Vol. XIII (2007), no 20 - The International Newsletter of Communist ...

The International Newletter of Communist Studies Online XIII (2007), no 20 135
were accepted. The final shutdown followed in early 1938 when the Comintern workers
including the Finnish ILS teachers were severely hit by Stalinist terror. The last Finnish
students had to witness the disappearance of their leaders in Moscow. After a curious
additional year, the majority of the graduates was sent back to Finland in the autumn of
1938. The former ILS students that had remained in the USSR and assimilated into Soviet
society were at the greatest risk of becoming terror casualties.
The ILS was saturated with ideology and propaganda. The study analyzes especially the use
of history as a vehicle of ideological standardisation and as instrument of power. Special
attention is paid to the effects of Stalin’s intervention at the ILS and inside the CPF.
The book describes the life of Finns at the ILS and outside the school. The fate of the ILS
Finns after their studying or teaching period in Moscow are described in detail. The ILS Finns
have been compared to students and teachers from the other ILS sectors, especially the
British and the Irishmen, the Austrians and the Scandinavians that were often taught by the
Swedish speaking Finns. The protagonist among the teachers is Yrjö Sirola, who was called
“father of the CPF cadres”.
Soviet education was of great importance in Finland in the post WW2 period. Three former
students became ministers of the Finnish governments (1945–1948), and 12 of them were
elected to parliament. The training at the ILS, however, did not contribute to revolution in
Finland. Instead, the ILS-educated cadres took the power inside the CPF. The Stalinist
methods of cadre policy, organisation and discipline were applied to the party’s own ranks.
The CPF’s inner circle kept the power for a relatively long period, until the mid-1960s.
The archival materials are collected from the RGASPI (Moscow), the National Archives and
the People’s Archives (both in Helsinki). In the study, the most often theorist referred to is
Erving Goffman with his concept of total institutions.
The main heading of the study, “A Short Course of Stalinism”, crystallises the interpretation
of the ILS as a school for the ideological coherence of Stalinism. On the other hand, the title
includes a statement about the deficiency of the Stalinist education, with the schooling at the
ILS being restricted to one year only.
Saarela, Tauno: Kansan Tahto. Pohjolan työtätekevien lehti, Jyväskylä,
Gummerus Oy, 2006. 448 p.
Newspapers have been important for the Finnish labour movement. The first labour
newspaper was founded in Helsinki in 1886 and by the end of the century there were three
papers in the country. An actual wave of foundation took place in 1905-06 when labour
associations in various towns started their own newspapers. That coincided with the dramatic
membership increase of the labour movement as the ban on the creation of new organisations
issued in 1899 by the Russian authorities, had been lifted after the general strike in November
1905. The general strike also made the tsar to give a promise to establish a new unicameral
parliament based on universal suffrage in Finland.
Many of those newspapers born after the general strike have disappeared but Kansan Tahto
(Will of the People), which started in Oulu in the beginning of February 1906, is still alive.