Graduated in law from Petersburg University, 1912.
Joined the Bolshevik Party, 1907. Estonian communist leader. Active in Estonia during the October Revolution 1917.
Chairman of the government of the (abortive) Estonian Soviet Republic,
1918. Political commissar in the Red Army, 1919-1921. Underground communist leader in independent Estonia, 1921-1925.
Returned to the USSR, 1925. Worked as a high ranking political officer in the Soviet armed forces, later active in the Comintern.