Herman Hurmevaara
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Herman Hurmevaara (Russian Герман Вильгельмович Хурмеваара, German Vilgelmovich Khurmevaara; 19 February 1886 – 16 February 1938) was a Finnish Social Democratic Party of Finland Member of Parliament. He was born in Kiuruvesi, and served in the Parliament of Finland from 1917 to 1919. In the 1920s, he lived in Sweden. In 1930, he was exiled from Sweden, and with his family he moved to the Soviet Union. During the Great Purge, Hurmevaara was arrested on charges of espionage and imprisoned on December 23, 1937. He was later sentenced to death and executed by firing squad in Petrozavodsk. After the death of Joseph Stalin, he was rehabilitated in 1956.
Born in Kalliokylä in Kiuruvesi, Herman Hurmevaara's parents were farmhand Abram Vilhelm Pietikäinen (1837-1889) and Saara Kokkonen (1846-1914). After attending public school, he worked as a bricklayer in Oulu from 1900 to 1902 and in Helsinki from 1902.
During the Great Strike, Hurmevaara belonged to the Helsinki red guard company that guarded the railway station. In the years 1906-1909, he worked as a traveling speaker of the Social Democratic Party and since 1910 as the district secretary and housekeeper of the Social Democratic District of Uusimaa. Hurmevaara was also a member of Helsinki's social democratic municipal committee.
After the February revolution, in the summer of 1917, the banking council of the parliament elected Hurmevaara as the deputy auditor of the Bank of Finland. In the parliamentary elections of the same autumn, he was elected as a Member of Parliament. After the start of the Finnish Civil War, Hurmevaara became a member of the Communist Party of Finland or SKP. He was appointed to a position corresponding to the governor of Uusimaa county, in addition to serving in the financial affairs department of the people's delegation in the early days of February. After the people's delegation withdrew to Vyborg at the beginning of April, Hurmevaara was elected to the committee sent to St. Petersburg, which took care of the evacuation of the Reds fleeing to Soviet Russia.
As a refugee in Sweden
In October 1918, Hurmevaara moved to Sweden as a political refugee. According to Arvo Tuominen, Hurmevaara, who acted as the committee's housekeeper, took with him funds from the Bank of Finland, which were used to finance the underground activities of Finnish communists. The committee soon turned into the Stockholm office, where he worked until 1920. Hurmevaara was also the editor of the magazine Viesti and lectured at agitation courses led by Kullervo Manner and Yrjö Sirola.
In the SKP, he used the pseudonym "Hansson". Hurmevaara belonged to the staff of the Swedish battalion of the Finnish Red Guard, which was revealed in 1921 and he was a suspect in the case of treason brought against the communists.
From 1921, Hurmevaara served as a representative of the Karelian Working People's Commune and later as a commercial representative of the Karelia ASNT. They also tried to get him official ambassador status, but Sweden did not agree to it.
Hurmevaara, who was in the country with refugee status, did not have a Finnish passport, so in 1922 he took Soviet citizenship in order to visit the country. In 1927, Hurmevaara was dismissed from his duties, after which he was hired as an archivist for the communist newspaper Folkets Dagblad Politiken. When the Swedish Communist Party broke up, Hurmevaara supported the minority led by Hugo Sillén, loyal to the Comintern and to Joseph Stalin in his intra-party dispute with Nikolai Bukharin. During party disputes, he was suspected of participating behind the scenes under the pseudonym "Ex. R.” (Executivens representative), which was also allegedly used by the trio formed by Hurmevaara, Kullervo Manner and Allan Wallenius. In his interview with Nya Dagligt Allehanda, Hurmevaara denied that he was "Ex. R.”.
