Regions associated with Greater Finland superimposed on modern borders; yellow is the border according to the 1920 Treaty of Tartu and red is the current border according to the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties.
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).
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 White Sea, Lake Onega, and the River Svir.[2] The geologist Wilhelm Ramsay defined the bedrock concept of Fenno-Scandinavia in 1898.[2]
Karelianism was a national romantic hobby for artists, writers, and composers in which Karelian and Karelian-Finnish culture was used as a source of inspiration. Karelianism was most popular in the 1890s. For example, the author Ilmari Kianto, known as the "White friend", wrote about his travels to White Karelia in the 1918 book Finland at Its Largest: For the Liberation of White Karelia.
Other Nordic countries
The Kvens, a minority in Northern Norway, helped Finnish settlements spread, especially in the 1860s. The Academic Karelia Society and the Finnish Heritage Association worked actively with the Kvens from 1927 to 1934, and the Finnish media spread pan-Fennicist propaganda through various channels. Activity slowed down from 1931 to 1934.
In the early days of its independence, Finland wanted Finnish-speaking areas in Norrbotten, Sweden, to join Finland. This was a reaction to the effort by Finland's own Åland to join Sweden. The Finnish government set up a committee to expand Finnish national movements. Sweden, for its part, pushed for instruction in the Swedish language in its northern Finnish regions. Until the 1950s, many schoolchildren in Norrbotten were banned from using the Finnish language during breaks at school.
The Greater Finland ideology gained strength from 1918 to 1920, during the Heimosodat, with the goal of combining all Finnic peoples into a single state. Similar ideas also spread in western East Karelia. Two Russian municipalities, Repola and Porajärvi, wanted to become part of Finland but could not under the strict conditions of the Treaty of Tartu. They declared themselves independent in 1919, but the border change was never officially confirmed, mainly because of the treaty, which was negotiated the following year. In the Treaty of Tartu negotiations in 1920, Finland demanded more of Eastern Karelia. Russia agreed to this but kept Repola and Porajärvi for itself, offering Finland Petsamo instead. President Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg of Finland agreed to the exchange.
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.
A caricature about the Soviet-Finnish negotiations on the Treaty of Tartu shows the "price" (parts of Karelia) Finland was to pay to gain a corridor to the Arctic Ocean (Kurikka magazine, 30 September 1920).
Under the Treaty of Tartu, Soviet Russia agreed to give Eastern Karelia (known simply as Karelia in the later Soviet Union) political autonomy as a concession to Finnish sentiment. This was in line with the Bolshevik leadership's policy at the time of offering political autonomy to each of the national minorities within the new Soviet state. At the same time, the League of Nations solved the Åland crisis in Finland's favor.
After the Finnish Civil War in 1918, the Red Guards fled to Russia and rose to a leading position in Eastern Karelia. Led by Edvard Gylling, they helped establish the Karelian Workers' Commune. The Reds were also assigned to act as a bridgehead in the Finnish revolution. Finnish politicians in Karelia strengthened their base in 1923 with the establishment of the Karelian ASSR. Finnish nationalists helped some Karelians who were unhappy with the failure of the Karelian independence movement to organize an uprising, but it was unsuccessful, and a small number of Karelians fled to Finland.
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 Leningrad party apparatus (the powerful southern neighbor of the Karelian Red Finns) began to protest Finnish chauvinism toward the Karelians in concert with the Tver Karelians. This coincided with increasing centralization under Joseph Stalin and the concurrent decline in power of many local minority elites. Gylling and Kustaa Rovio tried to expand the usage of Karelian in certain spheres, but this process was hardly begun before they were deposed. The academic Dmitri Bubrikh then developed a literary Karelian based on the Cyrillic alphabet, borrowing heavily from Russian.
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).[3]
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.[4] 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 factoofficial language of the republic.[5] 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.[6]
Continuation War
The furthest advance of Finnish units in 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".[7] 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.[8]
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.[9]
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.[10]
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 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.
The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from its organization.
The Orthodox Church of Finland or Finnish Orthodox Church is an autonomous Eastern Orthodox archdiocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The church has a legal position as a national church in the country, along with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.
Ingria is a historical region in what is now northwestern European Russia. It lies along the southeastern shore of the Gulf of Finland, bordered by Lake Ladoga on the Karelian Isthmus in the north and by the River Narva on the border with Estonia in the west. The earliest known modern inhabitants of the region were indigenous Finnic ethnic groups, primarily the Izhorians and Votians, who were forcibly converted to Eastern Orthodoxy over several centuries during the late Middle Ages. They were later joined by the Ingrian Finns, descendants of 17th century Lutheran Finnish immigrants to the area. At that time, modern Finland proper and Ingria were both part of the Swedish Empire.
Karelian is a Finnic language spoken mainly in the Russian Republic of Karelia. Linguistically, Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland, and some Finnish linguists have even classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish, though in the modern day it is widely considered a separate language. Karelian is not to be confused with the Southeastern dialects of Finnish, sometimes referred to as karjalaismurteet in Finland. In the Russian 2020–2021 census, around 9,000 people spoke Karelian natively, but around 14,000 said to be able to speak the language. There are around 11,000 speakers of Karelian in Finland. And around 30,000 have at least some knowledge of Karelian in Finland.
