Too Small to Succeed? East Central Europe and the Historical Study of State Assessment
Too Small to Succeed? East Central Europe and the Historical Study of State Assessment

Summary/Abstract: Whenever the existence of the interwar Estonian state became a subject of debate, interwar British and German experts were in rare agreement: In their eyes, Estonia was too small to survive. It was only a matter of time before its inevitable absorption into a revitalized Russian (or German) state. This was not necessarily revisionist thinking, but represented a broad consensus that transcended political fault lines. It was neither informed by revanchism nor hatred for Estonians, but mostly by a very specific, allegedly rational scepticism towards any state considered ―small‖ and, as a consequence, as ―unviable‖ (nicht lebensfähig).

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