The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918

Front matter

A STUDY BASED ON DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

BY HENNING SÖDERHJELM

THE RED INSURRECTION IN FINLAND IN 1918

The Prelude

THE PRELUDE.

On the 27th January, 1918, "Finland's Working-men's Executive Committee" announced that Finland's working-men had proceeded to revolution, that the lawful government had been overthrown, and that all power in Finland had now passed over to the organised working-men and their revolutionary organs.

Hereby the civil war was declared which was to ravage Finland's soil and demand such painful sacrifices. The revolutionaries—the "Red"—and their Russian allies succeeded in taking possession of the southern parts of the country and the largest cities here. But in the north the loyal citizens—the "White"—took up arms to free the country from the rebels. They cleared the whole of North Finland and marched towards the south. A long front was formed, beginning at the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, running in a wide sweep round Tammerfors and on to the east, going on the south side of St. Michel to the river Vuoksen, and ending south of the latter's outfall in lake Ladoga by the Finno-Russian frontier. It was not, however, until the middle of March that the "White" army was ready to proceed to a serious offensive, and by the first days of April, with the assistance of volunteers from Sweden, it had broken up the main forces of the "Red" and conquered Tammerfors. At the same time a German relief expedition, called in by the Finnish Government, landed at Hangö, and after a quick advance took the capital, Helsingfors. Now defeat followed upon defeat for the "Red" army, and at the beginning of May the insurrection was definitely subdued. The leaders of the revolutionaries had fled to Russia, and more than 70,000 men of their army had been captured by the victors. The most ignominious and bloodiest episode in the history of Finland was hereby closed.

What was the meaning of this revolution and this insurrection? What were its wishes, what its aims, and what caused it These questions will be quite briefly answered in the present little volume. Any complete statement cannot, of course, as yet be given, and least of all can there be any attempt at an historical account of the war. But it has seemed necessary already now to give interested people abroad a description of the psychology of the movement based upon reliable documents—and exclusively on such. This is attained partly by examining the causes of the revolution and the preparations for it, and partly by acquainting oneself with the conception of the "Red" themselves as it is revealed in the accounts and evidence in their papers, of which a great deal have fortunately been found which are of invaluable benefit for the history of the insurrection.

This account was written at the suggestion of persons who have been in close touch with the events. While I was doing service in one of the offices established for winding up the affairs of the insurrection, I was enabled to carry out this task, and obtain an insight into all the documents hitherto brought to light, through the friendly assistance of Senator A. Frey and the courtesy of the chiefs and the staff. For this I desire to express my grateful acknowledgments.

Chapter 1: The Historical Background

THE RED INSURRECTION.

1. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND.

For the last twenty years Finland has lived under politically abnormal conditions. For twenty years an intense struggle against Russian oppression has set its stamp on the whole spiritual existence of the people. At the same time the material conditions of life have run through a rapid development for great portions of the people. The last decades have seen industrialism making more and more headway into a people which before may be said to have virtually consisted of farmers and Government functionaries only. Towns and manufacturing centres have grown with American swiftness, the city population has been increased chiefly by influx from the country, the housing question has become pressing, the labour movement has grown like an avalanche. Social as well as political conditions have thrown the country off its balance.

Finland is sparsely populated, her soil yields but grudgingly, her climate is cold. The character of her people bears the impression of these harsh conditions. Dogged, tenacious, stubborn, the Finn has accustomed himself to fight a troublesome, slow and silent battle against the hard forces of Nature. He has few neighbours, and has learnt to trust to himself alone. His thoughts revolve round his own toil and trouble, and find their expression in the necessary action, not in sociable words. He is a hermit, and his emotions are of a strong and primitive order. He lives for himself only, and is an out-and-out individualist.

The stranger is to him a stranger, therefore suspected and dangerous. If anyone does him an injury, it burns deeper and deeper into his heart and grows into a dark hatred of the perpetrator. He lacks the power of firing up and then forgetting, for his character is that of the solitary and heavy brooder. He is not used to discipline and quick obedience. He must have a firm confidence in and an absolute affection for his masters to submit to them; but if so, he does it fully. He is a primitive individualist who does his work after his own mind, and only subordinates himself to the claims of society when he is absolutely convinced that it must be.