The Aunus expedition was an attempt by Finnish volunteers to occupy parts of East Karelia in 1919, during the Russian Civil War. Aunus is the Finnish name for Olonets Karelia. This expedition was one of many Finnic "kinship wars" (heimosodat) fought against forces of Soviet Russia after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and during the Russian Civil War.
Karelians are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group who are indigenous to the historical region of Karelia, which is today split between Finland and Russia. Karelians living in Russian Karelia are considered a distinct ethnic group closely related to Finnish Karelians, who are considered a subset of Finns. This distinction historically arose from Karelia having been fought over and eventually split between Sweden and Novgorod, resulting in Karelians being under different cultural spheres.
Karelia is a historical province of Finland, consisting of the modern-day Finnish regions of South Karelia and North Karelia plus the historical regions of Ladoga Karelia and the Karelian isthmus, which are now in Russia. Historical Karelia also extends to the regions of Kymenlaakso, Northern Savonia and Southern Savonia (Mäntyharju).
The Finnish Democratic Republic, also known as the Terijoki Government, was a short-lived communist puppet state of the Soviet Union in occupied Finnish territory from December 1939 to March 1940.
East Karelia, also rendered as Eastern Karelia or Russian Karelia, is a name for the part of Karelia that since the Treaty of Stolbovo in 1617 has remained Eastern Orthodox and a part of Russia. It is separate from the western part of Karelia, called Finnish Karelia or historically Swedish Karelia. Most of East Karelia has become part of the Republic of Karelia within the Russian Federation. It consists mainly of the old historical regions of Viena Karjala and Aunus Karjala.
Karelia is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Russia, Finland, and Sweden. It is currently divided between northwestern Russia and Finland.
The Ingrians, sometimes called Ingrian Finns, are the Finnish population of Ingria, descending from Lutheran Finnish immigrants introduced into the area in the 17th century, when Finland and Ingria were both parts of the Swedish Empire. In the forced deportations before and after World War II, and during the genocide of Ingrian Finns, most of them were relocated to other parts of the Soviet Union, or killed. Today the Ingrian Finns constitute the largest part of the Finnish population of the Russian Federation. According to some records, some 25,000 Ingrian Finns have returned or still reside in the region of Saint Petersburg.
The Academic Karelia Society was a Finnish nationalist and Finno-Ugric activist organization aiming at the growth and improvement of newly independent Finland, founded by academics and students of the University of Finland in 1922. Its members retained influential positions in the academic life of the era as well as within the officer corps of the Army. The AKS controlled the student union of the University of Helsinki from the mid-1920s right up to 1944, when the Society was disbanded in the aftermath of the Continuation War.
The Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Karelian ASSR for short, sometimes referred to as Soviet Karelia or simply Karelia, was an autonomous republic of the Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, with the capital in Petrozavodsk.
The Karelian people's presence can be dated back to the 7th millennium BC–6th millennium BC. The region itself is rich with fish, lakes, and minerals, and because of that its holder has changed throughout history, and to this day it is divided between the Republic of Finland and the Russian Federation.
The East Karelian Uprising and the Soviet–Finnish conflict 1921–1922 were an attempt by a group of East Karelian separatists supported by Finland to gain independence from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. They were aided by a number of Finnish volunteers, starting from 6 November 1921. The conflict ended on 21 March 1922 with the Agreements between the governments of Soviet Russia and Finland about the measures of maintenance of the inviolability of the Soviet–Finnish border. The conflict is regarded in Finland as one of the heimosodat – "Kinship Wars".
The Finnish military administration in Eastern Karelia was an interim administrative system established in those areas of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (KFSSR) of the Soviet Union which were occupied by the Finnish army during the Continuation War. The military administration was set up on 15 July 1941 and it ended during the summer of 1944. The goal of the administration was to prepare the region for eventual annexation by Finland.
Deportations of the Ingrian Finns were a series of mass deportations of the Ingrian Finnish population by Soviet authorities. Deportations took place from the late 1920s to the end of World War II. They were part of the genocide of the Ingrian Finns. Approximately over 100,000 Ingrian Finns were deported in the 1930s and 1940s.
Karelians, also known as Finnish Karelians or Karelian Finns, are a subgroup of the Finnish people, traditionally living in Finnish Karelia. Karelians speak eastern dialects of the Finnish language: the South Karelian dialects are spoken in South Karelia, while the eastern Savonian dialects are spoken in North Karelia. The South Karelian dialects were spoken in the Karelian Isthmus prior to the Winter War. Karelians are traditionally Lutheran Christians, with an Orthodox Christian minority, belonging to either the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland or the Orthodox Church of Finland respectively.
Pan-Finnicism, also known as Pan-Fennicism or sometimes even referred to as Finno-Ugrism or even Heimoaate is a pan-nationalist idea which advocates for the political or economic unification of the Finno-Ugric peoples. The idea is broad in its meaning and oftentimes it simply refers to the Finno-Ugric peoples, however on rare occasion it can be limited to only the Baltic Finnic peoples or to the Finnic peoples.
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. ISBN951-26-1735-8.
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. ISBN951-1-04963-1.
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. ISBN951-1-09751-2.
Seppälä, Helge (1989). Suomi miehittäjänä 1941-1944[Finland as occupier 1941-1944] (in Finnish). Helsinki: SN-kirjat. ISBN951-615-709-2.
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. ISBN978-951-0-40295-5.
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.
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