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The Finnish Party (in Finnish: Suomalainen Puolue) was a Fennoman conservative political party in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and independent Finland. Born out of Finland's language strife in the 1860s, the party sought to improve the position of the Finnish language in Finnish society. Johan Vilhelm Snellman, Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen, and Johan Richard Danielson-Kalmari were its ideological leaders. The party's chief organ was the Suometar newspaper, later Uusi-Suometar, and its members were sometimes called Suometarians (suomettarelaiset).
Ideology[edit]
nationalism: language question, autonomy, unifying the people
social reform: catheder socialism, helping cotters, mandatory education, "radical" party program of 1906, parliamentarism before the Civil War
conservatism: traditional values, Christianity, temperance movement, monarchism after the Civil War
appeasement and compliance: keeping administrative posts in Finnish hands, waiting for the crisis to pass, taking into account Russia's foreign policy interests, comparison to "Paasikivi line"
History[edit]
Snellman as Senator
Yrjö-Koskinen as Senator
The party started to form around a core of Fennoman intellectuals in the 1860s, but was still formally unorganized in the 1870s. Improving the status of the Finnish language, especially furthering its use in education, was a central issue. In the 1877-1878 parliamentary sessions the party attained a leading role in the Diet among the clergy and peasantry. [1]
In the 1880s a faction that took a critical view of Russia called the Young Finland group rose within the party and in 1894 it founded the Young Finnish Party. The Finnish Party sought legitimacy in the eyes of the Russian authorities and saw cooperation with Russia as a way to enact its language policies. When Russification began in 1899, the Young Finns advocated passive resistance whereas the Finnish Party, now often called the Old Finns (vanhasuomalaiset), supported appeasement. Although the party maintained that Finland's rights were being violated, it emphasized the importance of keeping official positions in Finnish hands and feared that resistance could lead to further loss of autonomy.
Aside from the central language question, the party espoused conservative values and supported many social reforms, especially after the 1906 election reform. In parliamentary elections in 1907-1917, the party was consistently the biggest non-socialist party in the Parliament and the second biggest overall after the Social Democratic Party. However, it lost seats in every election, sliding down from 59 MPs in 1907 to 32 in 1917.
YEAR SEATS VOTE% RANK 1907 59 27.34 2nd 1908 55 25.44 2nd 1909 48 23.62 2nd 1910 42 22.07 2nd 1911 43 21.71 2nd 1913 38 19.88 2nd 1916 33 17.49 2nd 1917 32 ? 2nd
By the end of the Finnish Civil War, Russification was no longer an issue and the language question had lost a great deal of its importance in Finnish politics. The main issues holding the party together were now secondary to economic and constitutional issues. Although it had agreed to establishing a republican form of government before the war, the party leadership now switched to supporting monarchism. Party leaders saw in a king a bulwark against socialism and thought that the election of a German prince as a monarch would guarantee Germany's military support, but the plan fell through when Germany surrendered. In December 1918, the party's supporters divided into two new parties, a majority going to the conservative, monarchist National Coalition Party and a minority to the liberal, republican National Progressive Party. [2]
Prominent party members[edit]
- Johan Vilhelm Snellman (1806-1881)
- Agathon Meurman (1826-1909)
- Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen (1830-1903)
- Johan Richard Danielson-Kalmari (1853-1933)
- Lauri Ingman (1863-1934)
- Juho Kusti Paasikivi (1870-1956) - Senate chairman 1918
- Ernst Nevanlinna (1873-1932) - Speaker of Parliament 1918, editor of Uusi Suometar 1906-1913
TODO: creation of the markka, better account of the ideology, positions on the big issues during 1905-1907 and 1917-1918, Danielson-Kalmari and Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen, maybe Paasikivi, maybe examples from the 1906 reform program [1]
Sources[edit]
- ^ Ilkka Liikanen (1995): Fennomania ja kansa - Joukkojärjestäytymisen läpimurto ja Suomalaisen puolueen synty. Pages 349-351. Suomen Historiallinen Seura. ISBN 951-710-012-4.
- ^ Hannu Salokorpi (1988): Pietarin tie - Suomalainen puolue ja suomettarelainen politiikka helmikuun manifestista 1899 Tarton rauhaan 1920. Pages 349-351. Suomen Historiallinen Seura. ISBN 951-8915-03-2
--Jouten 14:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
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