Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad (Finland Swedish: [ˈpæːr ˈeːʋin(d) ˈsviːnhʉːʋʉd ɑːv kʋɑːlstɑːd], 15 December 1861 – 29 February 1944) served as the president of Finland from 1931 to 1937. Before 1917, as a lawyer, judge, and politician in the Grand Duchy of Finland (at that time an autonomous state within the Russian Empire), Svinhufvud played a major role in the movement for Finnish independence, and he presented the Declaration of Independence to the Parliament on 15 December [O.S. 2 December] 1917.
From December 1917 until May 1918, Svinhufvud operated as the first head of government of independent Finland as Chairman of the Senate. He led the White government during the Finnish Civil War of January to May 1918, while Mannerheim led the White Finnish armies. After the war, he served as Finland's first temporary head of state with the title of Regent (May to December 1918) during the project to establish a German-aligned monarchy in the country, prior to stepping down in favour of Mannerheim. He later served as Prime Minister from 1930 to 1931, before his election as national president in January 1931. During his presidency, Svinhufvud successfully called for an end to the Mäntsälä rebellion of 1932.
As a conservative and nationalist who strongly opposed communism and the Left in general, Svinhufvud did not become a President embraced by all the people, although as the amiable Ukko-Pekka ("Old Man Pekka"), he did enjoy wide popularity. Svinhufvud's sharp line as a defender of Finland's legal rights during the period under Russian rule was especially valued from the early years of independence until the end of World War II, unlike in later decades. After the collapse of the communist bloc and the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, appreciation of Svinhufvud increased.
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Family background and early life
Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad was born in Sääksmäki in to a Finnish noble family. He was the son of Pehr Gustaf Svinhufvud af Qvalstad II, a sea captain, and Olga von Becker. His father drowned at sea off Greece in 1863, when Pehr Evind was only two years old. He spent his early childhood at the home of his paternal grandfather, Per Gustaf Svinhufvud af Qvalstad (a provincial treasurer of Häme), at Rapola, where the family had lived for five generations. The Svinhufvuds (literally translated as "Swine-head") are a Finland-Swedish noble family tracing their history back to Dalarna, Sweden. Pehr Gustaf Svinhufvud af Qvalstad, an army lieutenant in the reign of Charles XII, had moved from there to Rapola after the Great Northern War. The family had been ennobled in Sweden in 1574, and it was also introduced to the Finnish House of Nobility in 1818. Rapola was sold when his grandfather shot himself in 1866, and Svinhufvud moved to Helsinki with his mother and his sister.
He attended the Swedish-language high school in Helsinki. In 1878, at the age of 16, he enrolled at the Imperial Alexander University of Helsinki. There he gained a Bachelor's degree in 1881, and then completed a Master of Arts degree in 1882; his main subjects being Finnish, Russian and Scandinavian History. After this, he took a Master of Laws degree, graduating in 1886. In 1889, Svinhufvud married Alma (Ellen) Timgren (1869–1953). They had six children, Yngve (1890–1991), Ilmo Gretel (1892–1969), Aino Mary (1893–1980), Eino (1896–1938), Arne (1904–1942), and Veikko (1908–1969).
Lawyer and a politician
Svinhufvud's career in law followed a regular course: he worked as a lawyer, served at district courts, and served as a deputy judge at the Turku Court of Appeal. In 1892 he was appointed as a member of the Senate's law-drafting committee at the relatively young age of 31. For six years he worked in the committee, initially redrafting taxation laws. As head of his family, Svinhufvud participated as a member of the Estate of Nobles in the Diet of Finland in 1894 and 1899–1906.
He found his work on the law-drafting committee tedious and moved to the Court of Appeal as an assistant judge in 1902, his long-term goal being the easy life of a rural judge. Svinhufvud stayed mainly in the background until 1899, when Imperial Russia initiated a Russification policy for the autonomous Grand Duchy. The Finnish answer was mainly legislative and constitutional resistance, of which Svinhufvud became a central figure as a judge in the Court of Appeals.
