Heikki Ritavuori, originally Rydman (23 March 1880 in Turku

Turku

Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...

 – 14 February 1922 in Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

), was a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 Bachelor of Law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

, a politician from the National Progressive Party

National Progressive Party (Finland)

The National Progressive Party was a liberal political party in Finland from 1918 to 1951. The party was founded December 8 1918, after the Finnish Civil War, by the republican majority of the Young Finnish Party and the republican minority of the Finnish Party...

, a member of the Parliament of Finland

Parliament of Finland

The Eduskunta , is the parliament of Finland. The unicameral parliament has 200 members and meets in the Parliament House in Helsinki. The latest election to the parliament took place on April 17, 2011.- Constitution :...

, Minister of Internal Affairs, and for a short time also Deputy Minister of Justice. He was the closest work colleague of Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg

Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg

Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg was a Finnish jurist and academic, who played a central role in the drafting of the Constitution of Finland in 1919. He was the first President of Finland and a nationalist liberal.-Early life:...

 and was Minister of Internal Affairs in J.H. Vennola's first and second governments from 1919 to 1922 for a total of 526 days. Heikki Ritavuori is a unique figure in Finland's political history because he is not remembered for his life's work, but instead for its end. Minister Ritavuori was shot dead at the door to his home in Helsinki in February 1922.

Career

The murder of a government minister is such a rare occurrence in Finland that it has almost completely overshadowed Ritavuori's achievements as a builder of Finnish society. The Turku-born lawyer

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

, member of parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 and government minister was one of the most notable politicians in the early years of Finland's independence. He was dedicated to justice, equality

Social equality

Social equality is a social state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in a certain respect. At the very least, social equality includes equal rights under the law, such as security, voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, and the...

 among citizens, and a unified nation.

Defending these values took a great deal of courage in the unstable times following the Finnish civil war

Finnish Civil War

The Finnish Civil War was a part of the national, political and social turmoil caused by World War I in Europe. The Civil War concerned control and leadership of The Grand Duchy of Finland as it achieved independence from Russia after the October Revolution in Petrograd...

, when radical groups sought their own ends by any means necessary. Ritavuori was frightened of neither the extreme left-wing nor the extreme right, but instead implemented the reforms he felt were necessary as K.J. Ståhlberg's most trusted man. He took particular care in defending the civil rights of red prisoners of war

Prisoner of war

A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...

 kept in prison camps, and advocated laws to pardon them.

Ritavuori was already familiar with social questions when he became Secretary of the Foundation Board of the Parliament of Finland in 1907; he was especially interested in land-owning rights and the position of peasant

Peasant

A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...

s. As a lawyer, he liked to handle communal cases in defense of the poor. He was elected as a member of the parliament from the Turku Province southern election circle first in 1914, and then again in 1919.

The acceptance of Finland's republic

Republic

A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...

 form of government in June 1919 is largely because of Ritavuori's work as chairman of the Foundation Board. The dispute about the form of government between the royalists and the republicans had been holding back governmental activity for months. To stop the unhelpful "temporary situation", the republican government of Kaarlo Castrén

Kaarlo Castrén

Kaarlo Castrén was a Finnish politician and Prime Minister of Finland . He represented the National Progressive Party.Castrén was born in Turtola and graduated in 1887 as a Bachelor of Law...

 proposed a law establishing the new form to the Parliament of Finland in June; it was written by the President of the High Court, K.J. Ståhlberg.

For the parliament to be able to accept the proposed law, it had to be classified as urgent by the meeting order. One vote more was needed for the required five-sixths majority, and so the reform of the government was about to be delayed again. It was then that Heikki Ritavuori involved himself in the matter, and only a couple of days later he gave his own proposal for a new governmental form (which he had already submitted for consideration earlier) to the parliament. The members of the parliament were amazed, but now the proposal was classified as urgent, and based on it, the parliament accepted the new form of government on 21 June 1919. Thus, Finland became a republic.

Ritavuori, having served as Minister of Internal Affairs twice, was frequently confronted by activists representing the extreme right-wing. Because of the laws to pardon red prisoners of war, he was branded the "red minister", one who threatened the legacy of white Finland. Supporting Ståhlberg as the opponent of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim

Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was the military leader of the Whites in the Finnish Civil War, Commander-in-Chief of Finland's Defence Forces during World War II, Marshal of Finland, and a Finnish statesman. He was Regent of Finland and the sixth President of Finland...

 in the presidential elections in summer 1919 and opposing the independence of the protection guards in the crisis of 1921 made Ritavuori even less liked in right-wing circles.

