Bibliography
- Communism in Finland (1967)
- Escape to Russia (1974)
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John H. Hodgson is a political scientist.
He was for a long time custodian for an institution at Syracuse University in New York. He is one of the Western world's specialists on Russian communism, especially the Nordic sector. His Communism in Finland is a standard work on Nordic political history. He has also written a book about Otto Ville Kuusinen.
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Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe bordering the Baltic Sea, Gulf of Bothnia, and Gulf of Finland, between Sweden to the west, Russia to the east, Estonia to the south, and north-eastern Norway to the north. The capital and largest city is Helsinki. Other major cities are Espoo, Tampere, Vantaa, Oulu, Turku, Jyväskylä, Lahti and Kuopio.
The foreign relations of Finland are the responsibility of the president of Finland, who leads foreign policy in cooperation with the government. Implicitly the government is responsible for internal policy and decision making in the European Union. Within the government, preparative discussions are conducted in the government committee of foreign and security policy, which includes the Prime Minister and at least the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Defence, and at most four other ministers as necessary. The committee meets with the President as necessary. Laws concerning foreign relations are discussed in the parliamentary committee of foreign relations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs implements the foreign policy.
The History of Finland begins around 9,000 BC during the end of the last glacial period. Stone Age cultures were Kunda, Comb Ceramic, Corded Ware, Kiukainen, and Pöljä cultures. The Finnish Bronze Age started in approximately 1,500 BC and the Iron Age started in 500 BC and lasted until 1,300 AD. Finnish Iron Age cultures can be separated into Finnish proper, Tavastian, and Karelian cultures. The earliest written sources mentioning Finland start to appear from the 12th century onwards when the Catholic Church started to gain a foothold in Southwest Finland.
Scandinavia is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties. The term Scandinavia in local usage covers the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The majority national languages of these three belong to the Scandinavian dialect continuum, and are mutually intelligible North Germanic languages.
The Nordic Council is the official body for formal inter-parliamentary co-operation among the Nordic countries. Formed in 1952, it has 87 representatives from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden as well as from the autonomous areas of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and the Åland Islands. The representatives are members of parliament in their respective countries or areas and are elected by those parliaments. The Council holds ordinary sessions each year in October/November and usually one extra session per year with a specific theme. The Council's official languages are Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, though it uses only Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as its working languages. These three comprise the first language of around 80% of the region's population and are learned as a second or foreign language by the remaining 20%.
The Baltic states, also known as the Baltic countries, Baltic republics, Baltic nations, or simply the Baltics, is a geopolitical term, typically used to group the three sovereign states in Northern Europe on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The term is not used in the context of cultural areas, national identity, or language, because while the majority of people in Latvia and Lithuania are Baltic people, the majority in Estonia are Finnic. The three countries do not form an official union, but engage in intergovernmental and parliamentary cooperation. The most important areas of cooperation between the three countries are foreign and security policy, defence, energy, and transportation.
In Finland, Swedish is a mandatory school subject for Finnish-speaking pupils in the last four years of the primary education. This so-called other domestic language is also mandatory in high schools, vocational schools, and vocational universities. Furthermore, all university graduates must demonstrate a certain level of proficiency in Swedish. Altogether 89% of Finnish citizens are native Finnish speakers, whereas 5.3% of the population report Swedish as their mother tongue. Currently, it is possible for Finnish citizens to report a different mother tongue for themselves at any time, and as many times as desired, by submitting a form to the Population Register Center.
Nordic folk music includes a number of traditions in Northern European, especially Scandinavian, countries. The Nordic countries are generally taken to include Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The Nordic Council, an international organization, also includes the autonomous territories of Åland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Historically, the term Nordic was also applied to Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Otto Wilhelm (Wille) Kuusinen was a Finnish and, later, Soviet politician, literary historian, and poet who, after the defeat of the Reds in the Finnish Civil War, fled to the Soviet Union, where he worked until his death.
