As Lotvonen already mentioned, smuggling of alcohol became very common and organised. Luckily the organised crime born with bootlegging for all practical purposes dissolved once the prohibition ended. It has also been noted that the prohibition changed Finnish drinking habits and not in a good way - earlier much of the alcohol consumed in Finland had been beer, but now sprits replaced it (probably because smuggling beer wasn't profitable enough). I also have my suspicions that the Finnish attitude towards alcohol changed - during prohibition public intoxication was illegal, but it also showed that the intoxicated person was connected and had money.
While the prohibition might have looked good idea early on, it had zero chance of working with the cultural climate of those days. This was for the large part because the established social customs required use of alcohol in certain social situations. Even the government that had created the legislation for prohibition was routinely using alcohol, which the ushers of government house were delivering to it from the storage of forfeit alcohol.
Bootlegging was international business. Foreign ships loaded with spirits started appearing just outside Finnish territorial waters. Typically they stayed there, but sometimes also entered Finnish territorial waters to make unloading their cargo easier. Finnish bootleggers would mostly handle smuggling of the alcohol from these boats to the mainland with smaller boats. Bootlegging was big business, so the persons involved often had considerable resources for acquiring equipment. Even World War 1 era submarines were used for the purpose and the bootlegging business also inspired manufacturing of speed boats, which had been designed fast enough for the to have good chance of evading motor boats used by Finnish Customs.
Video showing Finnish speedboat build for bootlegging in year 1926:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hez3C8DyOtA
The subject also has some relation to World War 2.
Algoth Niska (sometimes referred as "King of bootleggers"), who was the most famous Finnish bootlegger, later turned his interests to smuggling Jews from Germany:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algoth_Niska
One of the main reasons why first VMV patrol boats were acquired for Finnish Navy was the need for this sort of boat (fast motor boat armed with 20-mm automatic cannon) for operations against bootleggers. They also proved highly successful in this role. For example:
- VMV 1: 19th of May 1931 it captured Czechoslovakian bootlegging ship Serpen off Märket lighthouse. The operation resulted confiscation of 122,000 litres of spirits (largest single confiscation during whole prohibition).
- VMV 2: 14th October 1933 it captured British bootlegging ships Atlantica and Omar. Once this had happened and its crew was about to start sailing Omar to Helsinki, twice the size of VMV-boat bootlegging motorboat S/S Rell approached and attempted twice ramming the patrol boat. In addition smugglers on board S/S Rell opened fire towards the patrol boat with pistols and two rifles, crew of the patrol boat returned fire with rifles and Bergmann-submachinegun, until the 20-mm automatic cannon got into action, at which the point the out-gunned smugglers decided to surrender.
VMV-boats were probably the most heavily used type of boats for Finnish Navy during World War 2. Armament originally acquired for these patrol boats was 20-mm Lahti L-34 automatic cannon (version II). This was the early design from which Aimo Lahti later developed also L-39 antitank-rifle, L-39/44 anti-aircraft rifle and 20 ItK/40 VKT anti-aircraft gun.
Jarkko
