Magnus Ilmjärv (born 31 August 1961 in

Viljandi Viljandi (, german: Fellin, sv, Fellin) is a town and municipality in southern Estonia with a population of 17,407 in 2019. It is the capital of Viljandi County and is geographically located between two major Estonian cities, Pärnu and Tartu ...

) is an

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and t ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

. He graduated from the

University of Tartu The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

''cum laude'' in 1988 and defended his MA thesis in 1997. In June 2004 he defended his PhD at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

. Since 2006, Ilmjärv has been the director of the Estonian Institute of History ( et, Ajaloo Instituut). He specializes in Baltic history and international relations between two World Wars. His most notable work is arguably the ''Silent Submission'', which covers the loss of independence of the three

Baltic states The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, ...

. In Estonia, he is probably best known for his harsh criticism on the Estonian leadership in 1940, incl.

Konstantin Päts Konstantin Päts (; – 18 January 1956) was an Estonian statesman and the country's president in 1938–1940. Päts was one of the most influential politicians of the independent democratic Republic of Estonia, and during the two decades pr ...

Works

* Silent Submission. 2004. Stockholm University Dept. of History.

Sources

*http://www.horisont.ee/arhiiv_2003_2006/artikkel791_786.html 1961 births Living people 21st-century Estonian historians People from Viljandi Historians of Estonia {{Estonia-historian-stub