Little people affected by and reaching to great events is a time-honoured literary device. The Red Line (Punainen viiva, 1909) uses this device to reflect on one of the major turning points in the political history of the world.
In 1906, Finland became the first nation in Europe to give women the vote. This was all the more remarkable considering that Finland was not even an independent country at the time. But how do such events affect ordinary people living a harsh life in the wilderness, in the far reaches of a remote province in a huge empire on the fringe of Europe, for all that they are promised a new world order?
Ilmari Kianto (1874-1970) was a Finnish poet, journalist and author. He was a fervent nationalist with a strong social conscience, and several of his works present brutally honest yet sympathetic depictions of people in rural Finland living in squalor and utter poverty around the turn of the 20th century. Kianto was controversial for much of his lifetime, but came to be recognised as one of Finland's great authors.
