Era of Silence
[[File:Kaja 1934-62.jpg|thumb|250px|Newspaper Kajas caption announcing the beginning of the state of protection led by General Laidoner on 14 March 1934.]] The Era of Silence''' () was the period between 1934 and 1938 (or 1940) in Estonian history. The period began with the preemptive self-coup of 12 March 1934, which the then Prime Minister of Estonia Konstantin Päts carried out to avert a feared takeover of the state apparatus by the popular Vaps Movement (a nationalist political organization of war veterans). Context and events In the charged atmosphere that pervaded Europe in 1934, when Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had become widely admired role models for authoritarian and nationalist movements in many other countries, most of the leaders of the democratic Republic of Estonia also viewed the possible takeover by a similar group, the Vaps Movement, as a credible and imminent threat. Claiming the existence of such an imminent threat, the then Prime Minister Konstantin Päts, using the authority of the newly adopted Constitution of 1933, proclaimed a national state of emergency on 12 March. He then appointed general Johan Laidoner, a popular leader of the War of Independence and a known opponent of the Vaps Movement's leadership, as commander of