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The 1919 constitution provided that both Finnish and Swedish should be the national languages. A younger radical generation now raised the demand for the supremacy of Finnish, and the language controversy was a bitterly contested issue during the interwar period. The position of the Swedish language was progressively weakened toward the end of the 1930s, as more Finnish speakers moved into positions of economic and cultural power. The enmity of the language issues was not healed until after the unifying effects of World War II. Following the war, the laws governing language were revised, first in 1947 and again in 1961. The constitution of 2000 guaranteed equal status for Swedish, which remains an official language of the country and a required subject in Finnish schools. For the first time the right of the Roma and Sami to maintain and preserve their cultures was also made explicit and constitutionally binding.
Foreign policy
After the recognition of Finland as a sovereign state, two problems had to be faced. The first was in connection with the eastern boundary, where influential groups wished to annex eastern Karelia. By the Treaty of Tartu (Dorpat) in 1920, however, the boundary was unchanged except in the north, where Finland acquired the harbour of Petsamo and a route to the Arctic Ocean. The other problem concerned the Åland Islands (Finnish: Ahvenanmaa), which Sweden had temporarily occupied during the Finnish Civil War. The demands of the population of the islands to be united with Sweden were firmly rejected. The League of Nations settled the question in 1921 in accordance with Finland’s wishes.
Finland’s main security problems resulted from the threat from the Soviet Union. An attempt to solve this by a defense alliance with Estonia, Latvia, and Poland in 1922 failed when Parliament refused to ratify the agreement, and in 1932 a Finnish-Soviet nonaggression pact was signed. Despite this, relations between the two countries did not really improve, and they remained “neighbours against their will.” During the second half of the 1930s, a Finnish-Swedish defense association was planned that, among other things, would have brought about the rearming of Åland, but the Soviet Union objected to these plans, and they could not be realized.
Finland during World War II
The Winter War
After Poland’s defeat in the autumn of 1939, the Soviet Union, wishing to safeguard Leningrad, demanded from Finland a minor part of the Karelian Isthmus, a naval base at Hanko (Hangö), and some islands in the Gulf of Finland. When Finland rejected the demand, the Soviet Union launched an attack on November 30, 1939, beginning the Russo-Finnish War. Immediately after the attack a coalition government formed under Risto Ryti. Despite courageous resistance and a number of successful defense actions, the defense of the Karelian Isthmus broke down, and Finland had to initiate peace negotiations. By the Treaty of Moscow of March 12, 1940, Finland surrendered a large area of southeastern Finland, including the city of Viipuri (renamed Vyborg), and leased the peninsula of Hanko to the Soviet Union for 30 years.
Cooperation with Germany
After the Treaty of Moscow the plan for a Nordic defense union was resumed. The Soviet Union still objected, however, and the plan was thus abandoned. In December 1940 President Kyösti Kallio resigned, and Ryti was elected in his place. When the tension between Germany and the Soviet Union grew in the spring of 1941, Finland approached Germany but did not conclude a formal agreement. Nevertheless, Finland, like Sweden after Norway’s capitulation, allowed the transit of German troops. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, therefore, German troops were already on Finnish territory, and Finland was ready for war; its submarines, in fact, were operating in Soviet waters. The “War of Continuation” (1941–44) began with a successful Finnish offensive that led to the capture of large areas of eastern Karelia. Some Finns were reluctant, however, to cross the old border of 1939, and the spirit of the Winter War that had united the Finns began to weaken. From the winter of 1942–43, Germany’s defeats gave rise to a growing demand for peace in Finland. After the breakthrough of the Red Army on the Karelian Isthmus in June 1944, President Ryti resigned on August 1. He was succeeded by Marshal Gustaf Mannerheim, who began negotiations for an armistice. This was signed on September 19, 1944, on condition that Finland recognize the Treaty of Moscow of 1940 and that all foreign (German) forces be evacuated. A pledge was given, moreover, to cede Petsamo; to lease an area near Porkkala, southwest of Helsinki, for a period of 50 years (in place of Hanko); and within 6 years to pay the equivalent of $300 million in goods for war reparations. In the meantime, however, the German army refused to leave the country, and, in the series of clashes that followed, it devastated great areas of northern Finland in its retreat. The final peace treaty, signed in Paris on February 10, 1947, reiterated the conditions of the armistice agreement.
Jörgen WeibullMarkku Ilmari Henriksson