Jüri Uluots

Jüri Uluots (1890 to 1945) was an Estonian jurist, journalist and statesman, a professor and dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tartu who became prime minister of Estonia in 1939. Born in Kirbla Parish, he studied law at St. Petersburg University and afterwards taught Roman and Estonian law at Tartu until 1944. He edited the newspaper Kaja in 1919 and 1920 and was editor-in-chief of Postimees in 1937 and 1938, sat in the Riigikogu from 1920 to 1926 and from 1929 to 1932, and was speaker of its lower chamber from 1938 to 1939. After the Soviet occupation of 1940 his constitutional government went underground, and after President Konstantin Päts was deported he acted as prime minister in the duties of the president, a position the national committee of 1944 treated as holding the president's duties from 21 June 1940. He died of gastric cancer in Sweden in 1945.