Finnish Civil War

Finnish Civil War
Part of World War I
Tampere's civilian buildings destroyed in the civil war.
Date 27 January – 15 May 1918 Location Finland Result White victory The traumatic war deepened division between the Finns Russian military presence ceased German hegemony until December 1918
Belligerents
White Guards Germany	Red Guards Russian SFSR
Commanders and leaders
C.G.E. Mannerheim Ernst Linder Ernst Löfström Martin Wetzer Karl Wilkman	Ali Aaltonen Eero Haapalainen Eino Rahja, Adolf Taimi Evert Eloranta Kullervo Manner
Strength
80,000–90,000 Finns, 13,000 Germans, 550 Swedish volunteers	80,000–90,000 Finns, 4,000–10,000 Russians
Casualties and losses
Whites 3,414 killed in action, 1,400–1,650 executed, 46 missing, 4 dead in prison camps Germans 450–500 killed in action	Reds 5,199 killed in action, 7,000–10,000 executed, 2,000 missing, 11,000–13,500 dead in prison camps Russians 700–900 killed in action 1,500 executed

The Finnish Civil War (Finnish: Suomen sisällissota; Swedish: Finska inbördeskriget) was a part of the national and social turmoil caused by World War I (1914–1918) in Europe. The war was fought in Finland from 27 January to 15 May 1918 between the forces of the Social Democrats led by the People's Deputation of Finland, commonly called the "Reds" (punaiset), and the forces of the nonsocialist, conservative-led Senate, commonly called the "Whites" (valkoiset). The Reds were supported by Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, while the Whites received military assistance from the German Empire.

In 1917, Finland was a possession of the Russian Empire. The February and October Revolutions in 1917 in Russia led to the empire's defeat in World War I and its total collapse. The chaos of Russia induced disintegration of Finnish society, which contained economical, social, and political cleavages and whose political system was in an unstable phase of democratization and modernization. Finland being culturally and nationally rather uniform, its subsequent civil war did not involve ethnic or religious divisions. The disintegration of Russia led some Finnish leaders to declare independence on 6 December 1917. Although the majority of the Finns supported sovereignty, the declaration occurred in the context of a power vacuum that followed the collapse of Russia deepening the rivalry for the leadership of the state between the left-leaning labour movement (the Social Democrats) and the more right-wing conservatives. Both sides were reluctant to make political compromises and aimed to gain supremacy for their own faction, due to the nature of the political and social structures of the nation that emerged in the 19th century. In the end, the crisis of power and authority penetrated all levels of society, from local administration to workplaces.

As there were no generally accepted police and army forces to keep order in Finland after March 1917, the left and right began building security groups of their own, leading to the emergence of two paramilitary forces, the White Guards and Red Guards. There arose among the Finns an atmosphere of political violence, fear, and mistrust. Fighting broke out during January 1918 due to acts by both the Reds and Whites in a spiral of military and political escalation. The fate of the Finns during 1917-1918 was in accordance with the concept often manifested in the history of minor nations separating from (disintegrating) major countries.

The Reds carried out a failed general offensive from mid February to early March. The general offensive of the Whites was issued on 15 March 1918. A large number of Russian soldiers remained stationed in Finland in the beginning 1918, but as the majority of these troops were unwilling to fight, and were withdrawn from Finland by the end of March, Soviet Russia's main support to the Reds was in supplying weapons. The White offensive was bolstered by the intervention of the Baltic Sea Division of the German army in southern Finland on 3 April. Battles of Tampere and Viipuri won by the Whites and the Battle of Helsinki won by the German troops were the decisive military actions of the war, and the victors were the Whites.

In the aftermath of the 1917–18 crisis and the Civil War, Finland passed from Russian rule to the sphere of influence of the German Empire. The conservative Finnish senate attempted to establish a Finnish monarchy ruled by a German king, but after the defeat of Germany in World War I, Finland emerged as a factually independent, democratic republic.

The Civil War remains the most controversial and emotionally charged event in the history of modern Finland, and there have even been disputes about how to designate it. Approximately 37,000 people died during the conflict, most of them off the battlefields. 75% of the dead were Red combatants and sympathizers. Most of the deaths were caused by political terror campaigns and high prison camp mortality rates. The turmoil caused a severe food shortage, destroyed the economy, rent the political apparatus, and divided the Finnish nation for many years. The country was slowly reunited through the compromises of moderate political groups on the left and right. The shift to peaceful development of Finnish society was facilitated by the outcome of World War I and by the pre-1918 cultural and national integrity of the nation.

Background

The main factor behind the Finnish Civil War was World War I. The conflict caused a collapse of the Russian Empire, mainly in the February Revolution and the October Revolution during 1917. This led to a formation of a large power vacuum and struggle for power. The autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, "Finland", as a part of the Russian Empire (between 17 September 1809 and 6 December 1917), became a part of the struggle and the vacuum. The war between Germany and Russia had a major impact on the Finns since the year 1914. Both empires had political, economic, and military interests in the Finnish area. The military significance of the Grand Duchy had been increasing for the Russians since the half of the 19th century as the tension and competition between the major European powers constantly rose. The northwestern territory was a part of the gateway and buffer zone (with Estonia) to and out of the imperial capital Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), both via Gulf of Finland towards the Kronstadt naval base, and via the Finnish land area, the Karelian Isthmus. The Grand Duchy had also become a vital source of raw materials, industrial products, and food and labour supply for the growing capital of Russia. Since the beginning of World War I the German Empire had seen Eastern Europe, mainly Russia, as a major source of vital products and raw materials for sustaining the capacity of the nation during the war, and after the final victory. A part of the German leaders were most concerned of the two-front war, which Germany had engaged in, and a policy of breaking up the enemy from inside by supporting revolutionary groups, such as Bolsheviks in Russia, financially was issued (in total 25 million German marks was spent to Russia). For the German army the Finnish area was a way for both controlling and/or penetrating to Petrograd, and reaching northeast, towards Kola Peninsula, an area rich of raw materials for mining industry. There were lots of timber and ore reserves, and well-developing forest industry in Finland also.

During 1809-1898, a period called Pax Russica, Finnish-Russian relations had been exceptionally peaceful and stable, compared to other parts of the Russian Empire. The crisis of the Crimean war of 1850's in Russia led to attempts to speed up the modernization of Russia, which led to more than 50 years of positive economical, industrial, cultural and educational development in the Grand Duchy. The improvement in the status of the Finnish language was especially striking. These developments also encouraged Finnish nationalism and cultural unity via birth of fennomania, which bound the Finns to the domestic governmental system and led to the idea that the Finnish Grand Duchy was an increasingly autonomous part of the Russian Empire.

In 1899 the Russian Empire initiated a policy of integration through Russification in the Finnish Grand Duchy. As the military and strategic status of Russia had become more difficult, notably when seen against the rise of Germany and Japan, and the Russian central administration and panslavism had strengthened in Petrograd, the Russian Tsar and the military leaders had since 1870's attempted to unite their large, heterogeneous empire, described as a Russian multinational, dynastic union. The Russification of Finland and the crisis of governmental leadership in Finland, ensuing the 1899 imperial order, was a result of collision between peripheral authority i.e. the Finnish thinking that the Grand Duchy was a state of the Russian empire but a separate part of the Russian governmental system and central power i.e. an idea of one, undivided Russia dominated in Petrograd. It had the aim to increase military and administrative control over the Grand Duchy. The Finns called the integration policy "the first period of oppression 1899–1905". After 1899 Finnish-Russian relations worsened, and plans for disengagement from Russia or even achieving sovereignty for Finland were drawn up for the first time. Several political and economic groups with different policies in respect to Russia arose. The most radical one, the activist movement which included anarchistic groups both from the working class and the Swedish speaking intelligentsia, arranged terrorist attacks. During World War I and via rise of germanism the latter (svecomans) began a covert collaboration with Imperial Germany, and during 1915-1917 a "Jäger" (Jääkärit) battalion consisting of 1,900 voluntary Finnish men was trained in Germany, by the support of the same German source of financing, which aided the Bolsheviks in Russia. Contrary, a few thousand Finns with a positive attitude towards Russia, joined the Tsar's army in 1914.

Peasants in the fields. Many Finns were agrarian workers and crofters, who had no political influence in the class society that existed before the parliamentary reform in 1906.

