Aadu (Ado) Birk * 14 November 1883, Tarvastu Parish † 2 February 1942, in Sosva, Sverdlovsk Region, Russia prime minister 28 July 1920 – 30 July 1920 In 1917 provisional secretary of the Estonian Diet, in 1918 Estonian representative in Helsinki, in 1918-1919 chairman of the Diet and Chairman of the Constituent Assembly Election Committee, in 1919-1920 deputy speaker of the Constituent Assembly, in 1919-1920, 1920 and in 1925 foreign minister.
In 1917-1919 member of the Diet, in 1919-1920 member of the Constituent Assembly, in 1920-1922 of the Riigikogu. In 1922-1926 Estonian Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He graduated from an ecclesiastical (Orthodox) seminar in Riga, studied at the St Petersburg Ecclesiastical Academy, in 1907-1908 at the faculty of law of Tartu, in 1908 at the St Petersburg and in 1911 of Leipzig University.
In 1911-1912 head of the Tallinn Statistical Office, in 1912-1917 assistant to barrister Jaan Poska. As ambassador to the Soviet Union he came into contradiction with the Estonian Foreign Ministry and refused to return to Estonia after his dismissal. In summer 1926 he fell victim of a Soviet GPO secret service, GPO, and was in prison in Russia. He was accused of passing secret information to the Soviet Union, and was in a remand prison; in 1927 the Tallinn-Tallinn Haapsalu district court acquitted him. Later he was a businessman in Tallinn.
In 1917-1924 he was chairman of the Tallinn Voluntary Firemen, in 1919-1922 of the National Firemen’s Association. In the second half of the 1920s and in the 1930s he was functionary of the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church, and in 1939-1940 its ecumenical secretary. He was arrested by the NKVD on 14 June 1941, was in a prison camp in Sosva, and was sentenced to death; he died before the sentence could be carried out.
