Jaan Anvelt


Jaan Anvelt, was an Estonian Bolshevik revolutionary and writer. He served the Russian SFSR, was a leader of the Communist Party of Estonia, the first premier of the Soviet Executive Committee of Estonia, and the chairman of the Council of The Commune of the Working People of Estonia. Imprisoned during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in 1937, he died from the injuries sustained during a beating by Aleksandr Langfang while in NKVD custody.

Early life

Anvelt was born to a peasant family in Oorgu, Võisiku Parish, Viljandi County, Governorate of Livonia. He studied to become a schoolteacher, beginning in Dorpat, and then in St. Petersburg, where he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party's Bolshevik faction. He was employed as a schoolteacher from 1905 to 1907, concurrently being involved in revolutionary activity. From 1907 to 1912, Anvelt studied part-time as a student of jurisprudence at St. Petersburg University.

October Revolution

On November 5, 1917, Bolshevik leader Jaan Anvelt led his leftist revolutionaries to the revolution in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and took political power.

Post-Revolution

After the defeat of the revolutionaries in the Baltics, Anvelt went underground, remaining active as a revolutionary, emerging as one of the leaders of the 1924 Estonian coup d'état attempt. In 1925, Anvelt arrived in the USSR, in 1926–29 working as a political commissar of the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. From 1929 to 1935 he worked in top positions of the civilian air fleet's main administration. During the period from 1935 to 1937 Anvelt served as a member and an executive secretary of a department within the Comintern.
Anvelt was arrested in 1937. Interrogated in custody, he died from the injuries inflicted by the interrogator Aleksandr Langfang on 11 December 1937, and was denounced as an enemy of the people afterwards.
In 1956, when Khrushchev distanced himself from Stalinism, Anvelt was rehabilitated.
His grandson Andres Anvelt became the Estonian Interior Minister for the Social Democratic Party in 2016.

Books about Jaan Anvelt