Otto Wille Kuusinen | |
|---|---|
 Portrait,c. 1940s | |
| Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Karelo-Finnish SSR | |
| In office 11 July 1940 – 16 July 1956 | |
| Succeeded by | Pavel Prokkonen |
| Member of the19thPresidium | |
| In office 16 October 1952 – 5 March 1953 | |
| Member of the20th–21st,22ndSecretariat | |
| In office 29 June 1957 – 17 May 1964 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1881-10-04)4 October 1881 Laukaa,Grand Duchy of Finland, Russian Empire |
| Died | 17 May 1964(1964-05-17) (aged 82) Moscow,Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Resting place | Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Moscow |
| Political party | Social Democratic Party of Finland (1906–1918) Communist Party of Finland (1918–1964) Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1918–1964) |
| Children | 8, includingHertta Kuusinen |
Otto Wilhelm "Wille"Kuusinen (Finnish:[ˈotːoˈʋilːeˈkuːsinen]ⓘ;Russian:О́тто Вильге́льмович Ку́усинен,romanized: Otto Vilgelmovich Kuusinen; 4 October 1881 – 17 May 1964) was a Finnish-born Soviet politician, literary historian, and poet.
From 1911 to 1917, Kuusinen served as Chairman of theSocial Democratic Party of Finland and became one of the leaders of theFinnish Socialist Workers' Republic in 1918. After the defeat of theReds in theFinnish Civil War, he fled toSoviet Russia.
In theSoviet Union, Kuusinen became a prominent official inComintern. During theWinter War (1939–1940), he led theFinnish Democratic Republic, a short-lived Soviet puppet state. Following the war, he served as the head of state of theKarelo-Finnish SSR from 1940 until 1956. He was a member of thePolitburo in 1952–1953 and 1957–1964.[1]
Kuusinen was born on 4 October 1881, to the family of village tailor Wilhelm Juhonpoika Kuusinen inLaukaa,Grand Duchy of Finland,Russian Empire. Otto's mother died when he was two years old, and the family then moved toJyväskylä. In May 1900, Kuusinen graduated from the JyväskyläLyceum and enteredHelsinki University the same year. His main subjects werephilosophy,aesthetics, andart history. Kuusinen was an active member of the students' union, and during this period he was interested inFennoman conservatism andAlkioism. In 1902, Kuusinen graduated as acandidate of philosophy.
In 1906, after toppling the more moderate party chairman J. K. Kari, Kuusinen came to dominateFinland's Social Democratic Party. He was a member ofFinland's Parliament from 1908 to 1910, from 1911 to 1913 and again from 1916 to 1918 as well as the party's chairman from 1911 to 1917. He was a leader of the January 1918 revolution in Finland that created the short-livedFinnish Socialist Workers' Republic, of which he was appointed People's Commissar of Education.[2] After the republic was defeated in theFinnish Civil War in 1918, Kuusinen fled toMoscow and helped form theFinnish Communist Party.
Kuusinen continued his work as a prominent leader of theComintern in Bolshevist Russia, that soon became theSoviet Union. Kuusinen also became a leader inSoviet military intelligence, establishing an intelligence network against the Scandinavian countries.[3] In Finland, a more moderate faction rehabilitated the Social Democrats underVäinö Tanner'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 SovietGreat Purge was a hard blow to Finns in the Soviet Union. Many Finnish communists sympathetic to Trotskyism or social democracy were purged and Kuusinen's reputation in Finland was damaged when he turned out to be one of the very few not targeted by Stalinistshow trials, deportations, and executions.
When theRed Army began its advance during theWinter War on November 30, 1939, Kuusinen was pronounced head of theFinnish Democratic Republic (also known as the Terijoki Government)—Joseph Stalin'spuppet regime[4][5][6][7] through which Finland would be transformed into a socialist state. 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.[2] However, the war did not go as planned, and the Soviet leadership decided to negotiate a peace with the legitimate Finnish government; Kuusinen's government disbanded and he was made chairman of the presidium of theSupreme Soviet of theKarelo-Finnish SSR (1940–1956).