The consequence of this is that every universal effort, in order to gain a sure footing in a people thus constituted, and in order to spread and grow, must have the character of something sacred, of a religion. It must rank above every-day claims of utility, must be charged with matter of such a high spiritual kind that it has power to break through the craving for seclusion and through individualism and lead to a higher order of concord; it must create a sympathy closely akin to fanaticism. Those sort of spiritual movements are known expressly to Finland from rich experience. There have, of course, been many purely religious movements, but when the Finnish National Movement, the endeavour to raise the Finnish language to a culture-language from having been merely a vernacular of the common people, came into being in the middle of the nineteenth century, this also assumed an almost religious character. This justifiable and very natural movement grew to such enormous proportions for the very reason that it was raised to the rank of a religion. Its purpose was a twofold one, viz., to combat the predomination of the Swedish language, and to raise the level of education among the Finnish-speaking element of the people. In both directions it has often found fanatical expression, and as the negative results thereof we find, on the one hand, an often bitter conflict between the languages; on the other hand, a worship of theoretical education, of studies and theoretical knowledge which has drawn too sharp a distinction between the "educated" classes, to which the "student examination" for admittance to the university is the only stepping-stone, and the "uneducated," i.e., those who have no academical education.

Another spiritual movement which has assumed the character of a religion—or perhaps rather of an epidemic—is the total abstention movement. It has had the result: entire prohibition for the whole country just because the whole people was stirred up and had the alcohol question presented to them in the light of a sacred cause and not as a difficult problem. In the same way the fight for the co-operative movement has been stamped by a similar holy ardour, where there has been no talk of reason or sense, but only of friend or foe.

It is obvious that a people that is thus constituted ought to live in peace. It will then be able to assert its fine qualities. It will then be able by its tenacity, its perseverance, its stubbornness, to create great and enduring things. But when once it is stirred, when one after another of the sacred claims knock at its doors, it rests with leaders, stump orators, lecturers and the press, whether this people shall be urged towards the good or the bad. Twenty years ago there was one cause which really forced the whole nation to fight, the cause against the unlawful measures adopted for the Russification of the country. And the people proved itself capable of resistance. In spite of every attempt denationalisation made no progress. A stubborn and tenacious resistance was offered against the Russian work of destruction, a defence was made which will always show as an honourable leaf in the history of Finland. The national defence was organised with one single end in view—the firm adherence to the laws of the country, the refusal to submit to the Russian decrees. It was the method of passive resistance, a loyal, quick and "Western" method. But the severer Russian pressure became, and the more the bitterness and hatred against Russian officialdom grew, the more easily could a more active, a more violent policy of opposition gain partisans in Finland. Russian autocracy was the enemy not only of Finland, but of the Russian people as well. And the methods employed from olden times by the Russian revolutionaries were anything but passive. Then, was it not necessary to join forces against the common foe? Should not the Russian militant methods be employed in Finland too? The answer was both yes and no. The enemy was common to both, and from this it followed that the Russian revolutionaries were regarded with sympathy in Finland and aided when in distress. But the end aimed at in the struggle was another in Finland than in Russia. We wished only to regain the rights we had been robbed of, and after that to work out our internal development according to our own lights and to the best of our ability. They laboured for the revolution, for a general upheaval, for a political and social liberation of the people, which was to transform Russia completely. We had laws, we had a sense of justice, a law-directed Western liberty; this the Russian rulers had sought to crush, and this we wanted back again. The Russians knew only decrees and commands, police regulations and reports of gendarmes; they thought to remodel their country by fresh decrees and regulations of another description. They were absorbed in dreams and Utopias, and yearned for an ideal society in which there was political liberty, and where all social injustice was set right.