Fennoscandia or the Fennoscandian Peninsula is the geographical peninsula comprising the Scandinavian and Kola Peninsulas, mainland Finland, and Karelia. Administratively this roughly encompasses the mainlands of Finland, Norway and Sweden, as well as Murmansk Oblast, much of the Republic of Karelia, and parts of northern Leningrad Oblast in Russia.
Eino Abramovich Rahja was a Finnish-Russian revolutionary who joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, becoming aligned with the party's Bolshevik faction. Rahja organized Lenin's temporary escape to Finland in the summer of 1917. During the Finnish Civil War, Rahja was one of the most capable military leaders of the Reds. After the Reds lost the war, he fled to the Russian SFSR where he lived for the rest of his life and became, for example, a commander of the army corps (komkor) in the Red army.
Communism is a philosophical, social, political, economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money and the state.
Finland–Russia relations have been conducted over many centuries, from wars between Sweden and Russia in 1700s, to the planned and realized creation and annexation of the Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire during Napoleonic times in 1800s, to the dissolution of the personal union between Russia and Finland after the abdication of Russia's last czar in 1917, and subsequent birth of modern Finland, with support of the bolshevik (Soviet) Russian government. Finland had its own civil war with minor involvement by Soviet Russia, was later invaded by the USSR, and had its internal politics influenced by it. Relations since then have been both warm and cool, fluctuating with time. Russia has an embassy in Helsinki, a consulate-general in Turku and consulates in Lappeenranta and Mariehamn. Finland has an embassy in Moscow, a consulate-general in Saint Petersburg and two branches of the consulate.
Anti-communism is a political movement and ideology opposed to communism. It has been prominent in resistance movements against communism under socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties throughout history. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an intense rivalry. Anti-communism has been an element of movements which hold many different political positions, including conservatism, fascism, liberalism, nationalism and social democracy as well as anarchist or libertarian and even socialist and anti-Stalinist left viewpoints.
The Nordic countries, or the Nordics, are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic, where they are most commonly known as Norden. The term includes Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands—which are both part of the Kingdom of Denmark—and the Åland Islands (Finland) as well as Jan Mayen and Svalbard archipelagos that belong to Norway. The Norwegian Antarctic territories are often not considered a part of the Nordic countries due to their geographical location. Several regions in Europe such as the Northern Isles of Scotland share cultural or ethnic ties with Nordic nations, but are not considered to be Nordic countries. Scandinavians, who comprise over three quarters of the region's population, are the largest group, followed by Finns, who comprise the majority in Finland; other ethnic groups are the Greenlandic Inuit, the Sámi people, and recent immigrants and their descendants. The native languages Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese are all North Germanic languages rooted in Old Norse. Native non-Germanic languages are Finnish, Greenlandic and several Sami languages. The main religion is Lutheran Christianity.
The Nordic Resistance Movement is a Pan-Nordic neo-Nazi movement and in Sweden, a political party. It is established in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, and also has members in Iceland. It has been banned in Finland, but the ban has been appealed. The NRM has been described as a terrorist organization due to their aim of abolishing democracy along with their paramilitary activities and weapons caches.
Sámi politics refers to politics that concern the ethnic group called Sámis in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. In a more narrow sense, it has come to indicate the government of Sámi affairs by Sámi political institutions. This article deals with Sámi political structures, with an emphasis on the contemporary institutions.
The Arctic Policy of the Kingdom of Denmark defines the Kingdom’s foreign relations and policies with other Arctic countries, and the Kingdom’s Strategy for the Arctic on issues occurring within the geographic boundaries of "the Arctic" or related to the Arctic or its peoples. The Kingdom of Denmark is an Arctic nation with the importance of The unity of the Realm with Denmark in Europe and the self-governing countries Greenland in the Arctic and the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic.
Anti-Leninism is opposition to the political philosophy Leninism as advocated by Vladimir Lenin.
