Authors

Discussion

This paper examines how the high fertility rate of the Setos, a small Finno-Ugric people living in the Russian-majority Petseri region, provoked racial and eugenic anxieties in interwar Estonia. In contrast to its liberal treatment of national minorities, Estonia saw the Setos as ‘Russified Estonians’ to be reintegrated into the Estonian nation. But unlike other Russified or Germanised Estonians ready to be reassimilated, the Setos were also suspected to be eugenically unfit and racially compromised. The clashes between the nationalist imperative to Estonianise the Setos, the contempt of Seto cultural backwardness and innate criminality, and the fear of Seto impact on the Estonian nation’s eugenic quality, culminated in the paradoxical approach to intensify Estonianisation and suppress Seto birth rate in the mid-1930s.      

Drawing upon transcripts, newspaper articles, and writings from medical experts and eugenic-minded intelligentsia, this paper will focus on a 1935 eugenic conference in Tallinn as the case study to discuss how proposals suspected to encourage Seto population growth were ignored or rejected.