Parek, Lagle

Born on April 17, 1941 in Pärnu (at that time - the Estonian SSR ) in the family of the former captain of the Estonian army Karl Parek ( 1903 - 1941 ) and his wife, director of the museum Elsbet Parek (b. 1902 ). The father was taken by Soviet authorities to Leningrad and was soon shot. Then, in March 1949, his family - Lagle with his mother, older sister Eva (b. 1931 ) and grandmother, actress Anna Markus ( 1874 - 1955 ) - were taken to Siberia ( Novosibirsk region ) as part of the Great March deportation of Baltic residents. At the same time, shortly after deportation to the museum, which was managed by Elsbeth Parek, banned books were discovered hidden; Ms. Parek was arrested in Siberia and was held in prison until the 1953 amnesty . Her daughters lived in Siberia with their grandmother and were able to return to their homeland after the death of Stalin , in 1954 - 1955 .

She graduated from the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute , worked as an architect in the bodies of the State Planning Commission, then as a technologist and technologist at the Design Institute in Tartu .

On October 10, 1981, she participated in the signing by 38 Lithuanians , Latvians and Estonians of an open letter to the heads of the government of the USSR and the northern European countries, in which the authors, supporting the initiative approved by the Soviet leadership to declare the Scandinavian countries a nuclear-free zone , proposed to extend this initiative to the Baltic republics and remove them from their territory Soviet rockets ^[2] . She participated in the publication of the Samizdat magazine. She maintained contact with dissidents in Russia ^[3] .

On March 5, 1983, she was arrested, on December 16, she was sentenced by the Supreme Court of the ESSR under article 68 part 1 of the Criminal Code of the ESSR (corresponds to Article 70-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR ) to 6 years in prison and 3 years of exile. Heiki Akhonen and Arvo Pesti were convicted in the same case and the same article (both were born in 1956, both received 5 years in prison and 2 years of exile; H. Ahonen is now the director of the Museum of the Occupation in Tallinn ).

She was serving her term in Dubravlag , in the so-called “Minor Zone” for women convicted under political articles - together with Tatyana Velikanova , Irina Ratushinskaya and others. Together with them, she participated in hunger strikes and other protests, for which she was imprisoned in a pre- trial detention center and other similar impact measures. In January 1987, released by pardon , like many other Soviet political prisoners.

After her release, she returned to Estonia. In 1988, she was one of the founders of the Estonian National Independence Party (ERSP) and its chairman in 1988 - 1992 . In 1990 - 1992 participated in the work of the “alternative parliament” - the Estonian Congress . In 1992, in the first election to the Riigikogu, ERSP won 10 seats (8.8% of the vote) and joined the government coalition ^[4] . She participated in the presidential election in Estonia on October 20, 1992 , taking fourth place (4.3%). In the government, Marta Laar took the post of Minister of the Interior. On November 27, 1993, she resigned due to the “ crisis in Pullapäe ” around the rebellion of a company of huntsmen under the command of Asso Commer .

Member of the Union of the Fatherland and Res Publica party, formed in 1995 through the merger of the ERSP and the National Fatherland Coalition Party into Isamaali (Union of the Fatherland), and then in 2006 - Isamaali and the Res Publica party . The author of the book “Mina ei tea, kust ma rõõmu võtan. Mälestused ”(“ I don’t know where to take joy. Memories. ”Kirjastus Kunst, Tallinn 2010, 424 pp.).

In the mid -1990s, Lagle Parek adopted Catholicism . Head of the non-profit association Caritas Eesti, a member of the Caritas International Catholic Charity Confederation. In recent years, lives at the monastery of St. Birgitas in Pirita .

• 1996 - Order of the State Emblem II Art.
• 1998 - Prize "Consent" ("Koosmeele auhind"), together with Andrei Khvostov and Larisa Vasilchenko
• 2006 - Order of the White Star, II art.
• 2007 - “Citizen of the Year” title
• 2009 - Order of the Renaissance of Poland