Finnish CommunistArvo Tuominen expressed the opinion that the war was not Kuusinen's idea. According to him, Kuusinen would have known that the underground Finnish Communist Party was in shambles due to police terror and could not incite a mass revolt in Finland or mutiny in the ranks of the army. The number of soldiers who joined Kuusinen's Finnish People's Army was up to 25000 Ingrians, Karelians, Russians, and some Finnish émigrés. Kuusinen served as chairman and foreign minister of the Terijoki puppet government, while its other ministers were members of the Finnish Communist Party. The Treaty of Mutual Assistance between the government of the Soviet Union and the Terijoki puppet government, signed in Moscow in December 1939, indicates that the puppet government's members were accepted by the leaders of the Soviet Union. The first idea of the Terijoki puppet government might have been expressed toJoseph Stalin by the Finnish Communist Party or Soviet Communist Party secretaryAndrei Zhdanov in the beginning of November, because the main secretary of the Finnish Communist Party, Arvo Tuominen, received a letter dated November 13 in Stockholm concerning this matter.[8]
The Finnish Communist Party had little influence during the 1930s and mostworking class Finns stood behind the legal government inHelsinki.[9] Finnish national unity against the Soviet invasion was later called theSpirit of the Winter War.[10]
Kuusinen became an influential official in the Soviet administration. He was a member of thePolitburo, the highest organ of the Communist party. Despite his close work with Stalin, Kuusinen was able to continue to work during the administration ofNikita Khrushchev (1953–1964) and "de-Stalinization". He was Secretary of theCentral Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1957–1964. In 1952 and again in 1957 he was also elected to the Presidium of the Central Committee.
In the 1950s, Kuusinen was also one of the editors ofThe Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, a textbook considered to be one of the fundamental works ondialectical materialism andLeninist communism.
In 1958, Kuusinen was elected a member of theSoviet Academy of Sciences.
After learning that he was terminally ill, Kuusinen requested (via the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki) permission to visitLaukaa andJyväskylä as a private person. The government of Finland denied this request.
Kuusinen was married several times and had several children:Aino Elina (born 1901),Hertta Elina (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 marriedAino Sarola. In 1936, he fell in love with an Armenian, Marina Amiragova, who was 30 years younger than him. They stayed together until Kuusinen's death and never married. They had a daughter in 1937 who died at the age of eleven months.
Kuusinen died age 82 on 17 May 1964 in Moscow. His ashes were buried in theKremlin Wall Necropolis.
He was succeeded by his daughterHertta Kuusinen, a leading communist politician in Finland during theCold War.
Under Kuusinen's name came the Comintern concept of a politically organized "solar system" in an influential piece called "Report of the Commission for Work among the Masses" (1926):
The first of our task is to build up, not only communist organisations, but other organisations as well, above all mass organisations sympathising with our aims, and able to aid us for special purposes. We have already such organisations in some countries, for instance theInternational Red Aid, theWorkers' International Relief, etc. ComradeZinoviev has expressly emphasised the importance of this task in his closing speech. Besides this we require a number of more or less firmly established organisatory fulcrums, which we can utilise for our further work, ensuring that we are not condemned to theSisyphus-like task of only influencing the masses politically, only to see this mass influence constantly slip through our hands. We must create a wholesolar system of organisations and smaller committees around the Communist Party, so to speak, smaller organisations working actually under the influence of our Party (not under mechanical leadership).[11][12]
The quote "solar system of organizations" was wrongly ascribed to Lenin by U.S.HUAC chief investigatorRobert E. Stripling[13] and U.S. Attorney GeneralFrancis Biddle.[14]
Books by Kuusinen include:
Articles by Kuusinen include:
First published in the United States under the title A Frozen Hell: The Russo–Finnish Winter War of 1939–40
