A historian who linked scholarship with social democracy
In Moscow in 1940, he signed the peace treaty that ended the Winter War.
Väinö Voionmaa was a Finnish historian, professor and Social Democratic politician who helped shape the early republic. He founded institutions for workers’ education and joined scholarship to popular political work through parliament, diplomacy and social policy. As a Social Democratic member of Finland’s delegation to the Moscow Peace Treaty negotiations in 1940, he signed the settlement that ended the Winter War, embodying the difficult compromises imposed on Finland between war and great-power politics.
Career timeline
- 1894Earned a doctorate in history at the University of Helsinki
- 1903–1918Docent in Nordic history at the University of Helsinki
- 1917Member of the economic division of the Tokoi Senate and head of the transport commission
- 1919–1947Social Democratic member of the Parliament of Finland
- 1920Member of Finland’s delegation to the Tartu peace negotiations
- 1926–1927Minister for Foreign Affairs
- 1937–1939Minister of Trade and Industry, acting Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1938
- 1940Finnish delegate and signatory to the Moscow Peace Treaty
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
Finnish social anthropologist of southern Yemen and Aden
In 'The Snake with a Thousand Heads' (Middle East Report 256, 2010) she documented al-Harak, the southern movement that arose in summer 2007 against northern marginalization, tracing it to the 1994 civil war.
Finnish social anthropologist working on southern Yemen and Aden. She studied social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, the London School of Economics and the University of Helsinki, first travelled to Aden in 1982, and has done ethnographic fieldwork in southern Yemen since the 1980s. Her doctoral dissertation on social dynamics and competing moral frameworks in Aden was published in 2010 by Syracuse University Press. Her research covers the history of shari'a, fiqh and court practice in Aden, gender and family law, and state building and the everyday state in Yemen.
Career timeline
- 1980s–Ethnographic fieldwork and research in Aden, southern Yemen
- 2000sAcademy of Finland research fellow, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
- 2000sGuest researcher, Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NVIC), Leiden University
- UndatedSenior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Tampere University
- UndatedAdjunct Professor (Docent), University of Helsinki
- 2023–2026Director, Finnish Institute in the Middle East (from 1 June 2023, relocating to Beirut)
