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

• Published in: Ajalooline Ajakiri. The Estonian Historical Journal
• Main Author: Elmgren, Ainur
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Tartu Press 2015
• Subjects: karelia*; karelian
• Online Access: http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/EAA/article/view/AA.2015.3.04; https://doi.org/10.12697/AA.2015.3.04

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 Commune