Devotedly International—But Always Wrong: Left-Wing Intellectuals and Their Orientation toward International Progressive Culture and Literature in the 1930s and 1940s

Abstract

Abstract The layer of the educated classes and intelligentsia was thin in Finland in the 1930s and 1940s. One of the most internationally oriented was a Helsinki-based group, whose members called themselves left-wing intellectuals. In spite of numbering only about twenty men and women, the group was both vocal and visible. Today the group offers a fascinating opportunity to observe clashes between ideologies and conflicts within the labor movement, as well as the ambivalent and problematic relationship of the Finns with the Soviet Union. Paradoxically, it appears that neither decade was favorable for the group, in spite of the decades’ strikingly different political ethos. The most active periods for left-wing intellectuals were the years 1933 to 1938 and 1944 to 1948. Both of these periods resulted in profound frustration for the members of the group, who could never realize their cultural objectives. Even worse, most contemporaries thought that their ideas and aims were simply wrong. In the present article, the author analyzes internationalism among left-wing intellectuals, its expression as well as its significance to working-class culture and literature in Finland.