Tõnis Kint

Tõnis Kint (* 5 August ^{. Jul} / 17th August  1896 ^greg. Farm Paasio, state farm Taevere, community Suure-Jaani , Viljandi County ; † 5. January 1991 in Ornskoldsvik , Sweden ) was an Estonian politician. From 1970 to 1990 he was head of state of the Estonian government in exile .

education

Tõnis Kint graduated from school in Tartu in 1916 and studied civil engineering at the Riga Polytechnic (now: Riga University of Technology ) - evacuated to Moscow during the war . In 1917/18 Tõnis Kint served in the Russian army during the First World War , including on the front in Ukraine . In 1918 he continued his studies at the Faculty of Agriculture of the Baltic Technical University in Riga . From 1918 to 1920 he took part in the Estonian War of Independence against Soviet Russia . From 1920 to 1928 he studied intermittently at the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Tartu .

Agriculture and politics

From 1925 to 1940 Tõnis Kint held various prominent positions within the Estonian agricultural administration. From 1936 to 1940 he was a member of the Estonian Parliament and, among other things, chairman of the Agriculture Committee. With the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union , he became involved in the democratic resistance. In the elections scheduled by the occupying power in 1940, he ran as a democratic candidate against the communists, but was struck off the electoral list by the occupation authorities.

exile

In 1944, Tõnis Kint managed to escape to Sweden. From 1945 to 1949 he was employed at the Agricultural University of Uppsala as an archive worker, from 1949 to 1951 as an agronomist near Stockholm and from 1951 to his retirement in 1975 at the Swedish Agricultural Association ( Landbrukarnas Riksförbund ).

From 1953 to 1963 he was Minister of Agriculture and Defense of the Estonian government-in-exile and from 1963 to 1970 Deputy Prime Minister. From December 23, 1970 to March 1, 1990 Tõnis Kint was Prime Minister with the duties of President and thus head of state of the Republic of Estonia in exile. From 1971 to 1975 he was also chairman of the Estonian National Council ( Eesti Rahvusnõukogu ).

Web links

• Biography of the Estonian Presidential Office
• CV written by his son Oole Kint (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry in the baptismal register of the community Groß-St. Johannis (Estonian: Suure-Jaani kogudus)