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Toomas Alatalu

Estonian politician and historian (born 1942)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 16, 2025
Entity authorityQ12377076
Source-derived summary

Toomas Alatalu (born 23 August 1942 in Rakvere) is an Estonian historian, educator, political commentator and politician. He has been a member of VII, VIII and X Riigikogu.

Education

Alatalu graduated from Pärnu Secondary School No. 4 in 1960 and from the Faculty of History and Linguistics of Tartu State University in 1965, majoring in history.

In 1977, he defended his PhD in philosophy at Leningrad State University with the dissertation Революционная ситуация и особенности ее созревания в Латинской Америке (The Revolutionary Situation and Peculiarities of Its Maturation in Latin America).

Political career

From 1999 until 2005 he belonged to the Estonian Centre Party. From 2005 until 2009, he was a member of the People's Union of Estonia party. Between 2009 and 2018, he was a member of the Social Democratic Party.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Toomas Alatalu” as estonian politician and historian (born 1942). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Toomas, Alatalu and Estonian.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1942, 1960, 1965, 1977—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1942-08-23. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Toomas, Alatalu and Estonian providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Toomas Alatalu”, the useful work is to connect “estonian politician and historian (born 1942)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q12377076. VIAF identifies the subject as 311376601. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 1960, 1965 and 1977.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Toomas Alatalu”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Toomas Alatalu primary sources, Toomas Alatalu archive and Toomas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Toomas Alatalu”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Toomas Alatalu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.