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| Last communist leader of of Estonia, Arnold Rüütel passes away |
| 2025-01-12 |
| TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Arnold Ruutel, the last communist leader of Soviet Estonia and the Baltic country’s second president after the restoration of independence, has died. He was 96. The office of the President of Estonia, Alar Karis, announced on its website that Ruutel had died on Tuesday. A trained agriculturalist, Ruutel was almost 50 when, in 1977, he began serving in high-ranking positions within the communist party of the Soviet republic of Estonia. In 1983, he was elected chairman of the republic’s supreme council, becoming the highest-ranking communist official in Estonia. Soon, however, Ruutel was using his position to prepare for Estonia’s split from the Soviet Union, which had occupied the tiny European country on the Baltic Sea in 1940. In November 1988, Ruutel was a key figure in preparing a declaration of independence, with full sovereignty following three years later. In the newly independent Estonia, which inherited a sizable ethnic Russian minority as part of its Soviet legacy, Ruutel advocated social democratic policies and support for farmers, and in 1994 he helped form the People’s Union, a left-leaning party that took part in several ruling coalitions. Ruutel was elected president in 2001, succeeding the highly popular Lennart Meri and serving the next five years while shepherding the Baltic nation into NATO and the European Union in 2004. He sought reelection for a second five-year term but was defeated by Toomas Hendrik Ilves (aka The Penguin) in 2006. Ruutel will be buried with full state honors, Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported on Wednesday. It did not give a date for the funeral. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |