FINLAND HAS BEEN THE SITE of human habitation since the last ice age
ended 10,000 years ago. When the first Swedish-speaking settlers arrived
in the ninth century, the country was home to people speaking languages
belonging to the distinctive Finno- Ugric linguistic group, unrelated to
the more prevalent Indo- European language family. The first dates in
Finnish history are connected with the Swedish crusade of the 1150s
that, according to legend, aimed at conquering the "heathen"
Finns and converting them to Christianity. There was, however, no
Swedish conquest of Finland. The bodies of water that lay between
Finland and Sweden, rather than making them enemies or separating them,
brought them together. Trade and settlement between the two areas
intensified, and a political entity, the dual kingdom of Sweden-Finland,
gradually evolved.
During the seven centuries of Swedish rule, Finland was brought more
and more into the kingdom's administrative system. Finland's ruling
elite, invariably drawn from the country's Swedish-speaking inhabitants,
traveled to Stockholm to participate in the Diet of the Four Estates and
to help manage the kingdom's affairs. Swedish became the language of law
and commerce in Finland; Finnish was spoken by the peasantry living away
from the coasts. The clergy (Lutheran after the Protestant Reformation),
who needed to communicate with their parishioners, were the only members
of the educated classes likely to know Finnish well.
Swedish rule was benevolent. Sweden and Finland were not separate
countries, but rather were regions in a single state. The elite spoke a
common language, and it was not until late in the eighteenth century
that any separatist sentiments were heard within Finland. However, Finns
occasionally suffered much from Sweden's wars with neighboring states.
In the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, Sweden was one of
Europe's great powers and had a considerable empire around the shores of
the Baltic Sea. Wars were frequently the means of settling Finland's
eastern border. In the long run, however, Sweden could not sustain its
imperial pretensions, and military defeats obliged it to cede Finland to
tsarist Russia in 1809.
Finland's new ruler, Tsar Alexander I, convinced of the strategic
need to control Finland for the protection of his capital at St.
Petersburg, decided it was more expedient to woo his Finnish subjects to
allegiance than to subjugate them by force. He made the country the
Grand Duchy of Finland and granted it an autonomous status within the
empire. The Grand Duchy kept its Swedish code of laws, its governmental
structure and bureaucracy, its Lutheran religion, and its native
languages. In addition, Finns remained free of obligations connected to
the empire, such as the duty to serve in tsarist armies, and they
enjoyed certain rights that citizens from other parts of the empire did
not have.
Nevertheless, the Grand Duchy was not a democratic state. The tsar
retained supreme power and ruled through the highest official in the
land, the governor general, almost always a Russian officer. Alexander
dissolved the Diet of the Four Estates shortly after convening it in
1809, and it did not meet again for half a century. The tsar's actions
were in accordance with the royalist constitution Finland had inherited
from Sweden. The Finns had no guarantees of liberty, but depended on the
tsar's goodwill for any freedoms they enjoyed. When Alexander II, the
Tsar Liberator, convened the Diet again in 1863, he did so not to
fulfill any obligation but to meet growing pressures for reform within
the empire as a whole. In the remaining decades of the century, the Diet
enacted numerous legislative measures that modernized Finland's system
of law, made its public administration more efficient, removed obstacles
to commerce, and prepared the ground for the country's independence in
the next century.
The wave of romantic nationalism that appeared in Europe in the first
half of the nineteenth century had profound effects in Finland. For
hundreds of years, Finland's Swedish-speaking minority had directed the
country's affairs. The Finnish-speaking majority, settled mostly in the
interior regions, was involved only marginally in the social and the
commercial developments along the coast. Finnish-speakers wishing to
rise in society learned Swedish. Few schools used Finnish as a means of
instruction: higher education was conducted entirely in Swedish, and
books in Finnish were usually on religious subjects. The nationalist
movement in Finland created an interest in the language and the folklore
of the Finnish-speaking majority. Scholars set out into the countryside
to learn what they could of the traditional arts. Elias Lönnrot, the
most important of these men, first published his collection of Finnish
folk poems in 1835. This collection, the Kalevala, was quickly
recognized as Finland's national epic. It became the cornerstone of the
movement that aimed at transforming rural Finnish dialects into a
language suitable for modern life and capable of displacing Swedish as
the language of law, commerce, and culture.
