Authors

• Hyttinen, Elsi (University of Turku)
• Lehtonen, Mikko (University of Tampere)

Keywords

artistic activities, communism, cultural associations, culture, marxism, political history, political movements, political participation, political philosophy

Abstract

The data comprise interviews with active members in the former Association for Cultural Workers in Finland (Kulttuurityöntekijäin liitto, KTL), which was a Finnish Marxist-Leninist association founded in 1972. All interviewees had had a significant role in the founding and activities of the association, and they appear in the data with their real names.

The interview questions were structured around five main themes: personal background; motivations for participating in political activism and joining KTL; activities of the association and the interviewees' attitudes toward e.g. the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia; interpersonal relations inside the association; and difficult issues such as attitudes toward homosexuality in Finnish leftist circles in the 1970s and the case of musician Wolf Biermann (a large share of KTL members signed a letter supporting his expatriation from the DDR).

Background information in the data includes the date and duration of the interview, and the name and occupation of the interviewee.

The dataset is only available in Finnish.