Yrjö Sirola
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Yrjö Elias Sirola (born Yrjö Elias Sirén; 8 November 1876 – 18 March 1936) was a Finnish
socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
politician, writer, teacher, and newspaper editor. He was prominent as an elected official in Finland, as minister of foreign affairs in the 1918 Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic, a founder of the Communist Party of Finland, and as a
functionary An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless of whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority (either their own or that of the ...
of the
Communist International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internationa ...
.


Background

Yrjö Esias Sirén was born 8 November 1876 in Piikkiö,
Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
, then part of the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
. His father, Karl Gustaf Sirén, worked as a clergyman.David Kirby, "Yrjö Esias Sirola," in A. Thomas Lane (ed.), ''Biographical Dictionary of European Labor Leaders: M-Z.'' Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995; pg. 899. Yrjö attended a
lycée In France, secondary education is in two stages: * ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 14. * ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for students between ...
in Viipuri and then attended Rauma teachers' training college, from which he graduated in 1902.


Career

Following completion of his studies he took a post as a teacher in Hattula.


Social Democratic Party (Finland)

Yrjö joined the
Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Form ...
in 1903. After a short stint on the staff of the liberal newspaper ''Kotkan Sanomat'' (Kotka News) in 1903, Yrjö moved to the city of
Tampere Tampere is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Pirkanmaa. It is located in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Tampere is approximately , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately . It is the most populous mu ...
to assume the editorship of the '' Kansan Lehti'', a post which he occupied from 1904 to 1906. It is apparently during this period that he adopted the
pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...
Sirola, which he retained for the rest of his life. Sirola also served as editor of the
Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...
''Työmies'' ("Workman") from 1906. In 1905, Sirola was appointed as Secretary of the SDP, a role which enabled him to play an active part in the general strike of that year. An advocate of parliamentary methods during a revolutionary time, Sirola found himself out of step with a boisterous radical rank-and-file in the Social Democratic Party and withdrew his name from consideration in the elections for Secretary held at the party's 1906 national conference. The Russian imperial government of Nicholas II managed to stabilize itself by 1907, defeating the radical opponents which threatened to topple it in the
Revolution of 1905 The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, t ...
. Sirola remained active in the socialist movement following this defeat, gaining election to parliament and serving as deputy speaker in 1908 and 1909. Increased control by the
Tsarist Tsarist autocracy (), also called Tsarism, was an autocracy, a form of absolute monarchy in the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its successor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire. In it, the Tsar possessed in principle authority and ...
government over Finnish affairs in the aftermath of the revolution combined with a troubled personal financial situation moved Sirola to emigrate to the United States, however.


American years

Arriving in America in 1909, Sirola followed previous Finnish immigrants in moving to the
Upper Midwest The Upper Midwest is a northern subregion of the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwestern United States. Although the exact boundaries are not uniformly agreed upon, the region is usually defined to include the states of Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wi ...
region of the United States. Sirola landed a post as the director of the Finnish Socialist Federation's Work People's College in Smithville, Minnesota in 1910. Sirola would remain in that position until 1913. Previously very much a parliamentarian in his political orientation, while in Minnesota Sirola begun to be influenced by the radical
syndicalism Syndicalism is a labour movement within society that, through industrial unionism, seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through Strike action, strikes and other forms of direct action, with the eventual goa ...
espoused by the
Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago, United States in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with indu ...
. He would support the left wing in the bitter factional dispute which in 1912 and 1913 split the more than 10,000 member Finnish Socialist organization in America. Amidst this rancor, Sirola returned home to Finland in 1913.


