Johannes Vares
Johannes Vares
Poet and doctor whom Zhdanov forced on Estonia as puppet prime minister in June 1940, and who led the petition to join the Soviet Union
Born to a farming family near Viljandi, he studied medicine in Kiev and served as a military physician in the First World War and the Estonian War of Independence. He became a well-known poet and radical socialist under the pen name Johannes Barbarus. After the Soviet occupation of June 1940, Andrei Zhdanov forced President Konstantin Päts to appoint him prime minister of a communist-dominated puppet government, and he headed the delegation that delivered the petition to join the Soviet Union. He then chaired the Estonian SSR Supreme Soviet’s presidium, fled to Soviet Russia when the Germans came in 1941, and after returning in 1944 was investigated by the NKVD over his role in the War of Independence. He died in the presidential residence in Kadriorg, Tallinn, in November 1946, most probably by suicide, though murder has also been suggested.
Career timeline
- 1910–1914Studied medicine at the University of Kiev
- 1918–1920Military physician in the Estonian War of Independence
- 1940Puppet prime minister; led the delegation petitioning to join the USSR
- 1940–1946Chairman of the Estonian SSR Supreme Soviet’s presidium