusing, haunting, and a little like a fairy tale.<\/p>\n
The strangest events in Naissaar\u2019s history took place between 1917 and 1918. Few people know that at the very same time Finland and Estonia were declaring their independence, this small island also proclaimed its own. For a few months, it bore the grand name The Soviet Republic of Soldiers and Fortress Builders of Naissaar.<\/i><\/p>\n
The executive and ruling power consisted of fewer than a hundred naval soldiers inspired by anarchism, led by a Ukrainian-born man named Stepan Petrichenko<\/b>. They formed their own government and began collecting taxes from the island\u2019s couple of hundred residents\u2014people who wisely decided it was safer to pay up and accept the new anarchist order.<\/p>\n
A flag bearing a skull was raised on the fortress mast, emblazoned with the words \u201cDeath to the Bourgeoisie!\u201d Beneath the skull were a crossed spear and sickle, and below those, a pair of crossed shinbones.<\/p>\n
At the time, the Estonian government\u2014still in the process of establishing independence\u2014asked the German army for help. German forces occupied Naissaar just two days after Estonia\u2019s official declaration of independence. The anarchist sailors fled to Kronstadt, where, a few years later, they launched a new uprising against the Bolsheviks. Those who were captured were executed in Tallinn, and the island was formally incorporated into Estonia.<\/p>\n
So\u2014wars, warlike self-fertilising women, plague, railways, and anarchism. Yet from the mainland, the island looks peaceful. As evening falls, the beam from its lighthouse becomes visible, and a massive Swedish ferry passes through the strait, glowing in full light.<\/p>\n
I wouldn\u2019t be a poet if I didn\u2019t find something strangely beautiful in all that history. Someday, or some night, I\u2019ll row across this strait myself\u2014hopefully not during wartime, and without cans of petrol and lamp oil in the boat.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
  Ville Hyt\u00f6nen, writer and chair of the Finnish Writers Union, living in Suurupi, Harku, Estonia.   Three Russian MiG-31 … Read more<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":152384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152431,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152430\/revisions\/152431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}