The Socialist Soviet Republic of Scandinavia
Ajalooline Ajakiri, 2015, 3 (153), 287–326 The Socialist Soviet Republic of Scandinavia Ainur Elmgren ABSTRACT Nationalist and regionalist geopolitical concepts were appropriated in the ser- vice 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 So- cialist Soviet Republic of Scandinavia, united by cultural, geographical and eco- nomical factors, would monopolize the timber market and exercise economic power over Western Europe. The idea of a Scandinavian revolution was aban- doned along with the idea of world revolution in the mid-1920s. The last men- tions 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, So- viet Union, Karelian Labour Commune The pursuit of a “Greater Finland” is a well-known chapter in the history of Finnish nationalism. The Greater Finland project uniting the “tribal brothers” of Finland and Karelia, sometimes also the national irredenta of the border regions in Northern Sweden and Norway, the Kola Penin- sula and the Finno-Ugric minorities of Russia, was practically monopo- lized by right-wing intellectual movements after Finland’s independence in 1917 and the subsequent civil war.1 However, it had inspired politicians and scholars identifying as Socialist before, and it would continue to do so.
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