Abstract
The restoration of the Estonian Republic in late 1980s and early 1990s can be described as the construction of ‘the Republic of Historians’. A great many founders and leaders of the newly independent republic had received their education from the Department of History at the University of Tartu, and first gained their public renown as leaders of the national heritage movement and publicists on historical issues. The whole of the period, often called the ‘new era of awakening’, was characterized by an ideology of restoration, worked out by politically minded historians and historically minded political dissidents. In essence, all the political steps taken were motivated by a desire to return to pre-war laws, traditions, and institutions – to rehabilitate and restitute everything that had been destroyed or condemned to oblivion in the Soviet period. The major role of historical arguments and restoration ideology in the Estonian independence movement was not without several important sociopolitical consequences, especially in the realm of citizenship and property policy, which departed from a strict idea of legal continuity.