Cultural Trauma of the Civil War of 1918 Staged and Commemorated in Finland

Authors

  • Pentti Paavolainen University of Helsinki

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v31i2.120183

Keywords:

Civil War, Finland 1918, Revolution in Finland, War of Independence in Finland, War representations in theatre, Political narratives in theatre, Cultural trauma, Piotr Sztompka, Trauma processes, Trauma treatment, National reconciliation, Identity, Cold War, Labour movement, The Jaeger Movement, Historiography

Abstract

The Centennial of one of the cruelest of European civil wars fought in Finland between the Reds and the Whites from January to May 1918 has evoked a spectrum of theatre productions illustrating variations of styles and approaches on the events. The turn in the treatment of this cultural trauma occurred with the interpretations and narrative perspectives that were fixed in the 1960s, when an understanding for the defeated Red side was expressed in historiography, literature and theatre. Since that, the last six decades the Finnish theatre and public discourse on the Civil War have been dominated by the Red narrative as the memory of the 1918 Civil War provided an important part in the new identity politics for the 1969 generation. Since the 1980’s the topic was mostly put aside so that before the 2018 revivals of the Civil War topic, the productions seem to have been reactions by the artists confronting the developments at the end of the Cold War. Some theatrical events can even be tied to the cultural trauma of the 1969 left evoked by the collapse of the socialist block. The Centennial productions repeated the Red narrative but they also provided more balanced interpretations
on the tragic events.

Author Biography

Pentti Paavolainen, University of Helsinki

Pentti Paavolainen is a Docent at the University of Helsinki. His PhD dissertation (1992) was a sociological analysis of the theatre repertories of the 1960s in Finland. In 1993–2007 he held the Chair of Theatre Research in the Theatre Academy, today the University of Arts, Helsinki, where he developed the doctoral programs for research. He served as the chair for the Nordic Society of Theatre Research (NTF/NTS 1995–1999), and a visiting professor in Malmö Theatre College (Sweden) 2003–07. His works include a monograph (1987) on the early career of the director Jouko Turkka and a major biography of Kaarlo Bergbom (2014, 2016, 2018), the portal figure of 19th theatre and opera in Finland.

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Published

2020-05-18

How to Cite

Paavolainen, P. (2020). Cultural Trauma of the Civil War of 1918 Staged and Commemorated in Finland. Nordic Theatre Studies, 31(2), 102–131. https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v31i2.120183

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