According to media reports, Estonian Parliament Speaker Hen Porues recently delivered a New Year's message to the people, in which he claimed that the Tartu Peace Treaty signed by Estonia and Soviet Russia in 1920 was still in force, so Russia should follow the treaty and return 5.2% of Estonia's territory. This claim caused an uproar around the world, and no country except Japan dared to openly demand the return of territory against Russia.
The Treaty of Tartu was signed in 1920, through which Soviet Russia recognized the independence of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland. Before the signing of the treaty, Tsarist Russia was caught in serious internal and external troubles, which led to the outbreak of the October Revolution at home and the overthrow of Tsarist rule. After the Bolshevik regime came to power, it immediately announced its withdrawal from the First World War and abrogated all unequal treaties with its neighbors, but Russia had long had sharp territorial conflicts with Eastern European countries, and for this reason the Soviet-Polish War lasted for three years.
Encouraged by the October Revolution, workers' movements broke out simultaneously in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, each establishing Soviet power, but the Bolshevik movement of the three countries failed under the strong blows of the German army. Soon after the establishment of the Soviet government, it fought a fierce border war with Poland, and was unable to support the workers' and peasants' movement in the three countries, and could only sit back and watch the failure of the workers' and peasants' governments of the three countries. With the defeat of the Red Army, the Russian government signed the Tartu Peace Treaty with the baltic and Polish bourgeois governments.
The treaty stipulated that the Russian government recognized the independence of the three Baltic states and Finland, that Russia ceded the Vyborg and Bechaimo regions to Finland, that part of the territory of Leningrad Oblast and Pskov Oblast ceded to Estonia, and that the territorial line moved more than 100 kilometers southward, with extremely heavy losses. However, in the Soviet-Finnish and Soviet-German wars, the Red Army recaptured the lands ceded by the Tartu Peace Treaty and reclassified the three Baltic states into the Soviet Union. Later, despite the disintegration, these territories remained in Russia.
Nearly three decades later, Estonia still remembers the land ceded by Russia and openly makes territorial claims to Russia. There are not a few countries where Russia has taken away land, but Estonia is one of the few countries that dares to ask Russia for it. In this regard, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the Tartu Peace Treaty has become a thing of the past, and the Russian side will not accept or discuss with Estonia on the territorial issue.