Nonfiction book
Piia Vuorinen: Women dangerous to the state. State police, everyday life and gender of surveillance in Finland 1919–1944. Society for the Study of Labor History and Tradition. 452 pp.
Temptresses. Incompetent for politics. Bedbugs. Communist times.
The state police not only tracked down and shadowed female political activists, but also called and insulted them colorfully. Until the end of the Continuation War in 1944, communists and those suspected of being communists were the main targets of EK-Valpo (here Valpo) – and women were not controlled or treated more leniently because of their gender.
Historian Pia Vuorinen has gone through the day-to-day supervision of the “white guard” carefully for the whole quarter of a century, from 1919 to 1944. Research work Women dangerous to the state is based on his recent dissertation.
Vigilant 20 percent of the people followed were women. Even as a clear minority, there were enough women: Vuorinen makes use of the 872 personal folders of women deposited in the National Archives. So not some small sample slice, but everyone folders.
Vuorinen examines important aspects: why does a woman come under surveillance, what role does gender and social class play in it, how do intelligence and reporting networks intertwine, what is everyday surveillance like?
There weren't that many people from Valpo, at different times 130–255 employees. But considering its size, the facility worked diligently.
By no means all of the women who were shadowed were detained for questioning, but in many hundreds of cases they were sentenced to years in prison for at least the preparation of treason or treason. Or even more serious charges.
Period there was no uniform quality of spending, but the mass arrests and communist laws of the 1930s lowered the appeal of the red idea – and the famine years did not increase it either.
Head of EK Esko Riekki estimated already in the 1920s that there was no danger from communists. However, in the 1930s, as the specter of Communism faded, the personal map grew.
According to Vuorinen, the data collection was extensive, mechanical and person-oriented. Women without belonging to the extreme left, let alone in its forefront, could end up under surveillance – randomly, on the basis of friendship or acquaintance, co-workers or sexual relations.
The people of Valpo were also motivated to work by the fact that motor diligence and the increase in the number of convictions was good for proving the permanently greater needs of the institution and funding.
The state police hoped that the Court of Appeal would appeal against the sentence of Olga (b. 1882), who was punished in a major espionage case in 1933, “due to form”.
Security police meant communist control. The same applied to the women under supervision, of whom up to 96 percent were counted as SKP members or their sympathizers. Valpo was not concerned about the extreme phenomena of the right, practicing more cooperation on that side.
More than half of the shadowed women lived in Helsinki, and there were an equal number of workers.
The follow-up was quite complete. Attention was paid not only to women's public activities, but also to leisure and travel, letters, changes in wealth and socializing.
Valpo recruited informants near the suspects, who, being untrained in the matter, often talked about this or that. Of course valid observations as well.
Sexual did not protect the woman. Vuorinen also shows underestimating attitudes in Valpo, but mostly female customers were considered dangerously talented enemies of the state and the system. The use of derogatory language was cultivated equally strongly, whatever the attitude.
There were some exceptional situations where something like a negotiation happened and the woman could avoid more control measures.
In retrospect, it can be seen that Valpo, who was rooting out communism, could not limit himself to the plot of the information collector, to the preliminary investigation. It broke down and managed to influence the charges and sentences, aggravating both, which does not flatter the judicial system either.
Women dangerous to the state is such thorough work that it's almost terrifying. It seems as if Piia Vuorinen has translated every ticket and note in Valpo's archives, and the literature is also listed on twenty densely printed pages.
The state police attracted Eva (born 1903), who was convicted of espionage in 1935, as his assistant, but there is no more detailed information about whether the agreement was kept.
The first one the work sheds light on our republic's control policy. In political history, these questions have mostly been studied without a conscious gender perspective, so Vuorinen opens up welcome landscapes in that sense as well.
History is an inexhaustible field, free of different interpretations and approaches. That's enough shit.
The book's ballast is a very stuffy writing style. Heavy noun-driven sentences should have been lightened with one more round of editing. After all, Vuorinen is not the only one with this occupational disease of researchers.
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