The territorial composition of the whole historic province of Petseri County (
Petserimaa) is regarded as the homeland of the
Setos, a
Balto-Finnic people related to
Estonians. The Russian inhabitants of Petseri district were mainly
Old Believers who spoke a transitional dialect between Russian and the
Belarusian language. In the mid-15th century one of the most important Russian Orthodox monasteries, the
Pskovo-Pechersky Monastery, was founded in the area. During the last year of
World War I, from February to December 1918, the county's capital,
Pechory, was occupied by
German forces. (As such, the county including the town and the territory surrounding it was devised to be part of the
Baltic Duchy.) The town was then captured by Estonian forces on March 29, 1919, during the
Estonian War of Independence. The
Treaty of Tartu of 1920 subsequently assigned Pechory and its surrounding territory, the
Setomaa region, to Estonia. Pechory was renamed Petseri and the area became Petseri County. Saint Peter's Lutheran Church was built in 1926 at Petseri. During
World War II, the county was occupied by the
German army between August 1941 and August 11, 1944, and then by
Soviet forces during their advance toward
Nazi Germany. Soviet authorities transferred most of Petseri county from the
Estonian SSR to the
Russian SFSR in 1944. After Estonia regained independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991, Estonia raised the question of a return to the borders under the
Treaty of Tartu: Estonia dropped this claim in November 1995, however. Estonia and Russia signed the Estonian–Russian Border Treaty on May 18, 2005: the preamble noted that the international border had partly changed, in accordance with Article 122 of the Estonian Constitution. ==See also==