Yrjö Ruutu

[1] Ruutu was the first principal of the School of Social Sciences (current University of Tampere) 1925–1932, 1935–1945 and 1949–1953, and the first Finnish professor of International relations 1949–1954.

This group was responsible for starting the Jäger movement, and Ruutu was one of the people who organised the founding meeting of the central committee in 1914.

According to Pehr Norrmén, Ruutu was the one to suggest funneling volunteers to Germany and organising these veterans to form the revolutionary vanguard in Finland.

He was likely to be executed, but like the rest of the Finnish activist imprisoned there, the authorities never had time to carry out the sentences as the prisoners were released by a mob in 1917.

In his youth he was one of the most important figures of the Jäger movement and later adopted the view that the Finnish independence can be best guaranteed by removing class conflict from the society by introducing state socialism.

Although "Ruutuite" socialism never became a mass movement, it is considered to have had a considerable influence on the ideology of the Academic Karelia Society and president Urho Kekkonen.

Ruutu served for the second time as chairman of the student union in 1922–1923, when language disputes began to re-emerge at the University of Helsinki.

[10] Ruutu's AKS supporters Urho Kekkonen and Martti Haavio organized him becoming the chairman of the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity in 1928.