Yrjö Sirola
Encyclopedia
Yrjö Elias Sirola (8 November 1876 Kaarina
- 18 November 1936 Moscow
) was a Finnish
socialist politician
, teacher, and newspaper editor. He was prominent as an elected official in Finland, as minister of foreign affairs in the 1918 Finnish revolutionary government, as a founder of the Communist Party of Finland
, and as a functionary of the Communist International.
Työmies ("Workman") from 1906. In 1905, Sirola was appointed as Secretary of the SDP, a role which enabled him to play an active part in the general strike of that year. Sirola also wrote several books on social and political themes and translated works by August Strindberg
and Karl Kautsky
to Finnish
.
Sirola was elected as a member of the parliament from the SDP from 1907 to 1909. He was forced into emigration by the Tsarist government, however, landing in America. There he worked as a professor of social science at the Finnish Socialist Federation's
Work People's College
in Smithville, Minnesota
.
in November 1917 and who sought to emulate Lenin's results in Finland.
On November 11, 1917, Sirola arrived in Petrograd with his comrade Evert Huttunen, where he met with Lenin at Smolnyi about how radicals in Finland might aid the Bolshevik uprising and about revolutionary prospects in Finland. Lenin was fearful that troops loyal to the Provisional Government
of Alexander Kerensky
would be pulled from Finland to crush the Bolshevik uprising. He urged the Finns to initiate a general strike in an effort to emulate the Bolsheviks in their seizure of power. Sirola and Huttunen took the opposite impression from this meeting with Lenin than the one which the Russian leader had intended, however, interpreting the Bolshevik grip on power as being extremely tenuous and believing it dangerous for the Finnish SDP to build its plans around the survival of the Bolshevik government. This cautious perspective was shared by the SDP's parliamentary group, but radicals in the party pushed the revolution forward nonetheless, calling a general strike
for November 14. Sirola was one of three SDP leaders to exercise general control over the strike arrangements.
As one historian has noted:
Each community experienced the general strike that launched the Finnish Revolutionary Government in a different way, ranging from complete inaction to Red Guards nailing shut the doors of stubborn businessmen who defied the strike. The success of the action generated pressure among the working class to move to a full seizure of power in emulation of the Bolshevik seizure of power a week earlier. Sirola still held that the armed seizure of power was premature, however. He argued at a meeting of the SDP's Revolutionary Council convened in the early morning hours of November 16 that "the position in Russian and the eventual attack of the Germans" was decisive and that the prudent course of action was to pressure parliament into making concessions, guaranteeing action on food and granting and back wages to those who participated in the general strike action. The parliamentary delegates taking such a cautious position were in a minority, however, and at 5:00 am the Revolutionary Council voted 14-11 in favor of seizing power. The Revolutionary Council was reorganized, with Sirola and the parliamentary group (the minority) refusing to take part. Two hours later their nerve of the majority failed them, however, and the newly reorganized Revolutionary Council backed away from armed insurrection, in favor of an aggressive push for concessions from the bourgeois
parties.
As Anthony Upton notes:
On their own authority the Red Guard began arresting and jailing bourgeois notables, however, and the drive towards revolution careened forwards. On November 18, a group of angry railway workers came to see the SDP leaders, telling party leader Kullervo Manner
to his face "you have betrayed the workers, the strike must go on until a socialist government is established." The Strike Committee met that same night and declared in favor of a socialist government and that the Red Guard must stay armed until this was achieved and "all power is taken into the workers' hands." The conservative government headed by P.E. Svinhufvud
refused to make concessions to the socialist opposition, with parliament voting down proposals to lower the voting age and to grant the vote immediately to tenant farmers. A new cabinet was put together by Svinhufvud which did not include a single socialist, a body confirmed by parliament on November 24 by a vote of 100 to 80. Parliamentary maneuvering was met with spontaneous armed actions by Red Guard in various localities in which some 34 people were killed, mostly victims of Red Guard violence. This increasing hostility created an impenetrable barrier between the two sides. With the conservative parliamentary majority intent upon disarming the Red Guards and establishing a monarchical form of government, the nation descended into civil war.
On January 19, 1918, a pitched battle broke out between Red Guards and the conservative Protective Corps of Viipuri, which Russian troops coming to the aid of their allies in the fight.
