Head of the Finnish Senate who declared independence and sought German intervention in the civil war
On hearing of the February Revolution in his Siberian exile at Tomsk, he walked to the police station and announced, 'The person who sent me here has been arrested. Now I'm going home.'
Head of the Senate that declared Finland's independence in December 1917, he led the White government in the civil war of 1918 and sought German intervention. He was president from 1931 to 1937.
Career timeline
1894Began Diet work as representative of the Estate of Nobles
1907–1912Speaker of the Finnish Parliament
1914–1917Exiled to Tomsk for resisting Russification
1917–1918Chairman of the Senate (first head of government)
Jurist who shaped Finland’s republican constitution and, as its first president, sought to reconcile the defeated Reds
Born in Suomussalmi in 1865, he was a jurist and a constitutionalist of the Young Finnish Party who resisted Russification by legal means. He was senator for trade and industry in the Mechelin Senate in 1905–1907, professor of administrative law at the University of Helsinki in 1908–1918 and Speaker of Parliament in 1914. As chairman of the Constitutional Council from 1917 he led the drafting of the republican constitution, and in 1918 he backed a republic against the constitutional monarchy favoured by the victors of the civil war. Elected the first president by Parliament in July 1919, defeating Mannerheim by 143 votes to 50, he favoured peace with Soviet Russia, pardoned most of the Red prisoners and ratified the Treaty of Tartu. He did not seek re-election in 1925, was kidnapped by Lapua Movement activists in 1930 and died in 1952.
Career timeline
1905–1907Senator for trade and industry in the Mechelin Senate
1908–1918Professor of Administrative Law, University of Helsinki
1914Speaker of the Parliament of Finland
1917–1918Chairman of the Constitutional Council
1918First President of the Supreme Administrative Court
Aristocratic soldier who rose from Russian Imperial lieutenant general to Marshal of Finland, facing the Soviet Union in two wars
"Forts, cannons and foreign aid will not help unless every man himself knows that he is the guard of his country."
A Swedish-speaking Finnish aristocrat who served 30 years in the Imperial Russian Army, rising to lieutenant general through the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. In the 1918 Finnish Civil War he commanded the White Army to victory, then as regent consolidated Finland's independence, telling the London Times that 'the historic mission of Finland is to drive Bolshevism out.' As commander-in-chief in the Winter War and Continuation War, he led outnumbered Finnish forces against the Soviet Union, fighting alongside Nazi Germany but refusing to assault Leningrad. Elected president in 1944, he concluded peace with the USSR and expelled German forces in the Lapland War, leaving Finland the only Eastern European nation to escape occupation.
Career timeline
1889–1917Cavalry officer, Imperial Russian Army; retired as lieutenant general, 1917
1918Commander-in-chief, White Army; led victory in Finnish Civil War
1918–1919Regent of Finland (head of state)
1931–1939Chairman, Finnish Defence Council
1939–1944Commander-in-chief, Finnish Defence Forces (Winter War & Continuation War)
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
A president shaped by agrarian reform and wartime compromise
“May the hand that is forced to sign such a monstrous treaty wither.”
Kyösti Kallio was a leader of Finland’s Agrarian League who pursued land reform and parliamentary politics. Four-time prime minister and several-time parliamentary speaker, he championed the 1922 settlement law known as Lex Kallio, which helped tenant farmers acquire land. As president during the Winter War, he resisted territorial concessions but ultimately had to accept the Moscow Peace Treaty in March 1940. His reported curse on the hand forced to sign the treaty became an enduring historical irony when his right arm was paralysed that summer; he resigned as his health failed and died later that year.
Career timeline
1904–1906Representative of the Peasant Estate in the Diet of Finland
1907–1937Member of Parliament; leader of the Agrarian League
1917–1922Minister responsible for agriculture in the independence Senate and governments
1922Advanced the land-settlement reform known as Lex Kallio
1922–1924Prime Minister of Finland
1925–1926Prime Minister of Finland
1929–1930Prime Minister of Finland
1936–1937Prime Minister of Finland
1920–1936Speaker of the Parliament of Finland across several sessions
1937–1940President of Finland during the Winter War and the Moscow Peace Treaty
Finnish labour leader who became the world’s first Social Democratic head of government and then joined the Red government
Born in Kannus in Central Ostrobothnia in 1873, he emigrated to America at 17, worked in the mines and joined the radical Western Federation of Miners. Back in Finland from 1900, he entered Parliament for the Social Democrats in 1907, chaired the Finnish Trade Union Federation in 1912–1917 and was Speaker in 1913. In 1917 he became vice-chairman of the Senate’s economic department, the world’s first social democratic prime minister. In the civil war he was commissar for supply in the People’s Delegation, signed the 1 March treaty with Soviet Russia and fled to Russia after the defeat. In 1919–1920 he advised the British-organised Murmansk Legion, for which the Communist Party of Finland sentenced him to death. From 1922 to 1949 he edited the social democratic paper Raivaaja in the United States, and the 1944 Lex Tokoi cleared him of the civil war charges.
