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Armas Äikiä (1904 - 1965) - pseudonyms Ami Aarto, Viljo Veijo, Liukas Luikku |
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Finnish
writer, Communist and journalist, a citizen of two
countries, who had several collections of poems published in the Soviet
Union. Armas Äikiä was one of the few Finnish exile writers and
politicians
who avoided in the 1930s and 1940s Stalin's terror and forced labour
camps. In Finland, when the Communist Party was banned, he spent years
in prison writing defiant poems. After returning to Finland, Äikiä
became a fierce critic of the anti-Stalinist left. "Sillä ”demokraattisten sosialistien” polvi ei ole muuttunut pojastakaan muuten kuin siinä suhteessa, että pojat ovat isiään julkeampia ja lainaavat käsityksiään ”yksilön vapaudesta” itseltään Hitleriltäkin eivätkä ainoastaan porvarillisilta liberaaleilta. Yleensä he ovat isiensä kaltaisia ja lähtevät tänään mielellään tarpomaan isiensä polkua uudelleen ottamatta minkäänlaista oppia historiallisesta kokemuksesta." (from "Kolmas tie" by Armas Äikiä, Helsinki: Kansankultuuri, 1948, p. 17) Armas Äikiä was born in Pyhäjärvi, Carelia, the son of Matti Äikiä, a tailor, and Eeva (Koskinen) Äikiä. His formal education restricted to what he learned in the primary school. From his father, who had read Marx, Äikiä learned the basics of Communism. Later in life, he attended in Moscow the International Lenin School. At the age of 19, he moved to Helsinki, where he joined the Finnish Communist Party, outlawed since 1918. Äikiä worked as chief editor at the Communist newspapers Liekki, Itä ja Länsi, and Tiedonantaja. His early poems appeared in the anthology Vallankumousrunoja (1928). Between 1927-1928 and 1930-35 he was imprisoned because of political activities. During these years Äikiä wrote many of the poems, which were published in the 1940s in several collections. From 1935 to 1947 Äikiä was a political refugee in the Soviet Union in the Russian Carelia. He edited the magazine Punalippu and worked for Comintern from 1938. Äikiä also contributed poems to magazines, and his works were widely introduced to the public. Laulu kotkasta (1941) centered on the Communist leader Toivo Antikainen, and Kaksi soturia, took its subject from the Winter War (1939-40). Kalterilyyra (1945) presented mostly Äikiä's vengeful prison poems, which were born in the Tammisaari penitentiary in 1927-28. Äikiä managed to survive the purges of the late 1930s. It is widely believed that he served as an informer for the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB). During the years, when Finland was fighting against Soviet
aggression, Äikiä was a member of the Soviet-backed Terijoki government
in Karelia; he was appointed Minister of Agriculture, not Minister
of Culture. The head of the puppet-government was the
emigrant communist Otto Wille Kuusinen.
Although it tried to appeal to every Finn to join in the struggle
against Fascism, the Finns realized that the Soviet Union intended to
occupy the country. In his words to a popular song, 'Jesli zavtra
voina', Äikiä associated the Red Army with the emergence of light: "Oli
tähdetön Pohjolan taivas, / oli synkeä Suomemme yö. / Valo tulkohon
siis, / tuli leimahtakoon, / Puna-Armeija lahtarit lyö!" (from Taistelulauluja,
ed. by S. K. Hel'man, Petroskoi: Karjalais-suomalaisen SNT:n valtion
kustannusliike, 1941) Moreover, Äikiä served as a propaganda officer. He was a well-known radio voice, nicknamed "Räikiä" (glaring). When Finnish forces were ordered to leave Aunus in 1944, he declared: "Suomalaiset sotilaat! Ottakaapa nyt lähtiessänne pulloon Äänisen aaltoja kotiin vietäväksi, sillä tämän jälkeen ette niitä näe." ('"Ropakantaa" ilmasta' by Erik Ekholm, Kansa Taisteli, Vol. 23, No. 9, 1979, p. 304) Much later Mauri Sariola portrayed him in a comic light in Armeija piikkilankojen takana (1970), which dealt with Finnish prisoners of war in Carelia. One of the prisoners says, hesitating after his agitation, that Äikiä is like a radish – but perhaps white and Finnish inside. After the Continuation War (1941-44), Äikiä returned in 