Otto Ville Kuusinen
Encyclopedia
Laukaa
Laukaa is a municipality of Finland.It is located in the province of Western Finland, next to Jyväskylä and is part of the Central Finland region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of ofwhich is water. The population density is....
, Finland
Grand Duchy of Finland
The Grand Duchy of Finland was the predecessor state of modern Finland. It existed 1809–1917 as part of the Russian Empire and was ruled by the Russian czar as Grand Prince.- History :...
– 17 May 1964, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, USSR) was a Finnish-born Soviet
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....
politician, literary historian, and poet, who, after the defeat of the Reds in 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...
, fled to the Soviet Union, where he worked until his death.
Early life
Kuusinen was born to the family of village tailor Wilhelm Juhonpoika Kuusinen in LaukaaLaukaa
Laukaa is a municipality of Finland.It is located in the province of Western Finland, next to Jyväskylä and is part of the Central Finland region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of ofwhich is water. The population density is....
in 1881. His mother died when Kuusinen was two years old, and the family then moved to Jyväskylä
Jyväskylä
Jyväskylä is the capital of Central Finland and the largest city on the Finnish Lakeland, north-east of Tampere and north of Helsinki, on northern coast of lake Päijänne. The city has been continuously one of the most rapidly growing cities in Finland since World War II. The city is surrounded...
. Kuusinen graduated from the Jyväskylä lyceum in May 1900 and entered Helsinki University the same year. His main subjects were philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
and art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
. Kuusinen was an active member of the students' union, and during this period he was interested in Fennoman conservatism
Finnish Party
The Finnish Party was a Fennoman conservative political party in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and independent Finland. Born out of Finland's language strife in the 1860s, the party sought to improve the position of the Finnish language in Finnish society...
and Alkioism
Santeri Alkio
Santeri Alkio was a Finnish politician, author and journalist. He is also considered to be the ideological father of Finnish Centre Party.-History:...
. Kuusinen graduated as a Candidate of Philosophy
Candidate of Philosophy
Candidate of Philosophy is any of the following academic degrees: a Bachelor's level, Master's level, higher than Master's level, or Doctorate level degree, depending on the country.- In the United States :...
in 1902.
Civil War and flight to the Soviet Union
After toppling the more moderate party chairman J. K. Kari in 1906, Kuusinen came to dominate Finland's Social Democratic Party. He was a member of Finland's Parliament 1908–1913 and the party's chairman 1911–1917. He was a leader of the January 1918 revolution in Finland that created the short-lived Finnish Socialist Workers' RepublicFinnish Socialist Workers' Republic
The Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic was a short-lived Finnish socialist government, established by a revolution just prior to the Finnish Civil War and in the aftermath of the October Revolution...
, of which he was appointed People's Commissar of Education. After the republic was defeated in 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...
in 1918, Kuusinen fled to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and helped form the Finnish Communist Party.
He continued his work as a prominent leader of the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
in Bolshevist Russia, that soon became 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....
. Kuusinen also became a leader in Soviet military intelligence
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
, establishing an intelligence network against the Scandinavian countries. In Finland, a more moderate faction rehabilitated the Social Democrats under Väinö Tanner
Väinö Tanner
Väinö Tanner was a pioneer and leader in the cooperative movement in Finland, and Prime Minister of Finland from 1926 to 1927....
's leadership. Meanwhile, Kuusinen and other radicals were increasingly seen as responsible for the Civil War and its aftermath.
Animosity towards Socialists in Finland in the decades after the Civil War prompted many Finns to emigrate to Russia to "build Socialism." However, the Soviet Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
was a hard blow against Finns in the Soviet Union — most of those who didn't escape back to Finland were executed as unreliable in the 1930s — and Kuusinen's reputation in Finland was further damaged when he turned out to be one of the very few not targeted by Stalinist show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
s, deportations, and executions.
Head of the Terijoki Government
When the Red ArmyRed Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
began its advance during the Winter War
Winter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
on November 30, 1939, Kuusinen was pronounced head of the Finnish Democratic Republic
Finnish Democratic Republic
The Finnish Democratic Republic was a short-lived government dependent on and recognised only by the Soviet Union. It nominally operated in those parts of Finnish Karelia that were occupied by the Soviet Union during the Winter War....
