Rakhia, Ivan

(Iukka Rakh’ia). Born July 19, 1887, in Kronstadt; died Aug. 31, 1920, in Petrograd, now Leningrad. Figure in the Finnish and Russian revolutionary movement. Member of the Communist Party from 1902. Son of a worker.

Rakh’ia was a metalworker. In 1905 he was a member of the Kronstadt committee of the RSDLP and a leader of the uprising of sailors and soldiers. He participated in the Finnish workers’ movement from late 1905. In 1913 he took up party work in St. Petersburg. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was a member of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He was a delegate to the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP(B) and a participant in the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B). He participated in the expanded session of Oct. 16 (29), 1917, of the party’s Central Committee, the session which confirmed the decision of October 10 (23) on the armed uprising.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Rakh’ia was sent to Finland as assistant commissar for Finnish affairs. He was one of the organizers of the Finnish Red Guard. He participated in the revolution of 1918 in Finland and was seriously wounded in the fighting at the Kämärä railroad station. In 1918 he was one of the founders of the Communist Party of Finland (CPF) and a member of its Central Committee. He was a delegate of the CPF to the First (1919) and Second (1920) Congresses of the Comintern. He perished in the attack of counterrevolutionaries on the O. V. Kuusinen Club of Finnish Communists.