Finnish Revolution

Back in Finland, Sirola resumed activity as a functionary of the Social Democratic Party, teaching in party schools and writing for the party press. In 1916 he was elected the SDP's Executive Committee and in 1917 he was returned to office as a parliamentary deputy. Within the SDP Sirola was a leader of the radical left wing of the party who supported the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
in November 1917 and who sought to emulate
Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
's results in Finland. On November 11, 1917, Sirola arrived in Petrograd with his comrade Evert Huttunen, where he met with Lenin at Smolnyi about how radicals in Finland might aid the Bolshevik uprising and about revolutionary prospects in Finland. Lenin was fearful that troops loyal to the
Provisional Government A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, a transitional government or provisional leadership, is a temporary government formed to manage a period of transition, often following state collapse, revoluti ...
of
Alexander Kerensky Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky ( – 11 June 1970) was a Russian lawyer and revolutionary who led the Russian Provisional Government and the short-lived Russian Republic for three months from late July to early November 1917 ( N.S.). After th ...
would be pulled from Finland to crush the Bolshevik uprising. He urged the Finns to initiate a general strike in an effort to emulate the Bolsheviks in their seizure of power. Sirola and Huttunen took the opposite impression from this meeting with Lenin than the one which the Russian leader had intended, however, interpreting the Bolshevik grip on power as being extremely tenuous and believing it dangerous for the Finnish SDP to build its plans around the survival of the Bolshevik government. This cautious perspective was shared by the SDP's parliamentary group, but radicals in the party pushed the revolution forward nonetheless, calling a
general strike A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions ...
for November 14. Sirola was one of three SDP leaders to exercise general control over the strike arrangements. As one historian has noted:
The instructions for the conduct of the strike required that in each community a revolutionary council would be set up with full authority over all workers' organizations, above all the Red Guard, which was to be the executive arm of the workers' power. The Red Guard would work with the militia in keeping order, mount guards and patrols, arrest dangerous enemies of the workers, confiscate liquor stocks, and stop the spread of rumors. The instruction ended with the standard injunction that "during the general strike, order and discipline must be preserved irreproachably. It must be remember that revolution is not the same as outrage and anarchy."
Each community experienced the general strike that launched the Finnish Revolutionary Government in a different way, ranging from complete inaction to Red Guards nailing shut the doors of stubborn businessmen who defied the strike. The success of the action generated pressure among the working class to move to a full seizure of power in emulation of the Bolshevik seizure of power a week earlier. Sirola still held that the armed seizure of power was premature, however. He argued at a meeting of the SDP's Revolutionary Council convened in the early morning hours of November 16 that "the position in Russian and the eventual attack of the Germans" was decisive and that the prudent course of action was to pressure parliament into making concessions, guaranteeing action on food and granting and back wages to those who participated in the general strike action.Upton, ''The Finnish Revolution, 1917-1918,'' pg. 157. The parliamentary delegates taking such a cautious position were in a minority, however, and at 5:00 am the Revolutionary Council voted 14–11 in favor of seizing power. The Revolutionary Council was reorganized, with Sirola and the parliamentary group (the minority) refusing to take part. Two hours later their nerve of the majority failed them, however, and the newly reorganized Revolutionary Council backed away from armed insurrection, in favor of an aggressive push for concessions from the
bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...
parties. As Anthony Upton notes:
In effect Sirola had won and emerged as the leading figure on the morning of 16 November; his policy, that of stepping up the pressure until they got a government that would satisfy the basic demands on food and guarantee immunity from reprisal, was adopted. On his suggestion, they decided to take over the railways, close the law courts, and compel all the agencies of central and local government to cease activity... There was also an attempt to satisfy the restlessness of the Red Guard by assigning to it a new task: It was to begin systematic searches for hidden stocks of food, if possible with the authorization of local Food Boards, but if necessary without...
On their own authority the Red Guard began arresting and jailing bourgeois notables, however, and the drive towards revolution careened forwards. On November 18, a group of angry railway workers came to see the SDP leaders, telling party leader Kullervo Manner to his face "you have betrayed the workers, the strike must go on until a socialist government is established."Upton, ''The Finnish Revolution, 1917-1918,'' pg. 162. The Strike Committee met that same night and declared in favor of a socialist government and that the Red Guard must stay armed until this was achieved and "all power is taken into the workers' hands." The conservative government headed by P. E. Svinhufvud refused to make concessions to the socialist opposition, with parliament voting down proposals to lower the voting age and to grant the vote immediately to tenant farmers. A new cabinet was put together by Svinhufvud which did not include a single socialist, a body confirmed by parliament on November 24 by a vote of 100 to 80. Parliamentary maneuvering was met with spontaneous armed actions by Red Guard in various localities in which some 34 people were killed, mostly victims of Red Guard violence. This increasing hostility created an impenetrable barrier between the two sides. With the conservative parliamentary majority intent upon disarming the Red Guards and establishing a monarchical form of government, the nation descended into civil war. On January 19, 1918, a pitched battle broke out between Red Guards and the conservative Protective Corps of Viipuri, which Russian troops coming to the aid of their allies in the fight. Fighting spread with the Red Guards beginning the seizure of Helsinki on the night of January 27/28.
White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
forces headed by General Mannerheim controlled the northernmost five-sixths of Finland, while the Reds controlled the southernmost region, containing approximately half of the country's population and including the cities of
Pori Pori (; ; ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Satakunta. It is located on the west coast of the country, on the Gulf of Bothnia. The population of Pori is approximately , while the Pori sub-region, sub-region has a population of a ...
,
Turku Turku ( ; ; , ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Southwest Finland. It is located on the southwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the Aura River (Finland), River Aura. The population of Turku is approximately , while t ...
,
Tampere Tampere is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Pirkanmaa. It is located in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Tampere is approximately , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately . It is the most populous mu ...
,
Riihimäki Riihimäki (; ) is a town and municipality in the south of Finland, about north of Helsinki and southeast of Tampere. An important railway junction is located in Riihimäki, since railway tracks from Riihimäki lead to Helsinki, Tampere and La ...
, Helsinki,
Kotka Kotka (; ) is a town in Finland, located on the southeastern coast of the country at the mouth of the Kymi River. The population of Kotka is approximately , while the Kotka-Hamina sub-region, sub-region has a population of approximately . It is th ...
, and Viipuri. A Finnish Revolutionary Government was declared, in which Sirola served as Commissar of Foreign Affairs. The civil war proved to be a one-sided affair, with the superior officer corps and materiel of the White forces under Mannerheim winning the day. By the spring of 1918, with the Red government clearly on the road to military defeat at the hands of the Whites, Sirola coordinated the evacuation of the leadership of the revolutionary government. On April 7, a meeting of Finnish socialists took place in Petrograd, at which various settlement plans were discussed, with Sirola setting up an office in Petrograd to look after the refugees already beginning to arrive three days later. Evacuation became official policy on April 14, 1918. Historian Anthony Upton notes:
The choices before the socialist leaders were unconditional surrender, a glorious fight to the finish in Finland ending in almost certain martyrdom, or a prudent withdrawal with a view to a future return. It was not a difficult choice to make, and did not mean, as their detractors had always claimed, that they were weak and cowardly men who betrayed their faithful but deluded followers. They were
Marxists Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, and ...
, and could see their defeat as only an episode in the class war, which always continued, and their duty was not to indulge in glorious gestures of defiance, but to persevere in the struggle.
The Finnish Socialist Republic fell on May 15, 1918.