In Finland a party was gradually formed which did not realise how great was the difference between the aims of the Russian liberty movement and Finland's struggle for her rights. This was the Labour Party, which has incorrectly described itself as the Social-Democrat Party. This party which, during the rapid growth of the industries, had developed out of some working-men's associations conducted in a friendly spirit by the employers, and which, to begin with, was without all political influence, gained vitality and thrived through the connection with Russian revolutionary circles. It got to look at existing phenomena with Russian eyes, learned to mix up proletariat policy with State emancipation, and to employ revolutionary methods of action for the gaining of its ends; it forgot the huge gulf fixed between Finland's Western social conditions and the Eastern chaos of Russia. This fact, that Finland's Labour Party from the outset struck into Russian paths and made the cause of the Russian revolutionaries its own; this was the original fatal cause that such a thing as the Red Insurrection in 1918 became at all possible.

The first results of the tactics of the Labour Party became evident in the stirring years 1905 and 1906. The Russo-Japanese War ended in the defeat of Russia. The bitter resentment against the chief men in power in Russia became so widespread that a general strike was proclaimed there towards the end of October, 1905. The stir re-echoed in Finland. This was a "passive" measure which nobody objected to, so here too a general strike was proclaimed. All work throughout the country stopped. The strike included the Government offices, all means of communication, the factories, the university, even the police. The Government of the country, the Senate, were compelled to resign; the Russian Governor-General fled to an ironclad lying in the roads of Helsingfors; and the Finnish community put forward its claims. They were, of course, to the effect that the downtrodden rights should be restored. But the Labour Party had not been taken into account. In the course of the week that the strike lasted, this party showed how strong it had grown, and its claims were now others than those of the hated "Bourgeois." It demanded a Constituent National Assembly, by which the country's future was to be shaped.

Finland's representative assembly was constituted on antiquated lines, and within its four estates the working-man had not been able to gain a hearing. It was, therefore, a surprise to everybody when they now acted suddenly with such vigour. This was chiefly felt through the forces for the maintenance of order which they instituted. As already mentioned, the police had joined the strike. Protective corps of volunteers for the maintenance of order were then formed, consisting chiefly of students and other young men who wore a white band round the left arm for a badge. The leaders of the Labour Party stood doubtful with regard to these bourgeois organisations; at first they co-operated with them, but later on they changed tactics. They established their own Protective Corps with a red band round the arm—the first germ of the Red Guard. It now became the object of the latter to arrogate to itself as much of the power as possible. So some of the towns of Finland, amongst others the capital, were "occupied" almost entirely by the Red. Conflicts between the Red and the White could not be wholly avoided, for, in the knowledge of their power, the Labour Party tried to carry through their claim of a Constituent National Assembly. There was a moment when revolvers flashed in the hands of a troop of Red and a troop of White as they met, and another when the working-men already elected their own Government at a meeting in a square. But finally they yielded and contented themselves with the results obtained by the bourgeoisie groups—the re-establishment of the country's rights. Still the schism had now become as plain as daylight; the Labour press declared that the upper class had played the people false, and the corps of the Red Guard were transformed to a purely military organisation "to safeguard the interests of the working-man.:

The Finnish military had been dissolved in 1901—only a battalion of the Guards had been left—but this also had ceased to exist shortly before the outbreak of the general strike. Now non-commissioned officers and privates from the dissolved battalion trained the Red bands; the language of command was Russian, and the actual business of the army somewhat obscure. It was in touch with Russian revolutionary organisations, and became a sort of Finnish central exchange for all the terrorist fanaticism which manifested itself throughout Russia in the course of the following months; not the least so in the neighbouring Baltic provinces, where excited bands ravaged the large estates with pillage, murder and incendiarism.

In Finland, too, a lot of anarchist outrages were committed, and when in July, 1906, a Russian military revolt broke out in the Sveaborg fortress, the Red Guard considered it their business to interfere. They took the side of the revolutionary troops, and even attempted to bring off another general strike. This attempt was however, foiled by the opposition of the bourgeoisie parties, but the affair did not pass without bloodshed. A band of the White Protection Corps was treacherously assailed in a square in Helsingfors and the Red, who were armed with Russian army rifles, shot down seven of its men.

