Johannes Laurist

Johannes Lauristin (born October 29, 1899 in Tallinn , † August 28, 1941 on the Baltic Sea ) was an Estonian politician, communist and writer.

Early years

Johannes Lauristin was born the son of an industrial worker. He spent his childhood and school years on the Tuisu Farm in Kuivajõe Village (now Kose Parish in Harju County ). In 1914 he graduated from the local village school. In 1915/16 he worked as a worker in the "Volta" factory and in 1916 in the "Dvigatel" factory in Tallinn. In 1917 he became a member of the communist party in Estonia.

persecution

From 1919 to 1922 Johannes Lauristin served in the Estonian armed forces. In 1923 he was elected as a left-wing MP in the Estonian Parliament ( Riigikogu ). Since the Estonian Communist Party was officially banned, he was persecuted by the Estonian authorities for illegal party work. In the so-called " Trial of 149 " Lauristin was sentenced to seven years of forced labor for communist activities, which he served from 1923 to 1931. In the subsequent "Trial of 34" he was tried again and was imprisoned from 1932 to 1938 before being released through an amnesty . During this time he worked from 1923 to 1933 as editor of the left-wing magazine Noor tööline ("The Young Worker").

Politician

With the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940, Lauristin was courted by Stalin and appointed head of the first Soviet puppet government in Estonia. From 1940 to 1941 Lauristin was chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Estonian SSR and thus head of government of Estonia, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia (EK (b) P) and member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

With the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, the German Wehrmacht also advanced into the Baltic States . According to official information, Johannes Lauristin died during the evacuation of Tallinn when the destroyer Jakow Sverdlov sank on a German mine barrier in the Gulf of Finland . The Estonian historian Mati Õun, on the other hand, claims that Lauristin was murdered by communists in August 1941 for defying Stalin's war orders.

In 1946 Lauristin was posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin .

Writing activity

Lauristin has published two novels under the pseudonym Juhan Madarik on the subject of the workers' and class struggle. In 1929 the novel Riigikukutajad ('The Subversives') was published in Leningrad , where he had had the manuscript smuggled out of prison . In 1941 he published the first volume of a multi-volume series of novels entitled Vabariik ('The Republic'). It was not until 1953 that the fourth part of the novel was published from the estate together with the fragmentary second part and a new edition of the first part. However, the third part is missing. Allegedly, a fifth part was also planned.

A short story by the author is available in German in translation, which was published in Tallinn. Since Lauristin was considered a prime example of socialist literature , it found its way into a number of handbooks in the GDR.

Private life

From 1939 Johannes Lauristin was married to the Estonian communist and politician Olga Lauristin (1903-2005). The Estonian social scientist and politician Marju Lauristin (* 1940), who was Estonian Minister of Social Affairs from 1992 to 1994, emerged from the marriage.

Web links

• Kas Lauristin tapeti? (Eesti Ekspress, October 21, 1999)

Remarks

1. ↑ http://www.ekspress.ee/Arhiiv/1999/42/Aosa/Magnet.html
2. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt : History of Estonian Literature. From the beginning to the present. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 2006, pp. 533-534.
3. ↑ Mikk Simm. Translated by Aivo Kaidja, in: Estonian novels . Selected by Endel Sõgel. Tallinn: Perioodika 1979, pp. 106-112.
4. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt : Estonian literature in German translation. A reception story from the 19th to the 21st century. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2011, pp. 204–207.