Young Communist League of Finland
Encyclopedia
The Young Communist League of Finland was the youth organization of the Communist Party of Finland
(SKP) 1925-1936. The organization was clandestine, but had a significant impact in Finnish society. SKNL was a section of the Communist Youth International.
The work of SKNL was difficult due to the repression by the state machinery. However, in the period 1925-1926 SKNL cells were set up around the country. As of September 1925 the SKNL had cells in the Helsinki
, Tampere
, Pori
, Vaasa
, Lappeenranta
, Vyborg
and Kuopio
regions. In total there were 40 cells, with 149 members. The SKNL was active in the 1927 parliamentary election
, campaigning for the Socialist Electoral Organisation of Workers and Smallholders. The youth activist Toivo Latva was elected to parliament.
The first conference of SKNL was held in Moscow
, August 1927. At that time, the organization had 94 cells and 358 members. The second conference, which was attended by eight delegates, took place in connection with the congress of the Communist Youth International in August 1928. By then the membership had reached approximately 600, out of whom 20% were women.
In early 1928 SKNL experienced setbacks, when police arrested dozens of communists after information had been revealed by the arrested SKP organizer Jalmari Rasi. SKNL cadres such as Jaakko Kivi, Väinö Vuorio and Emil Paananen were arrested. Eino Lehto and Nestori Parkkari remained at large for a brief period, before going into exile in the Soviet Union
. In May 1929 the SKNL organizer Matti Dahl was caught by police, and documents seized from him were used to arrest SKNL activists such as Eino Hellfors, Jussi Siltanen, Aino Kallio and Toivo Lång.
The first congress of SKNL was held in Stockholm
, Sweden
, August 10-August 15, 1929. The delegates from Finland travelled by boat from Helsinki or, clandestinely, by motorboat from Jakobstad
. The delegates residing in the Soviet Union travelled via Germany
. In total there were 22 delegates at the congress. Initially the Stockholm City Library had been selected as the congress venue, but in order to avoid police infiltration the venue was shifted to a private residence. Whilst the congress reaffirmed its commitment to the legacy of the Communist Youth International, it did also criticize the International for not paying enough attention to the sections working in illegal conditions. The congress elected a Central Committee
of the SKNL. The new leadership got into trouble as soon as they returned Finland. The police was able to identify several congress participants. In late 1929 the leadership of SKNL included Heikki Ilvesviita, Toivo Karvonen, Tatu Väätäinen, Paavo Kivikoski, Aatto Sallinen, Aili Mäkinen, Airi Virtanen and Reino Tynkkynen.
1929 saw a rise in clashes between communists demonstrators and police forces. SKP and SKNL formed special defence groups to engage in street-fights with the police. In response, police raided the offices of various organisations connected to SKP and SKNL in Helsinki. Many SKNL cadres were arrested. SKNL also argued intensely against the so called vacillators, the Left Group of Finnish Workers
, which split from the communist controlled fronts after getting fed up with the Comintern's Third Period
policies.
s against fascism
. The SKNL was directed to work within the Social Democratic Labour Youth League (STL), the youth wing of the Social Democratic Party of Finland
. At the time the activity of STL was very low. The secret SKNL cells became fractional units inside the STL. The STL leadership did not like the infiltration, and they instructed district organizations to be vigilant against communist influences. At the STL congress in May 1937 there were around 20-30 representatives of the leftwing opposition, a grouping indirectly tied to the SKNL. Gradually SKNL ceased to function, but the SKP retained some youth work of its own. In 1944, the Democratic Youth League of Finland
was founded as the new SKP youth organization.
SKNL organised young people between the ages of 14 to 24. Its constitution stipulated that SKNL was an independent organisation, but under the political leadership of SKP. SKP and SKNL were bound to assist each other in all types of activities. The highest decision-making body of SKNL was the congress and the Central Committee. As of 1928 there were seven district organisations of SKNL; Helsinki, Tampere, Vaasa, Viipuri, Kuopio, Oulu and Turku.
In 1926 SKP established a youth bureau in Moscow, in order to assist SKNL. The organisers of the youth bureau included Toivo Antikainen, Pekka Paasonen, Hannes Mäkinen, Kaarlo Kosunen, Hertta Kuusinen
, Inkeri Lehtinen, Eino Lehto and Ville Honkanen.
In the 1920s, left-wing early youth (under 14) work was organised inside Työväen Järjestönuorten Liitto. After the TJN was banned this became responsibility of the SKNL. Pioneer groups
were built and in the beginning of 1931 a new national organisation was formed under the guidance of SKNL. The SKNL pioneers had activity in the biggest cities and it published Pioneeri. SKNL decided to close down the pioneer wing in 1934–1935.
Other publications under the influence of SKNL included the literary magazine Liekki (1923–1930). In 1929 Liekki became a political weekly, and had a circulation of 10 000 copies.
During the 1920s, there were also several local publications of SKNL led youth committees such as Taisteleva Nuoriso (Uusimaa
), Aate (Turku), Punainen Nuoriso (Vaasa
) and Punainen Pohjola (Oulu
).
