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173 Finnish Identity in Immigrant Culture Finnish Identity in Immigrant Culture Keijo Virtanen The many-sided and rich cultural pursuits and interests such as arts, theater, music, schooling, and sports played a central role in the process of Finnish immigrant adaptation to the new society in the United States and Canada. A close look at the development of such pursuits, and at variations in the levels of activity, can help us to interpret the process whereby immigrants, and their descendants, became integrated and adapted to their new life circumstances. At the same time, it also casts light upon the persistence and preservation of Finnishness in this new context. Some of the earliest cultural activities were initiated by the temperance societies, which from the 1880s onward had begun to build “halls” (Finnish American haali) as meeting places. These rapidly gave rise to enthusiastic collaboration, in diverse forms, aimed at raising the educational and cultural level of the members in general.1 Almost from the very beginning the activities of the temperance societies included choral groups, sports and gymnastics clubs, musical bands, and amateur dramatic societies.2 The labor organizations practiced analogous cultural activities, from the beginning of the twentieth century, aimed at activating the membership. One example: in 1912, the Finnish Socialist Federation (Yhdysvaltain Suomalainen Sosialistijärjestö) had some 200 sections, which in turn included the following groups: 107 dramatic societies, 91 sewing circles, 53 gymnastics clubs, 23 choral societies, and 126 literary clubs.3 Other organizations were similar: the cultural activities of the Knights and Ladies of Kaleva were designed specifically to preserve the Finnish national culture and to maintain its prestige.4 In the case of Swedish-speaking Finnish immigrants, cultural activities were channeled in particular through the Runebergorden (Order of Runeberg); founded in 1920, it united the earlier temperance societies and mutual support groups under a single umbrella.5 These examples illustrate that immigrant culture was closely connected with organizational activities. The Finnish American labor movement even developed its own annual calendar of festivals. For the Communists, for instance, the summers of the 1920s culminated in a summer festival, with a highly diversified program: among other offerings, it included speeches, musical performances (both choral and orchestral), sports, athletic and gymnastic events, tableaux vivants, dramatic performances, and dancing. Fall events included celebrations of the Keijo Virtanen 174 Russian Revolution, along with Christmas. The spring season began immediately after Christmas, with New Year celebrations; more important, however, were events honoring Lenin’s life and work and those commemorating the Finnish “class struggle,” that is, the Civil War of 1918. The month of March saw International Women’s Day; this was followed by May Day, the international labor movement’s day of celebration, which in the case of Finnish immigrants was combined with “vappu,” the traditional Finnish spring holiday celebrated on the first of May. This was the culmination of the spring calendar. Along with these “fixed” events there were also numerous “moveable” ones, such as events celebrated by various individual sections; thus there was enough cultural activity to keep those responsible for organizing it busy for the whole year.6 The organizations tried to recruit as many members as possible to take part in these cultural activities. The level of participation in fact depended crucially on the success with which a given organization operated in its principal domain. Women often played a major role in organizing festivals and celebrations—for instance, in the labor movement. At its highest, the proportion of women among the membership in the Organization of Finnish Socialists was 40 percent; in the church congregations and temperance societies, too, a considerable proportion of members were women.7 On the other hand, it has been suggested that despite their steadily growing numbers, the influence of women in the Organization of Finnish Socialists was actually declining. During the first decade of the twentieth century, women were regularly elected, for instance, to boards of directors, entertainment committees, and building committees. Gradually, however, they began to be relegated to miscellaneous tasks involved in the organizing of a festival, such as catering. Their participation in actual decision-making powers was thus distrusted. The most common form of women’s activity in the local socialist sections was in fact the sewing society, whose chief responsibility was fund-raising—for example, for a library or even for the organization’s own building.8 A particularly important role was played in the cultural pursuits of the Finnish American immigrant community, and in immigrants’ leisure activities...

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