HS Foreign 16.10.2001 - Few people escaped Estonia in the Soviet days

By Jukka Rislakki in Tallinn

A new study based on KGB archives reveals that very few Estonians succeeded in fleeing to the West during the Soviet era.

Many people who reached the Finnish coast or borders were turned back to the Soviet Union.

Researcher Jaak Pihlau recounts that after the Second World War, there was still some traffic in the Baltic Sea that the Soviet Union was not able to monitor. At the time, many people left Estonia for Sweden.

The situation later changed, the seal guaranteed by the 2,000 border guards, as well as soldiers and security forces.

Pihlau deduces that over the course

of more than four decades, between 1947 and 1989, at least fifteen people succeeded in fleeing Estonia for the West. Around half of them escaped by sea.

This figure does not include the refugees who defected abroad from Estonian tourist groups or delegations, nor seamen who fled in foreign ports.

A group of Estonians managed to walk to the Finnish borders and even cross them, some even continued all the way through Finland to Sweden.

Perhaps the most extraordinary escapee was electrician and athlete Heigo Jogesma, who crossed the Eastern Finnish border by foot undetected on three occasions. First he entered the country in September 1971, then returned East in the summer of 1972 after being disappointed by his cold reception in Sweden.

After he was released from a psychiatric asylum, Jogesma tried to defect once again, but the Finns returned him.

There were plenty of those who tried.

The former KGB chief in Estonia recalls that during the final two decades of the Soviet reign, 78 people were charged in Estonia for crossing borders illegally, or attempting to do so.

Those who got away were sentenced to death in absentia, or to 25 years of hard labour in a prison camp.

In the spring of 1947, ice covered the Gulf of Finland and many attempted to escape on foot or skis.

At the end of February, three young Estonians aged sixteen to eighteen embarked toward Finland by skiing. The boys were captured the next day, sixty kilometres away from shore, or clearly outside of the Soviet borders. All received long terms in prison camps.

One month later, Heino Mikiver set out from Pirita. Mikiver had fought alongside the Finns during the Continuation War. Two days later, he reached the shorefront of Helsinki.

Mikiver applied for asylum at Suomenlinna, where the officers arrested him. Just over three weeks later, the Finns returned him to the Soviet Union, where he received a sentence of ten years.

Some Estonian fishing boats

still managed to reach Gotland, but otherwise escaping became more difficult as the KGB recruited fishermen as agents, and established supervised “escape points” on the coast.

One of Estonia’s most famous athletes, Elmar Kivistik, was lured into such a trap. Kivistik had won fourteen world championships in shooting.

Another well-known athlete, Eugen Adrik, succeeded in escaping in 1957 from Pirita to Stockholm in an Olympic-class sailboat. Another sailor, Mart Vahter, rowed his way across the Gulf of Finland in a small rubber boat in 1978. Vahter, who embarked from the Tallinn port area, was delivered via Vaasa to Sweden.

In April 1984, four young Estonian men reached the Finnish shores in a rubber boat: Andre Hildebrandt, Aleksander Oltsvel (later known with the name Lepajoe), Raivo Roosna, and Harry Gelstein. The authorities were already acquainted with them due to thefts, hooliganism, and bootlegging.

Another extraordinary case was that of Juhan Lapmann.

He was quite adventurous from a young age, and was returned home from Finland already when he was still in school. In 1948 he built a ship with branches, withes, tar, nails, and telephone cables, and used it to flee to Finland in early November.

He knew nothing of the Soviet base at Porkkala, and to his misfortune, he landed right on its shores. He was arrested.

After he was released, Lapmann bought an Olympic-class Finn dinghy, and decided to escape with it. He soon switched to a motor boat and set off in September 1972.

He reached a Danish trawler in the middle of the Baltic Sea, but near Gotland a Soviet patrol boat stopped the vessel. The Soviets boarded the Danish boat and apprehended the fugitive.

Lapmann spent a total of 32 years in jail, camps, and psychiatric institutions, which is most likely a record amount of time.

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 14.10.2001