Jurjo Esajas Emanuel Makelin

Born June 1, 1875, in Tampere; died Sept. 20, 1923, in Helsinki. Figure in the Finnish labor movement.

Mäkelin worked as a shoemaker until he was 26, while he educated himself. From 1899 to 1917 he was a leader of the Labor Party of Finland, known from 1903 as the Social Democratic Party. From 1900 to 1917 he was editor in chief of a number of labor newspapers and was a deputy to the Diet during 1905–06, 1908–10, and 1914–17.

During the general strike of 1905, Mäkelin was chairman of the strike committee in Tampere and the author of the “Red Manifesto.” His belief in the possibility of collaboration with the Finnish bourgeoisie in the struggle against tsarism led to his criticism by the left wing of the Social Democratic Party. Because of serious illness he took little part in the revolution of 1918.

In the autumn of 1918, Mäkelin was condemned to death by a bourgeois court on charges of treason and sedition, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Receiving amnesty in 1922, he became editor of the newspaper of the Socialist Labor Party and joined the Communist Party. Mäkelin was arrested in August 1923 and committed suicide in prison.