Communist Party of Finland Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue | |
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| Abbreviation | SKP |
| Founded | 29 August 1918 |
| Legalized | 1944 |
| Dissolved | 1992 |
| Split from | Social Democratic Party of Finland |
| Succeeded by | Left Alliance (Finland) Communist Party of Finland (1994) |
| Newspaper | Kansan Uutiset |
| Youth wing | Young Communist League of Finland, Democratic Youth League of Finland |
| Political orientation | Communism Eurocommunism |
| National affiliation | Finnish People's Democratic League |
| International affiliation | Comintern |
| Part of a series on |
| Communist parties |
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The Communist Party of Finland (SKP) was a communist party in Finland which was banned until 1944. During its decline the majority of the SKP party members formed the Left Alliance along with other member organisations of the Finnish People's Democratic League (SKDL). Meanwhile the Communist Party of Finland (Unity), a party that had been formed by expelled members of the SKP took the original Communist Party of Finland's name.
History
Founding
On August 29, 1918, the SKP was founded by exiled members of the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP) at a party conference abroad with key participants being Yrjö Sirola and Otto Ville Kuusinen. The conference was held in Moscow in the aftermath of the failed Finnish Revolution, and from its founding, the party was closely linked to the Soviet Union and the Comintern, of which it was a founding member. The SKP was banned almost immediately from its creation by the government of Finland, forcing them to fight for the workers underground.[1]
In its early days, the party underestimated the value of legal organisations in increasing the strength of the proletariat, but this mistake was soon rectified with help from the Comintern. Subsequently, in 1920, it helped create the legal Socialist Workers’ Party of Finland (SSTP) to participate in bourgeois elections, and continued to work in close cooperation with it, at least until the SSTP was also banned by the Finnish government in 1923. Throughout the 1920s, the SKP carried out important work in creating a network of mass workers’ organizations and developing the socialist movement, as well as leading the proletariat in large-scale political and economic actions.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "The Great Soviet Encyclopedia:Communist Party of Finland" (1979). USSR. Archived from the original on 2015-10-09.