In this talk, Timo Aava will discuss the history of ways of organising ethnically diverse states. The early twentieth century was a period of intense reform discourse in the Habsburg and Romanov empires and the emergence of nation-states after the end of the First World War. All of these, however, were inhabited by a multitude of nationalities, and the question was how to address this meaningfully to guarantee the internal stability and self-governance of the nationalities.

The talk will focus on the concept of non-territorial autonomy, which circulated widely in these debates but is often overlooked in historiography. It will zoom in on the case of Estonia, which in 1925 introduced legislation allowing minorities to establish non-territorial cultural self-government bodies to administer their educational and cultural affairs independently. Both the Jewish and Baltic German minorities established their cultural self-government institutions, and the arrangement received much positive international recognition and served as a model for many minority rights activists. By looking at the transnational debates leading to this legislation and implementation experience, the talk will offer a fresh interpretation of the circulation of ideas, imperial reform, and the interwar minority rights system.