Risto Ryti
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Risto Heikki Ryti (February 3, 1889 - October 25, 1956) was the president of Finland from 1940 to 1944. His time in office was marked by the Continuation War with the Soviet Union.
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Pre-War Years
Risto Ryti was born in Satakunta into a landholder's family. He enrolled in the university in 1906 to study law. In the spring of 1914 he moved to Oxford to study maritime law, but World War I forced him to return to Finland. In 1917 he and his wife witnessed a Russian Bolshevik killing his supporter Alfred Kordelin.
During the Finnish Civil War Ryti hid in Helsinki, where Communism was influential. Afterwards he was elected to be a member of the parliament as one of the youngest representatives for the nationalist liberal Progressive Party (Kansallinen Edistyspuolue). By 1921 he was the nation's finance minister. In 1925 president Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg appointed him as chairman of the Bank of Finland.
In 1925 Ryti was also nominated as a presidential candidate but his opponents concentrated their votes on Lauri Kristian Relander. His support increased over the years but was never enough in elections. During the 1930s he withdrew from daily politics, but influenced economic policies. The Wall Street Journal recognized his success.
1940s
Ryti was selected as a prime minister in the beginning of the Winter War. He tried to concentrate on a realistic analysis of the situation, instead of pessimism or overt optimism. He persuaded the rest of the Cabinet to settle for peace and was one to sign the Moscow Peace Treaty March 13th, 1940. The peace, in which Finland lost large land areas and faced the burden of resettling 400,000 refugees, was generally considered crushing. In the following precarious times Ryti bore the heavy responsibilities of state leadership together with Field Marshal Mannerheim and the Social Democratic leader Väinö Tanner as President Kyösti Kallio was struck by illness. Ryti was selected as successor to the retired Kallio just some weeks before the latter suffered a lethal stroke during a farewell gathering on December 19, 1940. During Ryti's presidency the power of the Commander-in-Chief remained with Mannerheim, somewhat insufficiently motivated by the World War in Finland's neighbourhood, and Russia's threatening pressure on Finland.
Towards German orientation
Finland's changed policy from a Scandinavian orientation up to, and during, the Winter War, to a German orientation after the Winter War, was not in the least pursued by the convinced Anglophile Risto Ryti. Traditionally Finland had been associated to Britain by stronger commercial ties, but as the Baltic Sea was dominated by the Germans, lost markets had to be found elsewhere, and Germans were willing to trade.
The relatively limited space given to Nazi German propaganda and ideology, or their domestic sympathizer fringe groups in Finland, can probably be seen as one of the many important joint contributions of Ryti, Tanner and Mannerheim. Ryti's government must also be credited for the fact that Finland remained a genuine democracy unlike any other continental European country that participated in WWII.
In August 1940 Ryti also agreed to secret military cooperation with Germany, in order to strengthen Finland's position vis-à-vis the threatening Soviet Union. Over time it became increasingly likely that the peace between two great totalitarian powers would end, and the experts' opinion - even among the enemies of Germany - was that in case of invasion the Soviets could not stop the German war machine. Ryti apparently turned, step by step, to being in favour of seizing the opportunity to secure Finnish claims to areas he saw to be in the country's interests, in case the great realignment of ownership of East European territory by force would materialize. Thus the cooperation begun in late 1940 ultimately developed in 1941 into preparations for re-annexation of the territories lost after the Winter War, in case Nazi-Germany would realize the rumoured plans on an assault on the Soviet Union. The Continuation War, when commenced, would also come to include occupation of East Karelia, which Nationalist circles had championed since the 1910s.
The Continuation War (1941-44)
When Germany's assault on the Soviet Union begun in June 1941, Finland remained formally neutral until Soviet air raids gave an expected reason to fulfill the invasion plans some days later. Finnish troops soon regained the territory lost in the Winter War and a substantial buffer zone beyond. A substantial number of MP's were not excited by the idea of crossing the old borders, but obviously Risto Ryti convinced Väinö Tanner and the Social Democrats to remain in the Cabinet despite their opposition against the conquest of East Karelia. His ability to thus maintain a broad coalition government strongly contributed to morale and perceived national unity.
Ryti's mandate as a President was intended to extend only through the rest of Kallio's term, i.e. to 1943, but as the government could not organize elections during the Continuation War, the electors from 1937 gathered to re-elect him.
The Soviet Union's major offensive begun in June 1944, in a situation when Finland's relations to Germany were strained due to earlier attempts to secure a separate peace. Finland was in dire need of food, but in particular of weapons and ammunition, as the Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop demanded guarantees that Finland would not again seek a separate peace. Ryti gave this guarantee, expressed as his personal guarantee that Finland under his presidency would not. Soon after the situation was stabilized, Ryti resigned and peace negotiations could begin again, this time from a stronger position although most territorial gains had been lost again.
After WWII
After the war Ryti attempted to return to the Bank of Finland. However, in 1945 Finnish communists and the Soviet Union demanded he should be tried as "responsible for the war". After considerable pressure from the Soviet Union, Ryti was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, in a trial widely held to be illegitimate and a miscarriage of justice. Finland's government had to make a new law which broke basic laws. President Juho Kusti Paasikivi pardoned him in 1949 after he had become hospitalized.
Ryti did not return to the public life. He died in 1956 and was buried with full honors. Ryti's reputation was publicly, but not officially, restored after the Cold War.
| Preceded by: Kyösti Kallio | President of Finland 1940–1944 | Succeeded by: Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim |
| Preceded by: Aimo Cajander | Prime Minister of Finland 1939–1940 | Succeeded by: Johan Wilhelm Rangell Template:End boxes:Risto Ryti ja:リスト・ヘイキ・リュティ pl:Risto Ryti fi:Risto Ryti sv:Risto Heikki Ryti |