ABSTRACT
Any student of Soviet Estonian population processes must be willing to pursue bits and pieces of data in all types of publications and to collate these to understand what has been and is transpiring. The population change irritates the natives, stimulates anti-Russian attitudes, symbolizes and in some cases leads to Russification of other sectors of society, and affects the maintenance of the native culture. The most significant population loss through forced transfer or politically motivated flight involved the ethnic Estonians, who had comprised 88 percent of the country's population in 1939. The depopulation process so reduced the number of males in the population that the factor in itself hampered population recovery. Most of the population increase of the first five postwar years was due, to immigration. After the war, however, Estonian population losses were counterbalanced by the immigration of other Soviet people, primarily Russians. Before examining these patterns of immigration, attention must be given to the processes of urbanization.
