A Short Course of Stalinism

Joni Krekola here provides an English-language summary of his new work: A Short Course of Stalinism. Finns at the International Lenin School, Moscow, 1926-1938.

Joni Krekola, Stalinismin lyhyt kurssi. Suomalaiset Moskovan Lenin-koulussa 1926-1938, (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura), 2006, ISBN 951-746-864-4, pp445.

The International Lenin School (ILS) in Moscow educated leading functionaries of communist parties from around the world between 1926 and 1938. The foundation of the ILS can be traced back to the death of Lenin in early 1924. It was followed by the introduction of the principles of 'Bolshevisation' at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern). The world party, its members (national sections) and single individuals in the home countries were supposed to imitate the only victorious revolutionaries: the bolsheviks. The Comintern schools like the ILS became instruments of a growing 'Russification' and stalinisation of international communism. The ILS succeeded in educating a generation of stalinist functionaries that were faithful to Moscow's party line. The totalitarian goal of an army of professional revolutionaries, however, remained uncompleted until 1938 when the ILS was finally dissolved.

The ILS was a totalitarian institution close to the Comintern's headquarters. The students came mainly from European and American communist parties. After the schooling, they were most often sent back to their home countries. During the education period, which lasted from half a year to three years, they were supposed to internalise current bolshevik values, methods and discipline. Through them, the national communist parties were to become stalinised. The total schooling experience included theoretical studies in 'Marxism-Leninism' (party history, political economics and dialectical materialism) as well as the practices of bolshevik party life in 'building socialism'. The campaigns of stalinism also promoted new subjects such as: 'About fighting against counter-revolutionary Trotskyism'.

This study tries to find out how the Finns interpreted their schooling experiences at the ILS. Throughout the study, the ILS education is situated within the wider contexts of revolutionary vanguards, political education, the aspiration for ideological moulding and, finally, Finnish communism in two countries: Finland and the USSR. The three main chapters of the study concentrate on the ILS Finns that temporarily lived in extraordinary stalinist conditions in Moscow. The teachers of the Finnish students were leading figures of the Communist Party of Finland (SKP). The party had been illegal in Finland since its founding in Moscow in 1918. The communists in Finland could act in some organisations in the 1920s, but, from 1930 onwards, the SKP went more or less underground. The Finnish ILS teachers, too, understood their political emigration to the USSR as a temporary state of being. They did not know what to expect. Finnish communism in the USSR was almost totally destroyed in the terror years of 1937-8. During this period, the systematic party education at the ILS ceased. However, it still remained the most important ideological intermediary between Finnish and Soviet communism.

The research method of this study is traditional for contemporary political history. The fates of the ILS Finns are explored by comparing archival materials from Russia (RGASPI) and Finland (National Archives, People's Archives) to literature. The Finnish ILS students' and teachers' mentalities, values and ideological judgements are interpreted on as basic a level as possible. The term 'political' does not exclude questions of everyday life, family or gender that might connect this study to the latest research of the post-revisionist school. Many such studies of stalinism have one central theory or concept (like nationalism, identity or gender) that structures the whole study. If anything, my study seeks theoretical inspiration from various sources. The most central of these is Erving Goffman's concept of a total institution.

The International Lenin Courses started in 1926 with a basic syllabus that lasted two years. The communist parties, the SKP included, could not fill the student quotas that were given to them. Education was given in the Comintern's four official languages that were seldom known by the Finns. To overcome this problem, the ILS established short courses for national groups in their own language. The initiative for the Finnish ILS sector was taken by the SKP leadership in Moscow because it was worried about the state of communist activities in Finland. When the first Finnish course started in late 1930, a law that prohibited the communists from acting in legal organisations was passed in Finland. After the Finnish Civil War in 1918, this was the second major defeat for the Finnish revolutionaries.