Several generations of struggle were needed before the Finnish
nationalist movement realized its objectives. Numerous members of the
Swedish-speaking community entered the campaign, adopting Finnish as
their language and exchanging their Swedish family names for Finnish
ones. Finnish journals were founded, and Finnish became an official
language in 1863. By the end of the century, there was a slight majority
of Finnish-speaking students at the University of Helsinki, and
Finnish-speakers made up sizable portions of the professions.
Finland's first political parties grew out of the language struggle.
Those advocating full rights for Finnish-speakers formed the so-called
Fennoman group that by the 1890s had split into the Old Finns and the
Young Finns, the former mainly concerned with the language question, the
latter urging the introduction of political liberalism. The
Swedish-speaking community formed a short-lived Liberal Party. As the
century drew to a close and the Fennoman movement had achieved its
principal goals, economic issues and relations with the tsarist empire
came to dominate politics.
Finland's economy had always been predominantly agricultural, and
with the exception of a small merchant class along the coast, nearly all
Finns were engaged in farming, mostly on small family farms. Despite the
location of the country in the high north, long summer days usually
allowed harvests sufficient to support the country's population,
although many lived at a subsistence level. In years of poor harvests,
however, famine was possible. In 1867--68, for example, about 8 percent
of the population starved to death.
Sweden's political development had favored the formation of an
independent peasantry rather than a class of large landowners. Even
while part of the tsarist empire, Finland maintained this tradition. As
a result, instead of serfs, there were many independent small farmers,
who, in addition to owning their land, had stands of timber they could
sell. When Western Europe began to buy Finnish timber on a large scale
in the latter part of the nineteenth century, many farmers profited from
the sale of Finland's only significant natural resource, and ready money
transformed many of them into entrepreneurs. There was also demand for
timber products, and, at sites close to both timber and means of
transport, pulp and paper mills were constructed.
Liberalization of trade laws and the institution of a national
currency not tied to the Russian ruble encouraged a quickening of the
economy and the growth of other sectors. Finland's position within the
Russian Empire was also beneficial. As Finnish products were not subject
to import duties, they could be sold at lower prices than comparable
goods coming from Western Europe.
The appearance of an industrial sector offered employment to a rural
work force, many of whom owned no land and earned their living as tenant
farmers or laborers. Much of the employment offered was of a seasonal
nature, a circumstance that meant considerable hardship. In contrast to
the larger European countries, most of this emerging proletariat did not
live in concentrated urban areas, but near numerous small industrial
centers around the country. This had two results: the one was that the
Finnish working class retained much of its rural character; the other
was that labor problems affected the entire country, not just urban
centers.
Finland's modernizing economy encouraged the formation of social
groups with specific, and sometimes opposing, interests. In addition to
the Finnish movement's Old and Young Finns, other political
organizations came into being. Because the existing political groups did
not adequately represent labor's interests, a workers' party was formed
at the end of the century. In 1903 it became the Finnish Social
Democratic Party (Suomen Sosialidemokraatthinen Puolue--SDP). At the
same time labor was organizing itself, the farmers began a cooperative
movement; in 1907 they formed the Agrarian Party (Maalaisliitto--ML).
The Swedish People's Party (Svenska Folkpartiet--SFP), also dating from
this period, was formed to serve the entire Swedish-speaking population,
not just those involved in commerce, an area where Swedish-speakers were
still dominant.
The Grand Duchy's relationship with St. Petersburg began to
deteriorate in the 1890s. The nervousness of tsarist officials about
Finnish loyalty in wartime prompted measures to bind Finland more
closely to the empire. The campaign of "Russification" ended
only with Finland's independence in 1917. In retrospect the campaign can
be seen as a failure, but for several decades it caused much turmoil
within Finland, reaching its most extreme point with the assassination
of the governor general in 1904. The first Russian revolution, that of
1905, allowed Finns to discard their antiquated Diet and to replace it
with a unicameral legislature, the Eduskunta, elected through universal
suffrage. Finland became the first European nation in which women had
the franchise. The first national election, that of 1907, yielded
Europe's largest social democratic parliamentary faction. In a single
step, Finland went from being one of Europe's most politically backward
countries to being one of its most advanced. Nonetheless, frequent
dissolutions at the hands of the tsar permitted the Eduskunta to achieve
little before independence.
The second Russian revolution allowed Finland to break away from the
Russian empire, and independence was declared on December 6, 1917.