Soviet years

Sirola was involved in establishing the Finnish Communist Party at the end of August 1918 in
Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
. The governing Central Committee of this new organization established itself in
Petrograd Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...
, where it launched a daily newspaper and magazines in Finnish and Swedish and put into print over 40 pamphlets during its first year.Sirola, "Report on Finland," pg. 71. Underground organizations of this new party were established inside Finland, where they distributed literature and conducted propaganda work. In January 1919, he was the Finnish CP's signatory to the call for the formation of the
Communist International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internationa ...
and in March of that year he was a delegate to the founding convention, held early in March 1919.Lazitch and Drachkovitch, ''Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern,'' pg. 432. At the founding convention of the Comintern, Sirola delivered the report on the Finnish revolution:
Although not adequately prepared politically or militarily for such a struggle, the workers held their ground at the front for three months, while at the same time doing a great deal behind the lines to organize social and economic life.

"That first revolution by the Finnish proletariat was defeated. The willingness to sacrifice and the courage of the comrades, men and women, who fought in the Red Guard and the invaluable aid given by our Russian comrades were not enough to repel the onslaught launched by the international gangs of White Guards led by Finnish, Swedish,
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
, and Russian officers. At the end of April, German imperialism tipped the balance by committing regular army troops to the fight. The White Guards were then able to block the plan to evacuate the revolution's best surviving forces to Russia.
In the wake of the Finnish uprising and its bloody aftermath, in which over 11,000 prisoners of the victorious Whites died of starvation, disease, or execution, Sirola had clearly cast his lot with revolutionary methods as opposed to
parliamentarism A parliamentary system, or parliamentary democracy, is a form of government where the head of government (chief executive) derives their democratic legitimacy from their ability to command the support ("confidence") of a majority of the legisl ...
:
For too long, we...were imbued with the ideology of a 'united' workers' movement. Only after the revolution did the split become unavoidable. There was a sharp polarization. The bourgeois dictatorship in Finland gave the extreme right wing of the old Social Democracy 'freedom' of organization and of the press for the express purpose of pacifying the workers. These traitors did their best to defeat the revolution the Finnish proletariat had made the previous year and to propagandize for a peaceful workers' movement functioning through parliament, trade unions, and cooperatives.... But the admonitions of those bourgeois lackeys are alien to the masses, who are tormented by prison, hunger, and poverty. The workers' memories of the White Terror are still fresh, and they can see the living example of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia.
Sirola also represented the Finnish party at the meetings of the
Executive Committee of the Communist International The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI (Russian acronym ИККИ - for ), was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body. The ECCI, established by the Fo ...
(ECCI). While he was not a delegate to the
2nd World Congress of the Comintern The 2nd World Congress of the Communist International was a gathering of approximately 220 voting and non-voting representatives of Communism, communist and Revolutionary socialism, revolutionary socialist political parties from around the world, h ...
in 1920, he did attend the 3rd World Congress in 1921 and in June 1922 took part in the 2nd Enlarged Plenum of ECCI. People's Commissar of Education in the Soviet
Republic of Karelia The Republic of Karelia, or simply Karelia or Karjala (; ) is a Republics of Russia, republic of Russia situated in the Northwest Russia, northwest of the country. The republic is a part of the Northwestern Federal District, and covers an area of ...
, close to the Finnish border.


