Aleksander Eduard Kesküla ( in

Saadjärve Saadjärve is a village in Tartu Parish, Tartu County in Estonia. It is located about 17 km north of the city of Tartu, on the eastern shore of Lake Saadjärv. Saadjärve has a population of 118 (as of 1 January 2012). Saadjärve manor S ...

Parish,

Kreis Dorpat Kreis Dorpat (''Tartu kreis'', ''Дерптский уезд'', 1893-1918 ''Юрьевский уезд'') was one of the nine subdivisions of the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire. It was situated in the northeastern part of the gove ...

– 17 June 1963 in

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

) was an

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

n politician and revolutionary. Kesküla studied politics and economics in the universities of

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 97,759 (as of 2024). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of Riga, Latvia. Tartu lies on the Emajõgi river, which connects the ...

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

and

Bern Bern (), or Berne (), ; ; ; . is the ''de facto'' Capital city, capital of Switzerland, referred to as the "federal city".; ; ; . According to the Swiss constitution, the Swiss Confederation intentionally has no "capital", but Bern has gov ...

. In 1905, he was a

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

with the pseudonym Kivi and endeavoured to create strife inside the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

and, according to Elisabeth Heresch, he was working alongside the

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese spy's, Motojiro Akashi. In 1913 he became an Estonian nationalist and wanted to play a role in the world's political arena. In 1914-1915, he informed the

German government The Federal Government (, ; abbr. BReg) is the chief executive body of the Federal Republic of Germany and exercises executive power at the federal level. It consists of the Federal Chancellor and the Federal Ministers. The fundamentals o ...

about

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

´s plans and intended to use

agitation to replace the Russian empire with a number of national states. Some earlier scholarship expressed skepticism,Alfred Erich Senn, "The Myth of German Money during the First World War", Soviet Studies, Vol.XXVIII, No. 1, January 1976, pp.83-90 but other research has indicated that between 200,000 - 500,000"Aleksander Kesküla", Proceedings of Estonian Academy of Sciences, 1991, 40, nr 1, lk 28—37
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German Reichsmark The (; sign: ℛ︁ℳ︁; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, and in the American, British and French occupied zones of Germany, until 20 June 1948. The Reichsmark was then replaced ...

was passed to

by Germany using Kesküla as a conduit. Michael Futrell interviewed Kesküla whilst researching his book 1958-63. Here, Futrell records that although Kesküla had only minimal contact with Lenin, he nevertheless passed money to him through another Estonian, Arthur Siefeldt, who drip fed the money into Bolsheviks hands by making a series of small secret donations. Other researches claim Kesküla had given the Germans little of substance and he did not deliver any significant sums to the Bolsheviks. In 1918, he founded the Estonian Office in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

to seek the support of the Entente states for Estonian independence. He acted in such status, until the official Estonian delegation forbade him to do that. The Estonian delegation was skeptical about Kesküla and considered him a German agent. Central in Kesküla's thought was the region of

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

. According to Kesküla's approach, Estonia had originally belonged to the Nordic region, but as a result of the German conquest in the 13th century it was included in the alien

Central Europe Central Europe is a geographical region of Europe between Eastern Europe, Eastern, Southern Europe, Southern, Western Europe, Western and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Central Europe is known for its cultural diversity; however, countries in ...

an cultural space. It then re-established its Nordic heritage in the 16-17th centuries and in the 18th century fell under the yoke of the even more alien Eastern European (Russian) sphere. Kesküla thought that Estonia should separate from Russia and restore its place among the Nordic countries that were becoming increasingly unified.
Reason for hiding: unreliable source, permanently dead link--> In his later years, Kesküla acted as the teacher of politics for several young Spanish scientists.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Keskula, Aleksander 1882 births 1963 deaths People from Tartu Parish Politicians from Tartu County People from Kreis Dorpat Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members 20th-century Estonian politicians Estonian emigrants to Spain People of the Russian Revolution Bolshevik finance Estonian nationalists