Kalle Leivonen

Kalle Leivonen placed seventh at the 1911 unofficial World Championship in Helsinki. At the 1912 Olympic Games in the featherweight (< 60 kg). There, he celebrated five consecutive wins before he lost to two future medalists, compatriot Otto Lasanen and Germany’s Georg Gerstacker. In 1914, he won his only Finnish Championship in the under 60 kg category.

Before the World War I, Leivonen moved to the United States and from there to the Soviet Union in 1932 during the Great Depression. He settled in Kondopoga, the Russian part of Karelia, where he worked as a painter. He disappeared during Stalin’s persecutions in 1938 and was sentenced to death. Two days after the verdict, he was executed near Petrozavodsk. on 21 September 1938, and was executed in the fall of 1938. In 1989 Leivonen was formally exonerated of any crimes.