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 socialist who was Red Finland’s commissar of finance and later headed the government of Soviet Karelia
Born in Kuopio in 1881, the statistician and economist took his doctorate in 1909 with a thesis on crofting and became the Social Democrats’ agrarian expert. He sat in the Diet for the party from 1908 to 1917, was its vice chairman, and in November 1917 co-wrote “We demand” with Kuusinen. In the civil war he was Commissar of Finance of the People’s Delegation, led the talks for the 1 March treaty with Soviet Russia and signed it, and organised the defence of Viipuri at the end. Escaping to Sweden, he headed the Stockholm bureau of the Communist Party of Finland and in 1920 reported to Lenin on Karelian autonomy. As chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Soviet Karelia in 1923–1935 he pursued Finnicisation, was condemned for “nationalist chauvinism” and removed, and was shot in Moscow in 1938.
Career timeline
- 1905Editor-in-chief of the Marxist journal Sosialistinen aikakausilehti
- 1908–1917Social Democratic member of the Diet; party vice chairman
- 1918Commissar of Finance, Finnish People’s Delegation
- 1918–1920Head of the Stockholm bureau of the Communist Party of Finland
- 1920–1923Leading the Karelian Workers’ Commune
- 1923–1935Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Karelian ASSR
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
