Sommerling, Arnold

Born July 11 (23), 1898, in Tallinn; died Dec. 5, 1924, on the farmstead of B. Tups, near Tallinn. One of the organizers of the communist youth movement in Estonia. Member of the Communist Party of Estonia from 1920.

The son of a worker, Sommerling graduated from the Tallinn Trade School in 1915. He served in the army in 1917 and later became an office worker at the port in Tallinn. In 1920 he became secretary of the dockers’ union and of the Central Soviet of Trade Unions in Tallinn. He was instrumental in the convocation of the First Congress of the All-Estonian Union of Young Proletarians in December 1920 and was elected chairman of the union. In February 1921 he became a deputy of Tallinn’s municipal duma and a member of the communist faction. He was also a candidate of the communist faction at the First State Assembly of Estonia.

Sommerling was arrested in May 1921 and sentenced to ten years at hard labor. Along with other Estonian communist prisoners, he was released to the Soviet government in exchange for captive Estonian White Guards. He began working with the Komsomol in the RSFSR in November 1922. In 1924 he returned illegally to Estonia and helped prepare and carry out the Tallinn Uprising of Dec. 1, 1924. Sommerling was killed in an exchange of fire with the police.