Finnish Americans

FINNISH AMERICANS. During the 1890s, Finnish immigrants in Massachusetts and New York founded two workingmen’s associations, the Saima Aid Society and the Imatra Society, designed to serve workers’ educational and fraternal needs. These two organizations became models for later socialist organizations. In 1899, Antero F. Tanner established a socialist club in Rockport, Massachusetts. He and a follower, Martin Hendrickson, published a socialist newspaper for a few editions in 1900. Both “Apostles of Socialism,” as Finns later called them, began nationwide organizing tours in 1901. Matti Kurikka, a Utopian socialist, also crisscrossed the country after the failure of his Utopian community, Sointula, in British Columbia. All three of these Finnish radicals spoke to workingmen’s associations, temperance groups, church bodies, and to anyone else who would listen.

Spurred by the agitational efforts of Tanner, Hendrickson, and Kurikka, and aided by leftist exiles from Finland who began to arrive regularly in Finnish communities in the United States, Finnish Socialists formed a national organization in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1906. Called Suomalainen Sosialistijärjestö (Finnish Socialist Federation), the organization grew by 1913 to 260 chapters with thirteen thousand members throughout the nation. The federation was supported by three newspapers, Työmies (Workingman, 1903) Raivaaja (Pioneer, 1905), Toveri (Comrade, 1907) and Toveritar (1911). As an organization that sought for equality, women`s, youth`s and children`s socialist units were integral part of the party activity. In 1907 federation members gained control of Työväen Opisto (Work People’s College) in Duluth, Minnesota, from a Finnish religious organization and used the school partly to train socialist functionaries.

Many Finns simply continued to build civic institutions, which they had already done in Finland in temperance organizations, labor movement and unions. Compared to Finland, where the czar slowed down democratic processes, the United States offered new opportunities for socially active people. On the other hand, Finnish immigrants also found out that it offered racial prejudices and tougher capitalism, targeting them. So, they had reasons, but also means to act. Finnish socialists were active in the 1907 Mesabi Range iron miners’ strike in Minnesota and the 1913–1914 copper miners’ strike in northern Michigan. On the heels of the copper strike, a split occurred in the federation. The more radical left-wing socialists backed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In 1914 four thousand members withdrew from the federation, took control of Work People’s College, and began publishing Industrialisti (Industrialist, 1915–1975), which by 1920 had more than 20,000 readers. Government pressure on the Left during and after World War I caused the arrest of five Finnish IWW members, who were tried and convicted in the infamous mass trial of IWW leaders in Chicago and in strikes of the Pacific North West. After World War I industrial unionism began a decline.

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia gave the left wing of the federation a new cause. Supporters of Lenin gained control and withdrew from the Socialist Party. The federation amalgamated with the American Workers Party. Several years later the federation was reorganized separately as the Finnish Workers Federation. During the 1920s federation members worked assiduously to promote consumers’ cooperatives as a weapon in the class struggle and to strengthen Central Cooperative Wholesale, located in Superior, Wisconsin. In 1930, however, because of their close association with the US Communist Party, Finnish federation members were driven from Central Cooperative Wholesale at its annual meeting.

Nevertheless, some of the strongest and most distinctive features of the Finnish American Left remained intact. “Hall culture,” providing a vibrant left-wing community center for mining, farming, and lumber districts, put on musical, theatrical, and assorted other activities with wide popular participation. For example, singing workers’ songs created a strong sense of community and solidarity and strengthened workers’ identity. Songs combined old and new: they were based on traditional Finnish workers’ culture but also became tools to deal with American society and new working conditions. They had a significant influence in industrial conflicts by giving a common language for multicultural participants. Even more important, political tradition and experiences lived in songs and other culture forms through generations.

Socialist education was seen as key to the socialist future. Local associations organized study clubs for adults in order to teach them socialist ideology, but also American civics and language. The aim was to give them knowledge to pass civics tests, achieve citizenship, and participate in democratic activities, such as voting. Also, thousands of Finnish American children of the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s inherited a left-wing understanding of their culture and its unique importance, a political legacy for their futures. The responsibility for upbringing lay with women and youth. They organized Socialist Sunday Schools, Idealistic League, Young Pioneers, and summer camps. Thousands of other institutions, destined to be long-lived, maintained their founders’commitments through cultural activities as much as through politics or unionism.

In the early 1930s, in response to Russian requests for aid to develop the timber resources of Soviet Karelia just across the border from Finland, about 6,000 to 10,000 Finnish American men, women, and children migrated to Karelia from the United States and Canada. But their dreams turned into nightmare. At least 2,000 of Finnish Americans were convicted and executed as public enemies by Stalin´s order in the Great Purge. Later in the 1930s, during the Spanish Civil War, approximately 400 Finnish American volunteers fought in the International Brigades on the side of Republican Spain. In 1941 the Finnish Workers Federation merged with the International Workers Order, a move that tended to diminish separate ethnic identity for Finnish American members. While Työmies-Eteenpäin (Workingman Forward) was still published in Superior, Wisconsin, during the Cold War era.

The left-wing proletarian internationalism of federation members irritated right-wing socialists, who made their objections known through their newspaper, Raivaaja. The right wing established a new federation within the Socialist Party but withdrew in 1937 and became the Finnish American League for Democracy, a strictly independent socialist group. Raivaaja in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, was published until 2009, while Työmies-Eteenpäin was already disbanded in 1995.

After its internal struggle with the left-wing labor movement, the consumers’ cooperative movement grew impressively. By 1940 it comprised well over a hundred member societies in the Midwest and published two Finnish- and English-language newspapers. In 1962 it merged with a large midwestern agricultural cooperative and, for all practical purposes, lost its ethnic identity.

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Beaulieu, Michel S., Ronald N. Harpelle, ja Jaimi Penney. Labouring Finns: Transnational Politics in Finland, Canada and the United States. Turku: Institute of Migration, 2011.

Goings, Aaron. Red Harbor: Class, Violence, and Community in Grays Harbor, Washington. Simon Fraser University, 2011.

Harpelle, Ronald, Varpu Lindström, and Alexis E. Pogorelskin eds. ”Karelian Exodus: Finnish Communities in North America and Soviet Karelia During the Depression Era.” Journal of Finnish Studies 8(1) Beaverton: Aspasia Books, 2004.

Rantanen, Saijaleena. “Workers of the World Awaken! The Songs of Finnish North Americans as Social and Ideological Mediators at the turn of the 20th Century.” In Made in Finland. Eds. Toni-Matti Karjalainen & Kimi Kärki. Routledge, 2020.