Armas Äikiä (1904 – 1965) – pseudonyms Ami Aarto, Viljo Veijo, Liukas Luikku
Finnish writer, Communist and journalist, a citizen of two countries, who had several collection of poems published in the Soviet Union. 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 and wrote defiant poems.
Vettä, leipää taivahastaan
herra antaa, siihen vastaan
runovalikoimalla.
Vastaan siihen nälkäkuuriin,
raakalaisten diktatuuriin
hengen ylivoimalla.
(from ‘Kiirastulessa’, 1933)
Armas Äikiä was born in Pyhäjärvi in Carelia as the son of Matti Äikiä, a tailor, and Eeva (Koskinen) Äikiä. He was educated at an elementary school. At the age of 19 he moved to Helsinki, where he joined the Finnish Communist Party and worked as a chief editor at the Communist newspapers Liekki, Itä ja Länsi, and Tiedonantaja. Äikiä published his early poems in the anthology VALLANKUMOUSRUNOJA (1928). Between the years 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, where he edited the magazine Punalippu. Äikiä also published poems in magazines, and his works were widely introduced to the public. In 1941 appeared LAULU KOTKASTA, which centered on the Communist leader Toivo Antikainen, and KAKSI SOTURIA, drawing 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.
During these years, when Finland was fighting against Soviet aggression, Äikiä was a member of the Soviet-backed Terijoki government in Karelia. Its head was the emigrant communist Otto Wille Kuusinen. Although the puppet-government 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’, Дikiд associated the Red Army with the emergence of light: “Oli tдhdetцn Pohjolan taivas, / oli synkeд Suomemme yц. / Valo tulkohon siis, / tuli leimahtakoon, / Puna-Armeija lahtarit lyц!” (from Taistelulauluja, ed. by S.K. Hel’man, 1941) Äikiä also served as a propaganda officer and he was a well-known radio voice. 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 to Finland in 1947 with other emigrant Communists (Tuure Lehén, Inkeri Lehtinen etc.). The political climate in the country had swung to the left. The Finnish Communist Party (SKP), outlawed since 1918, was legalized. Äikiä became a columnist at the newspaper Työkansan sanomat and director of the press agency Demokraattinen lehtipalvelu (DLP), which was organizationally under the new left-wing electoral alliance, SKDL (The Finnish People’s Democratic Alliance). As a columnist he used in Vapaa Sana and Työkansan Sanomat the pseudonym ‘Liukas Luikku’ (roughly “slippery slinker”). 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 writer killed in the Civil War (1917-18), Äikiä identified with the writer, whose philosophical works had met mixed criticism.
“Te, uljaat musteentuhraajat
ja suuret sanasankarit, mun teokseni repikää!
On niissä – myönnän itse – paljon vikaa.
Niin, mammonalle uhraajat,
nyt taistokenttä teille jää,
te voitte minut kivittää
ja silmilleni tänne asti räiskytellä likaa.”
(from ‘Maiju Lassila’ in Henkipatto, 1948)
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 was in confrontation with a number of writers, especially with Arvo Turtiainen, the chairman of the influential literary organization Kiila (the wedge). Usually Äikiä did not attack people, but their opinions. Turtiainen rejected Stalinism, and was annoyed by Äikiä’s self-made position as the foremost poet of the Finnish Communist Party. Kiila was taken over by Äikiä’s ideological supporters. The Marxists literary historian Raoul Palmgren, Turtiainen’s close friend, became also Äikiä’s opponent from the late 1940s. When Äikiä attacked Jean-Sartre’s play Dirty Hands, performed at the National theater, as hostile to the Soviet Union, Palmgren criticized him for bourgeois moralizing. Palmgren had his own reservation about Sartre, but he warned of too rigid political views. Palmgren was first supported by Hertta Kuusinen, Otto Ville Kuusinen’s daughter, but eventually he lost the battle and 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.
Äikiä’s literary production consists also of non-fiction, translations from Russian, and at least one book written in Russian. Äikiä died in Helsinki on November 20, 1965. His fiction is mostly forgotten, partly due to its ideological content, and wooden, declamatory expression. Äikiä’s Mayakovsky translations have been praised, but among others Raoul Palmgren did not accept his pointed vulgarity. Turtiainen translation of Mayakovsky’s elegy on Lenin, published in 1970, became more popular than Äikiä’s earlier version from 1947.
For further information: Suomen kirjailijat 1917-1944, ed. by Hannu Launonen (1981); Kapinalliset kynät 1-3 by Raoul Palmgren (1983-1984); Taas eespäin: Kiilan 50-vuotisalbumi, ed. by Matti Rinne, Kai Linnilä et al. (1986); 40-luku: kirjoituksia 1940-luvun kirjallisuudesta ja kulttuurista, ed. by Auli Viikari (1998) – Otto Ville Kuusinen (1881-1964), joined the Finnish Social Democratic Party and was a member of Parliament (1908-13, 1917). Emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1918, where he helped to found the Communist Party of Finland. Prime minister of the so-called Terijoki government in 1939, president of the Autonomous People’s Republic of Carelia (1940-56), member of the central committee of C.P.S.U. from 1941 and member of Politburo from 1957. Buried in Kreml, Moscow. – Among Kuusinen’s publications is foreword to Kalevala, karjalais-suomalainen kansaneepos, koonnut ja laatinut Elias Lönnrot (1935) and Kalevalan runoutta (ed. 1949). His best-known poems is ‘Torpeedo’. “Ma synnyin veljien käsissä pajan synkimmän, / sain sisääni voimaa pyhän Venäjän. / Oli ladattu, tähdätty julminta meren hirmua sydämeen, / käsi taikurin painoi ponninta, minä alle veen.”
