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
From Finnish labour leader to Comintern veteran and Khrushchev's theoretician
In February 1920 a false report of his death prompted memorial speeches by labour movement leaders in Finland and Russia and led Finnish communists in Petrograd to name their meeting place the 'Kuusinen Club', though he was in fact alive and hiding in Helsinki.
Born in Laukaa, Finland, to a village tailor's family, he joined the Finnish Social Democratic Party in 1904, chaired it in 1911-1913, and served as education commissioner in Finland's 1918 revolutionary government. After fleeing to Soviet Russia in 1918 he helped found the Communist Party of Finland and from 1921 to 1939 served as a secretary of the Comintern Executive Committee, directing the international communist movement. He headed the Finnish Democratic Republic during the Winter War, and at the height of the Great Purge, while his wife Aino and his son Esa were repressed, he kept his freedom and position, one of the few top Comintern figures to survive the 1937-1939 purges. Backing Khrushchev in 1957, he became a CPSU Central Committee secretary and Presidium member and theorized de-Stalinization through the 'all-people's state' thesis; he died in Moscow in 1964.
Career timeline
- 1904Joined Finnish Social Democratic Party
- 1905Candidate of philosophy, Imperial Alexander University
- 1908–1917Member of Finnish Parliament (SDP)
- 1911–1913Chairman, 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
- 1952–1953Member, CPSU Central Committee Presidium
- 1957–1964Member, CPSU Central Committee Presidium
- 1957–1964Secretary, CPSU Central Committee
- 1959Chief editor, 'Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism'
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
Admiral-engineer who built Soviet radar and revived cybernetics
"The main goal of cybernetics is to help people raise the efficiency of their control over complex, hard-to-manage processes. The role of the human is not reduced in the least." Report to the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 10 April 1959
Born in Orenburg in 1893 into a Lutheran military family of mixed Swedish, Finnish and German descent, he died in Moscow in 1979. He graduated from the Naval Corps and served as an Imperial Navy officer; after sinking a British destroyer as navigating officer of the submarine Pantera in 1919 he went on to direct naval communications research and radar development. Arrested in December 1937 on counter-revolutionary charges, he was never convicted and was released in 1940, and was fully rehabilitated only posthumously in 1991. A full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1946 and admiral-engineer from 1955, he served as Deputy Minister of Defence from 1953 to 1957 and chaired the Academy's Scientific Council on Cybernetics from 1959 until his death, institutionalizing biological and technical cybernetics and artificial intelligence research.
Career timeline
- 1914–1918Navigating officer, battleship Tsesarevich; liaison officer, British submarine HMS E8 (Imperial Russian Navy)
- 1918–1922Submarine navigator (Pantera) and commander (Rys, Volk, Zmeya), Red Navy; sank HMS Vittoria, first Soviet submarine victory (1919)
- 1925–1937Instructor, Naval Engineering School; founded radio laboratory → director, Naval Research Institute of Communications and Telemechanics (NIMIST)
- 1937–1940Arrested, imprisoned in NKVD sharashka developing military communications; released without conviction
- 1943–1944Deputy People's Commissar of Electrical Industry; founder & first director, All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Radar
- 1943–1947Deputy Chairman, Council on Radar, State Defence Committee (chairman: Georgy Malenkov)
- 1953–1957Deputy Minister of Defence, USSR
- 1953–1955First director, Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1959–1979Chairman, Scientific Council on Complex Problem "Cybernetics," USSR Academy of Sciences
