This work studies the emigrant policies amongst the leaders of the Finnish Communist Party in Soviet Russia at the time when the Party was illegal in Finland. In the Party there were a number of oppositions. The most famous of them was the 'Murder Opposition', which killed Finnish Communists in Petrograd in 1920. Another was a semi-criminal gang that manufactured fake Finnish money.
One opposition, led by Otto Wille Kuusinen in 1919-1921, aimed at liquidation of the emigrant-led Party altogether. The last opposition, led by Hanna Malm and Kullervo Manner, proclaimed in self-flagellating way that the Finnish revolutionary leaders, including Manner himself, 'betrayed' the workers in the revolution of 1918.
Theory of totalitarianism forms a starting-point to the analysis. Most important explanatory factor is, however, the emigration itself. Emigration produces easily sectarian political quarrels and the combination of these two, totalitarian and emigration circumastances made it difficult for the Finnish Communists to adjust in the Soviet Society.
