Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo and The Russian Revolution
By Risto Suvanto



The night of the Russian October Revolution Aleksanteri (Ali) Ahola-Valo (1900-1997) spent with his father´s best friend Kaarlo Kuosa in central St. Petersburg, Moyka 12, which had once been Pushkin´s residence. Kuosa came and went - and spoke almost nothing. He had at his home a little print for secret leaflets. He got the information from somewhere what to print, printed and distributed the material. When Ali during the Revolution night asked what he could do, Kuosa just commented : "If you are needed, I shall tell you what to do. We are going to need you. Now be quiet. Now there are great powers on the move, your help is not needed. You are too small to participate in what is happening now."

Ahola-Valo heard some shooting and a and bang of a cannon. Windows were shaking, but he did not know what was going on.

Ahola-Valo was an eyewitness of the Revolution, not active in the events, although his closest friends were. First of all, he was studying and worked in order to finance his studies. He was a chimney-sweeper, a baker, a railway worker, a tram driver and a chemist´s assistant. Ahola-Valo had come to St. Petersburg in 1916 and had managed to get to the high-quality Mayak College, an institution for foreign diplomats' children. Then, at the age of 16, he was the youngest student of the College. He was a passionate student. The October Revolution led to the closing of the College. Ahola-Valo was at the same time a part of the revolutionary movement and an intellectual developing his own different ideas.
Kaarlo Kuosa was one of the revolutionary activists. He also translated and printed papers written by Lenin in Geneva into Swedish. Also Ahola-Valo's father, Petter Ahola, was a revolutionary. After the February Revolution he organized a parade to celebrate the event in the villa community of Vyritsa, 60 kilometers to the south of St. Petersburg. Ali marched in the front row with his father under a red banner. Ali's father had also asked his son to paint a placard against the war raging in Europe : "Down with the war. Bread for people." They marched to the football ground, where Ali's father gave a speech : "The fall of tyranny now brings us duties that we should build a happier life and give up the misery and darkness produced by Czarism. First of all, the war must be finished." The local Menshevik leader could no accept this and they had a quarrel about this. Most of those who were marching in the procession were not members of any political party, and so was not Ahola-Valo. Organizing the procession caused that the Ahola family lost their home. Boris Korneyev, who owned their house, got angry : "This Ahola seems to be that kind of a man that he arranges processions with a red flag." They were forced to move further away to a janitor's house.

When the October Revolution broke out, and the social structures were changed, Korneyev was killed.

An excellent inscription about Ali's and his father's relationship with the revolutionary movement can be read in his childhood diaries which he started writing on the 30th of July in 1907. The diaries are unique because of their details and massiveness.

In the diary on March 25th, 1911, he tells about his argue with the father as little brother Felix is listening :"I remember what Dad said : Everything is going to change better, if the revolution comes. Then there will be no masters and those who work hard for them, but all people will become equal, dignified as human beings. I added to these Dad's words, that if you do not know how to live, the revolution does not help anything. But Dad said that everything will depend on the conditions of life as Marx has said, that capital belongs to all men altogether,not to capitalists only, which will change everything better. When I disagreed about this, Dad told me to read Karl Marx*s The Capital. Felix was only listening and taking no part on anybody's side. On the contrary, I tried to tell Dad that material becomes better through the improving of man. But Dad stayed with the Marx's theory, that man will always be dependant on materialism, as he said. We could not agree about this and there was no need for an argument."

Ali's father strongly believed in the Revolution. On May 1st, 1911, Ali writes :"I discussed all evening with Dad about what can happen in the world in the next years. Dad believed in the revolution and spoke about its birth, and I wanted assidously to prove him, that the revolution is not yet needed, but one has to make the education of workers and peasants more efficient, so that there would be more unity and people would better understand the meaning of life.

Ali believed in the strenght of education - not the revolution. The next day he continues thinking his ideas : "Dad explained to me how Karl Marx in his book The Capital saw the future world flourish. I was listening and thinking who could make it flourish if people in our days' Russia are so little developed and illiterate. One more time I told about this to Dad, but he remained in believing that everything to come will be changing better , so thus I tried to believe, that those new people in power will found new schools with better education".
Ali resisted the Czar's regime from all of his heart. A week later he wrote: "Phew ! To-day it is the Emperor's day and we have to lift up t he flag in the tower. Oh poor Dad, I wish he would not fall down when he is climbing up to the roof, because the flag-pole rope was breaking last year. According to the law, one would not be allowed to-day to do but humming the Imperial Hymn. But I deliberately break that law and work more than ever."

Little Ali was developing his very own ideas of the education of man. With Lidia, the daughter of his governess Lyudmila Kuzmina, he discussed the matter on May 8th, 1911: Ali speaks to Lidia, who is very fond of him, her arm resting on his shoulder:

- This I have to tell you, I said to her , thinking a little bit first.
- If all people understood the most valuable rule in the same way, I call it the wise love, it must be the basic concept for everybody, not depending on one's age. If people are decently educated, the easier it is to work together for the highest values of science.
- What does your wise love include ?
- It is all those things, without which one cannot construct activities that improve the quality of one's life. There are still egoistic concepts about love and all mankind of our time are fed up with them. One can meet pure and solid love very seldom.. It can be so that it does not exist at all in such way I have learned to understand."

This idea, assumed by Ahola-Valo already in early childhood, made him a revolutionary going his own way. He participated in late 1916 in a dangerous operation releasing revolutionary prisoners from Shpalernaya prison, he was distributing Pravda in St. Petersburg and his best friends were revolutionaries. His childhood friend Vladimir Izbakov became Lenin's librarian in the Smolnyi. Because of this he visited the Smolnyi often after the October Revolution and saw Lenin a few times. Before the Revolution Ali had been listening to Lenin speaking to the crowds in St. Petersburg. So, he was a revolutionary among revolutionaries but, however, not a part of it. He never joined the organized revolutionary movement and he joined the Red Army as late as 1919 in order to defend St. Petersburg from the threatening attack by the whites.

He did not take part in armed activies in the Army, but was a member of the department of enlightenment in the 6th division. He taught people how to read, worked as a librarian and lectured about education.

When Ahola-Valo, aged 81, recollected the Revolution and its meaning in a radio interview, he saw the change of the situation of children as the most important thing. The Czar's regime was based on force towards weaker ones, that "had the same attitude towards children. Never to give a child anything but to take away as much as one can." This was changed after the Revolution and it was according to the old doctor of pedagogy h.c. Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo, a remarkable achievement of the Revolution.

Sources :
My discussions with Ahola-Valo during the years 1982-1997.
The Schoolboy's Diary 1-4.
English translation by Kai Kyösti Kaukovalta

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