The situation was complicated. Certainly the whole of Finland sympathised with the Russian revolutionary movement, but we had—at least to a certain degree—arrived at a possibility of shaping our own internal affairs. Therefore no sensible citizen wished to draw our people into the great Russian muddle. Our strength and our safeguard were law-abidingness, loyalty; we did not want to fling our whole "Western" position to the winds and plunge into the Eastern maelstrom. Yet the line between the two was not always easy to find, and the working-men did not see it. With Finnish doggedness and stubbornness they had adopted the frail phantasms and Utopias of the Russians. What were to these latter only card-houses, built up in a moment of excitement, and the collapse of which was viewed later on with a shrug of the shoulders, became to the Finnish working-man a sacred, solid temple, firmly fixed, and incapable of ever falling in.

In face of the danger which threatened the unity of the people from the Labour bands—in hopes of satisfying them and giving them what they had learned to regard as a right—the Assembly of Estates, the Lantdag, was now transformed to a representative assembly so democratic that the world has never yet seen its like. It became a Single-Chamber, the 200 representatives of which were returned by a system of universal suffrage for all men and women that had completed their twenty-fourth year. The first elections for this parliament took place in March, 1907. The Labour Party got eighty representatives.

In the meanwhile the Red Guard had been dissolved and the participants in the Sveaborg revolt sentenced to penal servitude. The Single-Chamber opened up a new field of work for the Labour Party which therefore struck into parliamentary paths. They had, however, read a sufficient number of reports in the papers, about stormy scenes in the parliaments of the Balkan States and elsewhere, to know to the full how cheerfully a session may shape itself with "noise from the Left Parties," applause, interruptions and all sorts of enlivening riots. The Single-Chamber gave on the whole a very melancholy picture of the cultural level of the people.

Upon the improved conditions inaugurated with the general strike there soon followed a period of increasing Russian reaction. In Finland, where the Russian policy of repression had hitherto been regarded wholly and solely as the outcome of views within the highest bureaucracy, it was now discovered that also great portions of the Russian people saw in the national annihilation of Finland a great and necessary mission for the Russian Empire. The Duma sanctioned illegal measures against Finland. A fresh era of outrage and violence began for this country. With a certain weariness and pessimism the policy of passive resistance was there taken up again. The work of the Lantdag became mere desolation, partly because all the protests of the Chamber against the new rule of unlawfulness were followed by decrees of dissolution; partly because the enactments of the Single-Chamber were never corroborated in St. Petersburg; and, last but not least, because the most powerful party in the Lantdag, the Social Democrats, resorted to tactics of opposition and obstruction which distorted the decisions and gave rise to endless, unceremonious debates.

As said before, the Labour Party had struck into parliamentary paths—that is to say, they now aspired to gain the means of power that could be obtained in the altered circumstances in which no overt Russo-Finnish revolution could be thought of, viz., the majority in the Lantdag. All their work was agitation against the upper class, the bourgeoisie, the capitalists. One catchword which proved most effective was the epithet "Butchers of the People," which had been fastened on the White Protective Corps during the general strike. "Butchers" now were all non-working-men, and the word was an excellent termination to the well-known series—robbers, bloodsuckers, misers. The class struggle was proclaimed; Internationalism, Anti-Militarism, Atheism and Free Marriage were exalted to new lodestars of humanity. The industries suffered greatly during the agitation work. Strike followed upon strike; the distrust of employers and foremen was unlimited.

