18 Facts About Toivo Antikainen

Toivo Antikainen was a Finnish-born communist and a military officer of the Soviet Red Army.

Toivo Antikainen was one of the founders and leaders of the exile Communist Party of Finland.

Toivo Antikainen was born to a working-class family in Helsinki.

Toivo Antikainen's parents were trade unionists and Toivo joined the Social Democratic youth organization at the age of 8.

Toivo Antikainen went to school for six years and started working as he was 12.

Toivo Antikainen was one of the founders of the exile Communist Party of Finland, established in Moscow in August 1918.

Toivo Antikainen took a course in the Petrograd Red Officer School and graduated in the spring of 1919.

In January 1922, Toivo Antikainen commanded a battalion in the Battle of Kimasozero, where a Red Army unit composed of Finnish Reds beat the Whites and pushed them back to Finland.

Toivo Antikainen took part in the investigation of the Kuusinen Club Incident in 1920, and the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion a year later.

Toivo Antikainen was now accused of a preparation of a high treason in a trial that started in February 1935.

Toivo Antikainen was charged of the murder of the Finnish officer Antti Marjoniemi who was killed in the 1922 Battle of Kimasozero.

The right-wing press claimed that Toivo Antikainen had tortured him and conducted some kind of cannibalism after Marjoniemi had been roasted in the camp fire, but these accusations were not based in reality.

Toivo Antikainen was even noticed by the Finnish American volunteers of the Spanish Civil War, a machine gun company of the Abraham Lincoln brigade was named after him.

Finally, Toivo Antikainen was sentenced for 8 years of a preparation of a high treason.

In 1974, the Finnish-born KGB officer Toivo Vaha published his memoirs claiming that he had killed Marjoniemi with a knife by an order from Antikainen.

Toivo Antikainen now found out that a large number of his old Finnish companions had vanished.

Toivo Antikainen was allegedly killed in a plane crash near Arkhangelsk in October 1941.

Toivo Antikainen is buried to the village of Kegostrov in Arkhangelsk Oblast.