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“We were not traitors. It has
to be understood that we were the children of idealists. Their idealism was
worded in communist ideals—that there should be equality for
all.” —Mayme Sevander [10]
The Finnish-American community in the United States
was often politically radical, heavily influenced by left-wing socialist and
communist movements. This trend was rooted, in part, in the Finnish national
awakening. The national revival took place from 1885 to 1907, a time period
corresponding to the main wave of Finnish immigration to America. Included in this
cultural revival were strong socialist, temperance, women’s rights, and
workers’ movements. These movements also took root among the Finnish
émigrés in America.[11] In America, Finnish immigrants
often labored in lumber camps or mines under terrible working conditions.
Their anger at the exploitation they and other immigrants suffered from found
its outlet in radical political movements—the labor union movement,
socialism, and eventually communism.[12] At the time, workers across the
country were unionizing, and Finns joined them in demanding better working
conditions and pay. Finns played large parts in major miners’ strikes
in the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota in
1907 and in Michigan’s
Copper Country in 1913.[13]
By 1903, forty Finnish-American clubs had formed
the Imatra
League and had begun to take steps to promote socialist ideas among the
clubs. The Imatra League had 23,697 members in 1908, almost all of
whom were Marxist in orientation.[14] A Finnish-American Workers’
League was also founded in August 1904. In 1906, delegates at a conference in
Hibbing, Minnesota, formed the Finnish Socialist
Federation and affiliated themselves with the American Socialist party. The
initial group was formed from socialist clubs with approximately 2,500
members. A few years later, in 1912, the Federation had grown to 13,667
members.[15]
The Federation’s activities centered on
“Finn Halls.” These halls—the cultural centers of the
Finnish-American community—became political centers as well. There,
Finns could dance, watch theater, and absorb and discuss leftist
politics.[16] Many of the children of Finnish-American socialists were raised
as socialists from birth. They attended the Finnish halls regularly with
their parents, but they also participated in summer camps, demonstrations,
protests, and non-religious Finnish Sunday Schools.[17]
The Finnish Socialist Federation on several
occasions experienced dissension and even splits. After the 1913 copper
miners’ strike in Michigan,
many Federation members joined the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.).
The Federation was strongly influenced by communism after the founding of the
Communist Party in the United
States. The socialist and communist Finns
split over these influences, and communist Finns formed their own Finnish
halls.[18] In 1923, the Federation officially affiliated itself with the
Workers’ Party, the public organization of the Communist Party in the
United States.[19] Federation members made up about 40 percent of the
Workers’ Party in the 1920s.[20]
By 1921, four major Finnish-American radical
newspapers were printed regularly: Työmies (Working Man),
Raivaaja
(Pioneer), Toveri (Comrade), and Eteenpäin (Forward).