Communist Party of Finland
The Communist Party of Finland was a communist political party in Finland. The SKP was a section of Comintern and illegal in Finland until 1944.SKP did not participate in any elections with its own name. Instead, front organisations were used...
(SKP) 1925-1936. The organization was clandestine, but had a significant impact in Finnish society. SKNL was a section of the Communist Youth International.
Establishment
Prior to the founding of SKNL, the SKP worked through public organizations such as the Socialist Youth League of Finland (banned 1923) and the Socialist Youth League. An effective underground youth organization was not established while it was still possible to work publicly. Gradually, young members of the SKP began setting up secret party cells of their own. In 1923 the Communist Youth International proposed the formation of a communist youth league in Finland. Activity towards the build-up of the organization intensified and in August 1924, the SKP began publishing Nuori Kommunisti ('Young Communist'). In early 1925 an organiser was hired to build the movement and the SKNL was thus founded. In May, the league had 250 members.Initial period
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, Tampere
Tampere
Tampere is a city in southern Finland. It is the most populous inland city in any of the Nordic countries. The city has a population of , growing to approximately 300,000 people in the conurbation and over 340,000 in the metropolitan area. Tampere is the third most-populous municipality in...
, Pori
Pori
Pori is a city and municipality on the west coast of Finland. The city is located some from the Gulf of Bothnia, on the estuary of the Kokemäenjoki river, which is the largest in Finland. Pori is the most important town in the Satakunta region....
, Vaasa
Vaasa
Vaasa is a city on the west coast of Finland. It received its charter in 1606, during the reign of Charles IX of Sweden and is named after the Royal House of Vasa...
, Lappeenranta
Lappeenranta
Lappeenranta is a city and municipality that resides on the shore of the lake Saimaa in South-Eastern Finland, about from the Russian border. It belongs to the region of South Karelia. With approximately inhabitants Lappeenranta is the largest city in Finland...
, Vyborg
Vyborg
Vyborg is a town in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, situated on the Karelian Isthmus near the head of the Bay of Vyborg, to the northwest of St. Petersburg and south from Russia's border with Finland, where the Saimaa Canal enters the Gulf of Finland...
and Kuopio
Kuopio
Kuopio is a city and a municipality located in the region of Northern Savonia, Finland. A population of makes it the ninth biggest city in the country. The city has a total area of , of which is water and half forest...
regions. In total there were 40 cells, with 149 members. The SKNL was active in the 1927 parliamentary election
Finnish parliamentary election, 1927
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 1 and 2 July 1927. Although the Social Democratic Pary remained the largest in Parliament with 60 of the 200 seats, Juho Sunila of the Agrarian League formed a minority government in May 1924. It remained intact until the Agrarians left in November 1924...
, campaigning for the Socialist Electoral Organisation of Workers and Smallholders. The youth activist Toivo Latva was elected to parliament.
The first conference of SKNL was held in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, August 1927. At that time, the organization had 94 cells and 358 members. The second conference, which was attended by eight delegates, took place in connection with the congress of the Communist Youth International in August 1928. By then the membership had reached approximately 600, out of whom 20% were women.
In early 1928 SKNL experienced setbacks, when police arrested dozens of communists after information had been revealed by the arrested SKP organizer Jalmari Rasi. SKNL cadres such as Jaakko Kivi, Väinö Vuorio and Emil Paananen were arrested. Eino Lehto and Nestori Parkkari remained at large for a brief period, before going into exile in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. In May 1929 the SKNL organizer Matti Dahl was caught by police, and documents seized from him were used to arrest SKNL activists such as Eino Hellfors, Jussi Siltanen, Aino Kallio and Toivo Lång.
The first congress of SKNL was held in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, August 10-August 15, 1929. The delegates from Finland travelled by boat from Helsinki or, clandestinely, by motorboat from Jakobstad
Jakobstad
Jakobstad is a town and municipality in Ostrobothnia, Finland. The town has a population of and covers a land area of . The population density is .- History :...
. The delegates residing in the Soviet Union travelled via Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. In total there were 22 delegates at the congress. Initially the Stockholm City Library had been selected as the congress venue, but in order to avoid police infiltration the venue was shifted to a private residence. Whilst the congress reaffirmed its commitment to the legacy of the Communist Youth International, it did also criticize the International for not paying enough attention to the sections working in illegal conditions. The congress elected a Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
of the SKNL. The new leadership got into trouble as soon as they returned Finland. The police was able to identify several congress participants. In late 1929 the leadership of SKNL included Heikki Ilvesviita, Toivo Karvonen, Tatu Väätäinen, Paavo Kivikoski, Aatto Sallinen, Aili Mäkinen, Airi Virtanen and Reino Tynkkynen.
1929 saw a rise in clashes between communists demonstrators and police forces. SKP and SKNL formed special defence groups to engage in street-fights with the police. In response, police raided the offices of various organisations connected to SKP and SKNL in Helsinki. Many SKNL cadres were arrested. SKNL also argued intensely against the so called vacillators, the Left Group of Finnish Workers
Left Group of Finnish Workers
Left Group of Finnish Workers was a socialist political party in Finland. The party was active in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The group was founded by activists who had previously cooperated with the Communist Party of Finland . Niilo Wälläri, Eino Pekkala, Erkki Härmä and Kusti Kulo were some...