Within weeks, domestic political differences led to an armed struggle
among Finns themselves that lasted until May 1918, when right-wing
forces, with some German assistance, were able to claim victory. Whether
seen as a civil war or as a war of independence, the conflict created
bitter political divisions that endured for decades. As a consequence,
Finland began its existence as an independent state with a considerable
segment of its people estranged from the holders of power, a
circumstance that caused much strife in Finnish politics.
In mid-1919, Finns agreed on a new Constitution, one that constructed
a modern parliamentary system of government from existing political
institutions and traditions. The 200-seat unicameral parliament, the
Eduskunta, was retained. A cabinet, the Council of State, was fashioned
from the Senate of the tsarist period. A powerful presidency, derived,
in part at least, from the office of governor general, was created and
provided with a mixture of powers and duties that, in other countries,
might be shared by such figures as king, president, and prime minister.
Also included in the new governmental system was an independent
judiciary. The powers of the three branches of government were
controlled through an overlapping of powers, rather than a strict
separation of powers.
Finland faced numerous political and economic difficulties in the
interwar years, but it surmounted them better than many other European
countries. Despite the instability of many short-lived governments, the
political system held together during the first decades of independence.
While other countries succumbed to right-wing forces, Finland had only a
brush with fascism. Communist organizations were banned, and their
representatives in the Eduskunta arrested, but the SDP was able to
recover from wounds sustained during the Civil War and was returned to
power. In 1937 the party formed the first of the so-called Red-Earth
coalitions with the ML, the most common party combination of the next
fifty years, one that brought together the parties representing the two
largest social groups. The language problem was largely resolved by
provisions in the Constitution that protected the rights of the
Swedish-speaking minority. Bitterness about the past dominance of
Swedish-speaking Finns remained alive in some segments of the
population, but Finnish at last had a just place in the country's
economic and social life.
Finland's economy diversified further during the the 1920s and the
1930s. Timber, the country's "green gold," remained essential,
but timber products such as pulp and paper came to displace timber as
the most important export. Government measures, such as nationalization
of some industries and public investment in others, encouraged the
growth and strengthening of the mining, chemical, and metallurgical
industries. Nevertheless, agriculture continued to be more important in
Finland than it was in many other countries of Western Europe.
Government-enforced redistribution of plots of land reduced the number
of landless workers and fostered the development of the family farm.
Survival during the Great Depression dictated that Finnish farmers
switch from animal products for export to grains for domestic
consumption.
Finland's official foreign policy of neutrality in the interwar
period could not offset the strategic importance of the country's
territory to Nazi Germany and to the Soviet Union. The latter was
convinced that it had a defensive need to ensure that Finland would not
be used as an avenue for attack on its northwestern areas, especially on
Leningrad. When Finland refused to accede to its demands for some
territory, the Soviet Union launched an attack in November 1939. A
valiant Finnish defense, led by Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, slowed the
invaders, but in March 1940 the Winter War ended when Finland agreed to
cede to the Soviets about 10 percent of Finnish territory and to permit
a Soviet military base on Finnish soil. In June 1941, Finland joined
Germany as cobelligerent in its attack on the Soviet Union. In what
Finns call the Continuation War, Finland confined its military actions
to areas near its prewar borders. In the fall of 1944, Finland made a
separate peace with the Soviet Union, one that was conditional on its
ceding territory, granting basing rights, agreeing to onerous reparation
payments, and expelling German forces from its territory. However,
although Finland suffered greatly during World War II and lost some
territory, it was never occupied, and it survived the war with its
independence intact.
Finland faced daunting challenges in the immediate postwar years. The
most pressing perhaps was the settlement of 400,000 Finns formerly
residing in territory ceded to the Soviet Union. Most were natives of
Karelia. Legislation that sequestered land throughout the country and
levied sacrifices on the whole population provided homes for these
displaced Finns. Another hurdle was getting the economy in shape to make
reparation payments equivalent to US$300 million, most of it in kind, to
the Soviet Union. This payment entailed a huge effort, successfully
completed in 1952.
A less concrete problem, but ultimately a more important one, was the
regulation of Finland's international relations. The Treaty of Paris,
signed in 1947, limited the size and the nature of Finland's armed
forces. Weapons were to be solely defensive. A deepening of postwar
tensions led a year later to the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and
Mutual Assistance (FCMA--see Appendix B) with the Soviet Union, the
treaty that has been the foundation of Finnish foreign relations in the
postwar era. Under the terms of the treaty, Finland is bound to confer
with the Soviets and perhaps to accept their aid if an attack from
Germany, or countries allied with Germany, seems likely. The treaty
prescribes consultations between the two countries, but it is not a
mechanism for automatic Soviet intervention in a time of crisis. The
treaty has worked well, and it has been renewed several times, the last
time in 1983. What the Soviet Union saw as its strategic defensive
need--a secure northwestern border-- was met. The Finns also achieved
their objective in that Finland remained an independent nation.
