Finnish Party
핀란드당
A conservative Fennoman party in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Born of the language strife of the 1860s, it sought to make Finnish an official language alongside Swedish, and it organised as a modern party only in 1906. After the Young Finns broke away it pursued a policy of compliance with Russification and became known as the Old Finns; it ceased to operate at the end of 1918 when most of its members moved to the National Coalition Party.
In depth
According to the Finnish source, the Finnish Party grew out of the Fennoman movement inspired by the nationalism spreading in Europe and the ideas of J. V. Snellman. It formed during the language strife of the 1860s and 1870s, but until the early twentieth century it was essentially a parliamentary grouping without a real organisation, and it organised as a modern party only in 1906. Its leading ideologues were Snellman, Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen and J. R. Danielson-Kalmari, and its organs were Suometar and later Uusi Suometar. Yrjö-Koskinen led the party throughout the late nineteenth century and, after his death in 1903, Danielson-Kalmari.
In the late 1880s younger members influenced by liberalism formed the Young Finnish group around Jonas Castrén and Lauri Kivekäs; it became a party within the party in 1894 and broke away completely in 1905. During the periods of oppression (1899–1905 and 1908–1917) the Young Finns chose constitutional passive resistance, while the remaining party, called the Old Finns, followed a policy of compliance with the Russian authorities. The compliance men considered it important to keep state offices in Finnish hands despite Russification, and feared that resistance would increase Russification and lead to a violent conflict Finland could not survive.
Its supporters were Finnish-speaking educated people, especially officials, and wealthier land-owning Finnish-speaking peasants; in the Diet of Estates it held majorities among the clergy and the peasantry. According to the English source, after the 1906 parliamentary reform the party was consistently the largest non-socialist party in the 1907–1917 elections and the second largest after the Social Democrats, but its seats fell from 59 in 1907 to 32 in 1917.
According to the English source, after independence in 1917 and the Civil War of 1918 the party leadership switched to supporting a constitutional monarchy with a German prince as king, a plan that failed with Germany’s defeat. In December 1918 a majority of its supporters went to the conservative, monarchist National Coalition Party and a minority to the liberal, republican National Progressive Party. The Finnish source notes that J. K. Paasikivi, a former Old Finn who became president after the Second World War, saw clear links between his new eastern policy (the Paasikivi line) and the compliance policy of the years of oppression.