Toivo Vähä

Toivo Juhonpoika Vähä (, also known as Ivan Mikhailovich Petrov, , 12 April 1901 – 18 June 1984) was a Finnish-born Soviet colonel of the KGB. He fled to Soviet Russia after the 1918 Finnish Civil War and made a long career in the Red Army and the Soviet Border Troops. Vähä was one of the few Finnish exile revolutionaries who survived the Great Purge. He is best known for his role in the 1925 capture of the British super-spy Sidney Reilly during the Operation Trust.

Early life Toivo Vähä was born to the family of Juho Vähä, an industrial worker, and Maria Lindström. He started working at the age of 14, having several jobs in Helsinki. In 1916, Vähä moved to the industrial community of Dubrovka, near the Russian capital Saint Petersburg. At the time, Finland was an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. Vähä had five brothers, who all followed him to Russia after the 1917 February Revolution. Their father had emigrated to Russia few years earlier.

As the Finnish Civil War broke out in January 1918, Vähä joined the Saint Petersburg Finnish Red Guard, a paramilitary unit composed of Finnish emigrant workers in Saint Petersburg. The battalion was sent to Finland, where Vähä fought in the Battle of Kämärä, and later served as a courier in the Battle of Vilppula. As the Red front collapsed in the Northern Tavastia region, the Saint Petersburg Reds retreated to eastern Finland. After the decisive loss of the Battle of Vyborg in late April, many fled to Soviet Russia.

After his graduation in March 1923, Vähä was recruited by the NKVD. He served as a border station commander at the Finnish border in the Karelian Isthmus. From 1924 Vähä worked for the GPU in Leningrad, until he was moved to a border station in Sestroretsk in June 1925.

In September 1925 the Cheka managed to lure the British agent Sidney Reilly into crossing the border. Vähä smuggled him across the Sestra River and took Reilly to the Pargolovo railway station, where he was arrested. The Finns had successfully tested the route just a few days earlier, when Vähä escorted the courier of the White general Alexander Kutepov to the Soviet side. To complete the operation, the Cheka staged Vähä's death to mislead the British. He was held at the Hotel Evropeiskaya in Leningrad, and then secretly shipped to Moscow. Cheka put out a rumour that Vähä was shot as a traitor. In Moscow he was given a new identity as Ivan Petrov. In 1925–28, Vähä studied in the Border Academy, but was sent to the Far East after an old acquaintance recognized him. Vähä then served on the Chinese border in the Argun River area, and fought in the 1929 Sino-Soviet conflict. During his last years Vähä publicly criticised Stalinism. He also paid attention to the mistakes of the Soviet Communist Party, which he had joined in 1920.

Death Toivo Vähä died in Petrozavodsk in 1984 at the age of 83. The bust on his grave was erected by the KGB. In 2001, a big party was organized in Petrozavodsk when it was one 100-years since the birth of Vähä, where the speakers were, among others, the current Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, who in the early stages of his career led the Karelian Security Service and later the Russian Security Service FSB. In 1990, Soviet author Oleg Tikhonov published a documentary novel of Vähä's life.