The Finnish architect of the treaty, Juho Kusti Paasikivi, a leading
conservative politician, saw that an essential element of Finnish
foreign policy must be a credible guarantee to the Soviet Union that it
need not fear attack from, or through, Finnish territory. Because a
policy of neutrality was a political component of this guarantee,
Finland would ally itself with no one. Another aspect of the guarantee
was that Finnish defenses had to be sufficiently strong to defend the
nation's territory. This policy, continued after Paasikivi's term as
president (1946-56) by Urho Kekkonen (1956-81) and Mauno Koivisto (1982-
), remained the core of Finland's foreign relations.
In the following decades, Finland maintained its neutrality and
independence. It had moved from temporary isolation in the immediate
postwar years to full membership in the community of nations by the end
of the 1980s. Finland joined the United Nations (UN) and the Nordic
Council in 1955. It became an associate member of the European Free
Trade Association (EFTA) in 1961 and a full member in 1986. Relations
with the European Community (EC) and the Council of Mutual Economic
Assistance (CMEA, CEMA, or Comecon) date from the first half of the
1970s. In mid-1989, Finland joined the Council of Europe. The policy of
neutrality became more active in the 1960s, when Finland began to play a
larger role in the UN, most notably in its peacekeeping forces. Measures
aiming at increasing world peace have also been a hallmark of this
policy. Since the 1960s, Finland has urged the formation of a Nordic
Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (Nordic NWFZ), and in the 1970s was the host
of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which
culminated in the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975. By the end of
the 1980s, the most serious question for Finland in international
relations was how the country's economy, heavily dependent on exports,
would fare once the EC had achieved its goal of a single market in 1992.
Finland's neutrality seemed to preclude membership in an organization
where foreign policy concerns were no longer left to individual member
nations.
Finland also dealt effectively with domestic political problems in
the postwar era. By the early 1950s, the patterns of postwar Finnish
politics were established. No one group was dominant, but the ML under
the leadership of Kekkonen, who became president in 1956, became an
almost permanent governing party until the late 1980s. In 1966 it
changed its name to the Center Party (Keskustapuolue--Kesk) in an
attempt to appeal to a broader segment of the electorate, but it still
was not successful in penetrating southern coastal Finland. The SDP
remained strong, but it was often riven by dissension. In addition, it
had to share the socialist vote with the Communist Party of Finland
(Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue--SKP). As a consequence, nonsocialist
parties never had to face a united left. In the 1980s, the communists
had severe problems adjusting to new social conditions, and they split
into several warring groups. As a result, their movement had a marginal
position in Finnish politics. The SFP, a moderate centrist party with
liberal and conservative wings, had a slightly declining number of seats
in the Eduskunta, but its position in the middle of the political
spectrum often made it indispensable for coalition governments. The
National Coalition Party (Kansallinen Kokoomuspuoue--KOK), rigidly
conservative in the interwar period, gradually became more moderate and
grew stronger, surpassing Kesk in the number of parliamentary seats in
1979. Excluded from a role in government for decades, possibly because
it had been so right-wing earlier, th KOK Party participated in the
government formed after the national elections of 1987, supplying the
prime minister, Harri Holkeri. The Liberal Party of the postwar period
was never strong, and it had a negligible role by the 1980s.
A number of smaller parties, protest parties, and parties
representing quite distinct groups filled out the list of about a dozen
organizations that regularly vied for public office. Pensioners and
activist Christians each had their own party, and environmentalists won
several seats in the 1983 and the 1987 national elections. The most
active of the protest parties was the Finnish Rural Party (Suomen
Maaseudun Puolue--SMP), which managed to take votes from both Kesk and
the socialist groups. It scored its first big successes in the 1970
national elections. Since then its electoral results have varied
considerably. By late 1980s, it seemed a spent force.
