- Yrjö Sirola
Yrjö Elias Sirola (originally Sirén, born
November 8 1876 - diedNovember 18 1936 ) was a Finnishwriter andsocialist politician , originally a primary school teacher. He worked as an editor of the "Kansan Lehti " ("Newspaper of the people") from 1904 to 1906 and as an editor of the "Työmies " ("Workman") from 1906. Sirola also wrote several books, primarily about society and politics. He also translated works byAugust Strindberg andKarl Kautsky to Finnish.Sirola was elected as a member of the parliament from the Social Democratic Party from 1907 to 1909 and from 1917 to 1918. He represented the radical leftist wing of the party and supported the Reds during the revolution. Sirola worked in charge of foreign relations of the parliament of the people during the
Finnish Civil War in 1918. After the socialist republic was defeated, he escaped into Soviet Russia. Sirola was involved in founding theFinnish Communist Party inMoscow . He worked as a member of the central committee of theComintern and as a people's educational commissary in the SovietRepublic of Karelia , close to the Finnish border.Sirola was Comintern emissary to the US Communist Party 1925 - 1927.
Yrjö Sirola was killed during the
Great Purge .An educational institution of the Finnish Communist party, named the
Sirola institution after Sirola, worked inVanajanlinna after the end of the war until the end of the 1980s.
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