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Soviet Occupation Of The Baltic States (1940), Post-1940 Soviet Occupation
The Soviet occupation of the Baltic states covers the period from the Soviet Union, Soviet–Baltic States, Baltic mutual assistance pacts in 1939, to their invasion and annexation in 1940, to the mass deportations of 1941. In September and October 1939 the Soviet government compelled the much smaller Baltic states to conclude mutual assistance pacts which gave the Soviets the right to establish military bases there. Following invasion by the Red Army in the summer of 1940, Soviet authorities compelled the Baltic governments to resign. The presidents of Estonia and Latvia were imprisoned and later died in Siberia. Under Soviet supervision, new puppet communist governments and fellow travelers arranged rigged elections with falsified results. Shortly thereafter, the newly elected "people's assemblies" passed resolutions requesting admission into the Soviet Union. In June 1941 the new Soviet governments carried out mass deportations of "enemies of the people". Consequently, at fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks in World War II, Tanks and Air warfare of World War II, aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflict in history, causing World War II casualties, the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Allied-occupied Germany, Germany, Allied-occupied Austria, Austria, Occupation of Japan, Japan, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jüri Uluots
Jüri Uluots (13 January 1890 – 9 January 1945) was an Estonian prime minister, journalist, prominent attorney and distinguished Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tartu. Early life Uluots was born in Kirbla Parish (now Lääneranna Parish), in the Wiek County of the Governorate of Estonia in 1890 and studied law at St. Petersburg University in 1910–1918. He subsequently taught Roman and Estonian law at the University of Tartu until 1944. Uluots was also an editor of the '' Kaja'' newspaper 1919–1920, and editor-in-chief of '' Postimees'' 1937–1938. Political career Uluots was elected to the Riigikogu, the Estonian parliament, for 1920–1926, and from 1929 through 1932. He was speaker of the Riigivolikogu ( lower chamber) from 4 April 1938 to 12 October 1939. Uluots then served as prime minister from 1939 until June 1940 when Soviet troops entered Estonia and installed a new Soviet puppet government led by Johannes Vares, whereas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johannes Vares
Johannes Vares (pen name Barbarus or Vares-Barbarus – 29 November 1946) was an Estonian poet, medical doctor, and politician. Early life and education Vares was born in a farmer family in the village of Kiisa, near Viljandi, Estonia. He received secondary education at Pärnu Gymnasium, and in 1910–1914 studied medicine at the University of Kyiv. Medical career Vares served as a military physician in World War I, and after that as a military physician for the Estonian Army during the Estonian War of Independence (1918–1920). He was awarded the Estonian Cross of Liberty for the participation. In the 1920s, Vares started working as a medical doctor in Pärnu. He subsequently became a well-known poet as well as a radical socialist, using the pen name Johannes Barbarus. Prime minister of Estonia During World War II, after the Stalinist Soviet Union invaded and occupied Estonia in June 1940, Andrei Zhdanov, leader of the Soviet aggression, forced the Estonian pre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrey Vyshinsky
Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky (; ) ( – 22 November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat. He is best known as a Procurator General of the Soviet Union, state prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's Moscow Trials and in the Nuremberg trials. He was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Soviet Union), Soviet Foreign Minister from 1949 to 1953, after having served as Deputy Foreign Minister under Vyacheslav Molotov since 1940. He also headed the Institute of State and Law in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Biography Early life Vyshinsky was born in Odessa into a Poles in the Soviet Union, Polish Catholic family, which later moved to Baku. Early biographies portray his father, Yanuary Vyshinsky (Januarius Wyszyński), as a "well-prospering" "experienced inspector" (Russian: Ревизор); while later, undocumented, Stalin-era biographies such as that in the ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' make him a pharmaceutical chemist. A talented student, Andrei Vyshinsky married K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aleksandr Loktionov
Aleksandr Dmitriyevich Loktionov (; ) – 28 October 1941) was a Soviet general. In 1923 he was given command of the 2nd Infantry Division in Belarus, and the next year he became a member of the Minsk City Council. In 1925 he became a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Central Party Committee before continuing his education at the Frunze Military Academy in 1927. At the end of 1930 he became the commanding officer and commissar of the 4th Rifle Corps. From 1933 to 1937, he was assistant commander of the Byelorussian and subsequently Kharkov Air Force Military Districts. From 1937 to 1939, he served as commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Force. In July 1940, after the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, Loktionov was appointed commander of the Special Baltic Military District. In June 1941, he was arrested on fabricated charges of participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. Under interrogation, he was brutally bea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semyon Timoshenko
Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko (; ; – 31 March 1970) was a Soviet military commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union, and one of the most prominent Red Army commanders during the Second World War. Born to a Ukrainian family in Bessarabia, Timoshenko was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army and saw action in the First World War as a cavalryman. On the outbreak of the Russian Revolution he joined the Red Army. He served with distinction during the Russian Civil War and the subsequent Polish–Soviet War, which brought him into Vladimir Lenin's and Joseph Stalin's favour. Rapidly rising through the ranks, Timoshenko held several regional commands throughout the 1930s and survived the Great Purge. He led the Ukrainian Front during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. In early 1940, Timoshenko took over the command of the Winter War in Finland from Kliment Voroshilov and turned the tide for the Soviets. In May 1940, he was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union and the People ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (; – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary who was a leading figure in the government of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s, as one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies. Molotov served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (head of government) from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 during the era of the Second World War, and again from 1953 to 1956. An Old Bolshevik, Molotov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906 and was arrested and internally exiled twice before the October Revolution of 1917. He briefly headed the party's Secretariat before supporting Stalin's rise to power in the 1920s, becoming one of his closest associates. Molotov was made a full member of the Politburo in 1926 and became premier in 1930, overseeing Stalin's agricultural collectivization (and resulting famine) and his Great Purge. As foreign minister from 1939, Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as the fourth Premier of the Soviet Union, premier from 1941 until his death. He initially governed as part of a Collective leadership in the Soviet Union, collective leadership, but Joseph Stalin's rise to power, consolidated power to become an absolute dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified the party's official interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the totalitarian political system he created is known as Stalinism. Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Georgia, Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antanas Merkys
Antanas Merkys (; 1 February 1887 – 5 March 1955) was the last Prime Minister of independent Lithuania, serving from November 1939 to June 1940. When the Soviet Union presented an ultimatum to Lithuania demanding that it accept a Soviet garrison, President Antanas Smetona fled the country leaving Merkys as acting president. Merkys ostensibly cooperated with the Soviets, and illegally took over the presidency in his own right. After three days, Merkys handed power to Justas Paleckis, who formed the People's Government of Lithuania. When Merkys attempted to flee the country, he was captured and deported to the interior of Russia, where he died in 1955. Biography Merkys was born at Bajorai, near Skapiškis. Educated in law, he served in the Russian Army during World War I (1914–18). In 1919, he served as the newly independent Lithuania's Minister of Defence before serving with the Lithuanian Army until his decommissioning in 1922. He then practised as a lawyer. After ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antanas Smetona
Antanas Smetona (; 10 August 1874 – 9 January 1944) was a Lithuanian intellectual, journalist and politician. He served as the first president of Lithuania from 1919 to 1920 and later as the authoritarian head of state from 1926 until the Occupation of the Baltic states, Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940. Referred to as the "Leader of the Nation" during his presidency, Smetona is recognised as one of the most important Lithuanian political figures between World War I and World War II, and a prominent ideologist of Lithuanian National Revival, Lithuanian nationalism and the movement for national revival. Born into a farming family in the village of Užulėnis, Kovno Governorate, Smetona exhibited a strong interest in education and Lithuanian cultural identity from an early age. He attended Palanga Progymnasium and later graduated from Jelgava Gymnasium. He pursued higher education at the Saint Petersburg Imperial University, where he studied law and became involved in natio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jānis Balodis
Jānis Balodis (20 February 1881 – 8 August 1965) was an army general, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Latvia (1919–1921), Minister of War (1931–1940), and a politician who was one of the principal figures during the Latvian War of Independence and the dictatorship of Kārlis Ulmanis, when he was officially the number two of the regime as the Minister of War, Deputy Prime Minister and Vice President. Early life and education Jānis Balodis father was historian and teacher Voldemārs Balodis. In 1898, he joined the Imperial Russian Army and served in Kaunas. From 1900 until 1902 he studied at the Vilnius War School. Military service Russo-Japanese War and World War I From November 1904 until July 1905, he participated in the Russo–Japanese War and was seriously wounded in the arm. From 1906 until 1914, Balodis served in Vilnius. At the beginning of World War I he was lightly wounded during the battles in East Prussia, for which he received a number of decorat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Krišjānis Berķis
Krišjānis Berķis (April 26, 1884, in Īslīce parish, Bauska municipality, Courland, modern Latvia – July 29, 1942, in Perm, Russia) was a Latvian general. Rising to prominence as an officer of the Latvian Riflemen in World War I, he was promoted to the rank of general during the Latvian War of Independence, and served on the Army General Staff after the war. After the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States, he was deported to Siberia and died in a Gulag labor camp. Biography Krišjānis Berķis was born on April 26, 1884, in the farmer's homestead Bērzkrogs, Īslīce parish, Courland. He graduated from a local parish school and the Bauska city school. After his graduation, he decided to become a soldier, and entered Vilnius military school. He graduated in 1906 in the rank of podporuchik. He then served in the 2nd. Finnish rifleman regiment in Helsinki. During his service in Grand Duchy of Finland, he married a Finnish girl named Hilma Lehtonen (1887-1961). In 190 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