Career timeline
1907–1918Social Democratic member of the Parliament of Finland
1912–1917Chairman of the Finnish Trade Union Federation
1913Speaker of the Parliament of Finland
1917Vice-chairman of the Senate’s economic department (head of government)
1918Commissar for supply, Finnish People’s Delegation
Mannerheim remembered him as a colleague whose industrial experience and ability to organize an army were both needed by Finland.
Rudolf Walden was a Finnish industrialist who helped build the paper industry and became a military and state organizer. His work organizing the White rear and supply system in the 1918 civil war led to a long partnership with Mannerheim, and during the Winter War he represented headquarters in the cabinet. After the war he became defence minister and signed the Moscow Peace Treaty for Finland, helping manage a state that had lost territory while preserving its independence. Conservative toward organized labour, he shifted during the Winter War toward recognizing trade unions as legitimate negotiating partners in a national emergency.
Career timeline
1900Graduated from Hamina Cadet School; second lieutenant in the Finnish Guard
1918Chief in the White rear area and headquarters rear administration
1918–1919Finnish Minister of War
1920Finnish representative at the Treaty of Tartu
1939–1940Headquarters representative in the war cabinet during the Winter War
1940–1944Finnish Minister of Defence and signatory of the Moscow Peace Treaty
1942Promoted to general of infantry
1944Head of Finland's delegation for the Moscow Armistice
Finnish forest scientist and statesman who built forest-type theory and led the cabinet on the eve of war
During the Winter War the poorly equipped reservists, sent out with little beyond civilian clothes, a belt and a rifle, were popularly nicknamed 'Model Cajander'. The label stuck to him as premier, though responsibility for the defence shortfalls was not his alone.
Finnish forest scientist and politician. Born in Uusikaupunki, he took a botany doctorate in 1903 based on Siberian fieldwork, became docent in botany at Helsinki in 1904 and professor of silviculture in 1911. Acting director-general of the Forest Board (Metsähallitus) in 1918 and director-general in 1934, he led state forest administration until his death. He was prime minister three times, in 1922, 1924 and 1937, and chaired the National Progressive Party from 1933. He resigned after the Winter War began and died at the Parliament House on 21 January 1943.
Career timeline
1903Doctorate in botany based on Siberian fieldwork
1904Docent in botany, University of Helsinki
1911–1934Professor of silviculture, University of Helsinki
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
Head of Finland's 1918 Red revolutionary government, who later led the exiled Communist Party and served the Comintern
In July 1917, as Manner cried 'To free Finland!', the Eduskunta passed the Supreme Power Act and the gallery answered with the Finnish national anthem.
Finnish socialist revolutionary who led Finland's 1918 Red government as chairman of the People's Delegation. After the civil war's defeat, he fled to Soviet Russia, co-founded the Finnish Communist Party, and led it for fourteen years while serving on the Comintern executive committee.
Career timeline
1900Graduated from Helsinki University; journalist at Porvoo newspaper
1906Joined SDP; founded and edited the workers' paper Työläinen
1910–1914Member of Parliament for Uusimaa
1917Member of Parliament for Uusimaa
1917Speaker of Parliament and chairman of the SDP
1918.01–04Chairman of the Finnish People's Delegation (head of the Red government); also Commander-in-Chief of the Red Guards from April
1918.08Co-founded the Finnish Communist Party (SKP) in Moscow
1920–1934Chairman of the SKP; member of the ECCI (elected 1920, 1928)
1934–1935Reassigned as Comintern rapporteur for Latin American affairs
1935–1939Arrested, sentenced to 10 years; died in the Ukhta-Pechora camp
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
The Social Democratic realist who faced Stalin as Finland's Winter War foreign minister, rising from the cooperative movement
At the final meeting on 9 November 1939, when Finland refused even the reduced demands, 'the eyes of our opposite numbers opened wide.' Stalin asked: 'You don't even offer Ino?'
The politician who rebuilt Finland's Social Democratic Party from the ashes of the 1918 civil war into a parliamentary-democratic force. He became prime minister of Finland's first leftist government in 1926, and during the Moscow negotiations on the eve of the Winter War he joined Paasikivi at the table, urging Helsinki to accept a territorial exchange. It was Tanner who later recorded that when Finland rejected even the reduced Soviet demands at the final meeting of 9 November 1939, Stalin's and Molotov's 'eyes opened wide.' After the war he served a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence under Soviet pressure, but returned to parliament and led the party into the early 1960s.
