Finnish People's Democratic League

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Finnish People's Democratic League (in Finnish: Suomen kansan demokraattinen liitto, SKDL, in Swedish: Demokratiska Förbundet för Finlands Folk, DFFF) was a Finnish political organisation with the aim of uniting those left of the Finnish Social Democratic Party. It was founded in 1944 as the anti-communist laws in Finland were repealed, and lasted until 1990, whenmajority of its members merged with the newly formed Left Alliance.

The supporters of the Communist Party of Finland (SKP) constantly had a majority in the SKDL, thus it was regarded by many as a communist 'umbrella organisation'. In fact, this meant that SKP members attended two meetings, both SKP and SKDL, to decide on the same issues. Also, the number of communist party members amongst the SKDL MPs constantly raised from 1945 on: for 1945 election, many prominent left-wing socialists had joined the alliance. The Finnish Social Democratic Party ensured its integrity soon after as the number of internal communist sympathisers fell around 1945.

SKDL enjoyed its greatest election success in the 1958 election for the Eduskunta, when it gained a support of approximately 23 per cent and a representation of 50 MPs, making it the largest party in the Eduskunta. At its time, it was one of the largest leftist parties in Western Europe, with its main member party, the Communist Party of Finland, being one of the largest communist parties west of the Iron Curtain.

One of the few organized non-SKP forces in SKDL was the Socialist Workers Party (STP), a left-wing socialist party (STP was also subscribing to Marxism).