The basis for this publication is the report on the activity of the Writers’ Union in 1940–1948 that Chairman of the Soviet Estonian Writers’ Union (ENKL) Johannes Semper submitted to N. Karotamm, the leader of the Estonian SSR Communist Party of that time, in October of 1948. This document, which is characteristic of its time, is published together with an appendix – a brief overview of the activity of the Estonian Republic’s Department of the USSR Literature Foundation. The report briefly documents the ENKL’s more important undertakings, the dynamics of its membership year by year, and also notes quite well the more general changes that took place in the literary life of that time. The analysis of ‘mistakes and shortcomings’, and the list of tasks that lay ahead for the Writers’ Union presented at the end of the report are also telling. Bearing the foregoing in mind, this published report is definitely a key source in the study of the activity of the Soviet Estonian Writers’ Union and of post-war literary life more broadly.