Aleksander Kesküla

Aleksander Eduard Kesküla (21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1882 in Saadjärve Parish, Kreis Dorpat – 17 June 1963 in Madrid, Spain) was an Estonian politician and revolutionary.

Kesküla studied politics and economics in the universities of Tartu, Berlin, Zürich, Leipzig and Bern.

In 1905, he was a Bolshevik with the pseudonym Kivi and endeavoured to create strife inside the Russian Empire and, according to Elisabeth Heresch, he was working alongside the Japanese spy's, Motojiro Akashi.

In 1913 he became an Estonian nationalist and wanted to play a role in the world's political arena. In 1914-1915, he informed the German government about Lenin´s plans and intended to use Bolshevik agitation to replace the Russian empire with a number of national states. Some earlier scholarship expressed skepticism, but other research has indicated that between 200,000 - 500,000 German Reichsmark was passed to Lenin by Germany using Kesküla as a conduit.

Michael Futrell interviewed Kesküla whilst researching his book 1958-63. Here, Futrell records that although Kesküla had only minimal contact with Lenin, he nevertheless passed money to him through another Estonian, Arthur Siefeldt, who drip fed the money into Bolsheviks hands by making a series of small secret donations. Other researches claim Kesküla had given the Germans little of substance and he did not deliver any significant sums to the Bolsheviks.

In 1918, he founded the Estonian Office in Stockholm to seek the support of the Entente states for Estonian independence.