FINLAND: Minna Craucher

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On the Finnish mainland last week the Lapuan or Finnish Fascist revolt that petered out so dismally fortnight ago (TIME, March 14) was punctured last week by the murder of Minna Craucher. Minna Craucher, brilliant, amiable and 40, was a well-known character in Finland. She started her career as a secret agent for the early Soviet Cheka. After the War her house in Helsingfors was a salon for Finnish writers and artists. Dozens of novelists dramatized her adventures. Minna Craucher kept up her spying, was jailed three times for fraud. She knew a great deal about the Lapuan movement and at the beginning of the revolt, when it was discovered that the Finnish government had a complete list of contributors to the Lapuan war chest, Finns looked curiously at Minna Craucher. Last week they found her hunched over a desk with a soft-nosed bullet in her brain. Police inspectors turned thoughtful eyes on General K. Martt Wallenius, Lapuan leader.