1947 with other emigrant Communists (Tuure Lehén, Inkeri Lehtinen etc.) to Finland, where the political climate had swung to the left. However, he did not get back his citizenship. The Finnish Communist Party (SKP) had been legalized, but because of his Soviet citizenship Äikiä could not play a direct role in its activities. Like other returning Communists, he knew that Moscow was dissatisfied with the way Finnish Communists furthered the revolutionary cause. With the support of the hardline Communists, Äikiä was appointed director of the press agency Demokraattinen lehtipalvelu (DLP), which was organizationally under the new left-wing electoral alliance, SKDL (The Finnish People's Democratic League). Due to Äikiä's propagandist style of writing, Raoul Palmgren edited much of DLP's material before it was published. Äikiä considered it a sacrilege. As a columnist he contributed to Vapaa Sana and Työkansan Sanomat under the pseudonym "Liukas Luikku" (roughly "Slippery Slinker"). On the even of the Olympic Games in Finland in 1952, Äikiä's DLP spread a rumor, that the Social Democrats have set up cheering sections to throw insults at Soviet athletes. When SKP made the 70th anniversary of Kuusinen an important event, Äikiä took part by his pen in the celebration. He wrote the foreword to a selection of Kuusinen's speeches and articles from 1918 to 1949. Äikiä presented the book as a compendium of everyday class struggle: "Suppeudestaan huolimatta tämä kokoelma ei kuitenkaan jää vain kunnianosoitukseksi 70 vuotta täyttäneelle suurmestarillemme, vaan muodostuu epäilemättä tärkeäksi oppikirjaksi Suomen Kommunistisen Puolueen jäsenille ja kaikille niille, jotka tahtovat tutustua siihen, miten marxismin-leninismin oppeja on sovellettava jokapäiväisessä luokkataistelussa." (from 'Lukijalle' by Armas Äikiä, Kansainvälisiä kysymyksiä by Otto Wille Kuusinen, Helsinki: Kansankulttuuri, 1951) In a "Liukas Luikku" column, 'Tervetuloa isänmaalliseen rintamaan' in Työkansan Sanomat, Äikiä hailed Kuusinen as more patriotic than Mannerheim. (TS, 4 October, 1951) Until 1948, Äikiä's books appeared only in the Soviet Union, but in 1948 the Finnish publisher Kansankulttuuri printed his collection of poems, Henkipatto. Its major themes are the defeat of Nazism in the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union and capitalistic Finland after the collapse of the Finnish-German war pact. In the poem 'Maiju Lassila,' about the famous working class author killed in the Civil War (1917-18), Äikiä identified with Lassila, whose philosophical works had been received with mixed reviews. "Te, uljaat musteentuhraajat In cultural policy Äikiä was a hard-line Communist, who did
not
accept free verse. He was a strong advocate of the Soviet art theory
and Socialist realism. From the major leftist writers only Elvi Sinervo enjoyed his approval, but not
fully – perhaps because Sinervo had criticized his collection Henkipatto
for its clumsy rhyming. Due to his orthodox opinions Äikiä came
into confrontation with a number of writers, especially with Arvo Turtiainen,
the chairman of the influential literary organization Kiila (the
wedge). Usually Äikiä did not publicly attack people, but their
opinions, which he did with a vengeance. Turtiainen rejected Stalinism, and was annoyed by Äikiä's self-made position as the foremost poet of the Finnish Communist Party. Kiila, full of leftist intellectuals wavering between international modernism and Communist internationalism, was taken over by Äikiä's ideological supporters. Turtiainen once said, that Äikiä was sent to Finland to kill the 1940s. Also his way of speaking was considered irritating by some people – he had the habit of using the rising tone at the end of a sentence. From the late 1940s, the Marxists
literary historian Raoul Palmgren, Turtiainen's close friend, became
also Äikiä's opponent. Palmgren accused him for bourgeois moralizing,
after Äikiä had attacked Eino Kalima's adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's
play Likaiset kädet (Dirty
Hands) in Työkansan
Sanomat (12.10.1948) in a short article titled 'Kansallisteatterin tökerö
teko'.
