The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet-Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. It began with a Finnish declaration of war and invasion on 25 June 1941 and ended on 19 September 1944 with the Moscow Armistice. The Soviet Union and Finland had previously fought the Winter War from 1939 to 1940, which ended with the Soviet failure to conquer Finland and the Moscow Peace Treaty. Numerous reasons have been proposed for the Finnish decision to invade, with regaining territory lost during the Winter War regarded as the most common. Other justifications for the conflict include Finnish President Risto Ryti's vision of a Greater Finland and Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim's desire to annex East Karelia.
Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, often referred to by his initials UKK, was a Finnish politician who served as the eighth and longest-serving president of Finland from 1956 to 1982. He also served as prime minister, and held various other cabinet positions. He was the third and most recent president from the Agrarian League/Centre Party. Head of state for nearly 26 years, he dominated Finnish politics for 31 years overall. Holding a large amount of power, he won his later elections with little opposition and has often been classified as an autocrat.
Ville Hermanni Valo is a Finnish singer, songwriter and musician. He is best known as the lead vocalist of the gothic rock band HIM.
Kyösti Kallio was a Finnish politician who served as the fourth president of Finland from 1937 to 1940. His presidency included leading the country through the Winter War; while he relinquished the post of commander-in-chief to Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, he played a role as a spiritual leader. After the war, he became both the first President of Finland to resign and the only one to die in office, dying of a heart attack while returning home after submitting his resignation.
Mauno Henrik Koivisto was a Finnish politician who served as the ninth president of Finland from 1982 to 1994. He also served as the country's prime minister twice, from 1968 to 1970 and again from 1979 to 1982. He was also the first member of the Social Democratic Party to be elected as President of Finland.
The president of the Republic of Finland is the head of state of Finland. The incumbent president is Sauli Niinistö, since 1 March 2012. He was elected for the first time in 2012 and was re-elected in 2018. Alexander Stubb was elected in 2024 and will take office on 1 March 2024.
The Centre Party, officially the Centre Party of Finland, is an agrarian-centrist political party in Finland.
The Ryti–Ribbentrop letter of agreement was a personal letter from President of Finland Risto Ryti to German Führer Adolf Hitler signed on 26 June 1944. It was sent during the Soviet Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive, which had started on 9 June and threatened to knock Finland out of the Continuation War.
Finnish rock refers to rock music made in Finland. The initial rock and roll boom of the 1950s was preceded by a long tradition of popular culture. Suomirock may refer to Finnish rock music in general or more narrowly rock music sung in the Finnish language.
Greater Finland, was an irredentist and nationalist idea that was a subset of Pan-Finnicism which emphasized the territorial expansion of Finland. The most common concept of Greater Finland saw the country as defined by natural borders encompassing the territories inhabited by Finns and Karelians, ranging from the White Sea to Lake Onega and along the Svir River and Neva River—or, more modestly, the Sestra River—to the Gulf of Finland. Some proponents also included the Torne Valley, Ingria, and Estonia.
From 1941 to 1943, 1,408 Finns volunteered for service on the Eastern Front of World War II in the Waffen-SS, in units of the SS Division Wiking. Most of these volunteers served as motorized infantry in the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS. The unit was disbanded in mid-1943 as the volunteers' two-year commitment had expired and the Finnish government was unwilling to allow more men to volunteer. In 1944-1945 a company sized unit of Finnish defectors recruited to the SS continued fighting alongside Germany.
Kari Peter Conrad von Bagh was a Finnish film historian and director. Von Bagh worked as the head of the Finnish Film Archive. He was the editor-in-chief of Filmihullu magazine and co-founder and director of the Midnight Sun Film Festival. Since 2001, he had been the artistic director of the film festival Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. Von Bagh was a member of the jury in the competition category of 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
Mauno Jokipii was a Finnish professor at the University of Jyväskylä in history specializing in World War II. He was a thorough investigator and a prolific author. Among his works were studies of the local history of Jyväskylä and the university and historical province of Satakunta.
Lauri Kaukonen was a Finnish Secretariate Counsellor, board member, business executive, teacher, lecturer, and author.
I. K. Inha was a Finnish photographer, author, translator, and journalist. Inha is considered to be one of the grand masters of Finnish photography. Sometimes he is even referred to as "the national photographer" of Finland. He is especially known for his documentation of Finnish folk tradition, old habits and customs, and landscapes. In addition to his documentary work he was a significant portrayer of modernisation in the early 20th century.
In Finland, the far right was strongest in 1920–1940 when the Academic Karelia Society, Lapua Movement, Patriotic People's Movement (IKL) and Vientirauha operated in the country and had hundreds of thousands of members. In addition to these dominant far-right and fascist organizations, smaller Nazi parties operated as well.
The National Socialist Union of Finland, later the Finnish-Socialist Party was a Finnish Nazi political party active in the 1930s, whose driving force and ideologue was Professor Yrjö Ruutu. With an ideology based on Ruutu's theories, the party came to reject orthodox German Nazism.
Rising Finland was a Finnish political association founded on October 5, 1940. It aimed to "nurture the Spirit of the Winter War", promote the idea of a united people, to reorganize the bourgeois party field and to create a stronger leadership and increasing personal responsibility. According to the organization, its goal was to bring together citizens around national symbols whose value was "perceived by all our people in the great trials of the 1939-1940 War of Independence".
Irma Hellin Toivanen was a Finnish politician and teacher. She was a member of the Parliament of Finland from 1970 to 1979, representing Turku Province South as a member of the Liberal People's Party. From 1975 to 1976, she was Finland's Minister of Social Affairs and Health, appointed by then-Prime Minister Martti Miettunen.
Finnish alcohol culture refers to the drinking culture regarding beverages containing ethyl alcohol in Finland and to the manners and habits connected to the drinking culture.
