The article The Outbreak of the Landeswehr War: an Estonian Perspective from the pen of the historian Ago Pajur appeared in the second issue of the periodical Tuna in 2009. It generated a certain discussion by its novel approach to ascertaining the reasons for the Landeswehr War. This inspires a somewhat more critical review of the background for the mental continuation of the Landeswehr War, the so-called Pavel Bermondt Affair, which culminated in the autumn of 1919, when a body of troops under Bermondt’s command consisting of White Russian troops deployed in Latvia and Lithuania and troops from the German Free Corps attacked Latvia. Estonia and the Entente military mission (including a squadron from the British Fleet), in turn, set about supporting Latvia. For its own part and out of solidarity, the leadership of the White Russian Northwestern Army declared Bermondt an outlaw. The stalemate that ensued along the Daugava River line in early October lasted for nearly a month until the Latvians finally went on the offensive at the start of November and drove Bermondt’s units out of the country.

As in the case of the Landeswehr War, the viewpoints of the different participants regarding the reasons, course and consequences of the conflict are so different that the question arises, is this one and the same event at all? Excerpts from the military activity diaries of the General Staff of Estonia’s Commander in Chief of that time, which are supplemented by the relevant correspondence between Estonia’s government and military institutions, have been used here to illustrate how the Estonian side viewed the Bermondt incident. The picture that those documents reveal differs to some extent from the one that Estonian historical literature from the 1920s and 1930s has stored in people’s memory.

Thus Estonia participated in the fight against Bermondt from 9 to 28 October, from when Estonian armoured trains reached the outskirts of Riga until the Commander in Chief issued the order to return the forces concentrated for the operation to their respective divisions. To generalise in summing up this affair, two conclusions can be drawn. First of all, active combat operations took place on the outskirts of Riga for about a week, with brief intervals. By the time the Estonians withdrew, active combat had essentially subsided on the Riga front and positional warfare was being conducted. Bermondt was unable to advance across the Daugava (which evidently was also no longer on the agenda after the intervention of the Entente Fleet and Estonia), but the Latvian armed forces did not have the strength to force Bermondt to retreat either. Secondly, it can be said that the intervention of Estonian forces in the latter half of October could have changed the course of events, but the conclusion of a military agreement bogged down in mutual differences of opinion, which ended with the withdrawal of the Estonian armoured trains from the outskirts of Riga. Fortunately for the Latvians, the Latgale sector of the front was not the Red Army’s primary focus at that moment on its Western Front. This made it possible to bring reinforcements to the Riga front once the Estonians had conclusively withdrawn.

A more important reason for Estonia’s passiveness lies in its complicated relations with the Latvians. On the one hand, the Latvians did not fulfil the obligations to the Estonian forces that they had taken upon themselves in July of 1919. On the other hand, Latvian public opinion was also hostile regarding the Estonian “occupation forces” in Northern and Eastern Latvia and in the undetermined border areas. Since nothing came of any cooperation agreement between the two sides and Latvia accused Estonia of extortion, relations worsened even further as a result of all this. Since there were no agreements in effect that both sides would have recognised, there was a real danger at the end of 1919 that the border question would be resolved by force of arms. In such an event, the Estonian War of Independence would have been augmented with one further peculiar chapter.