Memory based sources

The Commission of Finnish Labour Tradition collects, catalogues and preserves memory based sources. The written memories and interviews included in the collection allow You to gain insight into individuals from the past, such as personal experiences of the labour community.

The Commission of Finnish Labour Tradition operates within the Labour Archives and collects memory based sources. The commission was founded in 1960 as a tradition group of the Työväen Sivistysliitto. It was founded by researchers, labour officers, an employer’s representative and bank director Mauno Koivisto. The objective was to collect memories of the 1918 Civil War and information on the spiritual traditions and culture of work that the official education and archiving establishment wasn’t interested in receiving.

The narrative collection of the commission has been written from the point of view of worker solidarity; it includes many life stories and interviews with politically-active people. The collections allow you to examine the world-view of individuals in greater detail, to see what they have experienced and to learn about the Finnish labour community. The Commission of Finnish Labour Tradition seeks to collect memories on the everyday life of normal people and the wielding of power.

In total our collection consists of approx. 10,000 individual collection units and it is organised in bindings, which are supplemented with other written material as an appendix folder. The biggest entity is the memories from 1917-1918 of ‘the Red’s’ that were defeated in the Civil War. It is a unique description of the destiny of those who lost the war. The collections of the Commission of Finnish Labour Tradition can be freely used by everyone for research purposes.