Taming Greater Finland : Pan-Finnism, the Soviet-Finnish Kalevala Controversy, and the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Republic, 1940-1956

• Main Author: Okabe, Takehiro
• Other Authors: Koivunen, Pia, Mikkeli, Heikki, Vihavainen, Timo, Helsingin yliopisto, humanistinen tiedekunta, Historian ja kulttuuriperinnön tohtoriohjelma, Helsingfors universitet, humanistiska fakulteten, Doktorandprogrammet i historia och kulturarv, University of Helsinki, Faculty of Arts, Doctoral Programme in History and Cultural Heritage
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Helsingin yliopisto 2024
• Subjects: history; karelia*; karelian
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/573614

This dissertation discusses repertories of Soviet imperial rule in Soviet Karelia from 1940 to 1956, when the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic existed there, by scrutinizing the controversy over the Kalevala and pan-Finnic kinship within the Soviet Union and between Finland and the Soviet Union. Utilizing Russian, Finnish, and Estonian archival materials and secondary sources, this work studies how the Soviet Union grafted pan-Finnic ideology onto the Soviet national ideology to justify its rule in Soviet Karelia but also to influence Finland to claim the central place of the Baltic-Finnic world after the Second World War. This dissertation is made up of four parts. Part 1 describes the historical trajectory of the controversy from the early 19th century to the late 1930s, when the pan-Finnism ideology and the Kalevala appeared in the Grand Duchy of Finland as Finnish national projects and imperial Russian productions and helped Finland and Finns become the center of the Baltic-Finnic world after independence, which was however followed by the Russian nationalism and Russian-Karelian friendship and later Russo-centric Soviet internationalism. Part 2 scrutinizes the early years of the Karelo-Finnish Republic, which rehabilitated repressed Soviet Finns and Finnish culture but saw again the rise of Russian-Karelian friendship during the Finnish occupation of Soviet Karelia. Part 3 demonstrates postwar Soviet utilization of pan-Finnism through discussions on the Soviet Kalevala centenary jubilee and Karelian-Finnish kinship within the Soviet Union and between Finland and the Soviet Union to reify the Soviet friendship of peoples and the shift of center from Finland to the Soviet Union in the Baltic-Finnic world. Part 4 concluded the dissertation with the final years of the Karelo-Finnish Republic, which saw both contradictions and persistence of the Karelo-Finnish and the Soviet Kalevala as the symbol during and after Stalin’s reign. As a conclusion, this doctoral dissertation argues that the Soviet Union ...