The most melancholy thing about the whole of these tactics was no doubt the systematically created distrust of all human motives. The whole activity of the "bourgeois," all his thoughts and efforts, were directed only towards one goal—the fleecing of the working-man in order that he might become rich himself. And the working-man's sole claim to existence was in his efforts to obtain better conditions of life; poverty was the root of all evil, of all sorrows and sufferings. By this view the "bourgeois" of Finland, amongst others, were shamefully wronged. They had fought bravely for the rights of their country and on the whole for Western culture in the common native land. They had been imprisoned, exiled and sent to Siberia—nay, in 1911–17 some fifty Government functionaries had been shut up in Russian prisons because they refused to obey illegal Russian orders. All this was suppressed in the Labour press, all this did not exist to the excited working-class; on the contrary, Finland's upper classes were represented as miserable tools in the hands of Tsarism.

The agitation of the Labour Party was mendacious, brutal and mean. This was chiefly caused by the fact that the party had never succeeded in securing any honest, upright and trustworthy leaders. Its touring lecturers, stump orators and editors were almost without exception persons of weak character and many high-flown words with the ambitions of strugglers. Its representatives in the Lantdag were precisely these lecturers and editors, besides a number of well-trained voting automatons. The sole object of the party was to gain power; therefore it could never attract men of broader views or nobler sentiments, although the wave of social radicalism that swept over the country after 1905 might have produced many eminent and convinced leaders of a real Social-Democratic Party.

In ordinary circumstances a seditious agitation like that of the Labour Party would have called forth strong opposition and energetic measures of repression. But now the Russian policy of oppression loomed as a continual threat in the background, holding, without a doubt, a still greater danger in store for the country. Therefore, first and foremost, it was necessary to face the latter. Besides, the violent attacks, accusations and threats of the faction leaders were found to be so exaggerated that it was believed they would gradually cease to influence even the working-men. This, however, proved a mistake. The great masses of labourers, recently arrived in the cities and manufacturing centres, with Finnish doggedness and fanaticism had espoused that mixture of extreme Socialistic and Russian revolutionary doctrines which had so long been preached to them. The work of agitation against the "upper class" had left a sediment of dark hatred in their hearts against all other classes, while these latter, without seeing the division with- in the people itself—or at least without perceiving its extent and the danger it carried with it—continued their silent war of defence against the Russian tyrannous policy.

Such was the state of Finland when the world-war broke out.

Chapter 2: From the Outbreak of the War to the Russian Revolution

2. FROM THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

The world-war brought Finland into a peculiar position. Without an army, with conscription not legally done away with but put out of practice by the Russians themselves, she stood as a portion of the Russian Empire which did not take part in the war. So severe was the discontent which the Russian policy of repression had aroused in Finland that Russia did not even deem it advisable to attempt to enlist military here. On the other hand, only one wish was prevalent in all classes and factions: the defeat of Russia. For the experience of the Russo-Japanese war, as well as ordinary common-sense, told them that the present regime must come to an end with a defeat, and the way thus be opened to liberty for Finland, whereas a victory would get fresh wind into the sails of the reaction and destroy all our hopes. Even the leaders of the Labour Party were of this opinion, all the more so as it was held by the Russian revolutionary extremists.

Already at the beginning of the war an imperial manifesto had, however, been issued which boded a complete assimilation of Finland. And the further the war proceeded the more severely the Russian pressure was felt. Huge masses of Russian troops were garrisoned here, the Russian Baltic fleet filled the ports, the country was declared to be in a state of war. Through this a practical Russification of the country was begun Street life took on a Russian aspect, the best customers in the shops were Russians, the erotic successes of the Russian uniform exposed the community to dangers of a particular kind. The Russian gendarmery—the political police showed energetic activity, arrests and the searching of houses was the order of the day, nay, Russian soldiers even executed Finnish citizens without as much as asking the permission of the Finnish authorities. The pressure was insufferable, and the yearning for deliverance from the yoke of Russia became stronger and stronger. It was obvious enough that the passive method would not in these circumstances lead to the goal. Once—in 1905—it had brought victory to us, now another vista was before us, and the time for action seemed to have come. Now at least a more or less complete liberation from Russian suzerainty might be thought of and dreamt of. Endeavours of such a kind could not be called treasonable, for, on the one hand, Russia had time after time broken her pledges to Finland, and, on the other hand, it was quite clear of what military importance Finland was as the sole bridge to Western Europe, as a port to the fleet, and as the owner of Åland, and this was tantamount to the future exposure of Finland to a policy of Russification still more intense, if possible, than hitherto. Ways and means of interfering were considered, and several proposals cropped up. The plainest illustration of this natural effort of Finland to get out of the connection with Russia which was so destructive to her nationality and culture, was given already in the first year of the war by a number of volunteers joining the German army, where they formed a special battalion of chasseurs which, after having been drilled, was placed on the Eastern front.