The Finnish ILS sector was led by Yrjö Sirola (1876-1936), an intelligent son of a priest who had made a career as a social democrat in Finnish politics already before the Civil War. He was appointed foreign minister of the 'Red Government' in 1918. Because of this, he was forced to flee to Soviet Russia after the defeat of the reds in the Finnish Civil War. Until the end of his life, Sirola worked in the SKP leadership and in the Comintern machinery, but party education remained his favourite occupation. Before starting at the ILS, Sirola had taught in Finland, in the United States (Duluth, Work People's College for Finnish immigrants) and in Leningrad (LOKUNMZ, Communist University of the National Minorities of the West, Department for Finns and Estonians). After quitting as ILS sector leader in 1934, Sirola continued as a teacher of party history and leninism until his death of natural causes in 1936. The following sector leader was Jukka Lehtosaari (1889-1939), a former ILS student (1926-8). He was the SKP's last chairman (1937-8) before falling victim to the Great Terror.

The contribution of the SKP leadership to the Finnish ILS sector was remarkable. Many other ILS sectors were taught by teachers that were neither natives nor members of the party leadership. The teachers of the Scandinavian ILS sector, for example, were often Swedish speaking Finns. The investments of the SKP leadership in the ILS may have been one of the reasons for the Finnish sector's success in the competition between the ILS sectors. On the other hand, the ILS Finns were criticized for their national isolation and their 'familyness' in the 1930s.

The first Finnish ILS short course lasted six months. The following school year was extended to nine months and included military training and a summer excursion (praktika) to a Soviet republic. The ILS year was completed with a vacation in some of the famous sanatoriums for the Soviet party elite. In the early 1930s, the Finnish ILS graduates were sent to Finland for illegal SKP work. If the party command was successful, the illegal functionaries were returned to the USSR for a rest. Often, the Finns were given the chance to study for another year at the ILS.

The Finnish state police worked actively against the communists in Finland. In 1934 detectives managed to send an informer to the Finnish ILS course. He came back from Moscow and revealed the secrets of the ILS during a series of police interrogations. In the 1930s, there were 157 Finnish ILS graduates, out of whom 90 were sent to Finland. No less than 54 of these received a political sentence in Finland, which usually meant a spell of prison for three to four years. Consequently, the system of two full years at the ILS never went according to plan.

Political imprisonment was part of the career of a SKP activist in Finland. Around 40 per cent of those Finns who became students at the ILS had spent time in prison before their education in Moscow. Their experience of repression made it easier for them to readjust to the conditions at the ILS that students from legal communist parties often complained about. The stalinist rituals (autobiographies, personal evaluations and criticism and self-criticism) that aimed at internalised self control against deviations from the Comintern's general line were usually accepted as learning the methods of bolshevik party life. The Finnish students made political mistakes and often wondered about the low standard of living in the Russian countryside. This was not a problem if the students were ready to admit their misinterpretations. They were at the ILS in order to learn. The cases were more severe if the Finnish teachers were accused of political deviations.

In the spring term of 1931 the Finnish ILS students complained that their teacher of trade unionism, Hanna Malm (1887-1936), taught too much like an agitator and without a true understanding of changed conditions in Finland. Malm herself accused the students of holding social democratic opinions that had to be unmasked and purged. Although Malm was a controversial person, she belonged to the SKP's central committee and was its leading female. The quarrel in the sector was supposed to be solved 'in the Bolshevik manner'. A pedagogic meeting was organised for the students where the rector of the ILS was ready to sweep the minor dispute under the carpet. Anyway, the SKP leadership dismissed Malm from the ILS after her students had been ordered to Finland.

Hanna Malm and her husband Kullervo Manner (1880-1939), who was the SKP's chairman in the 1920s, represented an uncompromising political position that appeared Stalinist in nature. In the autumn of 1931, Stalin used an article in the journal Proletarian Revolution to launch a furious attack on the 'rotten liberalism' that had gained ground, especially in writings on party history. Correspondingly, Malm and Manner questioned whether the SKP's official formulations of its own history were correct. The debate over party history concentrated on the years of the Finnish revolution, 1917-18. Had it been 'betrayed' by the same party leaders, then revolutionary social democrats, that had belonged to the SKP leadership since its foundation? The SKP's 'Great History Debate' soon developed into a power struggle between Manner's supporters and the rest of the SKP led by Otto Wille Kuusinen. Manner and Malm were forced to disassociate themselves publicly from their 'Betrayal Theory', but they never gave it up wholeheartedly. The new official theses on the SKP's history were formulated by Kuusinen. According to their stalinist message, interpretations on party history must not harm the party of today.