When some inhabitants of Helsinki lodged a complaint with the Turku Court of Appeal in 1902, concerning violence employed by the Russian Governor of Uusimaa to break up a demonstration against military call-ups, the court initiated proceedings against Governor-General Bobrikov. Bobrikov demanded that they be stopped, and when this did not happen, he used a decree which the Finns regarded as illegal to dismiss sixteen officials of the court, including Svinhufvud.
Originally a moderate of the Finnish Party or Old Finnish Party, after his dismissal Svinhufvud became a strict constitutionalist who regarded the resistance of judges and officials as a question of justice, not believing that political expediency offered compromises. He moved to Helsinki to work as a lawyer and participated in the political activities both of the Diet and of a secret society, Kagal.
He also acted as defence counsel for Lennart Hohenthal, who had murdered procurator Eliel Soisalon-Soininen in 1905.
Svinhufvud played a key role in the birth of a new parliamentary system in 1905 and he was elected as a Young Finnish Party member of the new Parliament in 1906. Svinhufvud went on to serve as a member of Parliament on four occasions (1907–1908, 1908–1914, 1917, and 1930–1931).
Independence and the Civil War
Svinhufvud was appointed as Chairman of the Senate on 27 November 1917, and was a key figure in the announcement of Finland's declaration of independence on 6 December 1917. He also personally went to Saint Petersburg with Carl Enckell and Gustaf Idman to meet Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who gave his official recognition of Finnish independence. This is how the meeting is told in Svinhufvud's biography Svinhufvud ja itsenäisyyssenaatti written by Erkki Räikkönen: After trying in vain to meet the Soviets on December 30, 1917 - then Sunday - the next day, the delegation managed to submit this letter to Lenin's secretary, and in the evening at 9 o'clock it went to Smolny, Saint Petersburg to hear the decision. "We waited a couple of hours in the big hallway and sat at the corner of the table," says Svinhufvud, "and we had the furs on and the caps on hand, because they didn't dare leave them." Smolny was busy despite the late hours. Guests came and went, typists ran down the hallways, even toddlers on the floor. On several occasions, Enckell tried to rush to the Soviet government's head of office, Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, but nothing helped. "We could only see," says Enckell, "how in one room the People's Commissars sat in thick tobacco smoke and probably pondered our case." Despite the fact that the furs were on, it became cold in the hallway while waiting. Finally, almost at midnight, Bonch-Bruyevich brought the decision of the Board of Commissioners.
It was worded as follows: "We rose one after another and signed with special satisfaction the recognition of Finland's independence," writes I. Steinberg, who was a justice commissioner in Lenin's government. "We knew that Finland's current hero Svinhufvud, once sent to exile by the tsar, was our public social enemy. and that he would not spare any of us in the future. But if we free the Finnish people from the oppression of Russia, there will be one less historical injustice in the world." Despite the fact that this letter merely announced the proposed recognition of Finland's independence, it actually meant full recognition of independence, as the confirmation of the Executive Committee was only a formality. Thus, in the last hour of the last day of the year, Finland had received an official certificate of resignation from Russia. After handing over this formal declaration of independence to the delegation, Bonch-Bruyevich planned to say goodbye and leave, but then Enckell pointed out: "When the Chairman of the Finnish Government is here, would it not be desirable for him to meet Lenin in person and express his gratitude to the Finnish people for the recognition of their independence."
Interlude 1919–1930
After leaving office, Svinhufvud worked for some years as managing director of the credit institution Suomen Vakuus Oy in Turku, though the venture was unsuccessful. He was subsequently granted a state pension and retired to Luumäki, withdrawing from public life. During this period his primary interest became the Civil Guard, in which he rose from soldier to sergeant major and became an accomplished competitive marksman.
