ABSTRACT
A small country of some 47,000 square kilometres (18,000 square miles) and 1.5 million inhabitants on the east coast of the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Russia, Estonia is populated by people of Finno-Ugric origin who have lived on this land for nearly 5,000 years. In the thirteenth century they were subjugated by German crusaders and later the country came under Polish, Swedish and (since 1710) Russian rule. For almost 700 years, a small German minority remained the dominant class and was the source of occasional amateur theatricals.