Politcs

Major reasons for the rising political tensions among the Finns were the autocratic rule of the Russian Tsar, and the undemocratic class system of the estates in the Grand Duchy, originating in the Swedish regime of the 17th century, which effectively divided the Finnish people into two groups, separated economically, socially and politically. Labour movement activity after 1899 not only opposed Russification but also sought to develop a domestic policy that tackled social problems and responded to the demand for democracy. Finland's population grew rapidly in the 19th century (860 000 in 1810 and 3 130 000 in 1917), and a class of industrial and agrarian workers and propertyless peasants emerged. The Industrial Revolution and economic freedom arrived in Finland later than in Western Europe (1840–1870), owing to the rule of the Romanov family. This meant that some of the social problems associated with industrialisation were diminished by learning from the experiences of countries such as England. Social conditions, the standard of living, and the self-confidence of the workers gradually improved between 1870–1914, and at the same time the political concepts of socialism, nationalism and liberalism took root. But as the standard of living rose among the common people, the rift between rich and poor deepened markedly.

The Finnish labour movement, which emerged at the end of the 19th century out of folk, temperance and religious movements and fennomania, had a "Finnish national, working class" character and was represented by the Social Democratic Party, established in 1899. The movement came finally to the fore without major confrontations when tensions during Russia's failed war against Japan led in 1905 to a general strike in Finland and revolutionary upheaval in the empire. In an attempt to quell the general unrest, the system of estates was abolished in the parliamentary reform of 1906, which introduced universal suffrage. Nevertheless, the futile domestic dispute since 1880's between the Finnish nobles and the labour movement concerning voting right for the common people had radicalized a part of the workers, decreasing the uniformity of the nation.

From the point of view of the political and social liberalization of the Finnish common man and woman, the majority of the nation, the reform of 1906 was a giant leap. The autocratic rule of the Russian tsar, intermediated to the ordinary people via the four Finnish estates (nobles, bourgoise, peasants, clergy) had been the most conservative political system in Europe. Most of the nations of Western Europe had reached the stage of bicameral parliaments by the end of the 19th century. In 1906 the Finns by-passed this phase and moved directly to the unicameral parliamental system, and female citizens were included in the universal suffrage. All Finnish adults were given the right to vote, increasing the number of voters from 126,000 to 1,273,000. This soon produced around 50% turnouts for the Social Democrats. But, a setback followed as the Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, was not dethroned or his power shared in the Grand Duchy, instead the Tsar regained his authority after the crisis of 1905, reclaimed his role as the Grand Duke of Finland, and during the second period of Russification between 1908 and 1917 neutralized the functions and powers of the new parliament. The emperor saw the parliament to have merely an advisory role and he determined the composition of the Finnish senate, which did not correlate with the assembly of the parliament, prohibiting true parliamentarism, and the Tsar dissolved the parliament and ordered new parliamentary elections almost annually between 1908-1916. The confrontations between the Finnish people's representatives of the largely uneducated common man and the representatives of the former estates accustomed to the meritocratic rule and attitudes reduced the capacity of the Parliament to solve major social and economical problems, and created conditions that encouraged a struggle for leadership, during the ten years before the collapse of the Finnish state.

February Revolution

See also: February Revolution

On strike in Helsinki, 1917. Workers demanded food and a complete shifting of legislative power from the Russian government to the Finnish parliament.

The more severe program of Russification, called "the second period of oppression 1908–1917" by the Finns, was halted on 15 March 1917 by the removal of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II. The immediate reason for the collapse of the Russian Empire was a domestic crisis precipitated by military defeats in the war against Germany and by war-weariness among the Russian people. The deeper causes of the revolution lay in the collision between the policies of the most conservative regime in Europe and the necessity for political and economic modernisation brought about by industrialisation. The Tsar's power was transferred to the Russian Duma and Provisional Government, which at this time had a right-wing majority.

Autonomous status was returned to the Finns in March 1917, and the revolt in Russia handed the Finnish Parliament true political power for the first time. The left, comprised mainly of Social Democrats, covering a wide spectrum from moderate to revolutionary socialists; the right was even more diverse, ranging from liberals and moderate conservatives to radical rightist elements. The four main parties were the two old Fennoman parties, the conservative Finnish Party and the Young Finnish Party including both liberals and conservatives; the social reformist, centrist Agrarian League, which drew its support mainly from peasants with small or middle-sized farms; and the conservative Swedish People's Party, which sought to retain the rights of the Swedish-speaking minority.

The Finns faced a detrimental interaction of power struggle and breakdown of society during 1917. The collapse of Russia induced a chain reaction of disintegration among the Finns; starting from the government, military power and economy, and spreading downwards to all fields of the society such as local administration and workplaces, and finally to the level of individual citizens as changes and questions of freedom, responsibility and moral. The blow of World War I, hit the Finnish people and the nation, which, at the beginning of the 20th century, stood at the crossroads between the old regime of the estates and the evolution of a modern, democratic society. The direction and goal of this period of change now became a matter of accelerating dispute and political battle, which eventually spilled over into armed conflict due to the weakness of the Finnish state, lack of basic controlling factors, and due to instinctive reactions of the individual Finns under most uncertain and fearful conditions. The Social Democrats aimed at retaining the political rights of the labor movement already achieved, and establishing influence over the people and society. The conservatives were fearful of losing their long-held social and economic power. Both groups collaborated with the corresponding political forces in Russia, deepening the split in the nation.

The Social Democratic Party had gained an absolute majority in the Parliament of Finland as a result of the general elections of 1916. The new Senate was formed by Social Democrat and trade union leader Oskari Tokoi. His Senate cabinet comprised six representatives from the Social Democrats and six from non-socialist parties. In theory, the new cabinet consisted of a broad coalition; in practice, with the main political groups unwilling to compromise and the most experienced politicians remaining outside it, the cabinet proved unable to solve any major local Finnish problems. After the revolution real political power shifted instead to street level in the form of mass meetings, strike organizations, and the street councils formed by workers and soldiers, and to active organizations of the employers, all of which served to undermine the authority of the state.

The rapid economic growth stimulated by World War I, which had raised the incomes of industrial workers and profits of the employers during 1915 and 1916, collapsed with the February Revolution, and the consequent decrease in production and economy led to unemployment and heavy inflation. For those who had a job the February revolution gave freedom to reach for resolving long-term problems of their laborious working life; the workers called for eight-hour-per-day working limits and better working conditions, as well as higher wages. The demands led to demonstrations and large-scale strikes in both industry and agriculture throughout Finland. The food supply of the country depended on cereals produced in southern mainland Russia, while the Finns had specialized in milk and butter production. The cessation of the cereal imports from disintegrating Russia led to food shortages in the country. The government responded to this by introducing rationing and price fixing. However, the farmers opposed the control of the government, and a black market formed in which food prices continued to rise sharply, which was a major problem for the unemployed worker families. Food supply, prices, and in the end the fear of starvation became emotional political issues between farmers in the countryside and industrial workers in the urban areas. The common people, their fears exploited by the politicians and the political media, took to the streets. Despite the food shortages, no large-scale starvation hit the Finns in southern Finland before the war. Economic factors remained a supporting factor in the crisis of 1917, but only a secondary part of the power struggle of the state.

Revolutionary Russian servicemen of various political groups added to the feeling of the instability during 1917.

Battle for leadership

The passing of the Tokoi's Senate bill, called the "Power Act", in July 1917 became the first one of the three culminations of the power struggle between the Social Democrats and the conservatives during the political crisis from March 1917 to the end of January 1918. The bill incorporated a plan by the Social Democrats to substantially increase the power of Parliament, in which they had a majority; it also furthered Finnish independence by restricting Russia's influence on domestic Finnish affairs. The Social Democrats' plan had the backing of Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks, who in July 1917 were plotting a revolt against the Russian Provisional Government. The Agrarian Union, some rightist activists, and other non-socialists eager for Finnish sovereignty supported the act, but both the Finnish conservatives and the Russian Provisional Government opposed the measure because it would reduce their power. In the event, Lenin was thwarted during the "July Days" and forced to flee to Finland. The Provisional Russian Government refused to accept the Power Act and sent troops to Finland, where, with the support of the conservatives, Parliament was dissolved and new elections announced. In those elections, in October 1917, the Social Democrats lost their absolute majority, which radicalized the labour movement and decreased support for parliamentary means.

