Eino Rahja

Eino Rahja
Born(1885-06-20)20 June 1885
Died26 April 1936(1936-04-26) (aged 50)
Allegiance Red Finland
 Soviet Union
Service years1917–1931
RankCommander
Conflicts
AwardsOrder of the Red Banner

Eino Abramovich Rahja (20 June 1885 – 26 April 1936) was a Finnish and Russian revolutionary.

Life

Born in Kronstadt, Russian Empire, Eino was a brother of Jukka Rahja and Jaakko Rahja. His brother, Jukka, was killed during the Kuusinen Club Incident on 31 August 1920. Their father was a Finnish dockworker, Aappo Rahja.[1]

He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, becoming aligned with the party's Bolshevik faction. Rahja organized Lenin's temporary escape to Finland in the summer of 1917. During the Finnish Civil War, Rahja was one of the most capable military leaders of the Reds. After the Reds lost the war, he fled to the Russian SFSR where he lived for the rest of his life and became, for example, a commander of the army corps (komkor) in the Red Army.[2]

Eino Rahja was expelled from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Finland in 1927. In the early 1920s he was politically close to Grigory Zinoviev.[2]

Rahja was expelled from the army in 1935 for his alcoholism and later sentenced to death in 1936, however, he died in April 1936 from tuberculosis and alcohol abuse, before he could be executed.[3]

See also

References

  1. ^ Hanski, Jari (14 June 2002). "Eino Rahja". BiographySampo (in Finnish). Retrieved 25 August 2025.
  2. ^ a b Paastela, Jukka (2003). Finnish communism under Soviet totalitarianism: oppositions within the Finnish Communist Party in Soviet Russia 1918-1935. Kikimora. Helsinki: Kikimora Publications. ISBN 978-952-10-0755-2. OCLC 53166825.
  3. ^ Хански, Яри. "Ejno Raxʹja" Эйно Рахья [Eino Rahja]. Sto zamečatelʹnyh finnov Сто замечательных финнов [One hundred wonderful Finns] (PDF) (in Russian). pp. 484–489. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 June 2007.
  • Media related to Eino Rahja at Wikimedia Commons