Khans Kheidemann

(Estonian, Hans Heidemann). Born Oct. 28 (Nov. 9), 1896, in Taagepera Volost (small rural district), now the area under the jurisdiction of the village soviet of Taagepera, Valga Raion, Estonian SSR; died Aug. 29, 1925. Figure in the Estonian revolutionary movement. Member of the Communist Party from 1922.

Kheidemann was the son of a peasant. During World War I he served first in the tsarist army and then in the bourgeois Estonian Army. After he was demobilized, he worked as a bookkeeper and joined the Estonian Independent Socialist Workers’ Party, which, beginning in 1922, supported the Communist Party of Estonia. In 1922, Kheidemann became a member of the Central Council of the All-Estonian League of Trade Unions, chairman of the Tartu Central Trade Union Council, and chairman of the Tartu Agricultural Workers’ Union. Elected to the Second State Assembly in 1923, he made use of the assembly to carry on revolutionary propaganda.

Kheidemann went underground in 1924 and worked as a party organizer in Tartu District. He directed preparations for the uprising of Dec. 1, 1924, until his arrest on September 18 of that year. Sentenced to death by firing squad, Kheidemann was executed on Inglimägi Hill, 8 km from Tartu.