After the 1966 national elections, President Kekkonen succeeded in
forming a popular front coalition government that contained communists,
socialists, and members of Kesk. Although this government lasted only
two years and was succeeded for another decade by short-lived coalition
and caretaker civil service governments, it was the beginning of what
Finns call the politics of consensus. By the 1980s, consensus politics
had become so dominant that some observers claimed that Finnish
politics, long so bitter and contentious, had become the most boring in
Western Europe. Although the larger parties differed on specific issues,
and personal rivalries could be poisonous, there was broad agreement
about domestic and foreign policy. The cabinet put in place after the
1983 elections, consisting mainly of social democrats and members of
Kesk, completed its whole term of office, the first government to do so
in the postwar period. Observers believed that the next government,
formed in 1987 and composed mainly of conservatives and social
democrats, would also serve out its term.
A foundation of the politics of consensus was the success of the
system of broad incomes agreements that has characterized Finland's
employee-employer relations in recent decades. The first of these, the
Liinamaa Agreement, dated from 1968. By the 1980s, the process was so
regular as to seem institutionalized. With about 80 percent of the work
force as members, unions negotiated incomes agreements with employers'
organizations. The government often helped in the talks and subsequently
proposed legislation embodying social welfare measures or financial
measures that underpinned the agreements. The process was successful at
increasing labor peace in a country that had been racked by strikes for
the first decades after World War II. Although there were complaints
that the agreements bypassed political channels or excluded minority
opinion, the obvious prosperity they had helped bring about made the
incomes policy system and the politics of consensus highly popular.
For much of its history, Finland had been a poor country, but in the
postwar era it gradually become one of the world's most prosperous. At
the end of the war, the country's economy faced serious hurdles.
Although it was never occupied, Finland had suffered extensive material
damage, especially in the north. The burden of reparations, to be paid
in kind, meant that much rebuilding had to occur quickly and the economy
had to be diversified. The Finns were successful, and by the early 1950s
the country had an economy well poised to compete in the world market.
Timber and timber products remained important, but a skillful selection
of export objectives and the general high quality of its manufactures
allowed Finnish products to penetrate the international economy at many
points. Careful government fiscal policies and selected state supports
combined with liberal trade policies and financial deregulation to
create an economy among the most capitalistic of Western Europe. In the
1980s, Finnish businessmen began to invest some of their profits abroad.
Faced with the prospect of being closed out of the EC's single market,
they bought into many firms located within the EC's member states.
Finland's membership in EFTA, an important trading partner of the EC,
also served to allay worries about the future of Finland's export trade.
Finland's access to the Soviet Union's economy, through an
arrangement whereby Finnish products were exchanged for raw materials,
had for decades provided a fairly secure market for many of Finland's
exports. By the late 1980s, trade with the Soviet Union was declining
because of the long-term drop in the price of oil, but sophisticated
joint venture agreements were being adopted to meet changed
circumstances.
The economic transformation of Finland caused a social transformation
as well. In 1950, approximately 40 percent of the work force was engaged
in agricultural and forest work. By the 1980s, fewer than 10 percent
were employed in this sector. Rather, the service sector became the
largest single source of work. As the country became wealthier, between
1950 and the 1980s, the number of persons retired or being educated
increased dramatically and accounted for a significant portion of the
population. An advanced economy required a skilled work force, and
enrollment at the university level alone had quadrupled.
A changing economy changed ways of life. Finns moved to areas where
jobs were available, mainly to the south coastal region. This area saw a
tremendous expansion, while other regions, most notably the
central-eastern area, lost population. Finns call this movement of
people from the countryside to the urbanized south the "Great
Migration." It gave Finns improved living conditions, but it caused
much uprooting with predictable social effects: loss of traditional
social ties, psychological disorders, and asocial behavior. Not all of
the new settlements constructed in the south were as famed for their
design as the garden town Tapiola in greater Helsinki.
The new prosperity was widely distributed, and people of all classes
benefited from it. Labor was highly organized, and the broad incomes
agreements involved nearly all of the working population. Those not in
the active work force got a decent share of the country's wealth via an
extensive system of social welfare programs. Worries about health or old
age were no longer pressing because government assistance was available
for those who needed it. Some social measures dealt with family welfare.
Paid maternity leave lasted for nearly a year, and in the 1980s
increasing resources were earmarked for childcare, as most mothers were
employed outside the home. Finland's welfare system was based on the
model developed in the other Nordic countries in which coverage was
universal and was seen as a right, not as a privilege. Faced with
special problems, and beginning with smaller means, Finland put its
welfare system in place somewhat later than did the Scandinavian
countries. By the late 1980s, however, it had become a member of that
small community of nations that combined an extensive state welfare
system with a highly competitive, privately owned market economy.