After the new thesis on the SKP's history, any hint of criticism led to trouble. The Finnish ILS teachers who had to explain the official truths to the students noticed that Kuusinen's formulations were compromises. Interestingly, the students were eager to report the teacher's discordant notes to the higher party organs. Interpretations of the SKP's history were used as a weapon in the final overthrow of Manner's party opposition in 1935. The Kirov murder in late 1934 had justified the use of terror against bolshevik leaders that Stalin imagined to be his enemies. Manner and Malm represented Finnish examples of a party opposition that had become criminal. In addition to them, labour camp punishments were given to one Finnish ILS teacher and one postgraduate student (aspirant). In the Scandinavian ILS sector, the Finnish leader Allan Wallenius (1890-1942) and teacher Uuno Vistbacka (1896-1939) were dismissed as Manner's sympathisers. The result of the SKP's party purge was an ideologically uniform party that was led by one man: Kuusinen.

Kuusinen began to take more personal responsibility for the Finnish ILS sector that had became the model sector of the school. The Comintern's new Popular Front tactics, however, led to a reorganisation of education of international cadres. The Soviet universities for national minorities were closed down. The communist parties that were legal in their countries were ordered to establish national party schools of their own. The ILS was reserved for students from countries where communists worked underground. In addition to these changes, the Spanish Civil War broke out in the summer of 1936. This marked the beginning of the end for the ILS.

The graduates from the ILS were supposed to volunteer for the International Brigades of the Republicans in Spain. For various reasons, only 5 out of 19 Finnish male students went to Spain. Before departing from Moscow, they got additional military schooling for a couple of months. The Finnish ILS intake that had started in late 1935 continued their studies for another year. The next student intake, planned for early 1937, never occurred. When the last Finns completed their studies in the summer of 1937, a systematic terror against certain national minorities condemned as enemies of the people was coming into operation.

The gates to the terror were opened during the spring of 1937. In February, the plenum of the central committee of the bolshevik party had paid attention to cadre policy, party education, and the need for vigilance against enemies within the party. One of the plenum slogans was party democracy 'from below'. Higher party organs were accused of 'familyness' that should be revealed by lower ones. In the Finnish ILS sector, the students reacted by criticizing harshly their own responsible workers, their teachers and the ILS leadership. The teachers were accused of limiting self-criticism and of neglecting their duties. The students suggested more control and the recycling of the responsible posts. Compared to the students' former reports, the tone of the criticism was severe.

The NKVD, or some grouping within it, had decided to destroy the SKP leadership in Moscow. The most severe denunciation against it touched on the lifestyles of some of the Finnish leaders. They had used party money in meeting prostitutes and in drinking. Among the accused were a couple of ILS teachers who should have been setting a good example. The SKP leadership tried to settle the sex scandal, but it could not deny all the malpractices. From January 1938 onwards, the SKP leadership was purged. Six of the party members caught up in this were former ILS teachers.

The last Finnish ILS graduates had to witness this campaign in Moscow where they had remained after their ILS course. During this time, the prospect of their return to Finland remained. In September 1938, many of them did in fact return. 12 out of 14 Finns from the last ILS course managed to get back to Finland at some point. The ILS Finns most likely to have fallen victims to the terror were those who had assimilated into Soviet society, or had become leaders of the SKP. The total number of former ILS students killed is roughly ten per cent of the entire Finnish student population educated at the ILS (14/141). This figure is probably an underestimate, since it does not include those whose fates are unknown or those sent to the labour camps. Almost half of the total number (12 of 26) of the Finnish ILS teachers also became terror casualties.

