Nyustrom, Ragnar Yakovlevich

He was born the sixth child in the family of the Finnish metalworker Jaakko Nyuström. He studied at general education and music schools.

From the age of 13 he began his career: he worked as a turner for metal, a fireman, was a helmsman in the Navy; took part in the labor movement.

At the same time he studied at the theater courses and performed on the stage of a working amateur theater in a suburb of Helsinki.

Since 1912 he was a member of the Social Democratic Youth Union, and since 1914 - the Social Democratic Party of Finland .

In 1918, during the civil war in Finland (1918), he was in the ranks of the Red Guard . After the defeat of the “Red Finns," he was arrested, sentenced to 12 years, and spent three years in prison in Tammisaari. In 1921 he fled to Soviet Russia.

He studied at the Leningrad branch of the Communist University of National Minorities of the West , at the Gatchina Finnish Pedagogical College .

Since 1924, in the Autonomous Karelian SSR, he taught at the Finnish 9-year school in Petrozavodsk and the pedagogical college .

In 1927 joined the CPSU (b) . In 1927-1928 he headed the club of the Karelian huntsman brigade .

In 1928 he was sent by the Karelian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to the Leningrad Theater Studio to the directing department. At the end of the studio in 1932 he was appointed chief director and artistic director of the Karelian National Drama Theater in Petrozavodsk.

He was a member of the editorial board of the Finnish-language magazine “Soihtu” (“Torch”), published in Leningrad.

In 1936 he was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR.

In 1937 he was subjected to repression.

While working in the national theater, he ignored the Karelian language and Karelian culture, focused only on the Finnish public, was daily connected (on all issues of the theater) with the enemies of the people. He tried to drag the plays of fascist Finland into the theater’s repertoire. He wrote out fascist literature from Finland and read it to the artists of the national theater.

- From the decision of the party meeting of the primary party organization of the House of Folk Art of September 20, 1937

By the decisions of the meetings of the party organization at the House of Folk Arts of September 20, 1937 and the Petrozavodsk City Committee of the CPSU (b) of October 21, 1937, he was expelled from the CPSU (b) "as a bourgeois nationalist."

By a decision of the NKVD troika of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of November 20, 1937, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on false charges of anti-Soviet activity. His letters from prison were preserved in the National Archives of the Republic of Karelia .

He was convicted again and executed on August 14, 1938 in the city of Svobodny, Amur Region, for counter-revolutionary agitation among prisoners. According to other sources, he died of exhaustion and illness on December 12, 1939 in a camp in Chita .

By the definition of the military tribunal of the Northern Military District of May 7, 1956, the decision of the triple NKVD of the KASSR of November 20, 1937 in respect of Nyustrem R. Ya. Was canceled and the case for the lack of corpus delicti was terminated. On May 7, 1970, the Karelian Regional Committee of the CPSU decided to consider R. Nyustrom as completely rehabilitated.

He published his first poems and prose in Finnish in the Karelian Commune, a Petrozavodsk Finnish newspaper.

In the 1920s he wrote a number of plays: “The Law of the Revolution” (“Kumouksen laki”, staged in 1926 in Petrozavodsk and Leningrad), “Justice”, “Red Sowing”, “Teacher”.

He is the author of several theoretical articles, theatrical reviews, and the take of the Winter Palace, staged in Petrozavodsk on Freedom Square (now Kirov Square).

He also wrote for children: in 1929-1932, the correspondence of the pioneer Matti Mittakaav regularly traveling to different countries and introducing children to the most important political events regularly appeared in the Kipinya magazine. He invented the adventures of Matti Ragnar Rusko (pseudonym R. Nyustroma; “Rusko” in Finnish means “dawn”).

The first book of poems “Kahleissa” (“In the shackles”) was published in 1930 - the author talks about his participation in the revolutionary movement of Finland, his arrest in 1918, and the escape from the Tammisaari prison in which he was to spend 12 years in prison.

Wife - N. Beckman.

Source - MFN Electronic Catalogs

• Rusko, Ragnar. Kahleissa: Kertomus. - Leningrad-Petroskoi: Kirja, 1930 .-- 95 p. - (karjalan proletaaristen kirjailijain yhdistys).
• Rusko, Ragnar. Mitä tiedän Matti Mittakaavasta "Kipinän" urheasta ulkomaan kirjeenvaihtajasta. - L .: Valtion kustannusliike Kirja, 1932. - P. 59. - (On the back of the title page: R. Rusko. Matti Mittakaawa.).
• Rusko, Ragnar. Punainen nousu: elävä lehti kevätkylvökamppailua varten. - L.-Petroskoi: Valtion kustannusliike Kirja, 1931 .-- 20 p. - (On the back titl. L.: Red rise.).
• Rusko, Ragnar. Johdatus näyttämötaiteeseen: Ohjeita näytelmien näyttämölle asettamiseen, näytelmien tuntemiseen, näyttelemiseen ja naamioimiseen ohjaajille, näyttelijöille, kirjailijoäjille ka - L-Petroskoi: Kirja, 1930 .-- 83 p.

• Karelia: encyclopedia: in 3 tons / hl. ed. A.F. Titov. T. 2: K - P. - Petrozavodsk: Publishing House PetroPress, 2009. S. 285-464 p., Ill., Maps. ISBN 978-5-8430-0125-4 (t. 2)

• Red Finns. Ragnar Nyustrem
• Photograph and Short Biography of Ragnar Rusko
• Nyustrom R. Ya. (1898-1939): National Archives of the Republic of Karelia, f. P — 2872, 6th d., 1923-1938 (Manuscripts: novels, poems; letters of R. Nyuström to O. Kuusinen , relatives and friends; recollections of the widow about the life and work of R. Nyuström. Photo by R. Nyuström.).
• Pages of history. Nyustrom R. Ya.