Pyotr Sokolov

Pyotr Sokolov started playing football during his law studies. He played as a defender for the St. Petersburg clubs Udelnaya (1906–11) and Unitas (1911–17). With Unitas he won the St. Petersburg championship in 1912 and in the same year the championship of the Russian Empire with the St. Petersburg city team. As a member of Unitas he also won the St. Petersburg cup three consecutive times (1911-13).

After playing one unofficial match with the Russian national team against England, Sokolov had his official début at the 1912 Olympic Games, where he played both matches for Russia, losing both. Later that year, he won two more caps, captaining the team against Hungary in his last international match. He was also considered a talented wrestler and boxer.

In 1917, Sokolov graduated from School of Ensigns. As a stern monarchist, he served in military counterintelligence in the Finnish Tornio area on the border to Sweden. In 1918, he joined a unit of the White guard that cooperated with the British intelligence and soon transferred to the Secret Service. From 1919, he organized an intelligence post in Terijoki (now Selenogorsk). From 1923, he headed counterintelligence for Russian emigrants in Finland. He uncovered several agents of the Soviet secret police and always refused to change sides. After a trial against Anglo-Finnish spies in Leningrad including former teammates from Unitas, Sokolov was forced to leave Terijoki and settle in Perkjärvi (now Kirillovskoye).

From 1930, he lived in Helsinki and worked at the Fennia tobacco factory. Six years later, Sokolov became a Finnish citizen. In the Soviet-Finnish Winter War (1939–40), he served as a captain in the Propaganda Department of the General Staff of the Finnish Army. In this capacity, he visited camps of Russian prisoners-of-war in Finland and Karelia and edited a POW newspaper.

In World War II, Sokolov collaborated with Germany’s military intelligence service and trained saboteurs for activities behind Red Army lines. He used several aliases including “Kolberg,” “Simolin”, “Captain Erickson”, and “Sokolovsky”. After the signing of the Soviet-Finnish armistice in September 1944, he escaped to Sweden, being wanted as a state criminal by the Soviet Union. He left behind his wife and three children. Sokolov then worked as a physiotherapist for a local sport club in Enköping. He married a Swedish woman, had two sons with her and adopted her surname changing his name to Peter Sahlin. Sokolov eventually died of a brain tumor.