Kadonnutta aikaa etsimässä
Summary
The Origins of Lotta Svärd Organisation, Women and the Military in 1918-1928
This dissertation is a study of Finnish women’s defence activity and the development thereof into a national network, the Lotta Svärd organisation, during 1918-1928. Lotta Svärd was a patriotic rightist organisation, which was voluntary and exclusively meant for women. It was a sister organisation to the White Guards, which was an all-male, voluntary - and armed - defence organisation. Lotta Svärd, in contrast, contributed in defence tasks unarmed, primarily taking on support and supply tasks. During the Second World War, Lotta Svärd had a membership of 230,000.
The dissertation has two approaches to the subject. First, it looks at the organisational development, the process during which the activity evolved from separate regional units into a national community, which became the largest all-female organisation of the era. Second, the study approaches the events from a gender-historical perspective. The disserta-tion provides a description of the ways in which the organisation of women’s defence ac-tivity affected the gender system of the time.
Women activated during the Finnish Civil War in 1918. Operation that had started off quite spontaneously was during the war months gradually getting more organised, diversi-fying itself. After the war, the women’s operation halted and the units disbanded. In the aftermath of Finland gaining independence the country had ended up on an insecure posi-tion in terms of security policy, which ignited voluntary defence willingness. Thereby also the women’s operations reactivated at the turn of 1918 and 1919. The White Guards got organised, while several local female units were established, as well.
The development that followed was fully characterised by its origins; the women‘s de-fence activity was very regional in nature and had a close connection with the White Guards. The women did not strive at establishing a nation-wide organisation of their own. The establishing of the Lotta Svärd organisation in 1921 was not a result of the women’s independent effort. Instead, the national organisation was founded by order of the leaders of the White Guards - and largely against the will of Lotta Svärd members. However, the 1920’s saw the united organisation gain strength: its operations expanded and took on an increasingly military bent. Simultaneously, the traditionally close bond between the White Guards and the women’s operation was growing weaker, and Lotta Svärd became virtually an independent organisation.
Among the central findings of this dissertation is that the aforementioned process took place to a large extent against the inherent principles of the voluntary national defence. The prevailing gender system in the predominantly rural Finland opposed to women acting in-dependent in the society. Thus, the development of Lotta Svärd, driven by the need to de-fend a small nation, changed the prevailing gender system. Women’s public activity had become more acceptable, widening the door for women’s activity outside the private sphere of home. As a whole, the development of the Lotta Svärd organisation is an example of an event where an originally political motive brought about a change in gender history.
Translation: Päivi Vuoriaro
