Johannes Vares

Johannes Vares ( - November 29, 1946), commonly known as Johannes Vares Barbarus, was an Estonian poet, doctor, and politician.

Vares was born in Heimtali, current Viljandi County, and educated at Pärnu Gymnasium. He later studied medicine at the University of Kiev, in present-day Ukraine.

Vares served as a military physician in World War I, and after that as a military physician for the Estonian army during the Estonian Liberation War (1918-1920), he was awarded Freedom Cross for the participation, but Vares denied the offer.

Vares later worked as a doctor in Pärnu, and became a well known Estonian poet as well as radical socialist, using the pen name Johannes Barbarus.

When Soviet troops occupied the Republic of Estonia in June 1940, Vares was installed (by Andrei Zhdanov) to head the puppet communist government as prime minister until August 1940, when Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union.

Following the German invasion of Estonia in 1941, Vares fled to Russia, where he lived in exile from 1941 to 1944, until the Soviets reconquered Estonia.

After returning to Estonia, Vares came under investigation by the Soviet NKVD for his activities in the Estonian War of Independence. He committed suicide in Kadriorg Palace in Tallinn, in November, 1946.