About: Anna Leetsmann

Anna Henriette Leetsmann (12 October 1888 – 5 March 1942) was an Estonian Bolshevik activist, politician, educator and historian. She was the only woman elected to the Provincial Assembly of the Autonomous Governorate of Estonia in 1917, although she was expelled from the chamber in February 1919 after her Bolshevik activism during the period when Estonian communists, sponsored by the Soviet Union, de facto governed parts of Estonia. By that time, she had already lived in the Soviet Russia since the German occupation of Estonia in February 1918; the rest of her life was spent teaching, studying and working for the party in the USSR. She was detained by the Soviet authorities twice for (allegedly) being a Trotskyist; she died during the second period of incarceration.