Estonian prime minister who concluded the Treaty of Tartu, publisher of Postimees
As Soviet forces occupied Estonia in June 1940, he urged President Päts to offer at least symbolic armed resistance.
Leader of Estonia's liberal national movement through the newspaper Postimees, he was prime minister in 1919 and 1920 and concluded the Treaty of Tartu. Pushed out for opposing Päts's authoritarian regime in 1934, he was arrested after the Soviet occupation of 1940 and disappeared.
Career timeline
- 1896Editor and publisher of Postimees, turning it into the organ of the national movement
- 1906Member of the First Russian State Duma; signed the Vyborg Appeal
- 1917Member of the Estonian Provincial Assembly (Maapäev)
- 1919–1920Prime Minister; concluded the Treaty of Tartu
- 1923–1925Speaker (President) of the Riigikogu
- 1927–1928State Elder
- 1931–1932Minister of Foreign Affairs
- 1933State Elder (final government)
Bolshevik who led the underground communist party in independent Estonia and was executed
A Cheka investigator on the Lockhart conspiracy and Kaplan affair, he was arrested after the May Day demonstration of 1922 and shot that same night in a forest by Lake Ülemiste.
The Bolshevik who led the October Revolution in Estonia in 1917, he directed the underground communist party in the independent republic until his arrest and execution in Tallinn in 1922.
Career timeline
- 1905Began revolutionary activity in a Marxist students' circle in Arensburg (Kuressaare)
- 1906Moved to St Petersburg and joined the RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
- 1906–1913Party work in St Petersburg and Revel (Tallinn); helped publish the Estonian-language paper Kiir
- 1917Deputy chairman of the Estland Military Revolutionary Committee; head of the administrative department of the Soviet ExecutComm
- 1918Investigator for the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal and Cheka; member of the All-Russian Central ExecutComm
- 1918–1922Led the underground Estonian Communist Party; Central Committee and Politburo member
- 1922Arrested 3 May and shot the following night
The agronomist who pushed a sovereignty declaration through the Soviet system and led Estonia out of the empire
Lukyanov warned him of a ten-year sentence for 'anti-constitutional activity.' Rüütel stood his ground: 'We will convene the Supreme Council and put the Declaration of Independence to a vote,' inadvertently saying 'Independence' instead of 'Sovereignty,' as he later recalled.
An agricultural economist from the Estonian island of Saaremaa, Rüütel rose through the Soviet system: rector of the Estonian Agricultural Academy, Communist Party functionary, and finally chairman of the Presidium of the Estonian SSR Supreme Soviet in 1983. On 16 November 1988, defying Moscow's threat of imprisonment, he pushed the Estonian sovereignty declaration through the legislature, opening the first crack in the Soviet edifice; in 1990, as chairman of the Supreme Council, he declared Soviet rule illegal and initiated the transition to restored independence. After independence he was elected president in 2001 and served until 2006, steering Estonia into NATO and the European Union.
Career timeline
- 1949–1950Senior agronomist, Saaremaa Executive Committee agricultural department
- 1955–1957Teacher, Tartu School of Agricultural Mechanization
- 1957–1963Senior zootechnician and director, experimental farm of the Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Research Institute
- 1963–1969Director, Tartu Reference State Farm
- 1969–1977Rector, Estonian Academy of Agriculture
- 1977–1979Secretary for agriculture, Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia
- 1979–1983First Deputy Chairman, Council of Ministers of the Estonian SSR
- 1983–1990Chairman, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR
- 1990–1992Chairman, Supreme Council of the Republic of Estonia
- 2001–2006President of the Republic of Estonia
Recalled from Nicaragua in June 1988, he led Estonia's Communists through the sovereignty declaration, the first breach in the Soviet wall.
"Our deputies have shown their will to see Estonia as a sovereign and equal member within the Soviet Union," he said after the sovereignty vote, November 1988.
An Estonian from the island of Hiiumaa, Väljas rose through Komsomol and party ranks from the 1950s, becoming a secretary of the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party by the 1970s. Suspected of nationalist sympathies, Moscow pushed him into diplomatic exile in 1980, making him ambassador to Venezuela and then Nicaragua. On 16 June 1988 he was recalled to replace the hardliner Karl Vaino as First Secretary; working with the Popular Front, he steered through Estonia's declaration of sovereignty that November, the first such assertion by a Soviet republic. He voted for the restoration of Estonian independence in August 1991 and later chaired the Estonian Democratic Labour Party.
