The concept of populism has been in use in political debate for over a century. Because 'populist' is often used in a pejorative sense today, those to whom it is applied to tend to reject it. However, a closer look at the history of the concept reveals that while its meaning may fluctuate and even be dismissed as irrelevant, its use can become a political tool. This study of the use of 'populism' refrains from making value judgments on the actual populist nature of certain parties or political tendencies.Instead, it analyses uses of the concept from a historical perspective. Special emphasis is placed on politicians who chose to define themselves as populist, or accept the label imposed by others, with particular focus on the Finns Party of Finland. Such self-identified populists draw their conceptions of populism from the ever-growing field of populism research, striving to appropriate and realize what scholars have only hypothetically described as a professed ideal. A closer look at the uses of populism as a political self-identity forces us to rethink its uses as a pejorative, or as an analytical, concept.The concept of populism was originally imbued with a positive meaning, but its usage has become pejorative since the late 20th century. This semantic drift can be traced back to post-war debates within American historiography, as well as European reception in the 1980s. Populism scholar Margaret Canovan noted already in 1981 that scholars studying so-called populist parties in Europe have to balance between political self-definitions and pejoratives used by opponents 1 , but as historian Anton Jäger observes in 2016, many lack historical awareness of the concepts they employ. 2 The concept of populism has two geographically separate lineages based on divergent historical experiences in Europe and the Americas. According to Argentine political theorist Ernesto

Finnish and Tatar intellectuals shared a position of subordination and relative privilege in the Russian Empire from the early 19th century onward. They did not simply accept or reject Western racial knowledge production, which was increasingly used to justify colonialism and imperialism toward the end of the 19th century; they appropriated it and created a localized version of racial hierarchy, subverting derogatory racial stereotypes to sources of vitality. Within that framework, the heritage of another empire that had managed to menace the white West, the Mongol Empire, had an undeniable attraction to Finns and Tatars, who shared the experience of middle-men minorities providing experts and services to a multi-national empire, while aspiring for empires and colonies of their own.

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The reception of the first generation of Finnish Tatars by representatives of the majority population in Finland, including state authorities, intellectuals, political movements, and the press, shows that geopolitical circumstances and local interests outside the Tatars' own power determined to what extent they were perceived as enemies or brothers-in-arms. Events such as the independence of Finland and the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 influenced public perceptions of Muslims in Finland. Minority spokespersons felt pressured to address mutual fears, justify their presence in Finland, and put the majority representatives at ease. These strategies did not always succeed without ruffling feathers within the Finnish Tatar communities. Behind the “success story” of the Finnish Tatars we find a century-and-a-half of struggles that were not always happily resolved.