The play had premiered with positive reviews at the National theater in
October 1948.
Aku Korhonen, cast in the role of Hoederer, a party leader, was masked
to look like Stalin. On making his appearance on the stage, a member of
the audience recalled later: "[There] was total silence and the
everybody was thinking how the ensemble dared?" ('Theatre and Transgression: Dirty Hands at the Finnish National Theatre in 1948 and the Aftermath' by Hanna Korsberg, Nordic Theatre Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2023, pp. 131–144) Raoul Palmgren defended the play in an open letter published in Vapaa Sana. Palmgren emphasized Sartre's involvement in the French resistance movement.
He called Äikiä's accusations cruel and insane and his
culture-political line bizarre. "Sinun kulttuuripoliittiset linjasi
ovat luvalla sanoen eriskummallisia. . . . kirjeeni on sanellut
yksinomaan halu puolustaa kulttuuripolitiikkaamme kunniaa, jolle sinä
kirjoituksillasi olet tehnyt karhunpalveluksen." ('Apropos Sartre' by Raoul Palmgren, Vapaa Sana, 05.11.1948, in Tekstejä Vapaan Sanan vuosikymmeniltä by Raoul Palmren, Helsinki: Love Kirjat, 1981, p. 207) However, Äikiä's
good contacts with the Soviet Embassy gave his writings and opinions an
extra weight. In December the Embassy sent to the Finnish
Foreign Minister Carl Enckell a note, in which the play was denounced as
hostile to the Soviet Union. As a result Likaiset kädet was closed down. At the beginning, Palmgren's more liberal editorial policy was supported by Hertta Kuusinen, Otto Ville Kuusinen's
daughter. Eventually hard-liners got the upper hand and he
had to resign from the party in 1952 and from his work as the editor of
Vapaa Sana. His successor at the newspaper was Jarno Pennanen. From the mid-1950s Kiila was more independent in its relation
to the Communist movement, but attempts were made to undermine its
position. It is possible that Äikiä was one of the initiators behind
Boris Leontyev's attack on Pennanen in 1963 in Literaturnaya Gazeta, the newspaper of the Union of Soviet Writers. Leontyev branded in
his article Pennanen's Tilanne
magazine as "dirty" and its contributors as "vile cowards". Pennanen
was Kiila's board member at that time and Äikiä objected from the
beginning Kiila's decision to write a letter in his defence. "Rytmi on runon perusvoima, sen perusenergia, eikä sitä voida oppia valmiista kaavoista. Jambi, trokee, vieläpä kanonisoitu vapaa mittakin ovat rytmiä, joka on sovellettu jotakin konkreettista tapausta varten ja kelpaa vain tässä määrätyssä tapauksessa. Majakovskin rytmin perustana on poljento, jossa ratkaiseva asema on korollisella tavulla." (Vladimir Majakovski by Armas Äikiä, Helsinki: Kansankulttuuri, 1950, pp. 140-141) Äikiä's literary production consists also of non-fiction, translations from Russian, and at least one book written in Russian. Äikiä's Mayakovsky translations have been praised, but among others Raoul Palmgren did not accept his pointed vulgarity. Turtiainen's translation of Mayakovsky's elegy on Lenin, published in 1970, became more popular than Äikiä's earlier version from 1947. Laulaja tulivuoren juurella: Kössi Kaatran
elämä ja työ (1962), Äikiä's
major work in the 1960s, was about
an
early Finnish proletarian poet, who died in 1928 at the
age of 46. When
Elmer Diktonius had criticized Kössi Kaatra for using rhyme,
which he dismissed as "old-fashioned" and "bourgeois," Äikiä defended
Kaatra and made a difference between content and form in revolutionary
poetry. Towards the end of his
life, Äikiä suffered from alcoholism and did not write much. Armas
Äikiä
died in Helsinki on November 20, 1965. His fiction is mostly forgotten,
partly due to its ideological content, and wooden, declamatory
expression. The titles of his book have a masculine sound; they echoe
titles of American westerns – Kaksi
soturia (Two warriors), Tulikehässä (In a ring of fire),
Henkipatto
(Outlaw).
Selected works:
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