Yrjö Elias Sirola (born Yrjö Elias Sirén; 8 November 1876 – 18 March 1936) was a Finnish socialist politician, writer, teacher, and newspaper editor. He was prominent as an elected official in Finland, as minister of foreign affairs in the 1918 Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic, a founder of the Communist Party of Finland, and as a functionary of the Communist International.
Background
Yrjö Esias Sirén was born 8 November 1876 in Piikkiö, Finland, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Karl Gustaf Sirén, worked as a clergyman. Yrjö attended a lycée in Viipuri and then attended Rauma teachers' training college, from which he graduated in 1902.
Career
Following completion of his studies he took a post as a teacher in Hattula.
Social Democratic Party (Finland) Yrjö joined the Social Democratic Party in 1903. After a short stint on the staff of the liberal newspaper Kotkan Sanomat (Kotka News) in 1903, Yrjö moved to the city of Tampere to assume the editorship of the Kansan Lehti, a post which he occupied from 1904 to 1906. It is apparently during this period that he adopted the pseudonym Sirola, which he retained for the rest of his life. Sirola also served as editor of the Helsinki 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. An advocate of parliamentary methods during a revolutionary time, Sirola found himself out of step with a boisterous radical rank-and-file in the Social Democratic Party and withdrew his name from consideration in the elections for Secretary held at the party's 1906 national conference.
The Russian imperial government of Nicholas II managed to stabilize itself by 1907, defeating the radical opponents which threatened to topple it in the Revolution of 1905. Sirola remained active in the socialist movement following this defeat, gaining election to parliament and serving as deputy speaker in 1908 and 1909. Increased control by the Tsarist government over Finnish affairs in the aftermath of the revolution combined with a troubled personal financial situation moved Sirola to emigrate to the United States, however.
American years
Arriving in America in 1909, Sirola followed previous Finnish immigrants in moving to the Upper Midwest region of the United States. Sirola landed a post as the director of the Finnish Socialist Federation's Work People's College in Smithville, Minnesota in 1910. Sirola would remain in that position until 1913.
Previously very much a parliamentarian in his political orientation, while in Minnesota Sirola begun to be influenced by the radical syndicalism espoused by the Industrial Workers of the World. He would support the left wing in the bitter factional dispute which in 1912 and 1913 split the more than 10,000 member Finnish Socialist organization in America. Amidst this rancor, Sirola returned home to Finland in 1913.
Finnish Revolution
Back in Finland, Sirola resumed activity as a functionary of the Social Democratic Party, teaching in party schools and writing for the party press. In 1916 he was elected the SDP's Executive Committee and in 1917 he was returned to office as a parliamentary deputy. Within the SDP Sirola was a leader of the radical left wing of the party who supported the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia 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.