Nikolai Karotamm

Nikolai Karotamm ( Russian Николай Георгиевич Каротамм ; born October 10 ^{. Jul} / 23. October  1901 ^greg. In Pärnu , † 21st September 1969 in Moscow ) was a communist Soviet-Estonian politicians.

Life

Early years

Nikolai Karotamm was born as the son of the carpenter Jüri Karotamm (1879–1954) and his wife Liina (1880–1965) in Livonia . From 1909 to 1915 he attended the parish school in Kastna (today rural municipality Tõstamaa ), then from 1915 to 1917 the secondary elementary school in Pärnu and 1919/1920 the teachers' college in Rakvere . From 1921 to 1923 he did his military service in the guard battalion in the Estonian capital Tallinn .

Communist movement

In March 1925, Karotamm emigrated to the Netherlands. There he joined the Communist Party of Holland a year later . In August 1926 he moved to the Soviet Union .

From 1926 to 1928 Karotamm studied at the Leningrad branch of the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West, named after Julian Marchlewski (Коммунистический университет национальных меньшинста).

Nikolai Karotamm became a member of the CPSU in 1928 . In the same year he secretly went to Estonia for a few months. 1928/1929 he was the organizer of the Tallinn section of the Communist Party of Estonia (EKP), which was banned in Estonia and active underground .

He then continued his studies in Leningrad until 1931. From 1931 to 1935 he studied at the Communist University of National Minorities of the West his postgraduate and was from 1933 to 1936 as a lecturer operates.

In 1935/36 Karotamm was a consultant in the Executive Committee of the Comintern , after which he worked as a journalist. In 1938 he was arrested in the course of Stalin's Great Terror , but released without charge. From 1938 to 1940 Karotamm was the deputy director of a mechanical engineering center in Leningrad.

Politician

In June 1940 the Red Army occupied the Republic of Estonia. Karotamm also came back to Estonia with her. He became the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Kommunist , the press organ of the Central Committee of the EKP. From August 1941 to 1944 he was the second secretary of the EKP. During the German occupation of Estonia during World War II , Karotamm was chairman of the staff of the Estonian partisan movement from 1942 to 1944.

After the reconquest of Estonia by the Soviet armed forces, Karotamm was elected 1st Secretary of the EKP on September 28, 1944. He was one of the leading politicians of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic , who carried out the Stalinization of the country during the second Soviet occupation of Estonia (from 1944) . At the same time he was the first secretary of the Tallinn City Committee of the EKP.

Under the direction of Karotamm, government structures, living conditions and the economy (collectivization of agriculture and production companies, introduction of the ruble ) were reshaped in line with the Soviet social system. At the same time, the EKP initiated the Russification of Estonia.

From 1946 to 1954, Karotamm was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR . From 1947 to 1951 he was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR.

Karotamm is also one of the main people responsible for the second large wave of deportations of Estonians to the interior of the Soviet Union on March 25, 1949 . Around 20,000 people, around 3 percent of the Estonian population at the time, fell victim to the measure. Nevertheless, in 1950 he was accused of not having carried out the deportations intensely enough.

Deposition

In particular, disputes with the group of Estonian communists who grew up in Russia forced him to give up his position as party chairman in favor of his successor Johannes Käbin after accusations of “bourgeois nationalism” at the 8th plenum of the EKP Central Committee in March 1950 . At the same time, Carotamm was removed from the Central Committee of the EKP.

Until his death in 1969, Nikolai Karotamm was politically sidelined as a scientist in Moscow. In 1971 his urn was transferred to the Tallinn Forest Cemetery.

Private life

Nikolai Karotamm married Alma Saueselg (1900–1971) in 1924.

literature

• Eesti Elulood. Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus 2000 (= Eesti Entsüklopeedia 14) ISBN 9985-70-064-3 , p. 144

Web links

• CV (Estonian)
• Entry in the ISIK personal database

Individual evidence