(also known as the Terijoki Government)—Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's puppet régime intended to rule Finland. A "Declaration of the People's Government of Finland" was issued in Terijoki on December 1, 1939, and a "Treaty of Mutual Assistance and Friendship Between the Soviet Union and the Democratic Republic of Finland" signed by Molotov and Kuusinen in Moscow on December 2, 1939 However, the war did not go as planned, and the Soviet leadership decided to negotiate a peace with the Finnish government; Kuusinen's government was quietly disbanded and he was made chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet
Supreme Soviet
The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union was the Supreme Soviet in the Soviet Union and the only one with the power to pass constitutional amendments...
of the Karelo-Finnish SSR
Karelo-Finnish SSR
The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was a short-lived republic that was a part of the former Soviet Union. The republic existed from 1940 until it was merged back into the Russian SFSR in 1956 ....
(1940–1956).
From the very outset of the war, working-class Finns stood behind the legal government in Helsinki. Finnish national unity against the Soviet invasion was later called the spirit of the Winter War
Spirit of the Winter War
The Spirit of Winter War is the national unity which is credited with having saved Finland from disintegrating along class and ideological lines under the Soviet invasion during the Winter War of November 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940....
.
Member of the Politburo
Kuusinen became an influential official in the Soviet state administration. He was a member of the PolitburoPolitburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
, the highest state organ. Kuusinen also continued his work during the administration of Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
(1953–1964). He was Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
1957–1964. In 1952 and again in 1957 he was also elected to the Presidium of the Central Committee.
Kuusinen was one of the editors of The Fundamentals in Marxism-Leninism, considered to be one of the fundamental works on dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
and Leninist
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. In Kremlin
Kremlin
A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
politics he was considered a liberal — and from its temporal distance his thinking pointed forward to perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
. While editing a new party programme for "rapid agricultural, industrial, and technological development" he championed giving up the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat
Dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
, to the horror of more conservative ideologists. In this he was supported by Khrushchev.
Kuusinen was elected a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1958.
After learning that he was terminally ill, Kuusinen requested (via the Helsinki Embassy of the Soviet Union) permission to visit Laukaa
Laukaa
Laukaa is a municipality of Finland.It is located in the province of Western Finland, next to Jyväskylä and is part of the Central Finland region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of ofwhich is water. The population density is....
and Jyväskylä
Jyväskylä
Jyväskylä is the capital of Central Finland and the largest city on the Finnish Lakeland, north-east of Tampere and north of Helsinki, on northern coast of lake Päijänne. The city has been continuously one of the most rapidly growing cities in Finland since World War II. The city is surrounded...
as a private person. The government of Finland denied this request.
Kuusinen died in Moscow on May 17, 1964. His ashes were buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis
Kremlin Wall Necropolis
Burials in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow began in November 1917, when 240 pro-Bolshevik victims of the October Revolution were buried in mass graves on Red Square. It is centered on both sides of Lenin's Mausoleum, initially built in wood in 1924 and rebuilt in granite in 1929–1930...
.
Otto Wille Kuusinen was survived by his daughter Hertta Kuusinen
Hertta Kuusinen
Hertta Elina Kuusinen was a Finnish Communist politician. She was a member of the central committee and the political bureau of the Communist Party of Finland, member of parliament , general secretary and the leader of the parliamentary group of the Finnish People's Democratic League...
, a leading communist politician in Finland during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
.
Family
Kuusinen was married several times, and had numerous children, such as Aino Elina [born 1901], Hertta ElinaHertta Kuusinen
Hertta Elina Kuusinen was a Finnish Communist politician. She was a member of the central committee and the political bureau of the Communist Party of Finland, member of parliament , general secretary and the leader of the parliamentary group of the Finnish People's Democratic League...
[born 1904], Esa Otto Wille [born 1906], Riikka-Sisko [born 1908], Heikki [born 1911] and Taneli [born 1913]. Most of his offspring remained with his first wife Saima Dahlström. In early 1920s Kuusinen married Aino Sarola. In 1936, he fell in love with the Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
Marina Amiragova, who was 30 years younger than he, and they stayed together until Kuusinen's death. The couple was never married and they had a daughter in 1937 who died at the age of eleven months.
During the Great Purge in 1937, Kuusinen's son was arrested. Stalin asked Kuusinen why he had not protested; Kuusinen replied, "No doubt there were serious reasons for his arrest." Later Kuusinen's son was released.