trot

As I said, I think it serves no purpose to argue over what percentage was forced

Sure, but omitting nuance by default allows for painting a black-and-white picture of history, which helps fabricate a justification for nationalism. We hopefully all understand what that leads to and who benefits from it.

I will read it, although honestly I am not really confident about the reliability of the report so far, judging by the following (mutually unrelated) excerpts with the most interesting parts highlighted:

2. THE CHARACTER OF REPRESSIVE ACTS COMMITTED IN ESTONIA BY THE SOVIET OCCUPATION

Because of their extent and severity, the repressive measures of this period can be compared to the Jewish holocaust, which is found to have caused long-term physical and/or mental disorders to nearly all the survivors.

Abortion, which had been forbidden in the Republic of Estonia and also initially in the Soviet Union, was legalised in 1955 and grew to be a serious problem, achieving its peak in the 1970s (in 1970 there were 188.7 terminations of pregnancy per 100 live births). This problem, too, has been carried over to the independent Estonia.

But the closed character of the Soviet system hindered development. In a normal and free society, the progress would have been more rapid. ... The industrious work and skills of Estonian doctors had to compensate for the technical backwardness.

Besides the damage to physical environment caused by the occupation authorities, the psychological pollution of environment should also be noted. This was caused by several measures deriving from the repressive policy:

...

• polarising and splitting the nation under the false slogan of class struggle, persecuting patriotically-minded people, especially intelligentsia, establishing a totalitarian system of persecution and denunciation;

• forcing materialism and atheism, restricting church life, prohibiting and destroying religious books, physical and moral repression of the clergy and the believers;

• abolishing of all real convictions and principles, creating of a nation- less, godless and impersonal „herd human”. As a melancholy humoristic exaggeration one might say that a new subspecies of Homo sapiens developed, a Homo sovieticus.

The frequency of self-destructive behaviour, suicides and alcohol poisonings decreased (H. Noor, 1993), religious life livened up and birth rates increased sporadically. The crises of the transitional period that followed, did not bring along such positive changes any more.

Violation and plunder of the nation’s genetic fund — by destruction, forced deportation and banishment of the healthier part of the nation, — should also be considered as a far-reaching effect of Soviet repressive policy that had lasted for decades.

All in all, it reads more like fascist-leaning propaganda than a scientific report.

Another census in 1959 showed that demographics had changed significantly - the population was ~75% of Estonian descent. I assure you that ~165 000 people did not magically change their descent in that period of time - this change was the direct result of deportations, executions, forced drafts into dictator-led armies, etc.

Assuming that the migration of every single person to and from Estonia was forced and done in deliberate pursuit of russification is a pretty major flaw in this argument. Economic migration in the rest of the USSR was common. Why do you rule that out completely for Estonia?