A major and long-standing research project of mine has been to write a political biography of the enigmatic Estonian politician Aleksander Kesküla. It grew out of my broader project on Nordic identity and regional cooperation and it is still very much intertwined with it and my project on transnational activism. Kesküla was one of the few figures who already during World War I advocated the establishment of a Baltic Sea federation that would have included both the Scandinavian states and, what were then parts of the Russian Empire -- Finland and the Baltic Provinces. He is, however, best known as the man who in autumn 1914 recommended Lenin to the German General Staff as the only Russian revolutionary leader who would be uncompromising enough to actually make the Russian revolution happen.

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