Estonian author Jaan Kross dies at 87

0 Comments | AFP, December, 2007

TALLINN (AFP) — Estonians on Friday paid tribute to the Baltic state's most celebrated contemporary author Jaan Kross, following his death in the Estonian capital Tallinn aged 87.

"Jaan Kross suffered at both the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets, he was imprisoned and deported," Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said in comments published Friday by Estonia's leading Postimees daily.

"The similarity of actions of those two criminal regimes made the writer often sneer later in his life on that similarity and to see it depict the irony of history."

"Words were weapons for Jaan Kross and he had admirable skill to beat the enemy with his own weapon," Estonia's ministry of culture, Writers' Union and Museum of Estonian Literature said in a joint statement....