Career timeline
1907Member of Parliament, SDP
1917Senator for Finance
1926–1927Prime Minister
1927–1945President, International Co-operative Alliance
Labour journalist and former Russian army officer who became the first commander-in-chief of the Finnish Red Guards
Born in 1884 to a poor land worker’s family in Jämsä, he joined the Russian Army in 1903, served as a lieutenant in the Russo-Japanese War, joined the socialists in the 1905 revolution, and was jailed in Moscow and expelled from the military. Back in Finland he worked for the labour press in Turku, Vyborg and Kotka and as a Social Democratic party official. In October 1917 he organised the Workers’ Order Guards in Helsinki and after the November general strike became their commander-in-chief. In January 1918, despite heavy drinking in Petrograd, he bought a large cargo of guns and ammunition from the Bolsheviks, but on 28 January he was replaced by Eero Haapalainen. He broke out of besieged Tampere on the battle’s last night, was captured near Lahti and was shot at the Hennala camp in May 1918.
Career timeline
1904–1905Lieutenant in the Russian Army in the Russo-Japanese War
1917Organiser of the Workers’ Order Guards in Helsinki
1917–1918First commander-in-chief of the Order Guards and Red Guards
1918Red Guard general staff; staff of the Häme Front
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
On the evening of 26 November 1939, he received Molotov’s protest over Mainila and immediately sought the facts from Helsinki.
Aarno Yrjö-Koskinen was a Finnish jurist and diplomat who shaped the foreign ministry’s political work and external negotiations. As envoy in Moscow, he stood at the front line of diplomacy in November 1939, receiving Molotov’s protest over the Mainila shelling and delivering Finland’s replies before the Winter War. He also helped conclude Finland’s non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, yet the effort to contain the security conflict through negotiation did not prevent war.
Finnish president who, as wartime prime minister, negotiated the Moscow Peace Treaty
This trial is a farce. The real prosecutor is not the Finnish state but the government of one superpower, and the real defendant is the Finnish people.
When the Winter War broke out, Risto Ryti became prime minister of Finland and led the legitimate government that the Soviet Union refused to recognize while backing the Terijoki puppet regime; he negotiated the Moscow Peace Treaty in March 1940. A liberal economist and governor of the Bank of Finland, he was elected president and led Finland through the Continuation War in cooperation with Germany, but in 1944 he signed the Ryti-Ribbentrop Agreement in his personal capacity and resigned, enabling his successor Mannerheim to make peace with the USSR. Convicted to ten years' imprisonment in the post-war war-responsibility trials under Soviet pressure, he was pardoned in 1949 and is remembered in Finland as a leader who sacrificed himself for his country.
Career timeline
1919–1924Member of Parliament (National Progressive Party)
1927–1929Member of Parliament (National Progressive Party)
1921–1924Finance Minister
1924–1939Governor of the Bank of Finland
1944–1945Governor of the Bank of Finland
1925Presidential candidate, National Progressive Party
A Finnish general at the boundary of war and diplomacy
In midsummer 1941 Mannerheim entrusted Finland's largest-ever field force, the 100,000-strong Army of Karelia, to Heinrichs for the advance toward the Svir River and Lake Onega.
Erik Heinrichs was a Finnish military commander who worked closely with Mannerheim across battlefield command and general-staff planning. After directing the defence of the Karelian Isthmus in the Winter War, he helped coordinate military cooperation with Germany in 1941 and then led the Army of Karelia in Finland’s offensive. The Weapons Cache Case ended his postwar command career, but he remained active as a military expert, taking part in the 1948 Moscow negotiations and writing a major two-volume biography of Mannerheim.
Career timeline
1915–1918Trained in Germany as a Finnish Jäger and fought on the Eastern Front
1918Commanded the 7th Jäger Battalion in the Finnish Civil War
1931–1938Commander of the 1st Division
1939–1940Commanded III Corps and the Army of the Karelian Isthmus in the Winter War
1940–1941Chief of the General Staff and participant in military talks with Germany in 1941
1941–1942Commander of the Army of Karelia during the offensive in East Karelia
1942–1944Chief of the General Staff, overseeing wartime coordination with German forces
1945Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Defence Forces, resigning after the Weapons Cache Case
Finnish Jäger lieutenant general who destroyed two Soviet divisions at Suomussalmi with motti tactics
The division was not yet fully formed: Siilasvuo destroyed the Soviet 163rd Division before year's end with an incomplete 9th Division, then encircled the 44th on the Raate Road and cut it into motti, cordwood stacks.
