After a short stint on the staff of the liberal newspaper Kotkan Sanomat (Kotka News) in 1903, Yrjö moved to the city of Tampere to assume the editorship of the Kansan Lehti, a post which he occupied from 1904 to 1906.

[1] Increased control by the Tsarist government over Finnish affairs in the aftermath of the revolution combined with a troubled personal financial situation moved Sirola to emigrate to the United States, however.

[1] Arriving in America in 1909, Sirola followed previous Finnish immigrants in moving to the Upper Midwest region of the United States.

[1] Previously very much a parliamentarian in his political orientation, while in Minnesota Sirola begun to be influenced by the radical syndicalism espoused by the Industrial Workers of the World.

[1] Within the SDP Sirola was a leader of the radical left wing of the party who supported the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in November 1917 and who sought to emulate Lenin's results in Finland.

[5] This cautious perspective was shared by the SDP's parliamentary group, but radicals in the party pushed the revolution forward nonetheless, calling a general strike for November 14.

Two hours later their nerve of the majority failed them, however, and the newly reorganized Revolutionary Council backed away from armed insurrection, in favor of an aggressive push for concessions from the bourgeois parties.

As Anthony Upton notes: In effect Sirola had won and emerged as the leading figure on the morning of 16 November; his policy, that of stepping up the pressure until they got a government that would satisfy the basic demands on food and guarantee immunity from reprisal, was adopted.

On his suggestion, they decided to take over the railways, close the law courts, and compel all the agencies of central and local government to cease activity...

"[12] The Strike Committee met that same night and declared in favor of a socialist government and that the Red Guard must stay armed until this was achieved and "all power is taken into the workers' hands.

With the conservative parliamentary majority intent upon disarming the Red Guards and establishing a monarchical form of government, the nation descended into civil war.

On January 19, 1918, a pitched battle broke out between Red Guards and the conservative Protective Corps of Viipuri, which Russian troops coming to the aid of their allies in the fight.

The civil war proved to be a one-sided affair, with the superior officer corps and materiel of the White forces under Mannerheim winning the day.

Historian Anthony Upton notes: The choices before the socialist leaders were unconditional surrender, a glorious fight to the finish in Finland ending in almost certain martyrdom, or a prudent withdrawal with a view to a future return.

[19] The governing Central Committee of this new organization established itself in Petrograd, where it launched a daily newspaper and magazines in Finnish and Swedish and put into print over 40 pamphlets during its first year.

[21] At the founding convention of the Comintern, Sirola delivered the report on the Finnish revolution: Although not adequately prepared politically or militarily for such a struggle, the workers held their ground at the front for three months, while at the same time doing a great deal behind the lines to organize social and economic life.

[22] In the wake of the Finnish uprising and its bloody aftermath, in which over 11,000 prisoners of the victorious Whites died of starvation, disease, or execution,[23] Sirola had clearly cast his lot with revolutionary methods as opposed to parliamentarism: For too long, we...were imbued with the ideology of a 'united' workers' movement.

The bourgeois dictatorship in Finland gave the extreme right wing of the old Social Democracy 'freedom' of organization and of the press for the express purpose of pacifying the workers.

These traitors did their best to defeat the revolution the Finnish proletariat had made the previous year and to propagandize for a peaceful workers' movement functioning through parliament, trade unions, and cooperatives....

[26]In 1930, Sirola left his position as a functionary of the Comintern to become People's Commissar of Public Education in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Karelia.

[21] Sirola also taught periodically in Leningrad at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West in the department for Finns and Estonians and at the International Lenin School in Moscow.