People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 12 Government and administration 6 Legislature and state representation 3 Military command 2 Security, intelligence and policing 1 Ideology and propaganda 1 Social movements and organizing 6 Scholarship and theory 2 Science and technology 1 Literature and arts 2 Law and justice 2
Affiliation

Most people

Any Soviet Unionstate 1

All 1 affiliations

Soviet Union

Soviet Unionstate 1
Position
Any Marxism and communism 1 Nationalism 1
Citizenship
Any Estonia 1 Soviet Union 1
Background(set)
Any Russia 105 United States 46 United Kingdom 28 Germany 11 France 8 China 7 Ukraine 6 Armenia 5 Hungary 5 Poland 5 Czechoslovakia 4 Georgia 4 Finland 3 Belarus 2 Croatia 2 Cuba 2 Czechia 2 Estonia 2 India 2 Ireland 2 Latvia 2 Lithuania 2 Spain 2 Albania 1 Australia 1 Bulgaria 1 Canada 1 Ethiopia 1 Guyana 1 Israel 1 Italy 1 Japan 1 Martinique 1 Netherlands 1 Portugal 1 Romania 1 Serbia 1 Somalia 1 South Africa 1 Trinidad and Tobago 1
Era
Any

People of the Soviet Union

People of the Stalin era1929–1953 1

People of the wider world

The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 1
Scholarship and theory Background: Estonia Clear all

Jüri Uluots

Jüri Uluots
Estonia state institutions Nationalism Estonia Estonia 1890–1945 ○ Died of cancer in exile in Sweden

Law professor and Estonia’s last constitutional prime minister who, acting as president, formed the Tief government in 1944

Born in Kirbla Parish in the Governorate of Estonia, he studied law at St Petersburg University and taught Roman and Estonian law at the University of Tartu until 1944. Editor-in-chief of Postimees and speaker of the lower chamber, he was prime minister from 1939 until Soviet troops entered Estonia in June 1940; after President Konstantin Päts was arrested by the Soviets he became, under the constitution, prime minister in the duties of the president. On 29 July 1941 he asked the Germans to let him form an independent government and was refused, and he declined to head the Self-Administration. On 7 February 1944 he appealed by radio for men to answer the call-up, and 38,000 registered. In June he appointed Otto Tief deputy prime minister, and in September, as the Germans withdrew, formed the Tief government. He then reached Sweden, where he died of gastric cancer in January 1945.

Career timeline
  • 1938–1939Speaker of the lower chamber
  • 1939–1940Prime minister of Estonia
  • 1940–1945Prime minister in the duties of the president
  • 1944Backed the call-up; formed the Tief government

Nikolai Karotamm

Nikolai Karotamm
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism Soviet Union Estonia 1901–1969 ○ Natural death

First Secretary of the Estonian Communist Party in 1944–1950, removed in 1950 for allegedly shielding “bourgeois nationalists”

Born in Pärnu County in 1901, he moved to the Netherlands in 1925 and joined its Communist Party, then settled in the Soviet Union in 1926 and studied at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West. Arrested in the Great Purge in 1938, he was soon released without charges. During the German occupation he was the de facto leader of the Communist Party of Estonia and head of the Estonian partisan movement staff, and on 28 September 1944 he was elected First Secretary. He headed the central staff of the destruction battalions, and in March 1949 he briefed the county plenipotentiaries before the deportation. Removed after the Eighth Plenum of 1950 and replaced by Johannes Käbin, he worked in Moscow as an economist, took his doctorate in 1964, and, because of his disagreements with Käbin, never returned to Estonia; he died in Moscow in 1969.

Career timeline
  • 1925Joined the Communist Party of the Netherlands
  • 1928Joined the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
  • 1941Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Estonia
  • 1944–1950First Secretary of the Communist Party of Estonia
  • 1950Removed after the Eighth Plenum
  • 1964Doctorate in economics