An election could give a man authority in Finland in 1930. Whether he would be allowed to exercise it was becoming another question. Across the country, newspaper offices were attacked, political meetings disrupted and men abducted for holding opinions their neighbors considered dangerous. Those responsible claimed to be saving their nation, a cause that seemed to excuse an ever-expanding list of cruelties.
Finland was still living with the wounds of its civil war. Just twelve years earlier, Reds and Whites had fought over its future, leaving bitterness that survived long after the fighting ended. With Stalin’s Soviet Union across the eastern border, fear of communism had a ready audience. For the growing nationalist movement, that fear also offered a useful weapon against people whose politics fell well short of revolution.
In towns and villages, these national divisions could become intensely personal. The political opponent was someone you passed in the street, did business with or faced across a council chamber. Old grievances acquired the language of patriotism. A dispute over taxes or the treatment of the poor could become a test of whose side a man was on.
In the eastern municipality of Heinävesi, Onni Happonen had made his position clear. A construction contractor and Social Democrat, he believed local government should serve residents who had little wealth or influence. As chairman of the municipal board, he was prepared to challenge people accustomed to having their wishes respected. He also expected them to pay the taxes they owed, a principle unlikely to endear him to the landowners concerned.
Happonen was 32, married and the father of two children. Energetic and respected within the local labor movement, he had already achieved a position from which a larger political career might have followed. For the moment, however, his responsibilities lay in Heinävesi, where the cost of carrying them out was rising.
The men who wanted him gone were losing patience with the ordinary business of democracy. Happonen, meanwhile, believed the people who had elected him were entitled to representation, regardless of who objected. By the end of that summer, the disagreement had become something no vote in the council chamber could settle. He would have to decide how firmly to stand—and how much faith to place in the institutions that were supposed to protect him.