Fighting spread with the Red Guards beginning the seizure of Helsinki on the night of January 27/28. White
forces headed by General Carl Mannerheim controlled the northernmost five-sixths of Finland, while the Reds controlled the Southernmost region, containing approximately half of the country's population and including the cities of Pori
, Turku
, Tampere
, Riihimäki
, Helsinki, Kotka
, and Viipuri. A Finnish Revolutionary Government
was declared, in which Sirola served as Commissar of Foreign Affairs.
The civil war proved to be a one-sided affair, with the superior officer corps and materiel of the White forces under Mannerheim winning the day. By the spring of 1918, with the Red government clearly on the road to military defeat at the hands of the Whites, Sirola coordinated the evacuation of the leadership of the revolutionary government. On April 7, a meeting of Finnish socialists took place in Petrograd, at which various settlement plans were discussed, with Sirola setting up an office in Petrograd to look after the refugees already beginning to arrive three days later. Evacuation became official policy on April 14, 1918. Historian Anthony Upton notes
The Finnish Socialist Republic finally fell on May 15, 1918.
at the end of August 1918 in Moscow
. The governing Central Committee of this new organization established itself in Petrograd, where it launched a daily newspaper and magazines in Finnish and Swedish and put into print over 40 pamphlets during its first year. Underground organizations of this new party were established inside Finland, where they distributed literature and conducted propaganda work.
In January 1919, he was the Finnish CP's signatory to the call for the formation of the Communist International and in March of that year he was a delegate to the founding convention, held early in March 1919. At the founding convention of the Comintern, Sirola delivered the report on the Finnish revolution:
In the wake of the Finnish uprising and its bloody aftermath, in which over 11,000 prisoners of the victorious Whites died of starvation, disease, or execution, Sirola had clearly cast his lot with revolutionary methods as opposed to parliamentarism:
Sirola also represented the Finnish party at the meetings of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
(ECCI). While he was not a delegate to the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern
in 1920, he did attend the 3rd World Congress in 1921 and in June 1922 took part in the 2nd Enlarged Plenum of ECCI. People's Commissar of Education in the Soviet Republic of Karelia
, close to the Finnish border.
Sirola was a representative of the Communist International to the US Communist Party from 1925 to 1927, replacing Sergei Gusev
. While in America, Sirola used the pseudonym
"Frank Miller."
In 1930 Sirola left his position as a functionary of the Comintern to become People's Commissar of Public Education in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Karelia
. Sirola also taught periodically in Leningrad at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West
in the department for Finns and Estonians and at the International Lenin School in Moscow.
on November 18, 1936.
An educational institution of the Finnish Communist Party, named the Sirola institution after Sirola, existed in Vanajanlinna after the end of the war until the end of the 1980s.
Kaarina
Kaarina is a small city and municipality of Finland.It is located in the Finland Proper region and is a neighbouring town of Turku, which is the capital of Finland Proper, therefore Kaarina is a part of the Greater Turku region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of of...
- 18 November 1936 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...
) 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...
socialist politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
, teacher, and newspaper editor. He was prominent as an elected official in Finland, as minister of foreign affairs in the 1918 Finnish revolutionary government, as a founder of the Communist Party of Finland
Communist Party of Finland
The Communist Party of Finland was a communist political party in Finland. The SKP was a section of Comintern and illegal in Finland until 1944.SKP did not participate in any elections with its own name. Instead, front organisations were used...
, and as a functionary of the Communist International.
Early years
Born November 8, 1876 the son of a minister, Yrjö Elias Sirola graduated from university in 1896 and went to work as a school teacher in Finland. He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1903 and served as an editor of the Kansan Lehti ("Newspaper of the People") from 1904 to 1906 and as an editor of the HelsinkiHelsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
Työmies ("Workman") from 1906. In 1905, Sirola was appointed as Secretary of the SDP, a role which enabled him to play an active part in the general strike of that year. Sirola also wrote several books on social and political themes and translated works by August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
and Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of...
to Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
.
Sirola was elected as a member of the parliament from the SDP from 1907 to 1909. He was forced into emigration by the Tsarist government, however, landing in America. There he worked as a professor of social science at the Finnish Socialist Federation's
Finnish Socialist Federation
The Finnish Socialist Federation was a language federation of the Socialist Party of America which united Finnish language-speaking immigrants in the United States in a national organization designed to conduct propaganda and education for socialism among their community.-Early Finnish socialist...
