Rudolf Holsti
Encyclopedia
Eino Rudolf Woldemar Holsti (8 October 1881, 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...

 – 4 August 1945, Palo Alto, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

) 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...

 politician, journalist and diplomat. He was the Foreign Minister of Finland 1919–1922 and 1936–1938 and a member of the Finnish Parliament 1913–1918 representing the Young Finnish Party
Young Finnish Party
The Young Finnish Party or Constitutional-Fennoman Party was a liberal and nationalist political party in the Grand Duchy of Finland...

 (Nuorsuomalainen Puolue). Since 1919 he represented 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...

  (see, for example, Sakari Virkkunen, "The Presidents of Finland", volume I, Helsinki: Otava Publications Ltd., 1994). Holsti represented Finland in the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...

. He was also a republican (opposing the then ongoing movement for monarchy in Finland). A firm supporter of democracy, he openly criticized Adolf Hitler at the outbreak of war. Holsti worked for newspapers in Hämeenlinna
Hämeenlinna
Hämeenlinna is a city and municipality of about inhabitants in the heart of the historical province of Häme in the south of Finland and is the birthplace of composer Jean Sibelius. Today, it belongs to the region of Tavastia Proper, and until 2010 it was the residence city for the Governor of the...

, Lahti
Lahti
Lahti is a city and municipality in Finland.Lahti is the capital of the Päijänne Tavastia region. It is situated on a bay at the southern end of lake Vesijärvi about north-east of the capital Helsinki...

 and Helsinki together with his friend and school companion Joel Lehtonen
Joel Lehtonen
Joel Lehtonen was a Finnish author, translator, critic and journalist. Born in Sääminki , he committed suicide in November 1934. His childhood was fatherless and poverty-stricken, his mother suffered from mental frailties and Joel himself was forced into paupery...

. The friendship ended abruptly when Holsti recognized himself as the satirically portrayed and fictive politician Rolf Idell in Lehtonen's book Sorron lapset (1924).

Later in life, Dr. Holsti taught at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, after he moved to United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 with his two sons: Kalevi and Olavi Holsti (both respected political scientists in their own right). He maintained a healthy correspondence with president Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...

, and the prime minister and president of Finland. He died on August 3, 1945 at Palo Alto Hospital while undergoing surgery to repair a hernia. His wife Liisa died of tuberculosis on July 22, 1951.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK