Between the two world wars, the Baltic Sea region became a hotbed of intelligence activity, ideological confrontation, and covert operations. Various state and non-state actors, including intelligence agencies, political organisations, and émigré groups played pivotal roles in shaping the geopolitical landscape through surveillance, information-gathering, propaganda, and clandestine collaboration.
The following short article is based on my recently-published book Infosoturit (Gaudeamus, 2025), or infowarriors, which considers the activities of a Swiss anticommunist organisation Entente Internationale Anticommuniste (EIA) in Finland and the Baltic States from 1923 until the Winter War. The EIA constructed a global network that gathered information on communism from different countries, and on this basis, produced transnational anticommunist propaganda intended mainly for media outlets and state officials.
The assassination of a Soviet diplomat Vatslav Vorovsky by two Swiss-Russian terrorists in Lausanne in 1923, triggered a politically charged trial. Concocted by the EIA’s president Theodore Aubert, the defence’s strategy shifted the attention from the murder to Soviet atrocities, successfully diverting the court’s focus. Out of nine judges, five voted for the release of the suspects, and they were freed. Aubert’s final statement at the trial was later published as a pamphlet L’Affaire Conradi, which became the ideological manifesto of the EIA.
The EIA mobilised a vast network of Russian émigrés to gather evidence for the trial, and they also had connections to state officials in different countries. One Finnish intelligence officer was invited to testify at the Lausanne trial but instead submitted a written statement detailing executions in Petrograd. His involvement, facilitated by Russian émigrés in Finland and Germany, highlighted the transnational nature of state and non-state intelligence collaboration.
In Finland, Suomen Suojelusliitto, founded in 1921, functioned as an anticommunist propaganda organisation. It cooperated with the Finnish state police (EK) to monitor the communists’ activities. By 1924, they had developed a detailed surveillance strategy for mapping communist influence across municipalities. This relationship extended into the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the EK provided the Suojelusliitto with classified reports and updates on domestic and international communism. Similarly, Estonia’s Kaitseliit, and the country’s political police, worked closely to monitor suspected communists.
In 1925, chief officers of the state police from Finland, Estonia, and Latvia convened in Helsinki to discuss anticommunist strategies and the potential establishment of anticommunist organisations. These meetings also underscored the role of non-state actors as intelligence sources and support structures because the Suojelusliitto’s president was invited to speak at the conference about international anticommunist cooperation and to discuss with state police representatives.
Russian émigrés, too, were instrumental in intelligence operations. One of them, served both the Estonian political police and the British SIS in the 1920s. Operating from the British passport office in Tallinn, he maintained a network of informants and provided military intelligence on Soviet naval and army capabilities. He also had ties to the EIA, supplying documents through the Swiss consulate. Finnish intelligence maintained a cautious stance toward Russian émigrés but recruited some of them for minor roles under strict supervision. While the EIA viewed Russian émigrés as a link to “real Russia”, Finnish right-wing circles, including Suojelusliitto, were sceptical of their motives.
In 1924, the infamous “Zinoviev Letter” surfaced just days before the British general election. The conservative newspaper Daily Mail published the letter in full. Allegedly authored by the Soviet official Grigory Zinoviev, the letter called for communist agitation in Britain. The letter was later revealed as a forgery, likely orchestrated by Russian monarchist émigrés. Finnish intelligence retrospectively identified the letter as part of a broader disinformation campaign aimed at manipulating democratic processes.
By the 1930s, figures like Severin Dobrovolsky emerged as key players in émigré-led intelligence and propaganda networks. Dobrovolsky, based in Viipuri, had established a private intelligence network and collaborated with the Finnish state police. Despite ideological alignment with the EIA, his overt fascist sympathies and controversial public lectures led to his marginalization. He was executed in Moscow in 1946.
As these glimpses into the interwar intelligence history of the Baltic Sea region illustrate, intelligence-gathering networks, disinformation campaigns, and propaganda as phenomena resemble their present-day successors. However, digitalisation has radically changed the information environment during the past twenty years, thus also fundamentally reshaping the nature of information operations.
Mika Suonpää
PhD, Docent, University Lecturer in Contemporary European History
University of Turku
Finland
misuon@utu.fi
