Estonia (Estonian: Eesti), officially the Republic of Estonia (Eesti Vabariik), is a republic in the Baltic States. The country comprises over 1,500 islands in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland. The islands constitute 10% of the country’s total area. The two largest islands are Saaremaa and Hiiumaa. Lake Peipus (Peipsi järv) in the east forms part of the border with Russia.

The territory of Estonia has been inhabited since at least 6,500 BCE, with Finno-Ugric speakers – the linguistic ancestors of modern Estonians – arriving no later than around 1800 BCE. Following centuries of successive Teutonic, Danish, Swedish, and Russian rule, Estonians experienced a national awakening that culminated in independence from the Russian Empire towards the end of World War I. During World War II, Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, then Nazi Germany a year later and again annexed by the Soviets in 1944, after which it was reconstituted as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1988, during the Singing Revolution, the Estonian SSR issued the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration in defiance of the illegal Soviet rule, and independence was restored on the night of 20 August 1991, during the 1991 attempted coup by the Soviets.

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