From last surviving Comintern secretary to Khrushchev's theoretician
In February 1920, labor movement leaders in Finland and Russia delivered memorial speeches upon hearing of Kuusinen's death. Finnish communists in Petrograd named their meeting hall the 'Kuusinen Club.' But he was alive, hiding in Helsinki.
A Finnish Social Democrat who directed the international communist movement for 18 years as a Comintern secretary. Under Khrushchev he became the theoretician of de-Stalinization, formulating the 'all-people's state' thesis, the only Comintern cadre ever to reach the CPSU's top leadership.
Career Timeline
- 1904Joined Finnish Social Democratic Party
- 1905Candidate of philosophy, Imperial Alexander University
- 1908–1917Member of Finnish Parliament (SDP)
- 1911–1917Chairman, Finnish Social Democratic Party
- 1918People's Commissar for Education, Finnish revolutionary government
- 1918Co-founder, Communist Party of Finland
- 1921–1939Secretary, Comintern Executive Committee (ECCI)
- 1939–1940Head of government and Foreign Minister, Finnish Democratic Republic
- 1940–1956Chairman, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Karelo-Finnish SSR
- 1940–1958Deputy Chairman, Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet
- 1952–1953, 1957–1964Member, CPSU Central Committee Presidium
- 1957–1964Secretary, CPSU Central Committee
- 1959Chief editor, 'Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism'
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionEducation commissar, Finnish revolutionary governmentServed as People's Commissar for Education in the Finnish Workers' revolutionary government (Council of People's Commissars) in 1918. After the Red defeat, he fled to the RSFSR and co-founded the Communist Party of Finland in Moscow later that year.
- 1939.11–1940.03The Winter WarHead of the Terijoki governmentInstalled at the head of the Soviet-created Finnish Democratic Republic, he was there to give the invasion a covering of legitimacy; the government vanished with the peace treaty.
- 1957The Anti-Party GroupPolitburo member · CC Secretary
The All-People's State Thesis: Theoretical Foundation of De-Stalinization
After backing Khrushchev against the 'Anti-Party Group' in June 1957 and rising to CPSU Central Committee Secretary and Presidium member, Kuusinen spent his final seven years as the chief theoretician of Soviet de-Stalinization. In September 1957 he submitted to the party leadership a 'Note on the Contemporary Interpretation of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,' arguing that the dictatorship of the proletariat had historically fulfilled its role and that the USSR had entered a new stage. This idea was formalized in the textbook 'Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism' (1959), which Kuusinen edited, as the 'all-people's state' thesis. The proposition of a transition from proletarian dictatorship to an all-people's state was incorporated as a core plank of the CPSU Programme adopted at the 22nd Party Congress in 1961, providing the theoretical basis for redefining the USSR not as a class-dictatorship state but as a 'state of the whole people.' Richard Kosolapov later observed that after Stalin's death, when Chesnokov and Zhdanov were removed from the Central Committee, 'the old Finnish Social Democrat and Comintern veteran Kuusinen suddenly emerged as practically the party's chief theoretician.' His work influenced state-theory debates throughout the socialist bloc and served as an intellectual pillar legitimizing Khrushchev's intensifying anti-Stalin line.