Murder

Ritavuori's fate was sealed by the Eastern Karelia crisis in the winter of 1921-22, when he served as minister responsible for the border guard and handled his job in a direct manner as instructed by President of Finland

President of Finland

The President of the Republic of Finland is the nation's head of state. Under the Finnish constitution, executive power is vested in the President and the government, with the President possessing extensive powers. The President is elected directly by the people of Finland for a term of six years....

 K.J. Ståhlberg. Based on falsified news sent from Eastern Karelia, right-wing newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

s started a smear campaign

Smear campaign

A smear campaign, smear tactic or simply smear is a metaphor for activity that can harm an individual or group's reputation by conflation with a stigmatized group...

 that destroyed Ritavuori's reputation and eventually caused his death. Heikki Ritavuori was shot dead at his home in Etu-Töölö, at Nervanderinkatu 11, on 14 February 1922.

Ernst Tandefelt

Ernst Tandefelt

Knut Ernst Robert Tandefelt was a Swedish-speaking Finnish nobleman.The mentally unstable Tandefelt shot the Finnish Minister of Internal Affairs Heikki Ritavuori dead at Ritavuori's home door at Nervanderinkatu 11 in Etu-Töölö, Helsinki on February 14, 1922, to affect Finland's politics in the...

, who had fired the murder weapon, was a mentally under-developed black sheep of a noble family. He stated that based on newspaper reports, and particularly Hufvudstadsbladet

Hufvudstadsbladet

Hufvudstadsbladet is the highest-circulation Swedish-language newspaper in Finland. Its headquarters are located in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The name of the newspaper translates approximately into "The Capital City Newspaper", hufvudstad being 19th century Swedish for capital...

information supporting Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

-speaking activists, he had concluded that Ritavuori was indeed a danger to the country, and thought he had to be eliminated. In court, Tandefelt said he had acted alone, and he was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor

Penal labour

Penal labour is a form of unfree labour in which prisoners perform work, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence which involve penal labour include penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labour...

 as partially legally insane. Afterwards, Tandefelt implicated several people, including the pharmacist

Pharmacist

Pharmacists are allied health professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use...

 Oskar Jansson and the general-major Paul von Gerich, who he said were involved in planning the murder. Research done by the chancellor of justice in 1927-30 did not result in any evidence that would have caused further actions in the matter. The decision was an understandable solution in the increasingly right-wing atmosphere of the time. However, many facts pointed to the theory that the initiative-less Tandefelt was supported by, if not a full conspiracy

Conspiracy (political)

In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of persons united in the goal of usurping or overthrowing an established political power. Typically, the final goal is to gain power through a revolutionary coup d'état or through assassination....

, then at least radical political actors, mostly Finland-Swedish

Finland-Swedish

Finland Swedish is a general term for the closely related cluster of dialects of Swedish spoken in Finland by Swedish-speaking Finns as their mother tongue...

 protection guard activists, who encouraged Tandefelt to kill Ritavuori by giving him the murder weapon and some money.

Other notes

Heikki Ritavuori, only 41 years old at the time of his death, was a heavy-duty government figure whom several parties saw as a potential new president.

Heikki Ritavuori fennicised his name in 1906. His younger brother Eero Rydman was a member of parliament from the Progressive Party, the mayor of Helsinki for 12 years, and a presidential candidate of the People's Party of Finland in 1956. Ritavuori's grandson, professor Pekka Tarjanne, was the chairman of the Liberal People's Party, a member of the parliament, a government minister, chairman of the board of the Post and Telephone Bureau, and chairman of the board of the ITU

Itu

Itu is an old and historic municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. The population in 2009 was 157,384 and the area is 641.68 km². The elevation is 583 m. This place name comes from the Tupi language, meaning big waterfall. Itu is linked with the highway numbered the SP-75 and are flowed...

.

Literature

• Risto Niku: Ministeri Ritavuoren murha. Helsinki: Edita Publishing Oy, 2004. ISBN 951-37-4146-X.
• Timo Hänninen: Myytti poliittisesta murhasta. 1995. Master's Thesis, University of Helsinki
  University of Helsinki
  The University of Helsinki is a university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but was founded in the city of Turku in 1640 as The Royal Academy of Turku, at that time part of the Swedish Empire. It is the oldest and largest university in Finland with the widest range of disciplines available...
  
  Faculty of Governmental Sciences.
• Tuomo Silenti: Ritavuoren murha. 1995. Master's Thesis, University of Helsinki Faculty of History.

External links