Soldiering and the Making of Finnish Manhood: Conscription and Masculinity in Interwar Finland, 1918-1939

This thesis studies military conscription as an arena for the “making of manhood” in peacetime Finnish society, 1918–1939. It examines a range of public images of conscripted soldiering, asking how soldiering was depicted and given gendered meanings in parliamentary debates, war hero myths, texts concerned with the military, as well as in works of fiction and reminiscences about military training as a personal experience. Studying conscription with a focus on masculinity, the thesis explores the different cultural images of manliness, soldiering and male citizenship on offer in Finnish society. It investigates how political parties, officers, educators, journalists, writers and “ordinary” conscripts used and developed, embraced or rejected these notions, according to their political purposes or personal needs. The study represents a combination of new military history and the historical study of men and masculinities. This study examines how the meanings ascribed to manhood varied according to class, age, political ideology and social situation.