In Finland, the ILS education could to some extent sustain the illegal SKP network in the early 1930s. Most of the ILS graduates worked as district organisers for the party or its youth organisation. The Finnish state police, however, won its fight against communists in the 1930s. Paradoxically, the effort of the Finnish police saved some communist lives from the terror in Moscow. However, at the end of the decade Finnish communism was outlawed in both of its countries of origin: Finland and the USSR.

On the eve of the Winter War, there were only a handful of Finnish communist leaders left in the USSR that could be appointed ministers in the infamous puppet government, 'Terijoen hallitus', led by Kuusinen. Four of those ministers had either studied or taught at the ILS in the 1930s. In the Continuation War, the Finnish ILS survivors in the USSR were usually used as war propagandists or spies at the Finnish front.

After the Second World War, the communists got their share of state power in the government of Finland. In the post-war period, there were three ministers (1945-1948) and 12 members of parliament that had studied at the Soviet party schools. The SKP exploited its exceptional position poorly. Instead of promoting Soviet Finland or People's Democracy, the communists found themselves excluded from state power in 1948. If things had turned out differently, the graduates from the ILS would probably have formed the inner circle of the new 'democratic' government, such as in the GDR.

The value of Soviet education was most appreciated by the SKP itself. Power in the party was divided between a small inner circle whose credibility was measured by their years of Soviet education and their political imprisonment in Finland. Instead of a mass party, the SKP became a closed cadre party. Soviet methods of cadre control were used to check the reliability of party members. Soviet party education guaranteed, almost automatically, work as a functionary in the party or in other organisations that were controlled by the SKP. Party positions were, however, quickly lost if the SKP's cadre organs could detect a lack of commitment to the party line in a person's past.

The dominance of the stalinist party leadership lasted a relatively long time in the SKP. There were no remarkable political changes in the SKP's line after 1956 - unlike the situation in many other communist parties around the world. In the early 1960s, the SKP was still lead by twenty professional revolutionaries, of whom only three had not been educated in the USSR. Kuusinen himself, then a member of the highest Soviet party leadership, had been urging the SKP to make ideological reforms. The old orthodox leadership lost some of its power in 1966 and this gave impetus to the SKP's actual party split in the late 1960s.

A Short Course of Stalinism refers, first, to the effects of ILS education. The longer the stay in Moscow, the better the methods and mentalities of stalinism were internalised. Since the majority of the Finnish ILS students took the shortest course, their stalinist education remained incomplete. The longest ILS course that included a career both as a student and as a teacher proved to be fatal during the terror years. In between these extremes emerged a group of comrades that witnessed repression and terror on both sides of the Finnish-Russian border. Finnish stalinism maturated during the long years in two types of total institution that were strangely complementary. The leading Finnish stalinists of the post-Second World War period were thus marked by two formative experiences: a Soviet party education and a period of political imprisonment inside Finland.

Secondly, A Short Course of Stalinism refers to the ideological dead end that was highlighted by the famous compass of international communism: History of the CPSU (B): Short Course (1938). Although the students at the ILS did not read the book before their school's dissolution they were witnessing stalinist process towards an ideological homogenisation throughout the 1930s. The Short Course remained the supreme ideological guide for communist parties until 1956. It was still valid in 1954 when the SKP renewed its cooperation with Moscow in respect to party education.

Finally, what was the significance of the Short Course of Stalinism at the ILS for the Finns? For the students, leaving Finland for party education in the USSR was the decisive move in a career as a professional revolutionary. Despite major risks, the ILS education ensured upward social mobility for those who remained faithful to the SKP throughout all the trials. In the 1930s, the SKP leadership in Moscow respected ILS education because the systematic schooling increased its influence on communism in Finland - until the terror years. For the great majority of Finns at the time, the Soviet party education simply symbolized treason. Despite short-term success after the Second World War, the history of the ILS Finns is, first and foremost, a history of losers.

Joni Krekola