[1] Perttilä lived in Helsinki as a factory worker since 1893 and joined the Social Democratic Party in 1899.

[1][2] During the 1918 Civil War, Perttilä was the chairman of the Central Workers' Council, the legislature of the Red Finland.

In August 1918, he took part on the founding congress of the exile Communist Party of Finland in Moscow.

[1][2] After returning Russia, Perttilä lived in Leningrad and worked for the publishing company Kirja and the Finnish-language newspaper Vapaus (″Freedom″).

His wife Augusta Påhlsson (1887–1937) and son Yrjö Mauno Perttilä (1910–1938), who served as an officer in the Baltic Fleet, were killed in the Great Purge.