, which split from the communist controlled fronts after getting fed up with the Comintern's Third Period
Third Period
The Third Period is a ideological concept adopted by the Communist International at its 6th World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928....
policies.
Liquidation
In the mid-1930s the Communist International and the Communist Youth International began to orientate themselves towards building popular frontPopular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
s against fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
. The SKNL was directed to work within the Social Democratic Labour Youth League (STL), the youth wing of the Social Democratic Party of Finland
Social Democratic Party of Finland
The Social Democratic Party of Finland is one of the three major political parties in Finland, along with the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party. Jutta Urpilainen is the current SDP leader. The party has been in the Finnish government cabinet for long periods and has set many...
. At the time the activity of STL was very low. The secret SKNL cells became fractional units inside the STL. The STL leadership did not like the infiltration, and they instructed district organizations to be vigilant against communist influences. At the STL congress in May 1937 there were around 20-30 representatives of the leftwing opposition, a grouping indirectly tied to the SKNL. Gradually SKNL ceased to function, but the SKP retained some youth work of its own. In 1944, the Democratic Youth League of Finland
Left Youth (Finland)
The Left Youth is a political youth organization in Finland. It is considered the youth wing of the Left Alliance, but it is not officially affiliated with the party - members of the Left Youth are not automatically members of the Left Alliance.The organization was founded in 1944...
was founded as the new SKP youth organization.
Organisation
The members of SKNL were organised in small cells, under the political direction of district organisations. Due to the conspiratory nature of the SKNL organisation, it never became a mass movement. The organisation itself claimed that the membership peaked at around 2,000, but a more realistic figure is that the total membership never reached much higher than 1,000. In the labour movement the existence of SKNL was known, but most people did not know who belonged to the league and/or how it functioned.SKNL organised young people between the ages of 14 to 24. Its constitution stipulated that SKNL was an independent organisation, but under the political leadership of SKP. SKP and SKNL were bound to assist each other in all types of activities. The highest decision-making body of SKNL was the congress and the Central Committee. As of 1928 there were seven district organisations of SKNL; Helsinki, Tampere, Vaasa, Viipuri, Kuopio, Oulu and Turku.
In 1926 SKP established a youth bureau in Moscow, in order to assist SKNL. The organisers of the youth bureau included Toivo Antikainen, Pekka Paasonen, Hannes Mäkinen, Kaarlo Kosunen, Hertta Kuusinen
Hertta Kuusinen
Hertta Elina Kuusinen was a Finnish Communist politician. She was a member of the central committee and the political bureau of the Communist Party of Finland, member of parliament , general secretary and the leader of the parliamentary group of the Finnish People's Democratic League...
, Inkeri Lehtinen, Eino Lehto and Ville Honkanen.
In the 1920s, left-wing early youth (under 14) work was organised inside Työväen Järjestönuorten Liitto. After the TJN was banned this became responsibility of the SKNL. Pioneer groups
Pioneer movement
A pioneer movement is an organization for children operated by a communist party. Typically children enter into the organization in elementary school and continue until adolescence. The adolescents then typically joined the Young Communist League...
were built and in the beginning of 1931 a new national organisation was formed under the guidance of SKNL. The SKNL pioneers had activity in the biggest cities and it published Pioneeri. SKNL decided to close down the pioneer wing in 1934–1935.
Organs
The central organ of SKNL was Nuori Kommunisti, which was published clandestinely in Helsinki. In spite of various arrests, the organization was able to bring out an issue of Nuori Kommunisti almost every month. SKNL also published and distributed documents of the Communist Youth International. The propaganda of SKNL reached almost every corner of the country. In 1928 Nuori Kommunisti had a circulation of just 175 copies, but by 1932 the number had increased to 1,100 copies. Another publication, Nuori Kaarti was also set up. In the period of 1932-1933 the (tens of different) SKNL publications had a combined circulation of about 15 000.Other publications under the influence of SKNL included the literary magazine Liekki (1923–1930). In 1929 Liekki became a political weekly, and had a circulation of 10 000 copies.
During the 1920s, there were also several local publications of SKNL led youth committees such as Taisteleva Nuoriso (Uusimaa
Uusimaa
Uusimaa, or Nyland in Swedish, is a region in Finland. It borders the regions Finland Proper, Tavastia Proper, Päijänne Tavastia and Kymenlaakso...
), Aate (Turku), Punainen Nuoriso (Vaasa
Vaasa
Vaasa is a city on the west coast of Finland. It received its charter in 1606, during the reign of Charles IX of Sweden and is named after the Royal House of Vasa...
) and Punainen Pohjola (Oulu
Oulu
Oulu is a city and municipality of inhabitants in the region of Northern Ostrobothnia, in Finland. It is the most populous city in Northern Finland and the sixth most populous city in the country. It is one of the northernmost larger cities in the world....
).