Khans Kruus

(Hans Kruus) Born Oct. 10 (22), 1891, in Tartu. Soviet historian, state and public figure of Estonia, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR (1946). Became a member of the CPSU in 1940. The son of a worker.

Kruus was a founder of the Estonian party of Socialist Revolutionaries in 1917 and the petit bourgeois Estonian Independent Socialist Party in 1920. He graduated from the University of Tartu in 1923, and in 1931 he defended his doctoral dissertation, “The Peasant Movement in Southern Estonia in the 1840’s” (1930). A professor at the University of Tartu from 1931 to 1940, Kruus was deputy prime minister in Vares’ democratic government in 1940 and rector of the university and chairman of its subdepartment of the history of the USSR in 1940–41 and 1944. Subsequent posts included minister of foreign affairs of the Estonian SSR (1944–50), president of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR (1946–50), and senior research worker at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1955–58). In 1958 he became chairman of the Commission for the Study of the Native Land of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR. Kruus’ major works have been on the history of Estonia and the Baltic region from the 13th to the 20th century.