The collapse of Russia in the February Revolution resulted in a loss of institutional authority in Finland and the dissolution of the police force, creating fear and uncertainty. In response, groups on both the right and left began assembling independent security groups for their own protection. At first, these groups were local and largely unarmed, but by autumn 1917, in the power vacuum following the dissolution of parliament and in the absence of a stable government or a Finnish army, such forces began assuming a more military and national character. The Civil Guards (later called the White Guards) were organized by local men of influence, usually conservative academics, industrialists and major landowners and activists, while the Worker's Security Guards and Red Guards (later called solely the Red Guards) were often recruited through their local party sections and the labour unions. In between the power political interests of Germany and Russia, the White Guards were armed by the Germans and the Red Guards by the Russians. The presence of these two opposing armed forces in the country imposed a state of “dual power" and "multiple sovereignty" on Finnish society, typically the prelude to civil war.

October Revolution

See also: October Revolution

Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution on 7 November transferred political power in Petrograd to the radical, left-wing socialists, a turn of events which suited a German Empire exhausted by fighting a war on two major fronts. The policy of the German leaders had been to foment unrest or revolution in Russia in order to force the Russians to sue for peace. To that end, they had arranged for the safe conduct of Lenin and his comrades from exile in Switzerland to Petrograd in April 1917, and financed the Bolshevik party, believing Lenin to be the most powerful weapon they could launch at Russia. The German policy was a success; an armistice between Germany and the Bolseviks came into force on 6 December and peace negotiations began on 22 December 1917 at Brest-Litovsk.

November 1917 became a marked interface in the crisis of 1917-1918 in Finland; the results and final interaction of the measures, both political and military, carried out by the right and left may be described as the second culmination of the rivalry for the leadership in the country. After the dissolution of the Finnish parliament, the polarization and mutual fear between the Social Democrats and the conservatives increased dramatically. The political idling and the parliamentary power vacuum lasting for several months enhanced the significance and actions of the Red and White paramilitary groups. After their victory in the October 1917 Parliamentary elections the Finnish non-socialists and the Russian Provisional Government had reached some kind of a consensus and status quo, but the Bolshevist October revolution changed everything; the newly formed Finnish parliament with a non-socialist majority decided to take over the highest power in Finland on 15 November, on the model of the Power Act of the socialists in July 1917. On the next day the Parliament accepted the Social Democratic proposals from July 1917 for an eight-hour working day and universal suffrage in local elections. Finally, on 27 November a purely conservative cabinet, led by Pehr Evind Svinhufvud was appointed, and the conservatives aimed to stay in power; the government decided to separate Finland from bolshevist Russia and strengthen the military power of the Civil Guards. Regardless of the politicians, the first Finnish Jägers had arrived at Finland on 31 October on a ship called Equity, carrying a first marked shipment of weapons from the German army. Equity was followed by a German U-boat (UC-57), with more Jägers and weapons on 17 November 1917; there were around 50 Jägers in Finland by the end of 1917. Nevertheless, the Finnish activists were concerned of the political development between Germany and bolshevist Russia; both aimed to an armistice and peace negotiations, which would restrict the possibilities of the Germans to aid the White Finns. The number of the Civil-White Guards in Finland (local units in towns and rural communes) was 149 on 31 August 1917, 251 on 30 September, 315 on 31 October, 380 on 30 November 1917 and 408 on 26 January 1918. The first attempt to start a serious military training among the Civil Guards was establishment of a 200-strong "cavalry school" at Saksanniemi estate, in vicinity of town Porvoo, east of Helsinki on 19 September 1917.

Following the political defeats in July and October 1917, on 1 November the Social Democrats put forward an uncompromising program called "We demand" in order to push for political concessions; they demanded abolition of the result of the October Parliamentary elections and demolition of the Civil Guards, which the right strongly denied. The October revolution induced a plan among the Finnish socialists to ask for acceptance of Finland's sovereignty from the Bolsheviks in the form of a manifesto on 10 November, but the uncertain situation in Petrograd stalled it. After the "We demand" program had failed, the socialists initiated a general strike on 14–19 November 1917. The moderate left aimed to put political pressure on the non-socialists in order to include a high number of Social Democratic members to the Finland's new cabinet. A revolution had been the goal of the radical left since the loss of the political power in October, and now there seemed to be a true momentum for it. At this phase, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, under threat in Petrograd, urged the Social Democrats to seize power in Finland, but the majority of the latter were moderate and preferred parliamentary methods, prompting Lenin to label them "reluctant revolutionaries". However, as the general strike appeared to be most successful, the "Workers' Revolutionary Council" voted by a narrow majority to seize power on 16 November, but the supreme revolutionary "Executive Committee" was unable to recruit enough members to carry out the plan and had to call the proposed revolution off the same day. The Social Democrats had an extra party meeting on 25-27 November 1917. There the voting between revolution and parliamentary means was repeated; the moderates won, but when they tried to pass a decision to completely abandon the idea of socialist revolution in Finland, the party representatives voted "no". The Finnish labour movement wanted thus to sustain a military force of their own and keep the revolutionary road open too. Russian bolshevik Joseph Stalin visited the meeting demanding the Finnish socialists to carry out revolution, he tried to push the Social Democrats forward by promising independence to Finland; as for the revolution he failed, the Finns were more eager to sovereignty. The low revolutionary activity of the Finnish Social Democrats was a disappointment to V.I. Lenin; he lost his faith to them finally in December 1917 during the process of independence of the Finns, and he tried to lean on the Finnish bolsheviks in Petrograd. These incidents effectively split the Social Democrats in two, a majority supporting parliamentary means and a minority demanding revolution. The most revolutionary workers were bitter of the labour movement's decision to give up the political power that it had so easily gained during the general strike. The repercussions of the events had a lasting effect on the future of the movement, with several powerful leaders staking positions within the party, and loosing support among the radical workers. On the other side, the future depended also on the reactions and plans of the other counterpart of the crisis, the conservatives, and the atmosphere after the deeds of the armed workers during and immediately after the general strike was not promising.

Among the labour movement, a more marked consequence of autumn 1917 was the comprehensive rise of the Worker's Guards. There were approximately 20-60 Worker's Guards in Finland between 31 August and 30 September 1917, but after the defeat in the October Parliamentary elections the number of the Guards began to substantially increase. On 20 October the Finnish Labour Union proclaimed the need to establish Worker's Guards in the country; the announcement led to a rush to the Guards by the workers; on 31 the number of Worker's Guards was 100-150, 342 on 30 November 1917 and 375 on 26 January 1918. The development of the Worker's Guards had been two-parted since May 1917; the majority of them were Security Guards, but the formation of the, partly secret, Red Guards began also, e.g. in Tampere and Helsinki, on the model of the domestic Red Guards built up during the general strike in 1905. In some of the Guards the nature of controlling social order and the more militant character were nested.

Since the beginning of November 1917 it seemed clear that a common, unified Finnish national order keeping and military force could not be established in the country. In spring 1917 there was a nation cheering the collapse of the Russian emperor and it was led by a Coalition Senate, but the cabinet had faint tools to retain social order. In autumn 1917, there was a deeply split nation with a divided tool for keeping order in the country, and either no politically strong cabinet at all or a cabinet without potential for a true compromise, and furthermore two maverick militant factions hunting weapons. The final cleavage between the counterparts broke out during the general strike, when the radical elements of the Red Guards and Worker's Security Guards executed several political opponents in the main cities of southern Finland, and the first armed clashes between Civil Guards and Workers' Guards broke out, with 34 reported casualties. The Finnish Civil War would probably have started at that point had there been enough weapons in the country to arm the two sides; instead, there began a race for weapons and a final escalation towards war.