Work People's College
Work People's College
A Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America folk school founded, September 1903, in Minneapolis, Minnesota served as a predecessor for Work People's College...
in Smithville, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
.
Sirola in the Finnish Revolution
The March 1917 Revolution in Russia brought Sirola home to his motherland, where he again served as a Social Democratic parliamentary deputy in 1917 and 1918. He was a leader of the radical left wing of the party who supported the Bolshevik Revolution in RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
in November 1917 and who sought to emulate Lenin's results in Finland.
On November 11, 1917, Sirola arrived in Petrograd with his comrade Evert Huttunen, where he met with Lenin at Smolnyi about how radicals in Finland might aid the Bolshevik uprising and about revolutionary prospects in Finland. Lenin was fearful that troops loyal to the Provisional Government
Provisional government
A provisional government is an emergency or interim government set up when a political void has been created by the collapse of a very large government. The early provisional governments were created to prepare for the return of royal rule...
of Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was a major political leader before and during the Russian Revolutions of 1917.Kerensky served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin was elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets following the October Revolution...
would be pulled from Finland to crush the Bolshevik uprising. He urged the Finns to initiate a general strike in an effort to emulate the Bolsheviks in their seizure of power. Sirola and Huttunen took the opposite impression from this meeting with Lenin than the one which the Russian leader had intended, however, interpreting the Bolshevik grip on power as being extremely tenuous and believing it dangerous for the Finnish SDP to build its plans around the survival of the Bolshevik government. This cautious perspective was shared by the SDP's parliamentary group, but radicals in the party pushed the revolution forward nonetheless, calling a general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
for November 14. Sirola was one of three SDP leaders to exercise general control over the strike arrangements.
As one historian has noted:
"The instructions for the conduct of the strike required that in each community a revolutionary council would be set up with full authority over all workers' organizations, above all the Red GuardRed Guards (Finland)The Red Guards formed the army of Red Finland during the Finnish Civil War in 1918. The combined strength of the Red Guard was about 30,000 at the beginning of the Civil War, and peaked at 90,000-120,000 during the course of the conflict....
, which was to be the executive arm of the workers' power. The Red Guard would work with the militia in keeping order, mount guards and patrols, arrest dangerous enemies of the workers, confiscate liquor stocks, and stop the spread of rumors. The instruction ended with the standard injunction that 'during the general strike, order and discipline must be preserved irreproachably. It must be remember that revolution is not the same as outrage and anarchy.'"
Each community experienced the general strike that launched the Finnish Revolutionary Government in a different way, ranging from complete inaction to Red Guards nailing shut the doors of stubborn businessmen who defied the strike. The success of the action generated pressure among the working class to move to a full seizure of power in emulation of the Bolshevik seizure of power a week earlier. Sirola still held that the armed seizure of power was premature, however. He argued at a meeting of the SDP's Revolutionary Council convened in the early morning hours of November 16 that "the position in Russian and the eventual attack of the Germans" was decisive and that the prudent course of action was to pressure parliament into making concessions, guaranteeing action on food and granting and back wages to those who participated in the general strike action. The parliamentary delegates taking such a cautious position were in a minority, however, and at 5:00 am the Revolutionary Council voted 14-11 in favor of seizing power. The Revolutionary Council was reorganized, with Sirola and the parliamentary group (the minority) refusing to take part. Two hours later their nerve of the majority failed them, however, and the newly reorganized Revolutionary Council backed away from armed insurrection, in favor of an aggressive push for concessions from the bourgeois
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
parties.
As Anthony Upton notes:
"In effect Sirola had won and emerged as the leading figure on the morning of 16 November; his policy, that of stepping up the pressure until they got a government that would satisfy the basic demands on food and guarantee immunity from reprisal, was adopted. On his suggestion, they decided to take over the railways, close the law courts, and compel all the agencies of central and local government to cease activity... There was also an attempt to satisfy the restlessness of the Red Guard by assigning to it a new task: It was to begin systematic searches for hidden stocks of food, if possible with the authorization of local Food Boards, but if necessary without..."
