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The 'Academic Karelia Society (AKS)' ''(Akateeminen Karjala-Seura)'' was a Finnish elitist nationalist organization aiming at the growth and improvement of newly independent Finland, founded by academics and students of the University of Finland in 1922. Its members retained influential positions in the academic life of the era as well as within the officer corps of the Army. The AKS controlled the student union of the University of Helsinki from the mid-1920´s right up to 1944, when the Society was disbanded in the aftermath of the Continuation War that to a great extent had been planned and fought in accordance with the AKS agenda. Most political officers in the Finnish Army during World War II were AKS members.
The Academic Karelia Society's program was centered around their main demand: the acquisition of East Karelia from Soviet Russia.
AKS also organized aid to Finnic minorities in Soviet Russia and refugees from there. Domestically it was an emphatic proponent for a strengthened army and for strict restrictions against Socialists, although it at the same time stressed the need of improving the lot of the working classes in the interest of the national community.
In the 1930s, the AKS was an ally of the ultra-right Patriotic People's Movement party. AKS also maintained close ties with a militant secret society called Vihan Veljet. Some authors claim that Vihan Veljet was actually a group inside the AKS, not a separate organization, but there is not much evidence either way. The archives of AKS were hidden or destroyed in 1944, when the organization was officially disbanded.
Prominent former members include quite a few academics, bishops, business leaders and politicians ( e.g. president Urho Kekkonen ).