Return to America

Sirola was a representative of the Communist International to the US Communist Party from 1925 to 1927, replacing Sergey Ivanovich Gusev. While in America, Sirola used the
pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...
"Frank Miller." In 1925 he was sent the United States as a representative of the
Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...
to the Workers Party of America. On October 16, 1939, J.B. Matthews, chief investigator for the Dies Committee of the
U.S. House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of th ...
, inquired into activities of Gusev (transliterated as "Gussev" in the transcript) in the U.S. during the 1920s with Max Bedacht, a co-founder of the Communist Party of the USA and long-time general secretary of the International Workers Order (IWO):
Mr. Matthews: Do you know a man by the name of Sirola?
Mr. Bedacht: Sirola I also met in the Comintern, I believe.
Mr. Matthews: Did you ever meet him here?
Mr. Bedacht: I knew him by that name before I met him.
Mr. Matthews. Did you ever meet him the United States?
Mr. Bedacht: No, I did not.
Mr. Matthews: You did not know him as a Comintern representative in the United States?
Mr. Bedacht: No, I did not.


Karelia

In 1930, Sirola left his position as a functionary of the Comintern to become People's Commissar of Public Education in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of
Karelia Karelia (; Karelian language, Karelian and ; , historically Коре́ла, ''Korela'' []; ) is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Russia (including the Soviet Union, Soviet era), Finland, and Sweden. It is currentl ...
. Sirola also taught periodically in Leningrad at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West in the department for Finns and Estonians and at the International Lenin School in Moscow. Yrjö Sirola had begun researching Finnish folklore already in his youth. His longest article on the subject from the period was "Who were the heroes of the Kalevala?". Sirola continued researching the Kalevala in Soviet Karelia. On the initiative of Sirola, the Karelian Republic's
Kantele A kantele () or kannel () is a traditional Finnish and Karelian plucked string instrument (chordophone) belonging to the southeast Baltic box zither family known as the Baltic psaltery along with the Estonian kannel, the Latvian kokles, t ...
Orchestra was formed.Erkki Salomaa: Yrjö Sirola. Kustannusosakeyhtiö Savon Sana. Sirola was also interested in Kalevala and folk poetry of other countries also from the perspective of Marxist
historical materialism Historical materialism is Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx located historical change in the rise of Class society, class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. Karl Marx stated that Productive forces, techno ...
and wrote about the topic in articles "A Small Sample of Edda" and "A Sample of Russian Folklore" Yrjö Sirola: Rintama nro. 5, 1935. among others. Sirola made a speech at the 100th anniversary of the Kalevala in Petrozavodsk in 1935 and published a book ''Kalevala, the Cultural Heritage of Workers''.


Death

Yrjö Sirola died in Moscow of a
stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...
on March 18, 1936. He was 59 years old at the time of his death. In 1957 Sirola's ashes were returned to Finland and reburied in Malmi cemetery in Helsinki.


Legacy

A
folk high school Folk high schools (also ''adult education center'') are institutions for adult education that generally do not grant academic degrees, though certain courses might exist leading to that goal. They are most commonly found in Nordic countries and i ...
of the Finnish Communist Party, named the Sirola-opisto after him, existed in Vanajanlinna from 1946 to 1994.


Citations and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sirola, Yrjo 1876 births 1936 deaths People from Kaarina People from Turku and Pori Province (Grand Duchy of Finland) Social Democratic Party of Finland politicians Members of the Socialist Party of America Communist Party of Finland politicians Members of the Parliament of Finland (1907–1908) Members of the Parliament of Finland (1908–1909) Members of the Parliament of Finland (1909–1910) Members of the Parliament of Finland (1917–1919) Finnish People's Delegation members Executive Committee of the Communist International Finnish Comintern people Finnish writers Finnish expatriates in the Soviet Union Minnesota socialists