Karl Harald Wiik was a Swedish-speaking 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...

 Social Democratic

Social Democratic Party of Finland

The Social Democratic Party of Finland is one of the three major political parties in Finland, along with the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party. Jutta Urpilainen is the current SDP leader. The party has been in the Finnish government cabinet for long periods and has set many...

 leader. He was a Member of the Finnish Parliament from 1911 to 1918, from 1922 to 1929, from 1933 to 1941 and from 1944 to his death. An influential member of the Party's left wing, he was imprisoned for a time after 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...

 for having participated in the Rebel administration. In 1940 he and five other Social Democratic MPs were expelled from the Social Democratic Party because of their leftist orientation. The six expelled MPs formed the short-lived Socialist Parliamentary Group, all of whose members spent the years 1941 - 1944 in prison because of their unrelenting opposition to the Continuation War

Continuation War

The Continuation War was the second of two wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during World War II.At the time of the war, the Finnish side used the name to make clear its perceived relationship to the preceding Winter War...

. Upon their release from prison in September 1944 after the armistice with the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, the members of the group decided to ally themselves with the newly legalized Finnish Communist Party. They, including Wiik, were among the founders of the Finnish People's Democratic League

Finnish People's Democratic League

Finnish People's Democratic League was a Finnish political organisation with the aim of uniting those left of the Finnish Social Democratic Party...

, an umbrella organization of the Finnish radical left dominated in practice by the Communist Party.