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The chapter shows how the social and political changes in Finnish society in the early 1990s were reflected in the images of C. G. E. Mannerheim (1867–1951), the Marshal of Finland. By looking at the debate concerning the construction of the Museum of Contemporary Art next to the Mannerheim equestrian statue in Helsinki, Tepora analyzes the public dispute as a moral panic that sprung from the 1990s recession, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and joining the European Union. Arguing for the study of non-totalitarian personality cults, Tepora shows how the opposing sides in the debate either arose to defend the conservative Mannerheim image as an unchanging emotional figure or recoded the figure to reflect their liberal and cosmopolitan perspectives. ; This chapter shows how the social and political changes in Finnish society in the early 1990s were reflected in the images of C. G. E. Mannerheim (1867–1951), the Marshal of Finland. By looking at the debate concerning the construction of the Museum of Contemporary Art right next to the Mannerheim equestrian statue in Helsinki, Tepora analyzes the public dispute as a moral panic that sprang from the 1990s recession, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and joining the European Union. Arguing for the study of nontotalitarian personality cults, Tepora shows how the opposing sides in the debate either rose to defend the conservative Mannerheim image as an unchanging emotional figure or recoded the figure to reflect their liberal and cosmopolitan perspectives. ; Peer reviewed

AbstractPremised on the interplay between national fags, violence and sacrifice, this article sheds new light on the significance of fag culture in nation‐building. It specifically highlights the role of the Finnish fag in directing violence outwards from Finnish society after the Civil War of 1918. The new national flag introduced after the war came to symbolise an ideal of oneness which found its expression in a propagated willingness to make sacrifices for the collective. The memory of fratricidal violence was externalised from the national space and transferred onto the red fags associated with Soviet Russia. During the Second World War the symbolically unifying 'sacrifice' was transformed into real sacrifice, giving birth to a new symbolism of the Finnish fag. The article concludes that national fags have an important role in societies' boundary formation, connecting civil society to the state, as well as the individual to the public realm.