Kai Donner

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Kai Donner (18881935) was a Finnish linguist, ethnographer and politician. He made expeditions to the Nenets people (Samoyeds) in Siberia 1911–1914 and was docent of Uralic languages at the University of Helsinki from 1924.

Donner was a refugee in Sweden and Germany from 1916 to 1918 as a separatist striving for Finland's independence from Russia. During the Finnish civil war, Kai Donner served as General Mannerheim's aide-de-camp.

In the 1920s and early 1930s he was one of the more influential leaders of the rightist Lapua Movement. Finland-Swedish by mother tongue, he expressed reservations about the persecution of Swedish speakers, which was commonly supported by conservative Finns in those decades.

He was the father of the Finnish politician and film producer Jörn Donner.

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