Finnish sovereignty

The disintegration of Russia offered the Finns a historic opportunity to gain independence, but after the October Revolution, the positions of the conservatives and the Social Democrats on the sovereignty issue had become reversed. The right was now eager for independence because sovereignty would assist them in controlling the left and in minimizing the influence of revolutionary Russia. The Social Democrats had aimed to increase independence of the Finns since the spring of 1917, but now they could not use it for the direct political benefit of their party, and had either to adjust to the right's dominance or try to change everything via a revolution. Nationalism had become a "civic religion" among the Finns by the end of the 19th century; however, their main goal, particularly during the first period of Russification and the general strike in 1905, was not independence, instead the Finns urged for a return and enlargement of the autonomy of 1809-1898. A major reason was probably the relatively large economic independence of the Grand Duchy, since 1809 including a beneficial Finnish customs organization, an independent domestic state budjet, an own currency (Finnish markka, since 1860) and the positive industrial progress during 1860-1916. The economy of the Grand Duchy was dependent on the huge Russian market, and there was a risk of loosing the advantageous position via separation from Russia. In fact, the economic collapse of Russia and the political power struggle of the Finnish state during 1917 were among the key factors, which brought sovereignty to the fore in Finland.

The Bolshevik government's recognition of Finnish independence was the first expression of Lenin's power political strategy and ideology; the right of nations to self-determination.

The P.E. Svinhufvud's Senate proposed Finland's declaration of independence, which the Parliament adopted on 6 December 1917. Though the Social Democrats voted against the Svinhufvud proposal, they decided to present an alternative declaration of independence containing no substantial differences. The socialists feared a further loss of support (as in the October elections) among the nationalistic common people and hoped to gain a political majority in the future. They sent two delegations during December 1917 to Petrograd in order to appeal from Lenin an approval of Finnish independence. Both political groups, therefore, agreed on the need for Finnish sovereignty, despite strong disagreement on the selection of its leadership.

The establishment of sovereignty was not a foregone conclusion; for a small nation like Finland, recognition by Russia and the major European powers was essential. Three weeks after the declaration of independence, Svinhufvud's cabinet concluded, under pressure by Germany, that it would have to negotiate with Lenin for Russian recognition. During December 1917, in turn the Bolsheviks were under pressure, in the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk with the Germans, and Russia Bolshevism was in a deep crisis with a demoralized army and the fate of the October Revolution in doubt. Lenin calculated that the Bolsheviks could perhaps hold central parts of Russia but would have to give up some territories on its periphery, including Finland in the less important north-western corner. As a result, Svinhufvud and his senate delegation won Lenin's concession of sovereignty on 31 December 1917. By the beginning of the Civil War, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland had accepted the Finnish sovereignty. United Kingdom and United States did not approve it; they were standing by and followed the political and military development between Finland and the major enemy of the Allies, German Empire. The Allies hoped and aimed to override V.I. Lenin and the bolsheviks, in order to get Russia back to the war against Germany. As to the Finnish independence, the Germans had hastened it in order to get Finland to their power sphere.

Warfare

White Guard in Nummi. White Guards were appointed the White army of Finland on 25.01.1918.

Escalation

In hindsight the events of 1917 have been often seen simply as precursors of the Civil War, an escalation of the conflict starting with the February Revolution, but the opposing political factions had made many failed attempts of their own to create a new order and prevent disintegration among the Finns. The most serious effort had been the Tokoi's Coalition Senate in spring 1917, but the true political will was lacking. In autumn 1917, the power vacuum began to fill up by the paramilitary troops of the right and left, and the events of the general strike in November 1917 deepened the suspicion and mistrust in Finland and finally put the possibility of compromise out of reach. The conservatives and rightist activists saw the groups of radical workers active during the strike as a threat to the dominance and security of the former estates and the political right, so they resolved to use all means necessary to defend themselves, including armed force. At the same time, revolutionary workers and left-wing socialists were now considering removing the conservative regime by military force rather than allowing the achievements of the workers' movement to be reversed or implementation of new reforms to be hampered. The result of this hardening of positions was that in late 1917, moderate, peaceful men and women, as so often throughout history, were forced to stand aside while the men with rifles stepped forward to take charge.

The final escalation towards war began in early January 1918, as each military or political act of the Reds or the Whites resulted in a corresponding counteract by the opponent. On the left, the vanguard of the war of 1918 was the most radical urban Red Guards and Workers' Security Guards from Helsinki, Kotka and Turku; they led the rural Reds, and convinced those leaders of the Social Democrats who wavered between peace and war, to support revolution. The Guards were under the command of Ali Aaltonen, a former Russian army officer, who had been appointed in December 1917. On the right, the vanguard of the war was those Jägers who had been moved to Finland by the end of 1917, and the most active volunteer White Guards of Viipuri province in the southeastern corner of Finland and those in southwestern Finland as well as southern Ostrobothnia. The Svinhufvud Senate and the Parliament decided on 12 January 1918 to create a strong police authority, an initiative which the Red Guards saw as a step towards legalizing the White Guards. On 15 January, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, like Aaltonen a former officer in the Russian army, was appointed supreme commander of the White Guards, and on 25 January the Senate renamed the White Guards the Finnish White Army. The Red Guards refused to recognise the title, and decided to establish a military authority of their own. General Mannerheim located his headquarters in Vaasa, while Aaltonen located his in Helsinki. The third and final culmination of the power struggle between the Finns, and the disintegration of the Finnish society had been faced.

The official starting date of the Finnish Civil War is a matter for debate. The first serious battles were fought during 17–20 January in Viipuri province, mainly for control of the town of Viipuri and to win the race for weapons. The White Order to engage was issued on 25 January. The White Guards attacked on 27 January, south of Viipuri, trains carrying a large shipment of weapons from Petrograd, as promised to the Reds by Lenin, and continued disarmament of Russian garrisons, initiated in Karelia on 23, by a major operation in Ostrobothnia during the early hours of 28 January. The Red Order of Revolution was issued on 26 January, and on the same day all the Worker's Guards joined together to form the Red Guard of Finland. The large scale mobilization of the Red Guards began in the late evening of 27 January, but some of the Guards located along the Viipuri-Tampere railway had been alerted to safeguard the Russian trains of arms on 24-26 January. A symbolic date for the start of the war could be 26 January, when a group of Reds climbed the tower of Helsinki Workers' Hall and lit a red lantern to mark the start of the second major rebellion in the history of Finland.

Brothers in arms

Initial frontlines and offensives of the Civil War at the beginning of February (area controlled by the Reds in red, and by the Whites in blue)

At the beginning of the war, the front line ran through southern Finland from west to east, dividing the country into White Finland and Red Finland. The Red Guards controlled the area to the south, including nearly all the major industrial centres and the largest estates and farms with high numbers of crofters and tenant farmers; the White Army controlled the area to the north, which was predominantly agrarian with small or medium-sized farms and tenant farmers, and where crofters were few or held a better social position than in the south. Enclaves of the opposing forces existed on both sides of the front line: within the White area lay the industrial towns of Varkaus, Kuopio, Oulu, Raahe, Kemi and Tornio; within the Red area lay Porvoo, Kirkkonummi and Uusikaupunki. The elimination of these strongholds was a priority for both armies during February 1918.

Red Finland, later named the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic, was led by the People's Council in Helsinki. Kullervo Manner was the chairman and other members included among others Edvard Gylling, Eero Haapalainen, Anna Karhinen, Otto Ville Kuusinen, Hilja Pärssinen, Yrjö Sirola and Oskari Tokoi. In domestic policy the People's Council reached for socialism based on the Finnish Social Democratic way of thinking; their vision of democratic socialism for the country did not resemble Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat. Otto Ville Kuusinen formulated a proposal (final acceptance via a referendum) for a new constitution, influenced by e.g. those of Switzerland and United States; a major political power was planned for Parliament, and a lesser role to Senate. The proposal included a multi-party system, assembly right, freedom of speech and of the press, and use of referendum e.g. for dissolving the Parliament; in order to ensure the power of the labour movement the common people had a right to a "continuous revolution". However, the Red's plans concerning private property rights of the Finns were contradictory with the plans of an "ultrademocratic" and free society; only the state and local administration of municipalities would have had the true property rights. In agriculture the crofters were liberated from the control of the landowners at the beginning of the war, but they were allowed only a right of containment of the farms, due to the plans of a general socialization in the country later. All these plans, including the new constitution, remained unfinished as the Reds lost the war. In foreign policy Red Finland leaned on Bolshevist Russia, which declared its support for the Red Finns; a peace agreement was signed between the Bolsheviks and the Finnish Reds on 1 March 1918. The negotiations for the treaty revealed that, alike in World War I in general, nationalistic factors were more important for the both sides than principles of international socialism and pacifism; the Finns did not accept a true alliance with the Bolsheviks and Lenin and People's Council exchanged land areas; the former got an artillery base, Ino located in the Karelian Isthmus and the latter received Petsamo in north-eastern Lapland. Lenin tried to prevent disintegration of Russia via the policy of right of nations to self-determination, mainly due to the military weakness of Bolshevist Russia. He expected that proletariat of free nations would carry out socialist revolutions and join socialist Russia later. In the end, Lenin failed; many minor, western territories of the former empire declared independence, and aimed to retain sovereignty. Accordingly, the majority of the Finnish labour movement supported Finland's independence, however, the Red Guards influenced also on the politics of Red Finland with their weapons, and the most radical Guards and the Finnish Bolsheviks, though few in number, obviously favoured annexation of Finland back to Russia. This major question vanished in the air due to the defeat of Red Finland.

