Aimo Aaltonen

Aimo Anshelm Aaltonen (born December 10, 1906 in Parainen , † September 21, 1987 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish politician . In 1944/45 and from 1948 to 1966 he was chairman of the Communist Party of Finland (SKP).

Life

Aaltonen was born in Parainen (Swedish Pargas), a place in the archipelago in southwest Finland. His parents were Vilhelmina Herttolin and the carpenter Johan Anshelm Aaltonen. Like his father, Aimo Aaltonen first learned to be a carpenter. In the 1920s he was also employed as a bricklayer, factory worker and farm worker. In 1927 he joined the banned Communist Party of Finland (SKP). From 1930 to 1933 he attended the School of National Minorities in Leningrad , then until 1934 the Lenin School in Moscow . After his return to Finland he was arrested and only released at the end of the Continuation War , which also resulted in the legalization of the SKP. In 1945 he was elected party leader of the SKP for the first time. He was also from April 1945 for the Democratic Union of the Finnish People (SKDL), an electoral organization set up by the SKP, a member of the Finnish Reichstag. He held his mandate there until 1962. When Aaltonen became deputy commander of the Valpo secret police in 1945 , he gave up the chairmanship of the SKP. In 1947 he resigned from his post at Valpo and became supervisory department head in the Ministry of the Interior, although he gave up this post again in 1948, after the communist influence in the government and the Ministry of the Interior was curbed. He now worked as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Kommunisti and was again SKP chairman since 1948. In 1950, 1956 and 1962 Aaltonen was electoral in the presidential election. Urho Kekkonen from the Landbund won the 1956 election with the help of the SKDL electors by a narrow margin. Kekkonen prevailed in the third ballot against the Social Democrat Karl-August Fagerholm , who would have been the worse choice in Aaltonen's eyes compared to Kekkonen, since Kekkonen was one of the proponents of integrating the Communists into government responsibility. In 1966 Aarne Saarinen , whom Aaltonen disparaged as a compromise politician, was elected as his successor as chairman of the SKP.

Ideologically, he represented a strict interpretation of the teachings of Lenin and Marx. Because of his interpersonal skills, he enjoyed a high reputation within the SKP.

In 1946 he married Vieno Tuulikki Ristell. In 1987 he died at the age of 80. His urn was buried in the chapel at Malmi Cemetery in Helsinki.