For the rest, the war carried with it in Finland the same difficulties, the same shortage of food and abundance of money, the same change of values and fortunes as in the rest of the world. But one more phenomenon must be pointed out: the Russian fortification work in the country. This stupendous enterprise, directed against an eventual Swedish invasion or a German landing, consisted both in the surrounding of the most important cities by belts of forts, blasted into the mountains, by lines of trenches and barbed wire defences, as well as in the building of lines of defence virtually throughout the whole of the country. How much work these fortifications have cost is best seen from the observations of an officer of the German general staff on the defences round Helsingfors. He says that these fortifications surpassed everything German soldiers had seen during the world-war, as well Liège as Verdun, as well Kovno as Warsaw, nay, even the mountain fortresses in the Italian Alps. These huge positions were built by Finnish labourers under Russian command. Enormous crowds of working-men overran the parts where the work was carried on, the pay was good, discipline there was none, the claims made on individual effort were the least possible. Innumerable were the anecdotes related about bribes, cheating, faked pay-bills, etc., in connection with this work. But one melancholy result they had. The labourers became corrupted, and were thought to fraternise with the Russian soldiers. A friendship was struck up between the worst elements within each group, and the compact was soon sealed by pillage, theft, robbery and murder, all in concert. The tracts where the fortification-work had been carried on became the worst haunts of Finno-Russian bands of ruffians in the winter of 1917–1918, and, from the ranks of those fortification workers who had been led astray, the most licentious bands of the reviving Red Guard were recruited.

During the war Finland's Lantdag had not been permitted to assemble. But in the summer of 1916 the new general elections took place. These were not able to create any very great interest, as it was impossible to foresee under what conditions the assembly would meet, and what problems would then be set before it. Only the Labour Party succeeded as before in rallying its constituents round the old familiar catchwords, and thus it obtained the power in parliament it had so eagerly coveted. The results of the election were 103 Labour representatives and 97 Bourgeois. The Labour Party was now in absolute majority.

Chapter 3: The March Revolution in Russia and the Position of Finland

3. THE MARCH REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA AND THE POSITION OF FINLAND.

When the Russian revolution broke out in March, 1917, it was, of course, welcomed with the greatest joy throughout all Finland, especially as the Government elected by the Duma immediately took up the Finnish question. The strongest feeling of deliverance and relief was, however, in the beginning due to the fact that our political prisoners in Russia might now be sure of liberation. Since the autumn of 1915 the leader of the Lantdag, Svinhufvud, had been in Siberia; thither also the mayor of Vasa city, Hasselblatt, and several others had been deported; the chief of the fire department was in the interior of Russia, and, finally, a hundred Finnish patriots had been confined for months in the prisons of St. Petersburg awaiting sentence of death. The thought of these unhappy victims to the struggle for our right had lain like a heavy load on the whole community; it was to them, therefore, that the first joyful thoughts from Finland went out.

Nor was it long before information was received that the new Russian Government had done everything in its power, viz., once more restored to Finland all her rights. Still at the same time it was found that the representatives of our Labour Party had preferred the demand that the Russian Provisional Government should introduce into its manifesto promises of the social reforms desired by the party; but as these demands were at once rejected as contrary precisely to those fundamental laws which would now again become valid, this bold step did not attract any particular attention. Yet, in the light of later events, this was the first sign that the Labour Party did not shrink from resorting to any foreign means of power, when it was a question of carrying through their own private claims.