The senate of White Finland was called the Finnish senate, the Vaasa Senate, and a "rump senate" also; it was relocated to the west-coast city of Vaasa, which acted as the capital of White Finland from 29 January to 3 May. Only a part of the senators could escape from Helsinki to Vaasa, and the chairman Pehr Svinhufvud and Jalmar Castren had to travel a longer way to White Finland; via Estonia-Poland-Germany-Sweden. In the end the Vaasa senate comprised of P.E. Svinhufvud, Juhani Arajärvi, J. Castren, Alexander Frey, E.Y. Pehkonen and Heikki Renvall. In domestic policy the main goal was to return the power of the right in Finland; the conservatives planned a monarchist political system, with a lesser role for Parliament. A section of the conservatives had always been against democracy; others had approved parliamentarianism at first but after the crisis of 1917 and the outbreak of war had concluded that empowering the common people would not work. Moderate non-socialists opposed, however, any restriction of parliamentarianism, and initially resisted German military help, but prolonged warfare changed their stance. In foreign policy the Vaasa Senate looked to Germany for military and political aid in order to beat the Finnish Red Guards, cease the effect of (Bolshevist) Russia in Finland, and also to expand the Finnish territory to Russian Karelia, due to economical and power political reasons, and there were tribes speaking Finno-Ugric languages in the area too. The disintegration and weakness of Russia induced an idea of "Grand-Finland" among the extreme nationalistic factions of both the right and left; a part of the Reds had plans concerning the same areas. General Mannerheim agreed on the need for German weapons, but opposed any help from German troops in Finland, due to his personal military and political plans. Concerning the war in Finland, as a former Russian army officer Mannerheim was well aware of the demoralization of the Russian army and he co-operated with the non-socialist, White Russian officers both in Finland and Russia, and he recognized also the low combat skills of the Red Guards. The counterparts' propaganda of the war and the power struggle in Finland during 1918 aimed to prove their support to democracy and liberty as well as a representation of the whole Finnish nation, but both failed, by allowing the political crisis, instead of a compromise, to end up in the bloody Civil War including a comprehensive terror, to accomplish a neutral and rightful political settlement for all the Finns.

The main offensives to the end of March. Whites besiege Tampere and encircle attacking Soviet Russian and Red forces at Rautu, on Karelian Isthmus.

The number of troops on each side varied from 50,000 to 90,000. While the Red Guards consisted mostly of volunteers (wages paid at the beginning of the war), the White Army contained only 11,000–15,000 volunteers, the remainder being conscripts. The main motives for volunteering were economic factors (salary, food), idealism, and peer pressure. Urban and agricultural workers constituted the majority of the Red Guards, whereas land-owning farmers and well-educated people formed the backbone of the White Army. Both armies used juvenile soldiers, mainly between 14 and 17 years of age, the most famous example being Urho Kekkonen who fought for the White Army and later became the longest-serving President of Finland. The Red Guards also included 2,000 female troops, mostly girls, recruited from the industrial centres of southern Finland. The use of child soldiers was not rare in World War I; children of that time were under the absolute authority of adults and were not shielded against abuse of this kind, they were a natural part of the working life and mentally orientated for unrealistic adventure. In the Finnish case an additional reason for the use of juveniles in the turmoil was the less organized and confused conditions, particularly at the beginning of the war; the military leaders took what they got in hand at the time, and in the Red Guards there was a chance for salary also. The Finnish Civil War was fought primarily along the railways, the vital means of transporting troops and supplies. One of the most important objectives for the both Guards was to seize a railroad junction northeast of Tampere, Haapamäki, which connected both western-eastern and southern-northern Finland; the Whites captured the junction permanently in the end of January 1918, this led to heavy battles at Vilppula. The Whites' bridgehead south of the River Vuoksi at Antrea on the Karelian Isthmus was a constant problem to the Reds as it threatened the railway connection Viipuri-Petrograd. The other vital railroad junctions during the war were Kouvola, Riihimäki and Tampere. The significance of the railways to the Civil War of the Finns is well symbolized by the most modern and frightening weapon used in the turmoil: an armoured train, carrying light cannons and machine guns.

The German intervention (grey arrows) and final offensives of the War

Red Guards and the Russian troops

The Red Guards seized the early initiative in the war, taking control of Helsinki, the Finnish capital, in the early hours of 28 January, and gaining first advantage with an "attack phase" that lasted till mid-March. However, a chronic shortage of skilled leaders, both at command level and in the field, left them unable to capitalize on their initial momentum, and most of the offensives finally came to nothing. The troops of the Red Guards were not professional soldiers but armed civilians, whose military training and discipline were mostly inadequate to resist the counter-attack of the White Army when it came, still less the onslaught of the German forces who arrived later. The military hierarchy and the true implementation of the warfare functioned only at the level of a platoon and a company in the Red Guards, but as most of the platoon and company leaders were chosen in a democratic manner, via voting by the troopers, the leadership and authority were weak. The combat moral of the Red troops was often low; some defeated platoons and companies simply left the battlefield and traveled home, regardless of the higher staffs (the effect of fighting against the people with the same nationality, on the moral of the troopers is not known). Consequently, Ali Aaltonen found himself rapidly replaced in command by Eero Haapalainen, who in turn was replaced by the triumvirate of Eino Rahja, Adolf Taimi and Evert Eloranta. The last commander of the Red Guards was Kullervo Manner, who led the final retreat into Russia. On the other hand, these conditions rose up some talented men with a high sense of responsibility such as Hugo Salmela to take the lead, but in the end they could not change the course of the war, and the fate of the Red troops. The Finnish Red Guards achieved their only victories as they retreated from southern Finland towards Russia; in the heavy battles against German troops on April 28-29 1918 at Hauho and Tuulos, Syrjäntaka, where female Red Guard platoons played a marked role also, but these combats had only local importance by then.

Red officers on their horses

Although some 60,000 to 80,000 Russian soldiers of the former Tsar's army remained stationed in Finland at the start of the Civil War, the Russian contribution to the Red Guards' cause was to prove negligible. When the conflict began, Lenin tried to commit the army on behalf of Red Finland, but the troops were demoralized, war-weary and home-sick after years of World War I. The majority of the soldiers had returned to Russia by the end of March 1918. As a result, only 7,000 to 10,000 troops participated in the Finnish Civil War, of which no more than 4,000, in separate smaller units of 100-1,000 men, could be persuaded to fight in the front line. The Russian revolutions had split the Russian army officers politically and their attitude toward the Finnish civil war varied; part of them such as Mikhail Svetšnikov led the battles on the Red side in western Finland throughout February 1918, while some of the officers were afraid of their revolutionary underlings and co-operated with the former colleague general Mannerheim by assisting the Whites during the disarmament of the Russian garrisons in Finland. The number of Russian soldiers active in the Civil War declined markedly once Germany attacked Russia on 18 February 1918. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed between Russia and Germany on 3 March, effectively restricted the Bolsheviks' ability to support the Finnish Red Guards with anything more than weapons and supplies. The Russians did remain active on the south-eastern front, however, defending the approaches to Petrograd.

