Member of Parliament
Yrjö Leino took which position in Apr 1945?
Yrjö Leino Yrjö Kaarlo Leino ( 28 January 1897 – 28 June 1961 ) was a Finnish communist politician . Imprisoned twice for his communist activities , and spending much of the Second World War as an underground communist activist , he served as a minister in three cabinets between 1944 and 1948 . Early years . Yrjö Leino was the only child of tanner Oskar Leino and factory worker Mandi Leino ( née Enfors ) . Leino studied at Normal Lyceum of Helsinki without graduating . In 1921 , after working in Helsinki and in casual agricultural jobs , Leino received an agricultural trade school diploma . Around 1924 , Leino bought a farm called Lövkulla in Kirkkonummi , but the farm soon led him to financial difficulties . Leino was forced to sell Lövkulla in the early 1930s . Around this time he also separated from his first wife , Alli Simola , and moved to Oitmäki , where his second wife Ulla Smedberg was a teacher . Again , the marriage ended in separation . Political captivity . Leino moved towards the extreme left in the 1930s . Detectives had begun surveillance on him after the fugitive communist activist Antti Järvinen had visited Leino in Lövkulla in early 1926 . The same year Leino was also visited by Arvo Tuominen , who had just been released from prison . In 1935 , Leino was sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment for high treason . During imprisonment at the Tammisaari prison camp , he is said to have formally become a communist . Leino was released from prison in 1938 , but the security police Valpo kept him under surveillance . The newly liberated Leino then participated in underground activities of the prohibited Communist Party of Finland . War years . During the Winter War Leino stayed underground , hiding in communist safe-houses across the Finnish countryside . In those years , Leino became acquainted with his future wife Hertta Kuusinen . In 1940 , Leino was detained in a secure facility . His detention continued until 1941 , when he escaped from a prison train in Riihimäki , which was taking prisoners to fight in a penal battalion . Leino participated in underground Communist Party activities until the 1944 armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union and the legalization of the Communist Party . Parliamentary and ministerial years . In the 1945 parliamentary elections , Leino was elected Member of Parliament for the Finnish Peoples Democratic League ( SKDL ) from Kuopio . Leino remained in parliament until 1950 . He became Minister of the Interior in 1945 . Leinos time as Minister of the Interior is often referred to as Finlands years of peril , as the far left control over the Interior Ministry and therefore the internal security apparatus of the nation raised fears of a communist takeover . In the spring of 1948 , Leino was the SKDL representative in the delegation which negotiated the Finno-Soviet Finno-Soviet Treaty in Moscow . Some days before the delegations departure to Moscow , Leino met with the Chief of Defence , General Aarne Sihvo , and presented him with concerns about extreme right-wing and left-wing demonstrations that suggested a coup . Leino asked that the army secure order in Finland while the Finno-Soviet Treaty was being negotiated . President Paasikivi released Leino from his duties as interior minister in 1948 . Parliament had adopted a motion of non confidece of Leino with connection to his illegal handing over of nineteen Finnish citizens and Nansen passport holders to the Soviet Union in 1945 . Overall , Leino was a minister for 1,283 days . After leaving parliament in 1951 , Leino avoided publicity . Memoirs controversy . Leino returned to the public eye for the last time in 1958 when he published memoirs of his time as Minister of the Interior . Leino had started a manuscript several years earlier but the book was finished with the help of publisher Tammi , Untamo Utrio , and editor , Kalevi Sorsa ( who became later prime minister of Finland ) .The manuscript was prepared in secret – even most of the staff of the publishing company were kept in ignorance – but the project was revealed by Leino because of an indiscretion just before the planned publication . A book intended for public consumption hit a sore point as Finnish-Soviet relations had reached an extremely sensitive stage . Moreover , the SKDL newspaper Kansan Uutiset attacked Leino for publishing the memoir . The paper claimed that the book had been ghost-written by the renegade ex-communist Arvo Tuominen , who , however , had been completely unaware of the project . Chargé dAffaires of the Soviet Union in Finland , Ivan Filippov , ( Ambassador Viktor Lebedev had suddenly departed from Finland a few weeks earlier on 21 October 1958 ) demanded that Prime Minister Karl-August Fagerholms government prevent the release of Leinos memoirs . Fagerholm said that the government could legally do nothing , because the work had not yet been released nor was there censorship in Finland . Filippov advised that if Leinos book was published , the Soviet Union would draw serious conclusions . Later the same day Fagerholm called the publisher , Untamo Utrio , and it was decided that the January launch of the book was to be cancelled . Eventually , the entire print run of the book was destroyed at the Soviet Unions request . Almost all of the books – some 12,500 copies – were burned in August 1962 with the exception of a few volumes which were furtively sent to political activists . Deputy director of Tammi Jarl Hellemann later argued that the fuss about the book was completely disproportionate to its substance , describing the incident as the first instance of Finnish self-censorship motivated by concerns about relations with the Soviet Union ( see Finlandization ) . The book was finally published in 1991 , after the collapse of the Soviet Union , when interest in it had largely dissipated . Private life . Leinos personal life was often stormy . Leino was first married to Alli Simola . Their daughter Lieko Tuuli Zachovalová ( neé Leino ) ( 1927–2017 ) gained fame as radio journalist living in Czechoslovakia . Leinos second marriage , to Ulla Smedberg , produced a son , journalist and author Olle Leino ( 1932-2021 ) who resided in Sweden . In 1973 , Olle published a biography of his father , Who was Yrjö Leino ( In Swedish Vem tackar Yrjö Leino ) , and in 1990 , the book Just one more letter ( In Swedish Ännu ett brev ) , where he describes the relationship between his father and his third wife Hertta Kuusinen . Leino died on 28 June 1961 , almost entirely forgotten , marked by an ever-worsening problem of alcoholism and a paranoid fear of assassination attempts by the Communists . Leino is buried in the Honkanummi cemetery in Vantaa .