Greater Finland
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Greater Finland (
.The idea of a Greater Finland rapidly gained popularity after Finland became independent in December 1917. The idea has lost support after World War II (1939–1945).
History
Natural borders
The idea of the so-called three-isthmus border—defined by the White Isthmus, the Olonets Isthmus, and the Karelian Isthmus—is hundreds of years old, dating back to the period when Finland was part of Sweden. There was a disagreement between Sweden and Russia as to where the border between the two countries should be. The Swedish government considered a three-isthmus border to be the easiest to defend.
Although the term "Greater Finland" was not used in the early 19th century, the idea of Finland's natural geographical boundaries dates back to then. In 1837, the botanist Johan Ernst Adhemar Wirzén defined Finland's wild plant distribution area as the eastern border lines of the
Karelianism
Karelianism was a
Other Nordic countries
The
In the early days of its independence, Finland wanted
Heimosodat
The Greater Finland ideology gained strength from 1918 to 1920, during the Heimosodat, with the goal of combining all
Karelians in Uhtua (now Kalevala, Russia) wanted their own state, so they created the Republic of Uhtua. Ingrian Finns also created their own state, North Ingria, but with the intention of being incorporated into Finland. Both states ceased to exist in 1920.
The Greater Finland ideology inspired the
1920s and 1930s
Under the
After the
After the civil war, a large number of left-wing Finnish refugees fled for the Karelian ASSR. These Finns—an urbanized, educated, and Bolshevik elite—tended to monopolize leadership positions within the new republic. The "Finnishness" of the area was enhanced by some migration of Ingrian Finns, and by the Great Depression. Gylling encouraged Finns in North America to flee to the Karelian ASSR, which was held up as a beacon of enlightened Soviet national policy and economic development.
Even by 1926, 96.6% of the population of the Karelian ASSR spoke Karelian as their mother tongue. No unified Karelian literary language existed, and the prospect of creating one was considered problematic because of the language's many dialects. The local Finnish leadership had a dim view of the potential of Karelian as a literary language and did not try to develop it. Gylling and the Red Finns may have considered Karelian to be a mere dialect of Finnish. They may also have hoped that, through the adoption of Finnish, they could unify Karelians and Finns into one Finnic people. All education of Karelians was conducted in Finnish, and all publications became Finnish (with the exception of some in Russian).
By contrast, the Karelians of Tver Oblast, who had gained a measure of political autonomy independent of Finnish influence, were able by 1931 to develop a literary Karelian based on the Latin alphabet. These Tver Karelians became hostile to what they saw as Finnish dominance of Karelia, as did some of the small, local Karelian intelligentsia. Reactions to the use of Finnish among the Karelians themselves were diverse. Some had difficulty understanding written Finnish. There was outright resistance to the language from residents of Olonets Karelia, while White Karelians had a more positive attitude toward it.
In the summer of 1930, "Finnification politics" became politically sensitive. The
The Central Committee of the Council of Nationalities and the Soviet Academy of Sciences protested the forced Finnification of Soviet Karelia. Bubrikh's Karelian language was adopted from 1937 to 1939, and Finnish was repressed. But the new language, based on an unfamiliar alphabet and with extensive usage of Russian vocabulary and grammar, was difficult for many Karelians to comprehend. By 1939, Bubrikh himself had been repressed, and all forms of Karelian were dropped in both the Karelian ASSR and Tver Oblast (where the Karelian National District was dissolved entirely).[1]
The Great Purge
In Stalin's Great Purge in 1937, the remaining Red Finns in Soviet Karelia were accused of Trotskyist-bourgeois nationalism and purged entirely from the leadership of the Karelian ASSR. Most Finns in the area were executed or forcefully transferred to other parts of the Soviet Union.[2] During this period, no official usage of Karelian was pursued, and the use of the Finnish language was repressed, relegating it to an extremely marginal role, making Russian the de facto official language of the republic.[3] By this time, the economic development of the area had also attracted a growing number of internal migrants from other areas of the Soviet Union, who steadily diluted the "national" character of the Karelian ASSR.
The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (KFSSR) was founded by the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Winter War, and was led by the Terijoki government and Otto Wille Kuusinen. This new entity was created with an eye to absorbing a defeated Finland into one greater Finnic (and Soviet) state, and so the official language returned to Finnish. However, the Soviet military was unable to completely defeat Finland, and this idea came to nothing. Despite this, the KFSSR was maintained as a full Union Republic (on a par with Ukraine or Kazakhstan, for example) until the end of the Stalinist period, and Finnish was at least nominally an official language until 1956. The territory Finland was forced to cede under the Moscow Peace Treaty was incorporated partly into the KFSSR, but also into Leningrad Oblast to the south and Murmansk Oblast to the north.
During the Continuation War from 1941 to 1944, about 62,000 Ingrian Finns escaped to Finland from German-occupied areas, of whom 55,000 were returned to the Soviet Union and expelled to Siberia. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, they were permitted to settle within the KFSSR, although not in Ingria itself.[4]
The Continuation War
During the civil war in 1918, when the military leader Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was in Antrea, he issued one of his famous Sword Scabbard Declarations, in which he said that he would not "sheath my sword before law and order reigns in the land, before all fortresses are in our hands, before the last soldier of Lenin is driven not only away from Finland, but from White Karelia as well".[5] During the Continuation War, Mannerheim gave the second Sword Scabbard Declaration. In it, he mentioned "the Great Finland", which brought negative attention in political circles.
