REFORM AND REVOLUTION IN SCANDINAVIA, 1917–1919

Abstract

The articles in this special issue, entitled Reform and Revolution in Scandinavia, 1917–1919: Entangled Histories and Visions of the Future, deal with the political turmoil in Scandinavia in the late 1910s, accelerated by the First World War and the revolutions in Russia in February/March and October/November 1917 and eventually in Germany in the autumn of 1918. Their special focus is on the political debates about reform and revolution and the related visions of the future of political order and social structures in national contexts and across borders. The articles examine how actors with different agendas in different contexts exploited the opportunities opened up by a window of change. None of the Scandinavian countries were directly involved in the theatre of war, but the whole of Scandinavia was associated with the hostilities in many other ways. The revolutionary processes in Russia affected Finland directly but – reflecting the events spreading from Petrograd – the debates about the legitimacy of the established political order intensified in all Scandinavian countries. The articles demonstrate how the debates and political processes took diverse forms in varying national contexts but were often more dependent on international relations, transnationally interconnected and entangled, than has traditionally been recognized in nation-state-centred historiographies.

Keywords:

• Russian Revolution
• Denmark
• Finland
• Sweden
• transnational history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Fur, Colonialism in the Margins; Marjanen, ‘Undermining Methodological Nationalism’; Berger, ‘The Comparative History of National Historiographies’; Kettunen, ‘The Transnational Construction’, 17; Lundqvist, ‘Fångad i nationen?’; Naum and Nordin, ‘Introduction: Situating Scandinavian Colonialism’, 4; Larsson, Jalava, and Haapala, ‘Nordic Historiography’, 5–8; Marjanen, ‘Transnational Conceptual History’.

2 Kocka, ‘Comparisons and Beyond’, 40–1; Cohen and O’Connor, ‘Comparative History’, ix–xii; Sluga, ‘The Nation and the Comparative Imagination’, 103, 109; Miller, ‘Comparative and Cross-National History’, 126; Kocka and Haupt, ‘Comparison and Beyond’, 20–1.

3 Fewster, Visions of Past Glory; Sulkunen, ‘Biography, Gender and Deconstruction’, 65–77; Kirjoitettu kansakunta; Kansallisten instituutioiden muotoutuminen; Sarviaho, Ikuinen rauha.

4 Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined; Katajisto, Isänmaamme keisari.

5 E.g. Engman, Språkfrågan; Meinander, Nationalstaten.

6 Finland in World War II; Kekkonen, Kun aseet puhuvat; Ihalainen, Springs of Democracy.

7 University of Tampere, ‘Reform and Revolution in Europe, 1917–19: Entangled and Transnational Histories’, accessed 1 August 2018: http://www.uta.fi/yky/en/his/conference/1917/index.html

8 Müller, Contesting Democracy, 16–19; Leonhard, Die Büchse der Pandora, 11, 14; Bessel, ‘Revolution’, 126–7, 144.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pasi Ihalainen

Dr Pasi Ihalainen is Professor of Comparative European History at the Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He has published widely on parliamentary and constitutional history since the 18th century, applying comparative and transnational perspectives. His recent books include Parliament and Parliamentarism: A Comparative History of a European Concept, co-edited with Cornelia Ilie and Kari Palonen (Berghahn, 2016), and The Springs of Democracy: National and Transnational Debates on Constitutional Reform in the British, German, Swedish and Finnish Parliaments, 1917–1919 (Finnish Literature Society, 2017). Address: Department of History and Ethnology, POB 35 (H), 40014 University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Tiina Kinnunen

Tiina Kinnunen works as a Professor in Finnish and Northern European History at the University of Oulu. Her research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century women’s and gender history, biographical writing, memory cultures of the Second World War, and history of historiography. Latest publications include Biograhy, Gender and History: Nordic Perspectives (2016), coedited with Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir, Maarit Leskelä-Kärki, and Birgitte Possing. One ongoing project deals with the feminist lives of Ellen Key and Alexandra Gripenberg, analysed from comparative and transnational perspectives. Address: Department of History, 90014 University of Oulu, Finland