Terminological Games : The Finnish Security Police Monitoring the Far-Right Movements in Finland During the Cold War

Abstract

This article focuses on the use of terms and concepts related to the nationalist movements by the Finnish security police during the Cold War. The key objective of the security police was to protect the legal order of the state and monitor the groups and phenomena potentially harmful to that cause. The previous experience regarding the rise of the radical nationalism and fascism in Finland in the 1930s and the 1947 Paris peace treaties were the historical and legal contexts within which the interpretations were made. As the article shows, interpretation made by the security police, however, relied occasionally on a limited understanding about the evolving far-right scene, thus producing terminological confusions, and in some cases even evidently biased interpretative patterns may be observed. The article also studies how terms and concepts produce differing evaluations and differing understandings regarding the phenomena at hand. The analysis is supplemented by a short excursion on the other side exploring how the far-right used the terms in order to avoid police scrutiny.