Serving as a lawyer, judge, and politician in the Grand Duchy of Finland, which was at that time an autonomous state under the Russian Empire’s rule, Svinhufvud played a major role in the movement for Finnish independence.

After the war, he served as Finland's first temporary head of state with the title of Regent during the project to establish a German-aligned monarchy in the country, until late 1918 when he stepped down in favour of Mannerheim.

As a conservative and nationalist who was strong in his opposition to communism and the Left in general, Svinhufvud did not become a President embraced by all the people, although as the amiable Ukko-Pekka ("Old Man Pekka"), he did enjoy wide popularity.

[4] Svinhufvud's sharp line as a defender of Finland's legal rights during the period under Russian rule was especially valued in the early years of independence until the end of the World War II, unlike in later decades.

He spent his early childhood at the home of his paternal grandfather, Per Gustaf Svinhufvud af Qvalstad (a provincial treasurer of Häme), at Rapola, where the family had lived for five generations.

The Svinhufvuds (literally translated as "Swine-head")[6] are a Finland-Swedish noble family tracing their history back to Dalarna, Sweden.

Pehr Gustaf Svinhufvud af Qvalstad, an army lieutenant in the reign of Charles XII, had moved from there to Rapola after the Great Northern War.

Svinhufvud stayed mainly in the background until 1899, when Imperial Russia initiated a Russification policy for the autonomous Grand Duchy.

Bobrikov demanded that they be stopped, and when this did not happen, he used a decree which the Finns regarded as illegal to dismiss sixteen officials of the court, including Svinhufvud.

Svinhufvud played a key role in the birth of a new parliamentary system in 1905 and he was elected as a Young Finnish Party member of the new Parliament in 1906.

Svinhufvud refused to obey the orders of the Russian procurator Konstantin Kazansky, which he considered illegal, and this led to his removal from office as a judge and being exiled to Tomsk in Siberia in November 1914.

When news of the February Revolution reached Svinhufvud, he walked to the town's police station and bluntly announced, "The person who sent me here has been arrested.

Svinhufvud was appointed as Chairman of the Senate on 27 November 1917, and was a key figure in the announcement of Finland's declaration of independence on 6 December 1917.

[1] He also personally went to Saint Petersburg with Carl Enckell and Gustaf Idman to meet Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who gave his official recognition of Finnish independence.

"We waited a couple of hours in the big hallway and sat at the corner of the table," says Svinhufvud, "and we had the furs on and the caps on hand, because they didn't dare leave them."

It was worded as follows: "We rose one after another and signed with special satisfaction the recognition of Finland's independence," writes I. Steinberg, who was a justice commissioner in Lenin's government.

[9]Svinhufvud's Senate also authorized General Mannerheim to form a new Finnish army on the basis on White Guard, the (chiefly Rightist) volunteer militia called the Suojeluskunta, an act simultaneously coinciding with the beginning of the Civil War in Finland.

Svinhufvud was elected president in 1931, and appointed Mannerheim as Chairman of the Defence Council, not least of all as an answer to the Lapua Movement's fear of having fought the Civil War in vain.

The turning point came with the President's broadcast radio speech, in which he called on the rebels to surrender and ordered all Civil Guard members who were heading for Mäntsälä to return to their homes: "Throughout my long life, I have struggled for the maintenance of law and justice, and I cannot permit the law to now be trampled underfoot and citizens to be led into armed conflict with one another....

Svinhufvud was not a supporter of Parliamentarism, or to put it differently, he believed that the President had a right to choose the Cabinet ministers after first consulting the parliamentary parties.

Svinhufvud strongly supported it, because he believed that it could effectively fight the Great Depression (which it did, generally speaking), he believed that Kivimäki had a strong personality like himself, and possibly because he hoped that the Agrarians and Swedish People's Party would let the Kivimäki government remain in office as a lesser evil, the greater evil being an Agrarian-Social Democratic government.

On the other hand, he was realistic enough to admit privately to the German Ambassador to Finland, Wipert von Blücher, that if he was re-elected, he would be unable to keep the Social Democrats in the opposition.

At the end of Winter War, he unsuccessfully sought audience with both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini but met only Pope Pius XII.

[citation needed] Svinhufvud appears as one of the main characters in the 1976 Finnish-Soviet historical drama film Trust, directed by Viktor Tregubovich and Edvin Laine, which portrays the events leading up to the Finnish Declaration of Independence from Russia in 1917.