Tõnu Parming

Tõnu Parming (28 June 1941 – 30 October 1998) was an Estonian-born sociologist, historian and journalist associated with the post-war Estonian exile community in North America. He taught sociology at the University of Maryland and worked in U.S. government training and policy circles on Soviet and East European affairs, before moving to Toronto, where he edited the Estonian-language weekly Meie Elu and led the local Estonian publishing organisation.^[2][1]

Parming was born in Pärnu, Estonia. His family fled during the Second World War and eventually resettled in the United States, where he attended high school in New Jersey.^[1][2]

He enrolled at Princeton University and later graduated in sociology in 1969 after an interruption for military service.^[1] After a research year at the University of Helsinki on a Fulbright scholarship, he completed a doctorate in sociology at Yale University in 1976.^[1][2]

Parming served as an officer in the United States Army Special Forces (the “Green Berets”), including service in the Vietnam War, and rose to the rank of captain.^[1][2]

From 1974 to 1988, Parming taught sociology at the University of Maryland, with a focus on Soviet nationality issues and public policy relating to ethnicity.^[1][2] During this period he also served as director of Soviet and East European studies at the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute.^[2]

In the late 1980s he was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto and subsequently moved to Toronto permanently. There he became president of the Estonian Publishing Company and editor of the weekly Estonian newspaper Meie Elu.^[1][2] In 1997 he received Estonia’s Order of the White Star (II class).^[1] He died in Toronto on 30 October 1998 of complications related to a stroke following heart bypass surgery.^[1][2]

Parming published on ethnic identity, nationalism, and political developments in Estonia and the Soviet Baltic region.

He wrote on demographic change and nationality issues in the Soviet Baltic region in Soviet Studies.^[3]

With Elmar Järvesoo, he co-edited A Case Study of a Soviet Republic: The Estonian SSR (Westview Press, 1978), a major English-language reference collection on society, politics, economy and culture in Soviet Estonia that was reviewed in Slavic Review.^[4][5]

He authored scholarly articles on Estonian politics in the interwar period, including work published in Slavic Review.^[6]

In addition to academic writing, Parming compiled bibliographic resources for English-language Estonia-related publications, co-authoring a bibliography with Marju Rink Parming in 1974.^[7][8]

• The Collapse of Liberal Democracy and the Rise of Authoritarianism in Estonia (Sage, 1975).^[9]
• (with Elmar Järvesoo, eds.) A Case Study of a Soviet Republic: The Estonian SSR (Westview Press, 1978).^[4][5]
• “Population Processes and the Nationality Issue in the Soviet Baltic,” Soviet Studies (1980).^[3]
• “The Electoral Achievements of the Communist Party in Estonia, 1920–1940,” Slavic Review (1983).^[6]

• Tonu Parming ’64 at Princeton Alumni Weekly