Hilja & Josephine
Here’s a nice illustration to the previous post about extremist receptions of Josephine Baker in Finland, from Kurikka no 6 1933.
Hilja: - Woman, if you don’t get out of here while you still can, you’ll taste this!
Hilja Riipinen was a member of parliament for the right-wing party IKL in the 1930’s. She was an active and fanatical anti-communist (attacking anything to the left of her own teetotaller, fundamentalist Lutheran views as “Communism”). She is one of only two Finnish MP’s who have been forcefully removed by order of the chairman. Kurikka was a social democrat satirical paper and logically jumped on every chance to depict the nationalists in ridiculous situations. Even though Josephine Baker is accompanied by stereotypical cartoon pickaninnies, she is herself depicted in a rather realistic way (although her costume is much more revealing than what she really did wear in the 1930’s). The cartoon is a bit ambiguous - on one hand, it plays on the misogynist idea that older women are jealous of young beauties, on the other hand, it’s not clear if Kurikka really approves of La Baker (the social democrats could be morally quite conservative, too).
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Teetotalling was a sympathetic practise embraced by leftists, as well. I remember reading a novel about a Swedish peasant woman in the beginning of the century whose daughter got romantically involved with a red Finn who had escaped to Sweden after the civil war. The mother was so happy and proud about the young people not drinking alcohol. The Finn was very sympathetically portrayed. I think mum has that book (it’s not “Maria”, but another one) - if you ever write anything about Swedish images of Finns, that could be material for it (along with Guillou’s “Ondskan” …).
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:48 pm
It’s true that large parts of the Social Democratic party in Finland wanted the Prohibition, because alcohol was seen as the bane of the working classes. Social Democrats and the Agrarian Union (Maalaisliitto) were the driving forces behind the law in 1919 (the only party that was clearly against it was Svenska Folkpartiet!). But total prohibition led to increased criminality and actually increased alcohol-related problems. The popular word for this period was therefore “pirtuaika”. The leftists started to look at Swedish solutions instead.
Interesting article about the prohibition
The populist Agrarian Union was also the main source for many of the extremist nationalist movements in the 1930’s, which saw the Social Democrats as enemies. Finnish politics was quite confusing at times.
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:44 am
Well, I was thinking about voluntary teetotalling and not government-imposed prohibition. There weren’t really any Communists saying no to alcohol in the government in Finland when they imposed the Prohibition, right? I wasn’t thinking of Social Democrats with their “von oben” attitudes.
Of course, it’s clear that government-imposed prohibition will lead to the activity of providing alcohol moving outside of the law, which brings with it more extreme problems.
Anyway,
I’m a person just like you
But I’ve got better things to do
Than sit around and fuck my head
Hang out with the living dead
Snort white shit up my nose
Pass out at the shows
I don’t even think about speed
That’s something I just don’t need
I’ve got the straight edge
- Minor Threat
>:(:))
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:59 am
As the article points out, the authorities weren’t actually prepared to properly realise the Prohibition in Finland. Maybe it’s a bit like how the Swedish illegalising of buying services of prostitutes hasn’t helped in any way, because it’s not paired with any significant efforts at anything from other ends.
November 3rd, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Yeah, well, the Commies hadn’t officially split off in 1919 yet, and egalitarian socialism (like anarcho-syndicalism) was never any significant factor in Finland. Looking at newspapers like Suomen Sosialidemokraatti writing about Swedish syndicalists, they were quite confused and didn’t really know how to describe their politics. They even called the rebels at Kronstadt “white Russians”. “Anarchism” was a bad word used by the enemies of socialism in Finland, not something that Finnish socialists would study seriously.
Coming back to Hilja Riipinen, she certainly wasn’t advocating any voluntary abstinence either. From left to right there was a strong belief in authority in Finland, and a distrust of the “masses”. If you look at the exiled Finnish Communists in Soviet Karelia, you see exactly the same “von oben” attitude towards the Karelian population as later during the Finnish occupation 1941-1944.
I haven’t read the book you mentioned, but I think it’s significant that it was written by a Swede. There’s a different, positive belief in the individual’s will to work for a collective cause early on in Swedish socialism (left of sossarna). In Finland, the events in 1905 (suurlakko) and 1918 (kapina) had shown the power of small groups of ordinary people mobilizing for a common cause, and this was very scary for the authorities, who have since then tried to discredit independent thinking and organizing. (Even in our century, the demonstrations against internet censorship a couple of years ago were described by Finnish politicians as “machination” (masinointi) - as if voluntary organisation is somehow a criminal activity.)
Because nobody except the exiled Commies wanted to take responsibility for 1918, everyone blamed the “misguided masses” and the Russians. Thus, the masses had to be ruled with a firm hand and protected from outside influences. That is exactly what Hilja is doing in the caricature…
November 4th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Jag hittade ett passande citat av självaste Rudolph Valentino:
“Var ren till kropp och själ. Kanske är den värste fienden starka drycker. Jag har aldrig smakat sprit. Det beror på min mor. Jag lovade henne, när jag var åtta år, att jag inte skulle dricka.”
Italienare!!!
November 4th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Ei ihme, että hän oli niin kaunis. Ihan sellasen viattoman näkönen…