These publications represented a range of political views across the leftist
spectrum.[21] Työmies was the official mouthpiece of the Finnish
Socialist Federation, and later of the Finnish section of the Workers’
Party.[22] Eteenpäin and Toveri, like Työmies,
were linked to communism. Raivaaja was the newspaper of the
Social Democrats, a group that broke from the Federation and retained its
links to the American Socialist Party. Carl Ross estimates the circulation of
the Finnish Communist press alone to have been nearly 40,000 at its peak; if the
circulation figures of Raivaaja and Industrialisti (the I.W.W. organ) are
added, the total circulation of the Finnish radical press numbered around
60,000. Because newspapers are almost always shared with others, this
represents a substantial radical movement within an immigrant community of
roughly 400,000.[23]
Not all Finns in the United States, of course, were
members of radical political movements. Many Finns were “Church
Finns”—members of the Lutheran Church, far more conservative, and
advocates of temperance.[24] These Finns did much to distance themselves from
their more radical brethren. In the wake of the Mesabi strike of 1907, for
example, the conservative Finns were so opposed to the striking miners’
socialism that they established the “True Finns Movement” (Tosi-suomalaisliike)
in February 1908. The movement claimed to be the true voice of
Finnish-Americans and asked the mining companies not to judge all Finns as
radical. They accused Finnish-American socialists of devastating the
reputation of Finns everywhere and blamed them for the miners’
“blacklist.” The leaders of this movement reportedly recommended
that the U.S. Department of Immigration deny Finnish socialists entrance to
the country.[25]
Despite the divisions within the community, speakers
traveling among Finnish-American communities to recruit immigrants to Karelia found a welcome there. Americans and Canadians
were recruited primarily by two organizations: Amtorg, the Soviet trade
mission in New York,
and Soviet-Karelian Technical Aid (Neuvosto-Karjalan Teknillinen Apu).[26]
Mayme Sevander’s father was head of Soviet-Karelian Technical Aid for a
time. She recalls that he told Finns in his recruiting speeches that:
Karelia
…needs strong workers who know how to chop trees and dig ore and build
houses and grow food. Isn’t that what we Finns have been doing in the United States
for the past thirty years? And wouldn’t it be wonderful to do that same
work in a country that needs you, a country where there is no ruling class,
no rich industrialists or kings or czars to tell you what to do? Just workers
toiling together for the common good.[27]
The recruiting speeches were often the source of
a person’s “Karelian fever.” Estimates of the number of
Finnish-Americans who caught “Karelian fever” vary, but a widely
accepted figure is approximately 6,000.[28] The fever was particularly
concentrated and widespread in 1931 and 1932. The vast majority of immigrants
arrived in Soviet Karelia in these years; few immigrants arrived after
1933.[29]
Many groups had farewells appealing to communist
sentiment printed in Finnish newspapers:
We the undersigned, leaving behind this country
of capitalistic exploitation, are headed for the Soviet Union where the
working class is in power and where it is building a socialistic society. We
appeal to you, comrades, who are staying behind, to rally round communist
slogans, to work efficiently to overthrow capitalism and create the
foundation of a Republic
of Labor.[30]
In order to be accepted to go to Soviet Karelia,
potential emigrants did not have to be members of the Communist Party. They
only had to be in good health, be willing to work hard and endure
difficulties, and receive a reference from a Communist-affiliated
organization.[31] All the emigrants, however, had in common at least an
openness to consider new, often utopian ideas.[32]
It is a matter of some debate within the
historical community whether ideology or ethnicity more strongly motivated
the Karelian fever. Alexis Pogorelskin argues that ethnicity was the primary
factor both for the recruitment of the emigrants and for the emigrants’
decisions to leave.[33] Mayme Sevander and Richard Hudelson, on the other
hand, argue that ideological motivations for emigration outweighed
nationalist ones and that Finnish ethnic identity “did not exist in
isolation from ideological factors.”[34]
Two facts, however, seem to indicate that neither
nationalist desires nor Marxist ideology can explain the
Finnish-Americans’ emigration completely. First, recruiters to Karelia did not target churchgoing, Suomi Synod Finns.
The recruiters generally spoke in Finn halls, where radical politics reigned
supreme. This seems to indicate that it was not simply Finns who were wanted
in Karelia, but a certain kind of Finns—those who would support the
aims of the Soviet Union. Second, it was
indeed Finnish Communists (or Communist sympathizers) who were targeted for
recruitment. Recruiters did not target any other nationality for settlement
in Karelia; they preferred Finns.
Arguing that nationalism was the primary factor,
as Pogorelskin does, ignores the fact that most Finns in the United States did not go to Karelia.
If nationalism were such a compelling factor, then one would expect a larger
portion of the entire Finnish-American community to emigrate. Arguing that
political ideology was the dominant motivator, as Hudelson and Sevander do,
also leaves something to be desired. There were far more Finnish Communists
in the United States than
the emigrants who went to Karelia. This
seems to indicate that a complex range of factors—ideology, ethnicity,
and perhaps others—united to create the Karelian “fever” in
the Finnish-American community.
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