Peace negotiations between the Republic of Estonia and Soviet Russia began in Tartu at the start of December, 1919 after war hostilities that had lasted nearly a year. The peace negotiations were in turn preceded by probing at the initiative of Soviet Russia that lasted over half a year to see how the land lies. At the same time, several vague peace offerings were made. The first more serious agreement between the hostile sides was the hostage exchange agreement signed on 19 November 1919. According to the agreement, the sides were to present lists to one another, and the exchanges took place by way of echelons. The exchange of political prisoners and hostages lasted several years and generally took place according to the same procedure that was agreed upon in November of 1919.
In addition to the above-mentioned general procedure for exchanging hostages, so to speak, there were ‘persons of particular importance’ concerning whom negotiations took place through the mediation of peace delegations independently of the overall procedure. In times that included the world war, the Russian revolutions, and the turmoil of civil war, people close to the former Prime Minister of the Estonian Provisional Government Konstantin Päts, the Commander-in-Chief of the Estonian forces Johan Laidoner, and others were left in Russia.
In this case, the central character is a representative of the opposing side who admittedly was not in a high-ranking civil or military position, or in the Communist Party in 1919/1920 or later on either. On the contrary, he belonged to the family circle of the leader of Soviet Russia, Vladimir Lenin. He has borne at least three first names – Mikhail, Aleksei, and Alexander; three patronymics – Konstantin, Aleksander, and Aleksei; and four surnames – Krupski, Krupsky, Krupenski and Krupinski in various documents of military agencies and of Estonia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The individual referred to here had been taken prisoner by the North-western Army of the Russian Whites and a peace delegation from Soviet Russia submitted a request to the Estonian delegation at the end of December of that same year to locate the named individual and to return him to them.
More detailed information on this case derives from the memoirs of William Tomingas, the secretary of the Estonian peace delegation of that time, where Tomingas among other things ascribes to himself the key role in solving this diplomatic problem. Tomingas’ memoirs of this episode have been called into question by numerous critics, to the point where he had allegedly made the story up for the most part. There is also reason for doubts, considering the exceedingly detailed descriptions found in Tomingas’ memoirs of events that had already taken place decades ago at the time when he wrote those memoirs. There are also numerous inaccuracies.
The primary objective of this source overview is to introduce correspondence among the documents of the political department of that time of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Estonia. This correspondence was conducted with military institutions concerning the search for Krupski-Krupinski-Krupenski, which begins with the request received from the peace delegation for finding the named person and ends with the handover of the person that was sought after to the Soviet Russian peace delegation. Among other things, it turns out that neither the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of War, or other military agencies knew exactly who they were looking for and why, aside from the fact that he was supposedly Lenin’s relative. Finding him would in turn make it possible to exchange him for hostages that interested the Estonian side. Although as far as they knew, Estonian military authorities were searching for the brother of Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, then in reality, the man they were after was Krupskaya’s nephew Alexander Krupski. He was found after a search that had lasted for a couple of weeks in a North-western Army lockup. He was released and handed over to the Soviet Russian peace delegation.
At the same time, it turns out that the existing documentation does not explicitly refute what is presented in Tomingas’ memoirs. If we now ask why Tomingas is not mentioned anywhere in the documents, we could answer – but why should he have been mentioned? Tomingas was a technical employee, so to speak, whose fate already was to remain in the background in the course of events. Tomingas compensated for all this in his memoirs, where at times he enlarged his role quite immoderately.