Former Estonian president Lennart Meri, a leading political figure in the Baltic states after they won independence from Moscow in 1991, has died at the age of 76, the president’s office said.
Meri died at 3.40am on Tuesday in a hospital in Tallinn “after a long and serious illness”, the president’s office said in a statement.
The former writer and filmmaker had undergone an operation in August last year for brain cancer.
Meri served two terms as president of Estonia, from 1992 to 2001.
Before the restoration of Estonian independence, he set up a non-governmental Estonian Institute in 1988, creating Estonian “information centres” in Western capitals that were turned into embassies representing the former Soviet republic when it regained independence in 1991.
He was foreign minister from 1990 to 1992 and instrumental in negotiating diplomatic recognition for Estonia after the failed coup in Moscow in August 1991.
Born in Tallinn in 1929, the son of a diplomat and Shakespeare translator, he left Estonia at an early age and studied abroad, attending nine different schools.
But by the time Estonia was occupied by Soviet forces, the family had returned to Tallinn, and in 1941 they were among a massive wave of people from the three Baltic states who were deported to Siberia by then Stalinist Moscow.
Unlike many deported families, Meri’s remained intact and eventually found their way back to Estonia, where Meri graduated with honours from the faculty of history and languages of Tartu University in 1953.
With Estonia’s Soviet rulers barring him from working as a historian, Meri found work first as a playwright in the theatre, before moving on to produce radio plays.
Before entering politics, Meri also wrote books and made films based on his extensive travels around the Soviet Union.
Some of his works were banned by the Soviets but earned praise abroad, such as the film The Winds of the Milky Way, which won a silver medal at the New York Film Festival.
“His works helped preserve and strengthen Estonian identity under an alien totalitarian regime,” Meri’s successor, President Arnold Ruutel, said in a speech on national television.
“In his nine years as head of state, Meri both restored the presidency and built up the Republic of Estonia in the widest sense,” Ruutel said.
Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said in a message of condolence that “the world has lost a great Estonian, a great statesman and a true European”.
Among other European leaders to send messages of sympathy to Estonia following Meri’s death were Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Finnish President Tarja Halonen.
“The Finnish nation lost in Lennart Meri a close and sincere friend and the world, a great statesman who was one of the leading architects of the post-Cold War world,” Halonen said. — AFP