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1922-1937 - Right-Wing Nationalism

The enduring domestic political turmoil generated by the civil war led to the rise not only of a large communist party, but also to that of a large radical right-wing movement. The right wing consisted mainly of Finnish nationalists who were unhappy with the 1920 Treaty of Dorpat (Tartu) that had formally ended the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland and recognized Soviet sovereignty over Eastern Karelia.

The more extreme Finnish nationalists hoped for the establishment of a Greater Finland (Suur-Suomi) that would unite the Finnic peoples of Northern Europe within boundaries, running from the Gulf of Bothnia to the White Sea and from Estonia to the Arctic Ocean, that included Eastern Karelia. Eastern Karelia was the area, located roughly between Finland and the White Sea, that was inhabited by Finnic-speaking people who, centuries before, had been brought under Russian rule and had been converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Since the nineteenth century, romantic Finnish nationalists had sought to reunite the Karelians with Finland.

The main body of the Finnish people lived in Finland, an extensive, thinly settled country with the area of New Mexico (125,000 square miles) and the population of the Boroughs of Manhattan and Queens (2,800,000 souls). Down to the Russian Revolution of 1917, Finland lay groaning under the Czarist yoke. Russia's collapse gave Finland the chance to declare its independence. Soon afterward another people of Finnish blood - the Esths of Esthonia, the northern-most of the Baltic Provinces, likewise proclaimed their freedom. The two peoples, separated only by the narrow waters of the Gulf of Finland, were acting in close association, Finnish troops having played a great part in clearing Esthonia of the Russian Bolshevik invasion. Among both peoples there was a strong tendency to form a permanent political union and to attempt in common the drawing of the whole Finnish people into a "Greater Finland." For there were many Finns outside the historic boundaries of Finland and Esthonia.

Eastward of both these countries lay a wide band of territory which, though politically classed as Russian, was largely inhabited by people of Finnish blood. In fact, Russia's capital, Petrograd, was built on Finnish soil, being historically a recent intrusion, the artificial creation of Czar Peter the Great two centuries ago. Another object of Pan-Finnish aspirations was the Norwegian province of Finmark, lying north of Finland proper along the Arctic Ocean, and inhabited, as its name implies, largely by Finns.

The most prominent organization advancing the Greater Finland idea was the Academic Karelia Society (Akateeminen Karjala-Seura- -AKS), which was founded in 1922 by Finnish students who had fought in Eastern Karelia against Soviet rule during the winter of 1921 to 1922. In the 1920s, the AKS became the dominant group among Finnish university students. Its members often retained their membership after their student days, and the AKS was strongly represented among civil servants, teachers, lawyers, physicians, and clergymen. Most Lutheran clergymen had been strongly pro-White during the civil war, and many of them were also active in the AKS and in the even more radical anti- communist Lapua movement. Thus the AKS created a worldview among an entire generation of educated Finns that was relentlessly anti-Soviet and expansionistic. The Eastern Karelians were eventually assimilated into Russian culture through a deliberate Soviet policy of denationalization, aimed at removing any possibility of their being attracted to Finland.

The military muscle for the right wing was provided by the Civil Guard. In the 1920s, the Civil Guard had a strength of about 100,000, and it received arms by parliamentary appropriation; however, Social Democrats, branded as leftists, were not welcome as members. Finally during World War II, the Civil Guard was integrated into the regular army, and peace was made with the Social Democrats. The Civil Guard included a women's auxiliary called Lotta Svard after a female hero of the war of 1808 to 1809. This organization performed important support work, behind the lines during the civil war and later during World War II, thereby releasing many men for service on the front.

The apogee of right-wing nationalism was reached in the Lapua movement, from 1929 to 1932. The emergence of the SKP in the 1920s had contributed to a rightward trend in politics that became evident as early as 1925 when Lauri Kristian Relander, a right-wing Agrarian, was elected president. In November 1929, a rightist mob broke up a communist rally at Lapua, a conservative town in northern Finland. That event inspired a movement dedicated to extirpating communism from Finland by any means, legal or illegal, an imperative that was termed the "Law of Lapua."

Under pressure from the Lapua movement, parliament outlawed communism through a series of laws passed in 1930. Not content, however, the Lapuans embarked on a campaign of terror against communists and others that included beatings, kidnappings, and murders. The Lapuans overreached themselves in 1930, however, when they kidnapped former president StAhlberg, whom they disliked for his alleged softness toward communism. Public revulsion against that act ensured the eventual decline of the Lapua movement.

The final major political success of the Lapuans came in the election to the presidency in 1931 of the former White leader, Svinhufvud, who was sympathetic to them. In February 1932, the Lapuans began calling for a "Finnish Hitler," and in March 1932, they used armed force to take over the town of Mantsala, not far from Helsinki, in what appeared to be the first step toward a rightist coup. Members of the Civil Guard were prominent in this coup attempt. The Lapuans had, however, underestimated President Svinhufvud, who used the Finnish army to isolate the rebellion and to suppress it without bloodshed. The leaders of the Mantsala revolt were tried and were convicted, and, although they were given only nominal sentences, the Lapua movement was outlawed.

The last flowering of right-wing nationalism began the month after the Mantsala revolt, when a number of ex-Lapuans formed the Patriotic People's Movement (Isanmaallinen Kansanliike--IKL). Ideologically, the IKL, calling for a new system to replace parliamentary democracy, picked up where the Lapua movement had left off. Much more than had the Lapua movement, the IKL styled itself a fascist organization, and it borrowed the ideas and trappings of Italian fascism and of German Nazism. Unlike the Lapua movement, the IKL achieved scant respectability among middle-class Finns. A future president of Finland, Urho Kekkonen, who in 1938 was minister of interior, banned the IKL. Like the communists, however, the IKL demanded the protection of the Constitution that it sought to destroy, and the IKL persuaded the Finnish courts to lift the ban.