White Guards and the German Army

The critical section among the posterity of the civil war generation has called the conflict "The War of the Amateurs", but anyway the White Army had three major advantages over the Red Guards in the war: the professional military leadership of General Mannerheim and his staff—which included 84 Swedish volunteer officers as well as former Finnish officers of the Tsar's army—and 1,450 soldiers of the 1,900-strong, elite "Jäger" battalion, which was not only trained in Germany during 1915-1917, but also battle-hardened on the Eastern Front. The main part of the battalion arrived at Vaasa on 25 February 1918. In the battlefield the Jägers formed a vital and strong leadership, that made a disciplined and rational combat of the common White soldiers possible; the Jägers were allowed an exeptionally large personal freedom to lead the fighting. The military quality of the White troopers differed little from that of their counterparts in the Red Guards, with brief and inadequate training provided for most of the men; at the beginning of the war some volunteer platoons or companies of the White Guards left unexpectedly the front line in order to "change and improve the gears, at home". After the arrival of the Jäger battalion at White Finland, training of six Jäger regiments, with conscripts, aiming at higher combat quality units for the Whites was issued.

However, the dilemma of the Civil War penetrated the Jäger battalion also; 450 soldiers of the unit remained stationed in Germany as most of them were socialists, who could have chosen the Red side in the conflict. The leaders of the White Guards faced a similar problem with drafting young men to the army in February 1918; 30,000, obvious supporters of the Finnish labour movement never showed up. In addition, the White highest staffs were uncertain whether the common troopers, drafted from the small-sized and poor farms of central and northern Finland, had a motivation high enough to fight against the Finnish Reds; therefore the propaganda of the Whites highlighted a nationalistic war against the Red, Bolshevist Russians, and belittled the significance of the Red Finns. On the other side, in the social structure and status of the Finnish rural areas, owning even a small piece of land made a marked difference to those without land, and the confrontation between Christianity and socialism was pronounced in northern Finland. Contrary, on 30 January 1918 general Mannerheim proclaimed to the Russian soldiers in Finland, that the White army did not fight against Russia; the goal of the White campaign was to beat the Finnish Red rebels, and those Russian troopers, who supported these Finns.

Battle of Tampere

Unburied bodies – outcome of the Battle of Tampere

In February 1918 general Mannerheim weighed the centre of the general offensive of the Whites between two strategically most vital strongholds; Tampere, Finland's major industrial town in the south-west and Viipuri, Karelia's main city. Although seizing Viipuri offered major advantages, the low combat skills of his army and potential for a major counterattack by the enemy in the area or in the south-west made it too risky; in the end Mannerheim decided to strike first at Tampere. He launched the attack on 16 March at Längelmäki, 65 km north-east of Tampere; at the same time the White Army began advancing along a line through Vilppula–Kuru–Kyröskoski–Suodenniemi, north and north-west of Tampere. The Red Guards collapsed under the weight of the assault, and some of its detachments retreated in panic. The White Army cut off the Red Guards' retreat south of Tampere in Lempäälä and lay siege to Tampere on 24 March, entering the town four days later. The true Battle of Tampere began on 28 March, later called the "bloody Maundy Thursday" on the eve of Easter 1918. The battle for Tampere was fought between 16,000 White and 14,000 Red soldiers, and it was the decisive action of the war and the largest military engagement in Scandinavian history to that point. It was Finland's first urban battle, fought in the Kalevankangas graveyard and from house-to-house in the city as the Red Guards retreated. The battle, lasting until 6 April 1918, was the bloodiest action of the war; the motivation to fight for defence had increased markedly among the Reds, and the Whites had to use part of the fresh, best trained detachments of their army. The fighting in Tampere was pure civil war, Finn against Finn, "brother rising against brother", since most of the Russian army had retreated to Russia in March and the German troops had yet to arrive in Finland. The White Army lost 700–900 men, including 50 Jägers. The Red Guards lost 1,000–1,500 soldiers, with a further 11,000–12,000 imprisoned. 71 civilians died mainly due to artillery fire. The eastern parts of the city, with wooden buildings, were destroyed completely.

After their defeat in Tampere, the Red Guards began a slow retreat eastwards. As the German army seized Helsinki, the White Army shifted its military focus to Viipuri, taking it on 29 April 1918 by the major attack of 18,500 men, against 15,000 Red troopers, of which 500-800 died and in total 12,000-15,000 Reds were imprisoned.

German intervention

German Maschinengewehr 08-machine gun position in Helsinki

The German Empire finally intervened in the Finnish Civil War on the side of the White Army in March 1918. The activists had been seeking German aid in freeing Finland from Russian hegemony since Autumn 1917, but the Germans did not want to prejudice their armistice and peace negotiations with Russia, due to the pressure at the Western front. The German stance altered radically after 10 February when Trotsky, despite the weakness of the Bolsheviks' position, broke off negotiations, hoping revolutions would break out in the German Empire and change everything. The German government promptly decided to teach Russia a lesson and, as a pretext for aggression, invited “requests for help” from the smaller countries west of Russia. Representatives of the Vaasa Senate in Berlin duly requested help on 14 February. The Germans attacked Russia on 18 February; the offensive led to a rapid collapse and retreat of the Russian troops and to signature of the first Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the bolsheviks on 3 March 1918. Russia lost Finland, the Baltic countries, Poland and Ukraine from its western territory; in the end, the economical and political investments on V.I. Lenin by Germany had paid off. The German army did not alter the military plans concerning Finland after the peace treaty with the bolsheviks as the Civil War of the Finns had opened an easy access with low costs to Fennoscandia, and first of all, troops of a British Naval squadron had invaded the harbour of Murmansk on the northwestern coast of Russia by the Arctic Ocean on 9 March 1918.

On March 5 a German Naval squadron landed on the Åland Islands in the southwestern archipelago of Finland, where a Swedish military expedition had been protecting Swedish interests and the Swedish-speaking population since mid-February. On 3 April 1918, the 10,000-strong Baltic Sea Division led by Rüdiger von der Goltz struck west of Helsinki at Hanko, and on 7 April, the 3,000-strong Detachment Brandenstein overran the town of Loviisa on the south-eastern coast. The main German formations then advanced rapidly eastwards from Hanko and took Helsinki on 13 April. At the same time, two German battleships and smaller vessels entered the city harbour and bombarded the Red positions, which included the present-day Presidential Palace. The Brandenstein Brigade attacked the town of Lahti on 19 April, cutting the connection between the western and eastern Red Guards. The main German detachment advanced northwards from Helsinki and took Hyvinkää and Riihimäki on April 21–22, followed by Hämeenlinna on 26 April. The efficient performance of the German top detachments in the civil war contrasted strikingly with that of the demoralized Russian troops, and in fact it was the policy of the Bolsheviks, due to the disintegration of Russia, which gave the final blow to the cause of the Finnish Reds by inducing the German eastern offensive in February 1918.

Red and White terror

White firing squad executing Red soldiers in Länkipohja

During the civil war, the White Army and the Red Guards both perpetrated acts of terror; called the Red and White terror. The threshold of political violence had been crossed, in the primarily peaceful Grand Duchy of Finland, during the first period of Russification 1899-1905; the Finnish activists murdered a Russian governer-general, police officers and a Finnish civil servant. World War I enhanced the potential of terror; it was widespread between the Allies and the Central Powers during the conflict. The February Revolution in 1917 initiated a comprehensive terror in Finland; the Russian common army soldiers murdered several Russian army officers in March 1917. The first victim of non-war violence between the Finns, an agricultural worker, died at the beginning of August 1917 at Ypäjä, during a local strike. In the end, the general strike in November 1917 led to a marked Finnish political terror; the Worker's Guards murdered 27 Finns.

During the war of 1918 there was two kinds of Red and White political violence; primarily both were a calculated part of the general warfare; the second form of this violence was more local, personal murders and corresponding acts of revenge. In the former, the highest staffs of both sides planned and organized these actions and gave orders to the lower level. At least a third of the Red terror and perhaps most of the White terror was centrally led. At the beginning of the war the governments of White Finland and Red Finland officially opposed acts of terror, but such operational decisions were made at the military level. The main purpose of the Red and White terror was to destroy the power structure and hierarchy of the opponent, clear and secure the areas governed by the armies since the beginning of the war, as well as the areas seized and occupied by the common units during the conflict, from the enemy. Another goal of the terror was to create a major shock effect and fear among the civil population and the warriors of the counterpart. The significance of the latter was emphasized in the Finnish civil war due to the low combat skills of the common soldiers in the both armies. The strategy functioned partly well, but on the other hand the terror gave an additional motivation to the counterparts for fighting the war as the enemy proved to be inhuman and cruel. The propaganda of the Reds and Whites utilized the terror acts of the opponent effectively, which increased the local political violence and the spiral of revenge.