During the Continuation War, Finland occupied the most comprehensive area in its history. Many people elsewhere, as well as Finland's right-wing politicians, wanted to annex East Karelia to Finland. The grounds were not only ideological and political but also military, as the so-called three-isthmus line were considered easier to defend. On 20 July 1941, a celebration was held in Vuokkiniemi, where White and Olonets Karelia were declared to have joined Finland.[6]
Russians and Karelians were treated differently in Finland, and the ethnic background of the country's Russian-speaking minority was studied to determine which of them were Karelian (i.e., "the national minority") and which were mostly Russian (i.e., "the un-national minority"). The Russian minority were taken to concentration camps so that they would be easier to move away.
In 1941, the government published a German edition of Finnlands Lebensraum, a book supporting the idea of Greater Finland, with the intention of annexing Eastern Karelia and Ingria.
Finland's eastern question
During the Continuation War's attack phase in 1941, when the Finns hoped for a German victory over the Soviet Union, Finland began to consider what areas it could get in a possible peace treaty with the Soviets. The German objective was to take over the Arkhangelsk–Astrakhan line, which would have allowed Finland to expand to the east. A 1941 book by professor Jalmari Jaakkola, titled Die Ostfrage Finnlands, sought to justify the occupation of East Karelia. The book was translated into English, Finnish, and French, and received criticism from Sweden and the United States.
The Finnish Ministry of Education established the Scientific Committee of East Karelia on 11 December 1941 to guide research in East Karelia. The first chairman of the commission was the rector of the University of Helsinki, Kaarlo Linkola, and the second chairman was Väinö Auer. Jurists worked to prepare international legal arguments for why Finland should get East Karelia.
Motivations
The rationales of the Greater Finland idea are a subject of disagreement. Some supported the idea out of a desire for wider cultural cooperation. Later, however, the ideology gained clearer imperialist characteristics. The main supporter of the idea, the Academic Karelia Society, was born as a cultural organization, but in its second year, it released a program that dealt with broader strategic, geographical, historical, and political arguments for Greater Finland.
The idea today
The Greater Finland idea is unpopular today, with those who wish for Finnish territorial expansion, such as the former Finns Party Youth and some others wishing for the re-annexation of Finnish Karelia instead.[7]
See also
- Finnic countries
- Greater Netherlands
- Greater Romania
- Karelian question
- Pan-Germanism
- Rattachism
- Scandinavism
References
- ^ "Rol' D. V. Bubrikha v sozdanii yedinogo karel'skogo yazyka" Роль Д. В. Бубриха в создании единого карельского языка [The role of D. V. Bubrikh in the creation of a unified Karelian language] (in Russian). 2015: 259–266.
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: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - .
- S2CID 159644993.
- ^ "Inkerin historia" [History of Inger] (in Finnish). Archived from the original on 16 February 2015.
- ^ heninen.net's translation of the first Sword Scabbard Declaration.
- ISBN 978-951-31-7549-8.
- ^ "Tiedusteluyhtiö Stratforin hurja ennuste: Karjala haluaa liittyä Suomeen". www.iltalehti.fi (in Finnish). Retrieved 2024-02-23.
Sources
- Manninen, Ohto (1980). Suur-Suomen ääriviivat: Kysymys tulevaisuudesta ja turvallisuudesta Suomen Saksan-politiikassa 1941 [Outlines of Greater Finland: The question of the future and security in Finland's German policy in 1941] (in Finnish). Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä. ISBN 951-26-1735-8.
- Nygård, Toivo (1978). Suur-Suomi vai lähiheimolaisten auttaminen: Aatteellinen heimotyö itsenäisessä Suomessa [Greater Finland or helping neighboring tribes: Ideological tribal work in independent Finland] (in Finnish). Helsinki: Otava. ISBN 951-1-04963-1.
- Tarkka, Jukka (1987). Ei Stalin eikä Hitler - Suomen turvallisuuspolitiikka toisen maailmansodan aikana [Neither Stalin nor Hitler - Finland's security policy during the Second World War] (in Finnish). Helsinki: Otava. ISBN 951-1-09751-2.
- Seppälä, Helge (1989). Suomi miehittäjänä 1941-1944 [Finland as occupier 1941-1944] (in Finnish). Helsinki: SN-kirjat. ISBN 951-615-709-2.
- Morozov, K.A. (1975). Karjala Toisen Maailmansodan aikana 1941-1945 [Karelia during the Second World War 1941-1945] (in Finnish). Petrozavodsk.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Jaakkola, Jalmari (1942). Die Ostfrage Finnlands (in German). WSOY.
- Näre, Sari; Kirves, Jenni (2014). Luvattu maa: Suur-Suomen unelma ja unohdus [Promised land: Greater Finland's dream and oblivion] (in Finnish). Helsinki: Johnny Kniga. ISBN 978-951-0-40295-5.
- Trifonova, Anastassija. Suur-Suomen aate ja Itä-Karjala [The idea of Greater Finland and Eastern Karelia] (PDF) (in Finnish). University of Tartu, Department of Baltic Finnic Languages. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04.
- Solomeštš, Ilja. "Ulkoinen uhka keskustan ja periferian suhteissa: Karjalan kysymys pohjoismaisessa vertailussa 1860–1940" [External threat in center-periphery relations: The question of Karelia in a Nordic comparison 1860–1940]. Carelia (in Finnish). No. 10–1998. pp. 117–119. Archived from the original on 2006-10-11.
- Ryymin, Teemu (1998). Finske nasjonalisters og norske myndigheters kvenpolitikk i mellomkrigstiden [Finnish nationalists' and Norwegian authorities' women's policy in the interwar period.] (in Norwegian). University of Bergen.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Web version - Olsson, Claes. Suur-Suomen muisto [The memory of Greater Finland] (in Finnish). Archived from the original on 2001-03-06.
- Sundqvist, Janne (26 May 2014). Suur-Suomi olisi onnistunut vain natsi-Saksan avulla [Greater Finland would have succeeded only with the help of Nazi Germany] (in Finnish).. Yle uutiset 26.5.2014.