A Jäger officer born in Helsinki, he went to Germany during the First World War for military training in the Prussian Jäger Battalion and fought in the Finnish Civil War as a White company commander. During the Winter War, as a colonel commanding the 9th Division, he encircled and destroyed the Soviet 163rd and 44th Rifle Divisions at Suomussalmi and Raate Road using motti tactics, halting the Soviet drive to cut Finland in half at Oulu. His success earned him promotion to major general and a best-selling book, Suomussalmen taistelut, though he was criticized for claiming all the credit. He commanded III Corps in the Continuation War and led the expulsion of German forces in the Lapland War, receiving the Mannerheim Cross in December 1944; he died at 54.
Career timeline
1915–1918Trained with 27th Prussian Jäger Battalion; fought on Eastern Front
1918White company commander, Finnish Civil War; fought at Tampere and Viipuri
1934–1939Commander, Pohjanmaa Military District; Oulu city councillor
1939–1940Commander, 9th Division; destroyed two Soviet divisions at Suomussalmi and Raate Road
1941–1942Commander, III Corps; northern Finnish-Soviet front
1944Commander, III Corps, Karelian Isthmus; Vuoksi defensive battles
1944–1945Overall commander, Lapland War; expelled German forces from Finland
Prime minister who declared Finland at war in 1941 and was later convicted in the war-responsibility trials
On the evening of 25 June 1941, Rangell told parliament: 'Finland has become the object of an attack by the Soviet Union, which has started acts of war against Finland.'
A Bank of Finland executive and close associate of Risto Ryti, Rangell was elevated to prime minister when Ryti became president in 1940. During his tenure Finland fought the Continuation War alongside Germany and occupied East Karelia, though foreign policy and military power rested with Mannerheim, Ryti, and Foreign Minister Witting rather than with Rangell. When Himmler visited in August 1942, Rangell famously silenced talk of Finland's Jewish minority with the words 'Wir haben keine Judenfrage.' Convicted to six years in the 1946 war-responsibility trials and pardoned in 1949, he left politics and served as an IOC member until 1967.
Career timeline
1912–1913Two-time Finnish triple jump champion and national record holder
1925–1933Legal department head and managing director, OKO cooperative bank
1937–1945Board member, Bank of Finland
1939–1940Acting governor, Bank of Finland
1943–1944Governor, Bank of Finland
1941–1943Prime Minister of Finland (Continuation War)
Finnish foreign minister who dismissed Stalin's demands as a bluff and overruled Mannerheim's counsel to compromise
"Forget that the Soviet Union is a great power": Erkko's instruction to Paasikivi before the 1939 Moscow negotiations.
A press baron who built Helsingin Sanomat into the Nordics' largest daily, Erkko became foreign minister in December 1938 and seized full control of the Soviet negotiations. An unyielding hardliner, he instructed Paasikivi departing for Moscow to "forget that the Soviet Union is a great power," dismissed Stalin's territorial demands as a bluff, and overruled Marshal Mannerheim's advice to compromise. With the Erkko-owned Helsingin Sanomat steering public opinion against concessions, the talks collapsed; after the Winter War began, Paasikivi called it "Erkko's war."
Career timeline
1918White Guard officer, Finnish Civil War
1919–1927Foreign Ministry postings in Paris, Tallinn, London
1927–1938Editor-in-Chief, Helsingin Sanomat; CEO, Sanoma Oy
1932Minister without portfolio, Deputy Interior Minister (Sunila II)
1933–1936MP, National Progressive Party
1938–1939Minister of Foreign Affairs (Cajander III)
Mannerheim's secret envoy to Berlin who brokered the German-Finnish military pact that led to the Continuation War
When Himmler asked him to lead Finnish armed resistance after the 1944 ceasefire, Talvela replied he would do so only 'on the orders of Marshal Mannerheim.'
A product of the Jäger movement, Talvela rose to prominence during the Winter War when his Group Talvela destroyed two Soviet divisions at Tolvajärvi, securing Finland's first major victory. In the autumn of 1940, Mannerheim dispatched him as a personal envoy to Berlin, where he negotiated secret military coordination between the Finnish and German general staffs: the diplomatic bridge that brought Finland into the Continuation War alongside the Wehrmacht. After the war he worked as a businessman and served on the Helsinki city council; the second recipient of the Mannerheim Cross, he was promoted to general of the infantry in 1966.
Career timeline
1916Jäger volunteer, 27th Royal Prussian Jäger Battalion
1918Battalion commander (Whites), Finnish Civil War; major
1919–1922C-in-C, Aunus expedition; battalion commander, Viena expedition
1926–1927Commander, Savo Jäger Regiment
1939.12–1940.04Commander Group Talvela (Tolvajärvi victory), then III Corps; major general
1940.09Mannerheim's personal envoy to Berlin; negotiated German-Finnish military coordination
1941.06–1942.01Commander, VI Corps, Army of Karelia; Mannerheim Cross (3 Aug 1941)
1942–1944Finnish army representative at German High Command; lt. general; commanded Aunus Group 1944