Prime Minister and President
In 1925 he was the presidential candidate for the conservative Kokoomus party, but was not elected. After the emergence of the anti-communist Lapua Movement, President Relander appointed him as Prime Minister of Finland on the Lapua Movement's insistence. Svinhufvud was elected president in 1931 after winning by the narrowest of margins, receiving 151 votes against Ståhlberg's 149. He appointed Mannerheim as Chairman of the Defence Council, not least of all as an answer to the Lapua Movement's fear of having fought the Civil War in vain.
He resisted both communist agitation and the Lapua Movement's exploits. All Communist members of parliament were arrested. In February 1932 there was a so-called Mäntsälä Rebellion, when the Suojeluskunta-Militia and the Lapua Movement demanded the Cabinet's resignation. The turning point came with the President's broadcast radio speech, in which he called on the rebels to surrender and ordered all Civil Guard members who were heading for Mäntsälä to return to their homes:
"Throughout my long life, I have struggled for the maintenance of law and justice, and I cannot permit the law to now be trampled underfoot and citizens to be led into armed conflict with one another.... Since I am now acting on my own responsibility, beholden to no-one, and have taken it upon myself to restore peace to the country, from now on every secret undertaking is aimed not only at the legal order but at me personally as well - at me, who have myself marched in the ranks of the Civil Guards as an upholder of social peace.... Peace must be established in the country as swiftly as possible, and the defects that exist in our national life must thereafter be eliminated within the framework of the legal order." His speech stopped the rebellion before anything serious happened.
Svinhufvud made no official state visits during his presidency, nor did any foreign heads of state visit Finland officially during this period. He deliberately delegated most foreign policy matters to his foreign ministers Aarno Yrjö-Koskinen and Antti Hackzell.
Svinhufvud was not a supporter of Parliamentarism, or to put it differently, he believed that the President had a right to choose the Cabinet ministers after first consulting the parliamentary parties. Evidence of this semi-presidential attitude was the minority government of Toivo M. Kivimäki, which survived for 3 years and 10 months (December 1932 – October 1936). Svinhufvud strongly supported it, because he believed that it could effectively fight the Great Depression (which it did, generally speaking), he believed that Kivimäki had a strong personality like himself, and possibly because he hoped that the Agrarians and Swedish People's Party would let the Kivimäki government remain in office as a lesser evil, the greater evil being an Agrarian-Social Democratic government.
Legacy
Svinhufvud's legacy has been a mixed one. He has been praised for his firm commitment to legality and his fearless defence of Finland's legal rights under Russian rule, which demanded personal sacrifice and led to his Siberian exile, as well as for his resolute intervention in the Mäntsälä rebellion. On the other hand, he has been criticised for his one-sided political activities and in particular for his total reliance on Germany in 1918.
A statue of Svinhufvud was erected in 1961 outside the Parliament House, near the statue of Ståhlberg. The statue was created by sculptor Wäinö Aaltonen.
Cabinets
Pehr Evind Svinhufvud's first senate
Svinhufvud II Cabinet
Honours
Awards and decorations
Finland : Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the White Rose of Finland (Finland) (1927)
Finland : Grand Cross of the Order of the Cross of Liberty (1918)
Czechoslovakia : Collar of the Order of the White Lion, Czechoslovakia (12 December 1931)
Sweden : Knight of the Order of the Seraphim, Sweden (3 December 1932)
Poland : Order of the White Eagle
Estonia : Order of the Cross of the Eagle
Hungary : Order of Merit of the Kingdom of Hungary
Egypt : Chain of the Order of Muhammad Ali (1936)
Latvia : Grand Gross with Collar of the Order of the Three Stars (14 December 1931)
In popular culture
Svinhufvud appears as one of the main characters in the 1976 Finnish-Soviet historical drama film Trust, directed by Viktor Tregubovich and Edvin Laine, which portrays the events leading up to the Finnish Declaration of Independence from Russia in 1917. In the film, Svinhufvud was played by Vilho Siivola.