Demokraatia jätkusuutlikkuse võimalikkusest Eestis 1933. aasta põhiseaduse järgi
Date
2012
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Estonia had its first constitution adopted in 1920, just two years after gaining
independence. It might not be well known that a new constitution – officially a law for
changing the existing constitution – composed by the Estonian Veterans’ League, was
adopted by the citizens of Estonia in a referendum in octobre of 1933. Just a few months
later, in march 1934, the rightist politician Konstantin Päts made a coup d’état with his
fellow general Johan Laidoner. They established an authoritarian dictatorship, not
following the new constitution. Thereby, Päts himself declared that this constitution was
so poorly composed that it easily led him to take full control of the power. Since a lot of
nowadays’ historical approaches of that era are based on the works composed between 1934 and 1991, there have been claims as if the constitution of 1933 was authoritarian or even fascist. This might lead to false interpretations amongst the Estonians today.
Therefore it was important to analyse if a democratic regime was possible according to
the Veterans’ League’s constitution as they themselves claimed. We took under review
different aspects of democracy, also looked at it from a point of view of the
constitutional law. Since it was announced by the Veterans’ League that their
constitution would have established a presidential democracy, we had to take a look at
the risks that would accompany this regime. It was also necessary to take a peek at the
Estonian Veterans’ League movement itself, since its policy and goals in Estonia in the
1930s gave an idea, what they were hoping to achieve when changing the constitution.
We also saw some opinions of the contemporary lawyers and politicians about the new
constitution. Finally, the most important thing was to analyse the changes of the
constitution themselves, occasionally comparing them to the current Estonian
constitution and the one from 1920.
All in all, it could be said that eventhough the constitution of 1933 complied the needed
characteristics of democracy, there were some important shortages. The leader of the
executive power, the president, would have been elected directly by the citizens of
Estonia. But one of the problems was, for example, that he would have had the chance
to constitute decrees and therefore soley influence the work of the parliament. So we
could say that the continuity of democracy would have been possible according to the
constitution of 1933 but would have depended too much on the person elected as the
president: he could have legally established an authoritarian-like regime.