Visual Stereotypes of Tatars in the Finnish Press from the 1890s to the 1910s

Visual stereotypes constitute a set of tropes through which the Other is described and depicted to an audience, who perhaps never will encounter the individuals that those tropes purport to represent. Upon the arrival of Muslim Tatar traders in Finland in the late nineteenth century, newspapers and satirical journals utilized visual stereotypes to identify the new arrivals and draw demarcation lines between them and what was considered “Finnish”. The Tatars arrived during a time of tension in the relationship between the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and the Russian Empire, with the Finnish intelligentsia divided along political and language lines. Stereotypical images of Tatar pedlars were used as insults against political opponents within Finland and as covert criticism of the policies of the Russian Empire. Stereotypes about ethnic and religious minorities like the Tatars fulfilled a political need for substitute enemy images; after Finland became independent in 1917, these visual stereotypes almost disappeared.Peer reviewe

Klasskamp och klubbekrig - Mellankrigstidens finländska vänsterpress och Sverige

How did the image of Sweden and "swedishness" reflect the construction of a Finnish national identity during the time period 1918-1939? This paper focuses on the socialist and left-wing liberal press of that time. Language: Swedis

En halvdan blandras? : Om Erkki Vala, finskan, svenskan och tvåspråkigheten

Peer reviewe

Den allrakäraste fienden : Svenska stereotyper i finländsk press 1918-1939

This thesis studies stereotypes of Sweden and Swedishness in the Finnish press 1918–1939. It maps the genealogy of the images and analyzes the use of stereotypes. In newly independent Finland, the press conveyed debates about national values and political goals. The concept of national stereotyping as a political tool is derived from the works of Michael Pickering, Stuart Hall and Thomas Hylland Eriksen. The categories kin, stranger and enemy (frände, främling, fiende) are used in the study to classify images found in the material. In Finland, Swedishness was both familiar and strange, as well as an obstacle to national unity. The past image of Sweden was a militant bulwark of Western civilization. This historical mission was integrated in an ideal Finnish or Finland-Swedish identity, while contemporary Sweden was discredited as cosmopolitan and pacifist. Sweden was seen as historical kin, estranged in the present. Right-wing writers urged Sweden to reclaim its former mission by identification with "white" Finland. Cultural leftists claimed kinship with the "misunderstood" neighbor. In their interpretation of the common historical mission, the concept of a free Nordic people was coupled with Socialism and the labor movement. Travel accounts depicted a harmonious Sweden in contrast to a Finland riddled with political and cultural conflict. The Finns themselves were perceived as strangers within their own nation, refusing to assimilate into a single national ideal. This "autoexotism" dilemma was solved by focusing on the ideological struggle against an external enemy. According to monocultural nationalism, the only cure to minority questions was assimilation. An external enemy could not be assimilated, but it legitimized the fulfillment of a militant historical mission. The antisemitic image of a "Judaized" Sweden prostrating before the Bolsheviks fed right-wing fantasies of a final apocalyptic battle. Ultimately the choice between kin, stranger or enemy was dependent on the writer's own identification struggles

The Socialist Soviet Republic of Scandinavia [Kokkuvõte: Skandinaavia Nõukogude Sotsialistlik Vabariik]

Nationalist and regionalist geopolitical concepts were appropriated in the service of Communist world revolution by Finnish activists in Sweden, Finland, and Soviet Karelia. The influence of Social Democratic statesman and scholar of geopolitics, Väinö Voionmaa, can be traced in the negotiations that led to the foundation of an autonomous Karelian Labour Commune in 1921. Exiled Finnish revolutionaries persuaded the Bolsheviks that Karelia could become a stepping-stone towards revolution in Finland and Scandinavia. A greater Socialist Soviet Republic of Scandinavia, united by cultural, geographical and economical factors, would monopolize the timber market and exercise economic power over Western Europe. The idea of a Scandinavian revolution was abandoned along with the idea of world revolution in the mid-1920s. The last mentions of a Soviet Scandinavia can be found in anti-Soviet propaganda long after the demise of its promoters in the Great Terror. Keywords: geopolitics, revolution, regionalism, nationalism, Scandinavia, Soviet Union, Karelian Labour Commun

Human Rights in Interwar Finland

n the 1930s, activists fought for the protection of civil rights in the Republic of Finland, expanding the notion of rights to include also categories of people who had been previously excluded, such as political prisoners, the mentally ill, and foreign refugees. Two of these activists were the editor of the journal Tulenkantajat, Erkki Vala, and the chair of the League of Human Rights in Finland, Väinö Lassila. Their usage of the concept ‘human rights’, drawing from the traditions of liberal humanism, Christian anarchism and the socialist labour movement, is analysed in the national and international context of the interwar era. During the 1930s, Erkki Vala increasingly used the concept ‘human rights’ in ways that seem to predate the so-called starting point of modern human rights discourse in the 1940s. He met with compact resistance from the authorities, which contributed to his political marginalisation and radicalisation. This article shows that the notion of universal human rights was not unthinkable before the end of the Second World War, but it was heavily politicised and controversial even in a democratic country such as the Republic of Finland.Peer reviewe

'Our Secret Weapon' – Minority Strategies of the Finnish Tatars 1890-1945

The reception of the first generation of Finnish Tatars by representatives of the majority population in Finland, including state authorities, intellectuals, political movements and the press, shows that geopolitical circumstances and local interests outside the Tatars’ own power determined to what extent they were perceived as enemies or brothers-in-arms. Events such as the independence of Finland and the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 influenced public perceptions of Muslims in Finland. Minority spokespersons felt pressured to address mutual fears, justify their presence in Finland, and put the majority representatives at ease. This did not always succeed without ruffling feathers within their own communities. Behind the “success story” of the Finnish Tatars we find one and half a century of struggles that were not always happily resolved.Peer reviewe

The Double-Edged Sword : Political Appropriation of the Concept of Populism

The concept of populism has been in use in political debate for over a century. Because ‘populist’ is often used in a pejorative sense today, those to whom it is applied to tend to reject it. However, a closer look at the history of the concept reveals that while its meaning may fluctuate and even be dismissed as irrelevant, its use can become a political tool. This study of the use of ‘populism’ refrains from making value judgments on the actual populist nature of certain parties or political tendencies. Instead, it analyzes uses of the concept from a historical perspective. Special emphasis is placed on politicians who chose to define themselves as populist, or accept the label imposed by others, with particular focus on the Finns Party of Finland. Such self-identified populists draw their conceptions of populism from the ever-growing field of populism research, striving to appropriate and realize what scholars have only hypothetically described as a professed ideal. A closer look at the uses of populism as a political self-identity forces us to rethink its uses as a pejorative, or as an analytical, concept.Peer reviewe

“The Jesuits of our time” : The Jesuit Stereotype and the Year 1917 in Finland

The tenacious negative stereotypes of the Jesuits, conveyed to generations of Finnish school children through literary works in the national canon, were re-used in anti-Socialist discourse during and after the revolutionary year of 1917. Fear of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 paradoxically strengthened the negative stereotype of "Jesuitism," especially after the attempted revolution by Finnish Socialists that led to the Finnish Civil War of 1918. The fears connected to the revolution were also fears of democracy itself; various campaigning methods in the new era of mass politics were associated with older images of Jesuit proselytism. In rare cases, the enemy image of the political Jesuit was contrasted with actual Catholic individuals and movements.Peer reviewe

Än har yxan mycket att göra - Nationalitetsfrågor i Finland 1918-1938

This study concerns the images of Sweden, Swedes and Swedishness which can be found in magazine articles, satirical cartoons and other media in Finland from the years 1918-1938. The following paper is a pilot study of relevant material for my Ph.D. thesis. Language: Swedis