On their own authority the Red Guard began arresting and jailing bourgeois notables, however, and the drive towards revolution careened forwards. On November 18, a group of angry railway workers came to see the SDP leaders, telling party leader Kullervo Manner
Kullervo Manner
Kullervo Achilles Manner was a Finnish journalist and politician. He was a member of the Finnish parliament, serving as its Speaker in 1917. He was also chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Finland between 1917–1918. During the Finnish Civil War, he led the Finnish People's Delegation...
to his face "you have betrayed the workers, the strike must go on until a socialist government is established." The Strike Committee met that same night and declared in favor of a socialist government and that the Red Guard must stay armed until this was achieved and "all power is taken into the workers' hands." The conservative government headed by P.E. Svinhufvud
Svinhufvud
Svinhufvud is a family of ancient Swedish nobility originating from Dalarna. The family is incorporated both at the Swedish House of Nobility and the Finnish House of Nobility....
refused to make concessions to the socialist opposition, with parliament voting down proposals to lower the voting age and to grant the vote immediately to tenant farmers. A new cabinet was put together by Svinhufvud which did not include a single socialist, a body confirmed by parliament on November 24 by a vote of 100 to 80. Parliamentary maneuvering was met with spontaneous armed actions by Red Guard in various localities in which some 34 people were killed, mostly victims of Red Guard violence. This increasing hostility created an impenetrable barrier between the two sides. With the conservative parliamentary majority intent upon disarming the Red Guards and establishing a monarchical form of government, the nation descended into civil war.
On January 19, 1918, a pitched battle broke out between Red Guards and the conservative Protective Corps of Viipuri, which Russian troops coming to the aid of their allies in the fight.
Fighting spread with the Red Guards beginning the seizure of Helsinki on the night of January 27/28. White
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
forces headed by General Carl Mannerheim controlled the northernmost five-sixths of Finland, while the Reds controlled the Southernmost region, containing approximately half of the country's population and including the cities of Pori
Pori
Pori is a city and municipality on the west coast of Finland. The city is located some from the Gulf of Bothnia, on the estuary of the Kokemäenjoki river, which is the largest in Finland. Pori is the most important town in the Satakunta region....
, Turku
Turku
Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...
, Tampere
Tampere
Tampere is a city in southern Finland. It is the most populous inland city in any of the Nordic countries. The city has a population of , growing to approximately 300,000 people in the conurbation and over 340,000 in the metropolitan area. Tampere is the third most-populous municipality in...
, Riihimäki
Riihimäki
Riihimäki is a town and municipality in the south of Finland, about north of Helsinki and southeast of Tampere. It is somewhat of a railway junction, since the railway tracks going from different parts of the nation to Helsinki merge there. Sako, Ltd...
, Helsinki, Kotka
Kotka
Kotka is a town and municipality of Finland. Its former name is Rochensalm.Kotka is located on the coast of the Gulf of Finland at the mouth of Kymi River and it is part of the Kymenlaakso region in southern Finland. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of of which is water....
, and Viipuri. A Finnish Revolutionary Government
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...
was declared, in which Sirola served as Commissar of Foreign Affairs.
The civil war proved to be a one-sided affair, with the superior officer corps and materiel of the White forces under Mannerheim winning the day. By the spring of 1918, with the Red government clearly on the road to military defeat at the hands of the Whites, Sirola coordinated the evacuation of the leadership of the revolutionary government. On April 7, a meeting of Finnish socialists took place in Petrograd, at which various settlement plans were discussed, with Sirola setting up an office in Petrograd to look after the refugees already beginning to arrive three days later. Evacuation became official policy on April 14, 1918. Historian Anthony Upton notes
"The choices before the socialist leaders were unconditional surrender, a glorious fight to the finish in Finland ending in almost certain martyrdom, or a prudent withdrawal with a view to a future return. It was not a difficult choice to make, and did not mean, as their detractors had always claimed, that they were weak and cowardly men who betrayed their faithful but deluded followers. They were Marxists, and could see their defeat as only an episode in the class war, which always continued, and their duty was not to indulge in glorious gestures of defiance, but to persevere in the struggle."
The Finnish Socialist Republic finally fell on May 15, 1918.