The number of casualties and the timing of the terror differed markedly between the Reds and Whites: in February 700 died by the Red violence, 350 by the White; in March the corresponding numbers were 200 and 500; in April the Reds killed 700 persons, the Whites 1,800; in May the Whites shot 4,800 people, and in June 1918 they killed 300 Reds. The different patterns of the counterparts may be explained by the following factors: the Reds lost the war, they could never seize and occupy new areas outside Red Finland and they tried to rule and control the very nucleus of the war and the country. In the industrialized southern Finland with the major cities and largest farms in the rural areas the Reds faced the elite and establishment of Finland. This is why the comprehensive Red terror commenced at the beginning of the war, declined in the half of the war in a sort of status quo, and rose up again in April due to the bitter defeat. Contrary, the Whites won the war, they seized and occupied southern Finland, and initially they did not encounter any real threat by the population in White Finland. Therefore, the comprehensive White terror started simultaneously with the general offensive of the Whites in March 1918, increased constantly, culminated in the end of the war, and ceased soon after the enemy had been sent to the prison camps. Moreover, the Red Guards were clearly less organized than the White army in respect to the political terror also.

The major part of the terror acts were implemented in practice by "flying detachments" deployed by the both armies. They were cavalry units, usually consisting of 10 to 80 troops aged 15 to 20, under the absolute authority of an experienced adult leader. The detachments, specialized in search-and-destroy operations behind the front lines and during and after battles, have been described as death squads. They resembled German Sturmbattalions and Russian Assault units organized during World War I. The Red Guards executed the representatives of the high economical and/or social power in Finland, including politicians, major landowners, industrialists, police officers, civil servants, teachers, and leaders and members of the White Guards. Servants of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (10 priests) and the labour movement members (90 obviously moderate socialists) were executed also, but they were not the main targets of the terror. The two major sites of the Red terror were Toijala and Kouvola; there 300–350 Whites were executed between February and April 1918. The White Guards executed Red Guard and party leaders, Social Democratic representatives of the Finnish parliament and local Red administrations, members of the Red tribunals and police, and common troopers of the Red Guards, and those who had participated in a way or another to the Red terror. During the peak of the White terror, between the end of April and the beginning of May, 200 Reds were shot per day. The White terror hit particularly strongly the Russian soldiers who fought with the Red Guards. In total, 1,400–1,650 Whites were executed in the Red terror, and 7,000–10,000 Reds were executed in the White terror. The White victims have been recorded quite exactly, but there are questions and permanent uncertainty among the Red victims of the terror; it is unclear, which of the victims have died in the battles and which of them have been executed immediately after the battles. Together with the prison camp experiences of the Reds later in 1918, the terror caused the deepest mental wounds and scars of the Civil War, among the majority of the Finns regardless of their political colour. It is well known that in many cases, in the mental conditions of 1918, it was not at all difficult to get members to the execution squads, but at least those Finns, who opposed the war, no matter what kind of military historical or psychological explanations have been given of the terror, could not at the time, and their mental offsprings cannot nowadays, accept the killing of unarmed fellow citizens, who did not have a fare chance to defend themselves. It is also known that a part of those, who supported and carried out the terror were seriously traumatized too.

End

After the major defeat in Tampere and under the threat by the invasion of the German division on the south coast, the People's Council retreated from Helsinki to Viipuri on 8 April, and after the loss of Helsinki most of them, only Edvard Gylling standing by his warriors, moved to Petrograd on 25 April 1918. The escape of the Red top leaders made the common Reds bitter and resentful. In the end of April thousands of them, without true leadership, tried to flee to Petrograd from Red Finland, but the majority of the refugees were sieged by the White and the German troops; the Reds surrendered on 1-2 May in the Lahti area. The long caravans of the Reds included women and children, who experienced a desperate, chaotic escape with several human losses due to the attacks of the enemy. It was "a road of tears" for the Reds, but for the Whites the long enemy caravans heading east was a victorious scene. The Red Guards' last strongholds in south-west Finland, the area between Kouvola and Kotka, fell by 5 May. The war of 1918 ended on 15 May, when the Whites took over Ino, a Russian coastal artillery base on the Karelian Isthmus, from the Russian troops. White Finland and general Mannerheim celebrated the victory in a major military parade in Helsinki on 16 May 1918.

The Red Guards had been defeated; the initially pacifistic Finnish labour movement had lost the Civil War, several of its military leaders commited suicide and a majority of the Reds were sent to prison camps. The Vaasa senate returned to Helsinki on 2 May 1918, but the capital of the Finns was under the rule of the German army; factually White Finland had become a protectorate and a military bridgehead of the German Empire. General Rüdiger von der Goltz was called "the true Regent of Finland". No armistice or peace negotiations were carried out between White Finland and Red Finland, and an official peace treaty in order to end the Finnish Civil War was never signed.

Aftermath

Lives Lost
Cause of death	Reds	Whites	Other	Total
Killed in action	5,199	3,414	790	9,403
Executed, shot or murdered	7,370	1,424	926	9,720
Prison camp deaths	11,652	4	1,790	13,446
Died after release from camp	607	-	6	613
Missing	1,767	46	380	2,193
Other causes	443	291	531	1,265
Total	27,038	5,179	4,423	36,640
Source: National Archive

Prison camp in Suomenlinna, Helsinki. More than 11,000 people died in such camps due to hunger, disease, and executions.

Bitter legacy

The Civil War was a catastrophe for the Finnish nation. Almost 37,000 people perished, 5,900 of whom (16% of the total) were between 14 and 20 years old, the youngest victims of the battles and the terror being between 8 and 10 years. Only about 10,000 of these casualties occurred on the battlefields; most of the deaths resulted from the terror campaigns and from the appalling conditions in the prison camps. In addition, the war left about 20,000 children orphaned. Together with the Spanish civil war (1936-1939) the war of the Finns was among the bloodiest conflicts in the history of Europe as more than one percent of the nation's total population perished. A large number of Red Finland supporters fled to Russia at the end of the war and during the period that followed. The war created a legacy of bitterness, fear, hatred, and desire for revenge, and deepened the divisions within Finnish society, a part of the Finns identifying themselves as "citizens of two nations".

The war of 1918 led also to disintegration within both the socialists and the non-socialists. The power political shift toward the right caused a strong dispute between conservatives and liberals on the best system of government for Finland to adopt: the former demanded monarchy and restricted parliamentarianism, the latter demanded a Finnish republic with full-scale democracy and social reforms. In the conflict both sides justified their views both via political and legal grounds. The monarchists claimed that the law of 1772 from the Swedish period constituting monarchy, was still in effect, the declaration of independence on 6 December 1917 determining only "a principle of republic", and that the constitution must be altered via the law of 1772; they proposed a modernized monarchistic constitution for Finland. The republicans argued that the law of 1772 had lost its status in the February Revolution, the power and authority of the Russian Tsar had been captured by the Finnish parliament via the political decision and proclamation of 15 November 1917 and Finnish republic had truly been accepted in the declaration of independency. The republicans were able to markedly postpone processing of the monarchists' proposal in the parliament, and in the end a new monarchistic constitution was never accepted in Finland. Therefore, the monarchists applied directly the law of 1772 to select a new monarch for the country. A major consequence of the 1918 conflict was the breakup of the Finnish labour movement into three parts: moderate Social Democrats, left-wing socialists in Finland, and communists acting in Soviet Russia with the support of the Bolsheviks. The Social Democratic party had its first official party meeting after the civil war on 25 December 1918, and the party proclaimed to commit to parliamentary means and a moderate political program was composed, and the socialdemocrats disclaimed from bolshevism and communism. Contrary, the leaders of Red Finland, who had fled to Russia, established the Communist Party of Finland in Moscow on 29 August 1918. After the power struggle of 1917 and the bloody civil war, the former fennomans and Social Democrats, who had supported "ultrademocratic" means in Red Finland, declared now to have commited to revolutionary bolshevism-communism and to dictatorship of the proletariat, under the control of V.I. Lenin.