Career timeline
- 1949–1955Various Komsomol posts; graduated Tartu State University (1955)
- 1955–1961First Secretary, Central Committee, ELKNÜ (Estonian Komsomol)
- 1961–1971First Secretary, Tallinn City Committee, Communist Party of Estonia
- 1963–1967Chairman, 6th Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR
- 1971–1980Secretary, Central Committee, Communist Party of Estonia
- 1980–1988Soviet Ambassador to Venezuela (1980–86), then Nicaragua (1986–88)
- 1988–1990First Secretary, Central Committee, Communist Party of Estonia
- 1992–1995Chairman, Estonian Democratic Labour Party
The dissident architect who walked out of a Soviet prison camp and opened Estonia's political road to independence
On 23 August 1987 at noon, Hirvepark stood empty until the stroke of twelve, when two to five thousand people suddenly filled it. Parek recalled: 'Unbelievable! Something had to be done.'
The daughter of an Estonian officer, she was deported to Siberia at seven and spent four years in exile. Working as an architect, she was arrested in 1983 for anti-Soviet samizdat activity and imprisoned for four years; seven months after her release she co-founded the MRP-AEG and organised the Hirvepark rally of August 1987. That rally became the starting point of the Baltic independence movement, and the following year she was elected chair of the ERSP, Estonia's first non-communist party. After independence she served as interior minister in the first post-Soviet government, resigning in the 1993 Pullapää crisis, and later converted to Catholicism, living at Pirita Convent while leading the drive to build a memorial to the victims of Stalinism.
Career timeline
- 1963–1983Worked as an architect at design institutes in Tallinn and Tartu
- 1983–1987Arrested for anti-Soviet agitation, imprisoned in Dubravlag women's political section
- 1987Co-founded the MRP-AEG, organised the Hirvepark rally
- 1988–1992Chair of the Estonian National Independence Party (ERSP)
- 1990–1992Member of the Congress of Estonia
- 1992Presidential candidate, fourth place with 4.3% of the vote
- 1992–1993Minister of the Interior of Estonia (Mart Laar cabinet)
- 1997–Co-founder and head of Caritas Eesti; resident at Pirita Convent
An Estonian communist leader who chose to preserve the Soviet Union
In 1991, as Estonian independence approached, he joined the Politburo while backing the Soviet Union.
Lembit Annus was a Moscow-aligned Estonian communist leader who stood at the centre of the late Soviet conflict over national independence and preserving the Union. From December 1990 until the party was banned in August 1991, he was First Secretary of the Communist Party of Estonia on the CPSU platform, and in 1991 he joined the CPSU Politburo. After the party's dissolution, he remained active in communist politics as a Pravda correspondent and Tallinn municipal councillor.
Career timeline
- 1941Born in Kohtla-Järve, Estonian SSR
- 1963Joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- 1983–1989Editor-in-chief of Eesti Kommunist
- 1990First Secretary of the Kalinin District Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia
- 1990–1991First Secretary of the Communist Party of Estonia on the CPSU platform
- 1991Member of the CPSU Politburo
- 1991–1999Estonia correspondent for Pravda and Tallinn City Council member
Architect of mass mobilization and independence politics
On live television on 13 April 1988, he proposed the idea of a Popular Front.
Edgar Savisaar was an Estonian politician and co-founder of the Popular Front of Estonia, helping turn demands for reform into mass politics. On live television on 13 April 1988, he proposed a Popular Front to support perestroika; the movement soon pressed for democracy and the restoration of Estonian independence. He became the first prime minister of restored Estonia, while economic hardship and later political controversies exposed the limits and tensions of his governing project.
Career timeline
- 1973Graduated from the University of Tartu with a degree in history
- 1980–1988Worked on economic planning in the state institutions of the Estonian SSR
- 1988–1989Academic director at Mainor and co-founder of the Popular Front of Estonia
- 1989–1990Deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and head of the State Planning Committee of the Estonian SSR
- 1990–1992First prime minister of the Republic of Estonia
- 1992–1995Vice-speaker of the Riigikogu
- 2001–2004Mayor of Tallinn
- 2005–2007Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications
- 2007–2015Mayor of Tallinn