Sirola in the Soviet Union
Sirola was involved in establishing the Finnish Communist PartyCommunist Party of Finland
The Communist Party of Finland was a communist political party in Finland. The SKP was a section of Comintern and illegal in Finland until 1944.SKP did not participate in any elections with its own name. Instead, front organisations were used...
at the end of August 1918 in 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...
. The governing Central Committee of this new organization established itself in Petrograd, where it launched a daily newspaper and magazines in Finnish and Swedish and put into print over 40 pamphlets during its first year. Underground organizations of this new party were established inside Finland, where they distributed literature and conducted propaganda work.
In January 1919, he was the Finnish CP's signatory to the call for the formation of the Communist International and in March of that year he was a delegate to the founding convention, held early in March 1919. At the founding convention of the Comintern, Sirola delivered the report on the Finnish revolution:
"Although not adequately prepared politically or militarily for such a struggle, the workers held their ground at the front for three months, while at the same time doing a great deal behind the lines to organize social and economic life.
"That first revolution by the Finnish proletariat was defeated. The willingness to sacrifice and the courage of the comrades, men and women, who fought in the Red Guard and the invaluable aid given by our Russian comrades were not enough to repel the onslaught launched by the international gangs of White Guards led by Finnish, SwedishSwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, GermanGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, and Russian officers. At the end of April, German imperialism tipped the balance by committing regular army troops to the fight. The White Guards were then able to block the plan to evacuate the revolution's best surviving forces to Russia."
In the wake of the Finnish uprising and its bloody aftermath, in which over 11,000 prisoners of the victorious Whites died of starvation, disease, or execution, Sirola had clearly cast his lot with revolutionary methods as opposed to parliamentarism:
"For too long, we...were imbued with the ideology of a 'united' workers' movement. Only after the revolution did the split become unavoidable. There was a sharp polarization. The bourgeois dictatorship in Finland gave the extreme right wing of the old Social Democracy 'freedom' of organization and of the press for the express purpose of pacifying the workers. These traitors did their best to defeat the revolution the Finnish proletariat had made the previous year and to propagandize for a peaceful workers' movement functioning through parliament, trade unions, and cooperatives.... But the admonitions of those bourgeois lackeys are alien to the masses, who are tormented by prison, hunger, and poverty. The workers' memories of the White Terror are still fresh, and they can see the living example of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia."
Sirola also represented the Finnish party at the meetings of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
Executive Committee of the Communist International
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI, was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body...
(ECCI). While he was not a delegate to the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern
2nd World Congress of the Comintern
The 2nd World Congress of the Comintern was a gathering of approximately 220 voting and non-voting representatives of Communist and revolutionary socialist political parties from around the world, held in Petrograd and Moscow from July 19 to August 7, 1920...
in 1920, he did attend the 3rd World Congress in 1921 and in June 1922 took part in the 2nd Enlarged Plenum of ECCI. People's Commissar of Education in the Soviet Republic of Karelia
Republic of Karelia
The Republic of Karelia is a federal subject of Russia .-Geography:The republic is located in the northwestern part of Russia, taking intervening position between the basins of White and Baltic seas...
, close to the Finnish border.
Sirola was a representative of the Communist International to the US Communist Party from 1925 to 1927, replacing Sergei Gusev
Sergei Gusev
Sergei Gusev is a professional ice hockey player who played in the National Hockey League for the Dallas Stars and the Tampa Bay Lightning. He was drafted 69th overall by the Stars in the 1995 NHL Entry Draft and in four NHL seasons, he scored 4 goals and 10 assists for 14 points in 89 games,...
. While in America, Sirola used the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
"Frank Miller."
In 1930 Sirola left his position as a functionary of the Comintern to become People's Commissar of Public Education in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Karelia
Karelia
Karelia , the land of the Karelian peoples, is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Finland, Russia, and Sweden...
. Sirola also taught periodically in Leningrad at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West
Communist University of the National Minorities of the West
The Communist University of the National Minorities of the West , was created by a 28 November 1921 decree of the Council of People's Commissars and charged with training party cadres from the western regions of Russia and the Volga Germans.In...
in the department for Finns and Estonians and at the International Lenin School in Moscow.
Death and legacy
Yrjö Sirola died in Moscow of a strokeStroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
on November 18, 1936.
An educational institution of the Finnish Communist Party, named the Sirola institution after Sirola, existed in Vanajanlinna after the end of the war until the end of the 1980s.