 The initial version of Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald's Kalevipoeg was published in its "Proceedings" between 1857 and 1861.In 1950 the Soviet occupation authorities shut down the society and split its collection of 25,000 books, 160,000 pages of manuscripts and 60,000 ethnographical items between several other institutes.The society was restored in 1988 on the initiative of Professor Herbert Ligi of Tartu University.