Problems of Finnish extreme right-wing organisations of Finland’s first republic

Abstract

The article is devoted to the very difficult task of identifying, archiving and organising disparate and, for the most part, incomplete archives of Finnish extreme nationalist movements of the interwar period and the Second World War, in the other words, in the First Republic of Finland (1919–1944). The most important of these organisations can be considered to be The Lapua Movement (1929–1932) and its successor, The Patriotic People’s Movement (IKL) (1932–1944) and the Academic Karelia Society (1922–1944). National questions, becoming quite important in the first half of the 20th century, become in modern Finland all the more important in terms of their scientific research. Their study is already absolutely necessary for the full and complete understanding of the events in Finland of that period. In this connection it is quite revealing that in the first decades after the Second World War studying the history of the Finnish right nationalist radicalism rarely attracted researchers, as the political situation in the country did not allow an objective reconstruction of the history of the losing side. The situation was also affected by the inaccessibility of many archival documents. The history of the Finnish right nationalist radicalism of the interwar period is still not enough studied both in Russian and in Finnish and in world historiography. Сonsidering the problem of the history of right-wing nationalist movement in Finland it can be argued that, along with the importance of this research to explain the policy of 1920s-1930s Finland, as well as the problem of the country’s participation in World War II on the side of Nazi Germany, there are still quite good prospects for the study proposed here. Moreover, it is possible to hope that the answers to urgent questions can mainly be found in the materials of the Finnish archives. Refs 31.