The Communist Party of Finland ( fi, Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue, SKP; sv, Finlands Kommunistiska Parti) was a communist

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. The SKP was a section of Comintern and illegal in Finland until 1944. The SKP was banned by the state from its founding and did not participate in any elections with its own name. Instead, front organisations were used. In the 1920s the communists took part in the

Socialist Workers' Party of Finland Socialist Workers' Party of Finland ( fi, Suomen Sosialistinen Työväenpuolue, SSTP) was a Finnish political party in the early 1920s. The SSTP consisted of radical leftists who split from the Social Democratic Party of Finland after the Finnish ...

(1920–1923) and the Socialist Electoral Organisation of Workers and Smallholders (1924–1930). Both of them were also banned. In 1944, a new front,

Finnish People's Democratic League Finnish People's Democratic League ( fi, Suomen Kansan Demokraattinen Liitto, SKDL; sv, Demokratiska Förbundet för Finlands Folk, DFFF) was a Finnish political organisation with the aim of uniting those left of the Finnish Social Democratic P ...

was formed. The SKP controlled these fronts but they always had a prominent minority of non-communist socialists.

History

Early stages

In 1918, the

Reds Reds may refer to: General * Red (political adjective), supporters of Communism or socialism * Reds (January Uprising), a faction of the Polish insurrectionists during the January Uprising in 1863 * USSR (or, to a lesser extent, China) during th ...

lost the Finnish Civil War. The Social Democratic Party of Finland had supported the losing side, and several of its leaders were exiled in

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

. Some of these exiles founded the Communist Party of Finland in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

. The SKP was illegal in Finland until 1944, and members could be imprisoned. After the

Continuation War The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet-Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944, as part of World War II.; sv, fortsättningskriget; german: Fortsetzungskrieg. A ...

, the SKP dominated the

, which was founded in 1944 as an

umbrella organization An umbrella organization is an association of (often related, industry-specific) institutions who work together formally to coordinate activities and/or pool resources. In business, political, and other environments, it provides resources and ofte ...

of the radical left.

Cold War

The Cold War era was the high point of Communists in Finland. Between 1944 and 1979 support of the Finnish People's Democratic League was in the range of 17%–24%. Communists participated in several cabinets, but Finland never had a communist

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

. In the mid 1960s the U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 40 000 (1.44% of the working age population). with the SKP's main rival for domination of the political left being the Social Democratic Party of Finland. The competition was very bitter in

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ...

s and other leftist organizations. The SKP received substantial financial support from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

during the Cold War. Internally, SKP was divided, with a

Eurocommunist Eurocommunism, also referred to as democratic communism or neocommunism, was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties which said they had developed a theory and practice of social transformation more rele ...

mainstream and a hardline pro-Moscow minority, called the '' Taistoists'' after their leader, Taisto Sinisalo. The word "taisto" also means "battle" or "fight"; the double connotation made this slur, originally launched by the largest Finnish newspaper '' Helsingin Sanomat'', stick. Soviet threats to withdraw support were the main reason why reformists did not expel the Taistoists from the party leadership or membership.

Aftermaths of the Prague Spring

The events of the Prague Spring followed by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia had strong repercussions on the SKP. With the SKP's leadership strongly denouncing the Soviet intervention, internal disputes became fiercer than ever. While a de facto

majority held sway, the Taistoist minority decisively stood by the

and the

Brezhnev doctrine The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet foreign policy that proclaimed any threat to socialist rule in any state of the Soviet Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe was a threat to them all, and therefore justified the intervention of fellow socialist st ...

. Gradually this led to a disintegration, and in practice, the party now consisted of two parallel structures, and gradually lost ground in terms of public support. The most hardline leader of the party, Markus Kainulainen, led a group that even opposed Soviet policies after the Perestroika had begun. In 1985–1986 a large number of Taistoists, hundreds of party organizations with thousands of members, were expelled. They regrouped as the Communist Party of Finland (Unity) (SKPy) which later evolved into the current

Communist Party of Finland (1994) The Communist Party of Finland ( fi, Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue, SKP sv, Finlands kommunistiska parti, FKP) or New Communist Party of Finland ( fi, Uusi Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue, USKP sv, Finlands nya kommunistiska parti, FNKP) is a political ...

Collapse

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s led to ideological conflicts: bitter internal disputes plagued the party. Bad stock-market investments made during Aalto's term of office resulted in financial bankruptcy in 1992. The SKP never recovered. A majority of the party members, with other member-organizations of SKDL, formed the Left Alliance in 1990. SKPy, originally the faction of the party expelled in 1985–1986, outlasted its parent and registered itself as the Communist Party of Finland in 1997, but has failed to regain the former Communist Party's parliamentary representation. In the elections of 2007 it won 0.7% of the vote; in April 2011, it won just 0.3%. 9.232 of 2.939.571
Ministry of Justice Finland
)

Youth wing

The youth wing of the SKP was the Communist Youth League of Finland (SKNL, 1925–1936). After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

young communists were active in the SKDL's Democratic Youth League of Finland (SNDL). The SNDL was member of

World Federation of Democratic Youth The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) is an international youth organization, and has historically characterized itself as left-wing and anti-imperialist. WFDY was founded in London in 1945 as a broad international youth movement, ...

Leaders

References

{{Authority control

Finland–Soviet Union relations Defunct communist parties Finnish People's Democratic League Political parties established in 1918 Political parties disestablished in 1992 Defunct political parties in Finland Communist parties in Finland Far-left political parties 1918 establishments in Finland Political parties of the Russian Revolution 1992 disestablishments in Finland Formerly banned communist parties