sailors, numbering about 80-90 men, formed a government and levied taxes on the local population.
At this point the new Estonian government appealed to the German army for assistance. The "republic" ceased to exist two days later, on February 26, 1918, when German forces occupied the island, causing the Russians to flee. The sailors fled to Kronstadt, where Petrichenko came to play an important role in the Kronstadt uprising.
After the departure of the German troops the Estonian Provisional Government executed forty Bolshevik prisoners of war here in February 1919. The island then became part of the new Estonian Republic in 1920.
Between the wars
The Estonian Republic too used Naissaar as a naval base. In 1934, 450 people lived on the island, of whom 291 were Estonians, most of whom in turn were in the Estonian army. The army of the Republic of Estonia continued to use the railway for military purposes throughout the 1930s.
World War II
The Red Army occupied Naissar in 1940, only to have the Wehrmacht displace it a few months later. The population of Swedish fishermen preferred the Germans, and when the Red Army drove the Germans out in 1944, the last of the Swedish-speaking fishermen took refuge in Sweden.
Post-war
During the period of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Soviet Union established its largest factory for naval mines in the Baltic on the island. The Soviets therefore declared the island a military area and off-limits to the public. The Soviets also used the railway to connect the factory to the port
