Karotamm, Nikolai

Born Oct 10 (23), 1901, in Párnu; died Sept. 26, 1969, in Moscow. Soviet statesman and party figure, one of the leaders of the partisan movement in Estonia during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. Doctor of economics (1964). Became a member of the CPSU in 1928. The son of a peasant carpenter.

Karotamm went to the USSR in 1925 and studied in theLeningrad branch of the J. Marchlewski Communist Universityof the National Minorities of the West (KUNMZ). In 1928 hewas engaged in illegal party work in Tallinn. Karotamm re-turned to the USSR in 1929, graduated from KUNMZ in 1931, and remained in graduate school there while working at the sametime on the Estonian-language journal Klassovaia bor’ba (ClassStruggle). He began teaching in Moscow in 1933 and was thenan editor in the Publishing House of Foreign Workers. In 1940, after the restoration of Soviet power in Estonia, Karotamm wasmanaging editor of the newspaper Kommunist, first secretary of the Tartu district committee of the Communist Party of Estonia, and second secretary of the Central Committee of the party.Karotamm directed the Estonian staff of the partisan movementfrom its inception on Nov. 3, 1942. He became first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia inSeptember 1944. In 1950, Karotamm studied in Moscow at the Academy of Social Sciences attached to the Central Committeeof the CPSU. He began to work at the Institute of Economicsof the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1951. Karotamm wasawarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Patriotic War FirstClass, and medals.