Eero Haapalainen (Russian Эро Эрович Хаапалайнен, Ero Erovich Khaapalaynen; 27 October 1880 – 27 November 1937) was a Finnish politician, trade unionist and journalist, who was one of the most prominent figures of the Finnish socialist movement in the first two decades of the 1900s. In the 1918 Finnish Civil War he served as the commander-in-chief of the Red Guards. After the war, Haapalainen fled to Soviet Russia where he joined the exile Communist Party of Finland and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was executed during the Great Purge in 1937. Life Early years Eero Haapalainen was born in the town of Kuopio in eastern Finland. His father Aaro was a carpenter and the mother, Wilhelmiina Kinnunen, a housewife who earned extra income as a seamstress for the shop of the author and social activist Minna Canth. Parents wanted him to become a priest, but after graduating from the Kuopio Lyceum, Haapalainen studied for two years in a business college and entered the Helsinki University Faculty of Law in 1901. In Helsinki, he was afflicted with the labor movement and joined the Sawmill Workers' Union and the Social Democratic Party of Finland. Due to lack of money, Haapalainen was not able to finish his studies and left the university in 1904. In 1903–1906, Haapalainen worked in the Social Democratic newspaper Työmies in Helsinki, and in 1907 he was the editor of Työ in Vyborg. During the 1905 general strike, Haapalainen was one of the leading Red Guard organizers in Helsinki. A year later, he was the delegate of the Finnish Social Democratic Party at the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in Stockholm. In the summer of 1906, Haapalainen represented Finnish Social Democrats in the underground Bolshevik committee planning the Sveaborg rebellion. In April 1907, Haapalainen was elected as the first chairman of the Finnish Trade Union Federation (SAJ) which was founded in the Tampere Workers' Hall. Haapalainen was expelled from the office in 1911 due to his drinking problem. Haapalainen now became a writer, he published and translated several books and articles focusing in trade unionism and cooperatives. Haapalainen also worked as an editor for the SAJ released monthly. In 1914, he served three months for political agitation. In the 1918 Civil War After the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, the social situation in Finland became restless due to the food shortage and