Communist Party of Finland

The Communist Party of Finland (Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue, SKP; Finlands Kommunistiska Parti) was a communist political party in Finland. The SKP was a section of Comintern and illegal in Finland until 1944. The SKP was banned by the state from its founding and did not participate in any elections with its own name. Instead, front organisations were used. In the 1920s the communists took part in the Socialist Workers' Party of Finland (1920–1923) and the Socialist Electoral Organisation of Workers and Smallholders (1924–1930). Both of them were also banned. In 1944, a new front, Finnish People's Democratic League was formed. The SKP controlled these fronts but they always had a prominent minority of non-communist socialists. In 1918, the Reds lost the Finnish Civil War. The Social Democratic Party of Finland had supported the losing side, and several of its leaders were exiled in Soviet Russia. Some of these exiles founded the Communist Party of Finland in Moscow. The SKP was illegal in Finland until 1944, and members could be imprisoned. After the Continuation War, the SKP dominated the Finnish People's Democratic League, which was founded in 1944 as an umbrella organization of the radical left. The Cold War era was the high point of Communists in Finland. Between 1944 and 1979 support of the Finnish People's Democratic League was in the range of 17%–24%. Communists participated in several cabinets, but Finland never had a communist Prime Minister or President. In the mid 1960s the U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 40 000 (1.44% of the working age population). with the SKP's main rival for domination of the political left being the Social Democratic Party of Finland. The competition was very bitter in trade unions and other leftist organizations. The SKP received substantial financial support from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Internally, SKP was divided, with a Eurocommunist mainstream and a hardline pro-Moscow minority, called the Taistoists after their leader, Taisto Sinisalo.