Seuraesittelyssä: Suomen Antropologinen Seura

‘Bigwig hatred’ and the emergence of the first Scandinavian agrarian‐populist party

“…Hakalehto (1986, p. 201) notes, in the first volume of the official party history, that the AP ‘gained its greatest support in those constituencies in which the independent small‐farming share of the population was highest…and in which the rural population, influenced by revivalist movements, was religious’. Isohookana‐Asunmaa (1986, p. 148) asserts that from the party's inception onwards a majority of [one of the revivalist groups] Conservative Laestadians belonged to the AP whilst Talonen (1988) concurs that in northern Finland the AP drew particular strength from Conservative Laestadianism (CL).…”

“…Plainly, then, in advocating a possible separation of church and state, a fundamental element in the AP's anti‐clericalism was an attack on the social privileges the clergy had acquired over the years. This anti‐clericalism, moreover, appealed to elements in the AP's small‐farmer CL base since as Talonen (1988, p. 129) has suggested, ‘the Agrarians church policy met the expectations of many Laestadians in their critique of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the CLs emphasis on a living Christian faith’.…”

“…The AP, moreover, was not necessarily well‐known whereas in several strong CL municipalities candidates included CL politicians with a record of representation in the defunct House of Estates. All six Laestadians representing northern Finland in the Peasant Estate between 1877 and 1906 were Old Finns (Talonen, 1988, p. 350) and it seems probable that for some CLs the Old Finns' plea to place the nation as a whole before the pursuit of narrow class interests elicited some sympathy. In the ON9 municipality of Kuusamo at the 1907 general election, for example, the Old Finns gained 73% of the vote, polling all the votes in the Sydänmaa and Siuminki voting areas and over 97% in four others (Talonen, 1988, p. 127).…”

“…The article draws extensively on primary historical sources, including materials in the Finnish state archive, AP archive, committee reports into farming conditions at the turn of the 20th century and contemporary press reports. Use is also made of three doctoral dissertations (Kinnunen, 2004; Nykänen, 2012; Talonen, 1988) on the party‐political profile of Christian revivalism in the focused period. The detailed official histories of the party are consulted (Hakalehto, 1986; Mylly, 1989) as, too, biographies and profiles of its pioneering leaders (Hokkanen, 1986).…”