Johannes Vares
Johannes Vares (pen name Barbarus or Vares-Barbarus 12 January 1890 [O.S. 31 December 1889] – 29 November 1946) was an Estonian and Soviet poet, medical doctor, and politician.
Also recorded as Johannes Barbarus · Johannes Vares Barbarus
Johannes Vares

Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
- Born
- 1890 · Kiisa.
- Died
- 1946 · Tallinn.
- Nationality
- Russian Empire · Estonia · Soviet Union
- Occupation
- politician · poet · writer · gynecologist · military personnel · physician
- Education
- Medical department of Kyiv Emperor University of St. Vladimir
- Honours
- Order of Saint Anna, 4th class · Order of Saint Stanislaus, 3rd class · Order of Lenin · Cross of Liberty 1st Division and 3rd Class · Honored Writer of the Estonian SSR · Medal For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945
- Languages
- Estonian
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Documentary summary
Johannes Vares (pen name Barbarus or Vares-Barbarus 12 January 1890 [O.S. 31 December 1889] – 29 November 1946) was an Estonian and Soviet poet, medical doctor, and politician.
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Note VALÉORINE
Johannes Vares (1890–1946) was a gynecologist, military personnel and physician, among other activities, of Estonian and Russian nationality. The gynecologist was born in Kiisa and died in Tallinn. Johannes Vares held the position of prime minister and worked in Tallinn.
Languages used include Estonian. Honours include Cross of Liberty 1st Division, 3rd Class, Honored Writer of the Estonian SSR and Order of Lenin, among others.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 27 September 2026
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wikidata · Q709956 · wikipedia · Johannes Vares
In this article
Early life and education
Early life and education
Johannes Vares studied at Medical department of Kyiv Emperor University of St. Vladimir. The recorded working language is Estonian. Places of work recorded in the authority are Tallinn. Positions recorded include deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and prime minister. Distinctions recorded are Order of Saint Anna, 4th class, Order of Saint Stanislaus, 3rd class, Order of Lenin and Cross of Liberty 1st Division, 3rd Class.
Vares was born in a farmer family in the village of Kiisa, near Viljandi, Estonia. He received secondary education at Pärnu Gymnasium, and in 1910–1914 studied medicine at the University of Kiev.
Medical career
Medical career
Vares served as a military physician in World War I, and after that as a military physician for the Estonian Army during the Estonian War of Independence (1918–1920). He was awarded the Estonian Cross of Liberty for the participation. In the 1920s, Vares started working as a medical doctor in Pärnu. He subsequently became a well-known poet as well as a radical socialist, using the pen name Johannes Barbarus.
Prime minister of Estonia
Prime minister of Estonia
During World War II, after the Stalinist Soviet Union invaded and occupied Estonia in June 1940, Andrei Zhdanov, leader of the Soviet aggression, forced the Estonian president Konstantin Päts to appoint Vares as prime minister of a communist-dominated puppet government. Päts resigned in July 1940, and Vares formally took over most presidential duties. The puppet regime declared Estonia a "Soviet Socialist Republic" (SSR), and petitioned to join the Soviet Union as a constituent republic. He headed the delegation to Moscow on 6 August 1940 that formally delivered the petition to Stalin and the Soviet government, an act that has tainted Vares as a traitor to the majority of Estonian people. When the Kremlin "accepted" the petition in August 1940, Vares remained as nominal head of state, now titled as chairman of the Estonian Supreme Soviet, until 1946. From 12 September 1940, Vares was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia, joining soon after the party had been merged into the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) of the USSR.
Exile in Russia
Exile in Russia
Following the German invasion of Estonia in 1941, Vares fled to Soviet Russia, where he lived in exile from 1941 to 1944, until the Soviets reconquered Estonia. On 20 April 1944, the Electoral Committee of the Republic of Estonia (the institution specified in the Constitution for electing the Acting President of the Republic) held a clandestine meeting in Tallinn. The participants included Jüri Uluots, the last Prime Minister of Estonia before the Soviet occupation, the substitute for Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Johan Holberg, the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies Otto Pukk, the second deputy vice-chairman of the National Council Alfred Maurer, and State judge Mihkel Klaassen. The Committee declared Päts' appointment of Vares as Prime Minister had been illegal. Accordingly, it held that Uluots had assumed the President's duties from 21 June 1940 onwards. Since Estonia regained independence in 1990/91, it has maintained that all laws, decrees and treaties made in 1940–1941 in Soviet-occupied Estonia, including those of Vares' puppet government were legally invalid. The upper house of Parliament had been dissolved soon after the 16–17 June 1940 Soviet invasion and was never reconvened, nor re-elected. According to the then Constitution of Estonia, all laws had to pass both houses of parliament before being promulgated. This applied also to the new pro-Soviet 1940 "electoral law" under which the blatantly rigged elections of 14–15 July 1940 were conducted. It was this sham election that produced the so-called "People's Riigikogu" which then declared Estonia a "Soviet republic" and "requested" to join the Soviet Union. On that basis, Estonia maintains that the electoral law was illegal and unconstitutional, rendering all acts of the "People's Riigikogu" void. Estonia also maintains that as a result, it did not need to follow the constitutional process of secession from the Soviet Union, since it was reasserting an independence that still de jure existed.
Return to Estonia and death
Return to Estonia and death
After returning to Estonia in 1944, Vares came under investigation by the Soviet NKVD for his activities in the Estonian War of Independence (1918–1920). He committed suicide in presidential residence in Kadriorg, Tallinn, in November 1946 and was buried at the Metsakalmistu.

Johannes Vares
Nõukogude Õpetaja, nr. 1, 3 jaanuar 1941 (http: dea.digar.ee/cgi-bin/dea?a=d d=noukogudeopetaja19410103.1.5)

Portrait of Johannes Vares
Original publication: Газета «Красная звезда» № 143 от 20 июня 1942 года (стр. 3) Immediate source: goskatalog.ru
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1890
Johannes Vares born at Kiisa.
1946
Johannes Vares died at Tallinn.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Kiisa.
Birth place
Tallinn.
Death place
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Pettibone, Charles D. THE ORGANIZATION AND ORDER OF BATTLE OF MILITARIES IN WORLD WAR II. Trafford Publishing. IX - THE OVERRUN & NEUTRAL NATIONS OF EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICAN ALLIES. 101. 2014. 978-1490733876.
- 2.L. Mälksoo, Professor Uluots, the Estonian Government in Exile and the Continuity of the Republic of Estonia in International Law, Nordic Journal of International Law, Volume 69, Number 3 / March, 2000
- 3.Duevel, Christian. Estonian Party Journal Reverts to "Un-Marxist" Terminology on Stalin's "Personality Cult". Blinken Open Society Archives. 28 June 1971.
References
Citations
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