Toivo Antikainen

Toivo Antikainen
Toivo Antikainen in a 1968 Soviet stamp
Born	(1898-06-08)June 8, 1898 Helsinki, Grand Duchy of Finland
Died	October 4, 1941(1941-10-04) (aged 43) Arkhangelsk, Soviet Union
Allegiance	Soviet Union
Years of service	1918–1924
Battles/wars	Russian Civil War
Awards

Toivo Antikainen (Russian: То́йво А́нтикайнен, 8 June 1898 – 4 October 1941) was a Finnish-born communist and a military officer of the Soviet Red Army. He was one of the founders and leaders of the exile Communist Party of Finland. Antikainen died in suspicious circumstances in the Soviet Union in 1941.

Toivo Antikainen was born to a working-class family in Helsinki. His parents were trade unionists and Toivo joined the Social Democratic youth organization at the age of 8. Antikainen went to school for six years and started working as he was 12. In the late 1910s, Antikainen had several posts in the Social Democratic organizations. As the Finnish Civil War broke out in January 1918, Antikainen served in the Red administration, but did not fight in the Red Guards.

As the Reds were losing the war, Antikainen fled to the Soviet Russia in late April 1918. He was one of the founders of the exile Communist Party of Finland, established in Moscow in August 1918. Antikainen took a course in the Petrograd Red Officer School and graduated in the spring of 1919. In the Russian Civil War, he fought against the Finnish Whites in East Karelia. In January 1922, Antikainen commanded a battallion in the legendary Battle of Kimasozero, where a Red Army unit composed of Finnish Reds beat the Whites and pushed them back to Finland. The 1937 film Za Sovetskuyu Rodinu (For the Soviet Motherland) is based on the events. Antikainen is played by Oleg Zhakov. He also took part in the investigation of the Kuusinen Club Incident in 1920, and the suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion a year later. After working as a lecturer in the Red Officer School, Antikainen was transferred to the Communist International in 1924. Since 1926 he gave lectures at the International Lenin School in Moscow.