Risto Ryti


Ryti, Risto

 

Born Aug. 3, 1889, in Huittinen; died Oct. 25, 1956, in Helsinki. Finnish political and state figure.

A lawyer by education, Ryti was minister of finance in the periods 1921–22 and 1922–24. He was a leader of the bourgeois Progressive Party of Finland. In 1939 and 1940 he was prime minister of Finland, and from 1940 to 1944, president. He was instrumental in bringing Finland into World War II on the side of fascist Germany against the USSR. In 1946, in a trial of war criminals, a special Finnish court sentenced him to ten years in prison. Ryti was pardoned “for reasons of health” in 1949.