KURIKKA, MATTI, colonizer, journalist, and publicist; b. 24 Jan.
1863 in the parish of Tuutari, Russia, one of the four children
of Aatami Kurikka, a wealthy Finnish farm-owner, and Anna
Pöyhönen; m. first 12 Jan. 1886 Anna Henriette Palmqvist in
Helsinki (Finland), and they had one daughter; divorced 1898; m.
there secondly 23 May 1906 Hanna Räihä, and they had one
daughter; divorced 1911; d. 1 Oct. 1915 in Westerly, R.I. From a
bourgeois home, Matti Kurikka attended school in his native
region of Ingermanland for three years before moving with his
parents to Helsinki in 1872. In 1881 he entered the University
of Helsinki but he left for Kuopio without graduating. There he
associated with Minna Canth, playwright, socialist, and women’s
rights advocate. He also made friends with novelist Arvid
Järnefelt and socialist Augusti Bernhard Mäkelä and in 1884
wrote his first notable play, Viimeinen ponnistus [Last effort],
on the theme of class conflict. Throughout his life Kurikka’s
struggle for social reform would