ARCHIVE COLLECTIONS

The archive collections of Finnish Labour Archives represent the social democratic labour movement, the SAK-affiliated trade union movement, civic organisations and related private individuals. The materials date from the late 1800s to this day. Most of the materials are in Finnish, but the collection also includes materials in other languages, such as Swedish, English and Russian.

The core of the collections is formed by the archives of social democratic parties and their district and local organisations, such as municipal organisations and workers’ associations operating in different locations. The largest records creator is the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP), whose extensive archive contains a wide range of materials on the activities of the SDP and its predecessor, the Workers’ Party of Finland. The collections also include the archive of the Social Democratic Union of Workers and Smallholders (TPSL) and some records from the Socialist Workers’ Party of Finland (SSTP). In addition, the collections contain archives from over 2,700 workers’ associations nationwide. Furthermore, information has been collected from workers’ associations that operated in ceded Karelia.

The archives of trade unions and their local organisations, in turn, hold materials of The Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions’ (SAK) and its predecessor The Finnish Trade Union Federations (SAJ) member unions and local trade union branches. In total, the collections include archives from over 5,000 organisations related to the trade union movement, for example in the industrial and service sectors.

The collections also encompass a wide range of archives related to workers’ educational activities, music and theatre activities, youth, women’s and temperance movements, and pensioners’ organisations. In addition, they include records from Ensikoti mother-and-child homes, insurance funds, other social organisations and non-governmental organisations defending the rights of minorities, for example.

In addition, the collections cover a wide range of archives of companies and organisations of the progressive cooperative movement, the largest of which are the archives of Kulutusosuuskuntien Keskusliitto, Keskusosuusliike OTK, Haka Oy, Kansa-yhtymä and Osuusliike Voima. The collections also include local cooperative shop archives from more than 200 different cooperative associations.

Moreover, there are collections focused on historically significant themes or eras, particularly from the years 1905–1906, 1917 and 1918. The 1918 collection includes material such as a statistic of acts of terror and violence in each municipality, covering the Reds that died during the Finnish Civil War.

The personal archives consist, in particular, of materials from national and local figures who have been active the labour movement. In recent years, the collection has expanded with personal archives of disability and LGBT activists, for example. The Biography collection, compiled from on newspaper clips, provides information about numerous people who impacted the labour movement.

The archive’s extensive collection of photographs and posters comprise over one million images and an estimated ten thousand different posters. Read more about the photo and poster collections here.

The collections also include audiovisual materials, for example Kansan Elokuva films available for viewing at the archives. A detailed filmography of labour movement films has also been compiled.

The Commission of Finnish Labour Tradition, operating in connection with the archive, maintains an oral history collection related to the labour movement and its history, with contributions from more than 8,500 people. The Commission actively collects oral history by recording interviews and memoirs that document social history, societal development and the experiences of those involved in the labour movement.

You can read more about the oral history collection here.

Some of the materials are digital and can be accessed electronically. For example, the minutes of the Social Democratic Party of Finland and some trade union bodies as well as the collections from 1905–1906, 1917 and 1918 are available digitally in part or entirely. Digital documents can be viewed using the archive’s Yksa database either on a home computer or on site at the archive. Digital photographs and posters can be viewed in Finna. The amount of digital material will increase depending on the archives’ resources. However, the majority of the archive material is still in analogue form and can therefore only viewed at the archive’s facilities in Helsinki.

In the Researcher Services section, you can read more about how the collections can be accessed.