Maiju Lassila

(most frequent pseudonym of Algoth Untola Tietäväinen; other pseudonyms: Irmari Rantamala and J. I. Vatanen). Born Nov. 28, 1868, in Tohmajärvi, West Karelia; died May 21, 1918, in Helsinki. Finnish writer.

Lassila graduated from a teachers’ seminary. He lived in St. Petersburg (1900–04) and became close to representatives of the Russian liberation movement, which was reflected in his autobiographical novel, Harhama (1909). In his humorous novella Matchsticks (1910; Russian translation, 1951), Lassila emerged as a satirist of realistic orientation. His novellas and comedies (including When Widowers Fall in Love, 1911, and Children of Nature, 1912) are primarily set in a rural milieu, and strongly emphasize the petit bourgeois aspects of peasant psychology. The novellas The Genius (1915) and Resurrected (1916) attacked bourgeois society as a whole.

Lassila wrote for the workers’ newspaper Työmies during 1916–18. His revolutionary publicistic writings expressed deep faith in the victory of socialism. He was shot down by Finnish White Guards.