People

Activity
Any Military command 2 Social movements and organizing 1
Affiliation(set)

Most people

Any Finland state institutions 15 Social Democratic Party of Finland 6 National Progressive Party (Finland) 5 Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 4 Communist Party of Finland (SKP) 4 Soviet Union state institutions 4 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) 2 Russian Empire state institutions 1

All 10 affiliations

Finland

Finland state institutions 15 Social Democratic Party of Finland 6 Communist Party of Finland (SKP) 4 National Progressive Party (Finland) 5

International organizations

Comintern 1

Russia

Russian Empire state institutions 1 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) 2

Soviet Union

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 4 Soviet Union state institutions 4

United States

Communist Party USA (CPUSA) 1
Position
Any Marxism and communism 2
Citizenship
Any Soviet Union 2
Background(set)
Any Russia 107 Ukraine 13 Georgia 10 Poland 10 Latvia 5 Belarus 4 Germany 4 Armenia 2 Finland 2 Lithuania 2 Azerbaijan 1 Estonia 1 France 1 Korea 1 Moldova 1 Turkey 1
Era
Any

People of the wider world

The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 2
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) Background: Finland Clear all
GlossaryRussian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP)

Eero Haapalainen

Eero Haapalainen
Communist Party of Finland (SKP) Communism Soviet Union Finland 1880–1937 ✕ Executed by shooting

Trade union leader who commanded the Finnish Red Guards from January to March 1918

Born in Kuopio in 1880, he joined the labour movement while studying law at Helsinki University. He was one of the leading Red Guard organisers in Helsinki during the 1905 general strike and in 1907 became the first chairman of the Finnish Trade Union Federation, losing the post in 1911 over his drinking. One of the most radical voices of 1917, openly calling for armed revolution, he was elected to the five-man committee of the Red Guards and in January 1918, without any military training, succeeded Ali Aaltonen as their commander-in-chief. Removed on 20 March after a series of defeats, he organised the defence of Viipuri with Edvard Gylling and escaped to Petrograd in May. He helped found the exiled Communist Party of Finland and worked in the Karelian Workers’ Commune, but was arrested in the Great Purge and shot in Petrozavodsk in 1937.

Career timeline
  • 1907–1911First chairman of the Finnish Trade Union Federation (SAJ)
  • 1917Commander of the Kymi Paper Mill Red Guard; member of the five-man Red Guard committee
  • 1918Commander-in-chief of the Red Guards; member of the People’s Delegation
  • 1920–1923Several posts in the Karelian Workers’ Commune
  • 1931–1935Head of the revolution research department, Karelian Research Institute

Eino Rahja

Eino Rahja
Communist Party of Finland (SKP) Soviet communism Soviet Union Finland 1885–1936 ○ Died of illness before execution

Petrograd Finnish Bolshevik who helped Lenin escape to Finland in 1917 and sat on the Red Guards’ three-man command in 1918

Born in Kronstadt in 1885 to a Petersburg Finnish working family, he worked in St Petersburg as a turner among other jobs and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, siding with the Bolsheviks. He organised Lenin’s escape to Finland in the summer of 1917 and guarded him around the October Revolution. Over the winter of 1917–1918 he and his brother Jukka procured arms for the Finnish Red Guards; when Haapalainen was dismissed on 20 March 1918 he formed a three-man command with Evert Eloranta and Adolf Taimi, then took over the Lempäälä front. After the defeat he rose to corps commander in the Red Army and quarrelled with Kuusinen and Manner in the Communist Party of Finland, which dropped him from its Central Committee in 1927. Expelled from the army for alcoholism in 1935 and sentenced to death, he died of tuberculosis in 1936 before the sentence was carried out.

Career timeline
  • 1903Joined the RSDLP (Bolshevik)
  • 1917Organised Lenin’s escape to Finland; Lenin’s bodyguard
  • 1918Three-man command of the Red Guards; commander of the Lempäälä front
  • 1919–1922Commissar and inspector of the Red Army’s Finnish units
  • 1918–1927Leadership of the Communist Party of Finland
  • 1935Expelled from the Red Army