Anarchism in Finland dates back to the early revolutionary movements of the 20th century, seeing organized activity begin in the 1960s.
History
Grand Duchy of Finland
Supporters of anarchism have been in the country since the time of the Grand Duchy of Finland. There was little support for anarchist ideas in the early 20th century Finnish labor movement, and the country was home to a large number of Russian revolutionaries, soldiers and members of the Tolstoyan movement, some of whom were anarchists. In addition to Russia, anarchist influences flowed to Finland with immigrants who returned from North America. For example, the long-term chairman of the Finnish Seamen's Union, Niilo Wallari, and the musician Hiski Salomaa were both members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In the United States, there was also a working-class college for Finnish American radicals.
The Finnish Social Democratic Party was influenced by some anarchists in the early 20th century. When Kaapo Murros, who had translated the works of Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin into Finnish, returned from North America to Finland in 1909, he presented his party colleagues at the SDP Assembly in Kotka with an anarcho-syndicalist line, one skeptical about the possibilities of class struggle from parliament and proposed some kind of decentralized municipal and cooperative strategy. Yrjö Sirola, along with others, attacked such ideas at the meeting, emphasizing the importance of parliamentary work and the fundamental flaws of the general strike tactic. Otto Wille Kuusinen's pamphlet Anarchy and the Revolution, published in Helsinki as early as 1906, reflected the SDP's general attitude towards anarchists. In the booklet, a then-deputy member of the SDP's party committee harshly criticized those on the path to violence and individual terrorism and condemned such practices as "anarchist". The Kotka Assembly called on party branches to be vigilant about such phenomena and to dismiss those involved.
The peak period of anarchist activity in Finland is considered to be 1906–1909. After the abolition of the first Red Guards established in connection with the 1905 Revolution, several underground groups began armed action against the tsarist rule in Finland. Some of the groups were anarchist and participated in various acts of terrorism, along with other workers’ activists and the bourgeois Active Resistance Party. By the fall of 1909, the activities of the groups had waned after several of their members had been killed, imprisoned or exiled. The most significant anarchist of the 1910s was Jean Boldt, a Kuopio-born lawyer who had previously been known as a theosophist. In June 1917, anarchists took over St. Nicholas' Church in Helsinki, on the steps of which Boldt had been speaking since the spring. The seizure ended with Boldt's arrest and subsequent riots in which three militants were injured. However, the anarchist meetings continued at Senate Square throughout the summer, even though the authorities had interned Boldt in Niuvanniemi Mental Hospital. In the summer of 1917, the Russian soldiers who stayed in Helsinki established a so-called "Anarchist Club" in the factory located on the site of the present Post Office. Towards the end of the year, Russian anarchists also held the Katajanokka Casino for a while, before the Red Guards took it over in January 1918. During the Finnish Civil War, in March 1918, one Russian and one Finnish anarchist died in an incident between anarchists and the Red Guard militia. According to some estimates, among the Russian military living in Finland, there were even more anarchists than Bolsheviks. Some Russian anarchists also took part in the civil war on the side of the Reds. In February 1918, 250 Tsentrobalt anarchist sailors were involved in the Battle of Ruovesi.
Independent Finland
Organized anarchist activity did not arise in independent Finland until the 1960s. In the country, however, there were individual Finnish anarchists and anarchist Russian emigrants who were sailors and soldiers that took part in the anarchist Kronstadt uprising. More than 6,000 of them arrived in Finland in March 1921. Kronstadt refugees were initially locked up in concentration camps on the Karelian Isthmus, after which some returned to Soviet Russia and others remained permanently in Finland.
In 1933, a poem by the anarchist Kaarlo Uskela, who died eleven years earlier, Pillastunut runohepo was seized and burned by a court decision. It was considered partly atheistic and anti-clerical.
