Public memory, National Heritage, and memorialization of the 1918 Finnish Civil War

Timo Ylimaunu,Oula Seitsonen,Paul R. Mullins

doi:10.1080/00438243.2020.1724821

Timo Ylimaunu, Oula Seitsonen + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2020.1724821

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Abstract

ABSTRACT The Finnish Civil War in 1918 left the newly independent country (1917) scarred for decades. In this paper, we assess the difficult public memory, national narrative and memorialization of the war. We take as our starting point a public crowdsourcing organized by the State-broadcasting company about the material traces of conflicts in Finland. Themes raised by the public in the crowdsourcing are used as foundation to map heritage perspectives. Special attention is paid to the memorial landscapes of the war. In the past century, the remembrance of the war has gone through several stages, from the complete denial of memorializing the defeated side and the associated clandestine remembrance practices based on folk religion, to today’s situation where the war is largely seen as a shared national tragedy. We outline the current status and importance of Civil War heritage based on public perceptions and stake out some directions for future research.

Highlights

In 2018 a host of memorial events, museum exhibitions, public lectures, historical studies and popular histories marked the centenary of the Finnish Civil War between the right-wing Whites and left-wing Reds (e.g. Hoppu et al 2018; HY 2018; Tepora and Roselius 2018)
In this paper we take as our starting point a recent public crowdsourcing about the material traces of conflicts on Finnish soil organized by the State-broadcasting company Yleisradio (YLE 2014)
Special attention is paid to the memorial landscapes of the war which today loom as a shared national tragedy

Summary

Introduction

In 2018 a host of memorial events, museum exhibitions, public lectures, historical studies and popular histories marked the centenary of the Finnish Civil War between the right-wing Whites and left-wing Reds (e.g. Hoppu et al 2018; HY 2018; Tepora and Roselius 2018). After the Civil War, the Reds’ experiences had brought expectations of public recognition of their grief, but this was not allowed to take material forms until the Second World War. Instead, Red memories lingered as haunting and covert local commemorative landscapes of brutality and oppression by victorious Whites. This is a typical example of these anonymous images, though in this case there is suggestive evidence that the well-dressed men were staging the scene.

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