Estonian academician Mikhail Bronstein celebrates his 97th anniversary on the 23 of January. Academician Bronstein is one of those intellectuals from St. Petersburg who came to Estonia as a lecturer and made a career in Estonia that perhaps would have been impossible in conservative Soviet centres. His contribution in raising our elite has been invaluable. Therefore, it is logical that Bronstein also contributed much to the process of restoring Estonia's independence by supporting his former students.
Bronstein is the economist who reached Gorbachev's adviser’s status. It is he who owns the idea of agro-industrial complexes, which Mikhail Gorbachev, who had just reached the top of the Kremlin Olympus at the time, put forward. There is no doubt that this activity supported Gorbachev's movement to become a leader of an empire and changed the course of world history.
The vitality of academician Bronstein has been astonishing. He was literally a teacher to President Lennart Meri, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and many others. Bronstein is also an honorary supervisor of my doctoral thesis, which I defended in St. Petersburg. Mikhail Bronstein has not yet said his last word, congratulations grand old man of Estonian science!