A new conservative Senate, with a monarchist majority, was formed by J.K. Paasikivi in May 1918. All members of parliament, who had taken part in the revolt were removed from office. This left only one social democrat later to be joined by two more; accordingly the parliament was named a rump parliament. In foreign policy, White Finland had been transferred to the power sphere of the German Empire via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March, and the agreements signed with the Germans on 7 March 1918 in return for military support had bound Finland politically, economically, and militarily to Germany. On the other hand, the Finns had looked actively for German military aid; at the end of May the Senate asked the German troops to remain in the country. The Germans proposed a further military pact in summer 1918 as a part of the plan to secure raw materials for their industry from eastern Europe and tighten their control over Russia. General Mannerheim resigned his post on 25 May after disagreements with the Senate about German hegemony over the country and about his planned attacks both on Petrograd to repulse the Bolsheviks and to Russian Karelia, which the Germans opposed under the peace treaties signed with Lenin. On 9 October, under pressure from Germany, the monarchist Senate and the rump parliament chose a German prince, Friedrich Karl, brother-in-law of German Emperor William II, to become the King of Finland—and depending on the point of view, monarchistic or republican, either the long tradition of monarchy continued in the country or Finland approached the status of a monarchistic state. All these measures diminished Finnish sovereignty. The Finns, both right and left, had achieved independence on 6 December 1917 without a gunshot but then compromised that independence by allowing the Germans to enter the country without difficulty during the civil war.

The economic condition of the country had deteriorated so drastically that recovery to pre-conflict levels was not achieved until 1925. The most acute crisis was in the food supply, already deficient in 1917, though starvation had at that time been avoided in southern Finland. The Civil War, according to the leaders of Red Finland and White Finland, would solve all past problems; instead it led to starvation in southern Finland too. Late in 1918, Finnish politician Rudolf Holsti appealed for relief to Herbert Hoover, the chairman of the Committee for Relief in Belgium: Hoover arranged for food shipments and persuaded the Allies to relax their blockade of the Baltic Sea (which had obstructed food supplies to Finland) to allow the food in.

Prison camps

The White Army and German troops captured about 80,000 Red prisoners by the end of the war on 5 May 1918. Once the White terror subsided, a few thousand including mainly small children and women, were set free, leaving 74,000–76,000 prisoners. The largest prison camps were Suomenlinna, an island facing Helsinki, Hämeenlinna, Lahti, Viipuri, Ekenäs, Riihimäki and Tampere. The Senate made the decision to keep these prisoners detained until each person's guilt could be examined. A law for a Tribunal of Treason was enacted on 29 May after a long dispute between the White army and the Senate of the proper trial method to adopt. The Tribunal did not meet all the standards of neutral justice, due to the mental atmosphere of White Finland after the war. Approximately 70,000 Reds were convicted, mainly for complicity to treason. Most of the sentences were lenient, however, and many got out on parole. Still 555 persons were sentenced to death; 113 were executed. The trials revealed also that some innocent persons had been imprisoned.

Combined with the severe food shortage, the mass imprisonment led to high mortality rates in the camps, and the catastrophe was compounded by a mentality of punishment, anger and indifference, but by post-war traumatic anxiety too, on the part of the victors. Many prisoners felt that they were abandoned also by their own leaders, who had fled to Russia. The condition of the prisoners had weakened rapidly during May, after food supplies had been disrupted during the Red Guards' retreat in April, and a high number of prisoners had been captured already during the first half of April in Tampere and Helsinki. As a consequence, 2,900 starved to death or died in June as a result of diseases caused by malnutrition and Spanish flu, 5,000 in July, 2,200 in August, and 1,000 in September. The mortality rate was highest in the Ekenäs camp at 34%, while in the others the rate varied between 5% and 20%. In total around 13,500 Finns perished. The dead were buried in mass graves near the camps. The majority of the prisoners were paroled or pardoned by the end of 1918 after the change in the political situation. There were 6,100 Red prisoners left at the end of the year, 4,000 at the end of 1919 (3,000 pardoned in January 1920, at the same time civil rights were given back to 40,000 prisoners), 500 in 1923, and in 1927 the last 50 prisoners were pardoned by the Social Democratic government led by Väinö Tanner. In 1973, the Finnish government paid reparations to 11,600 persons imprisoned in the camps after the civil war. Several reasons for the long-term and relatively high support of communism in Finland can be found; for the civil war generation of the left, the traumatic hardships of the prison camps were probably decisive.

Compromise

Just as the fate of the Finns was decided outside Finland in Petrograd on 15 March 1917, so it was decided outside Finland again on 11 November 1918, this time in Berlin, as Germany accepted defeat in World War I. The grand plans of the German Empire had finally come to nothing, and revolution had spread among the German people due to lack of food, war-weariness, and defeat in the battles on the Western Front. German troops left Helsinki on 16 December, and Prince Friedrich Karl, who had not yet been crowned officially, left his post on 20 December. Finland's status altered from a monarchistic protectorate of the German Empire to an independent democratic republic on the model of the western democracies; the system of government was confirmed on 17 July 1919. The first local elections based on universal suffrage in the history of Finland were held during 17–28 December 1918, and the first parliamentary election after the Civil War on 3 March 1919. The United States and the United Kingdom recognised Finnish sovereignty on 6–7 May 1919.

After the Civil War, at the beginning of 1919 a moderate Social Democrat, Väinö Voionmaa, wrote: "Those who still trust in the future of this nation must have an exceptionally strong faith. This young independent country has lost almost everything due to the war....". He was a vital companion for the leader of the reformed Social Democratic party, Väinö Tanner. In the half of April 1918, a liberal non-socialist, the eventual first president of Finland, K.J. Ståhlberg, elected 25 July 1919, wrote: "It is urgent to get the life and development in this country back on the path that we had already reached in 1906 and which the turmoil of war turned us away from". He was supported by Santeri Alkio, the leader of the Agrarian Union. Alkio's party colleague, Kyösti Kallio held his Nivala address on 5 May 1918 saying: "We must rebuild a Finnish nation, which is not divided into the Reds and Whites.....We must establish a democratic Finnish republic, where all the Finns can feel that we are true citizens and members of this society". In the end many of the moderate Finnish conservatives followed the thinking of Lauri Ingman, who wrote in spring 1918: "A political turn more to the right will not help us now, instead it would strengthen the support of socialism in this country".

Together with the other broad-minded Finns, pro common human decency, the new partnership constructed a Finnish compromise which eventually delivered a stable and broad parliamentary democracy. This compromise was based both on the defeat of Red Finland in the Civil War and the fact that most of the political goals of White Finland had not been achieved. After the foreign forces left Finland, the militant factions of the left and right lost their backup, while the majority of the Finns realised that they had to get along with each other. The weakness of both Germany and Russia after World War I made a domestic Finnish political and social solution possible, and the pre-1918 cultural and national integrity stood out, both consciously and unconsciously, among the Finns. The reconciliation led to a slow and painful, but steady, national unification. In the end, the power vacuum and interregnum of 1917-1919 ceased to the Finnish compromise, which has turned out to be strong and appears permanent; from 1919 to 1991, democracy and sovereignty of the Finns withstood challenges from both right-wing and left-wing radicalism, the crisis of World War II, and pressure from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The Civil War in literature

The first generally appreciated book in Finland concerning the war, Devout Misery (Finnish: Hurskas kurjuus), was written by the Nobel Laureate in Literature Frans Emil Sillanpää in 1919. Between 1959 and 1962, Väinö Linna, in his trilogy Under the North Star (Finnish: Täällä Pohjantähden alla), described the Civil War and the Second World War from the point of view of the common people. In poetry, Bertel Gripenberg, who had volunteered for the white army, celebrated its cause in The Great Age (Swedish: Den stora tiden) in 1928. Viljo Kajava, who had experienced the horrors of the Battle of Tampere at the age of nine, presented a pacifist view of the civil war in his Poems of Tampere 1918 of the 1960s. Also Kjell Westö's epic novel Where We Once Went (Swedish: Där vi en gång gått) deals with the Finnish civil war, following individuals and families from both the red and white sides of the spectrum, before, during and after the war period.

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See also

• Winter War
• Continuation War
• Finnish War
• History of Finland
• List of Finnish wars
• Lotta Svärd

External links

• Uta.fi/suomi80 — History project at University of Tampere
• War victims in Finland, 1914–1922 — Valtioneuvoston kanslia
• Monuments of the Reds — The central museum of Labour
• Vapaussota.fi — Foundation of Invalids of the War
• The representation of violence in the Finnish photography of the Civil War — Maarteen Patteuw