Finland - ORIGINS OF THE FINNS
During his reign, Gustav I Vasa concentrated on consolidating royal
power in the dynasty that he had founded and on furthering the aims of
the Reformation. In the process, he molded Sweden into a great power,
but he wisely avoided involvement in foreign wars. His successors,
however, sought, through an aggressive foreign policy, to expand
Sweden's power in the Baltic area. This policy produced some ephemeral
successes, and it led to the creation of a Swedish empire on the eastern
and the southern shores of the Baltic Sea.
Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, Sweden's ambitious foreign
policy brought it into conflict with the three other main powers that
had an interest in the Baltic: Denmark, Poland, and Russia. These three
powers fought numerous wars with Sweden, which was at war for more than
80 of the last 300 years it ruled Finland. Finland itself was often the
scene of military campaigns that were generally conducted as total war
and thus included the devastation of the countryside and the killing of
civilians. One example of such campaigns was the war between Sweden and
Russia that lasted from 1570 to 1595 and was known in Finland as the
Long Wrath, because of the devastations inflicted on the country. Sweden
was also heavily involved in the Thirty Years' War (1618- 48), in which
the Swedes under King Gustavus II Adolphus thwarted the advance of the
Habsburg Empire to the shores of the Baltic and thereby secured the
Swedish possessions there. Finnish troops were conscripted in great
numbers into the Swedish army to fight in this or in other wars, and the
Finns often distinguished themselves on the battlefield.
The Great Northern War began in 1700 when Denmark, Poland, and Russia
formed an alliance to take advantage of Sweden's apparent weakness at
that time and to partition the Swedish empire. Sweden's youthful king
Charles XII surprised them, however, with a series of military victories
that knocked Denmark out of the war in 1700 and Poland, in 1706. The
impetuous Swedish king then marched on Moscow, but he met disaster at
the battle of Poltava in 1709. As a result, Denmark and Poland rejoined
the war against Sweden. Charles attempted to compensate for Sweden's
territorial losses in the Baltic by conquering Norway, but he was killed
in action there in 1718. His death removed the main obstacle to a
negotiated peace between Sweden and the alliance.
The Great Northern War ended on August 30, 1721, with the signing of
the Peace of Uusikaupunki (Swedish, Nystad), by which Sweden ceded most
of its territories on the southern and the eastern shores of the Baltic
Sea. Sweden was also forced to pay a large indemnity to Russia, and, in
return, the Russians evacuated Finland, retaining only some territory
along Finland's southeastern border. This area included the fortress
city of Viipuri. As a result of the war, Sweden's power was much
reduced, and Russia replaced Sweden as the main power in the Baltic.
Finland's ability to defend itself had been impaired by the famine of
1696 in which about one-third of the Finnish people died of starvation,
a toll greater than that caused by the Black Death in the fourteenth
century. The war's greatest impact on Finland, beyond the heavy taxes
and conscription, was caused by Russian occupation from 1714 to 1722, a
period of great difficulty, remembered by the Finns as the Great Wrath.
The hardships of being conquered by a foreign invader were compounded by
Charles XII's insistence that the Finns carry on partisan warfare
against the Russians. Much of the countryside was devastated by the
Russians in order to deny Finland's resources to Sweden. Of the nearly
60,000 Finns who served in the Swedish army, only about 10,000 survived
the Great Northern War. Finland's prewar population of 400,000 was
reduced by the end of the war to about 330,000.
Charles XII's policies led to the repudiation of absolute monarchy in
Sweden and to the ushering in of a half-century of parliamentary
supremacy, referred to as the Age of Freedom. One major characteristic
of this era was the strife between the two major political parties, the
Hats, representing the upper classes, and the Caps, representing the
lower classes. These political parties, however, proved no more
competent in the realm of foreign affairs than the kings. In 1741 the
Hats led Sweden into a war with Russia in order to try to undo the
result of the Peace of Uusikaupunki. Russian forces thereupon invaded
Finland and began, virtually without a fight, a short-lived occupation
known as the Lesser Wrath. In accordance with the Peace of Turku signed
in 1743, Russia once again evacuated Finland, but took another slice of
Finnish territory along the southeastern frontier.
King Gustav III, who in 1772 had reimposed absolutism in Sweden, also
tried to alter the verdict of the Great Northern War. In 1788 Sweden
declared war against Russia with the intention of regaining territory
along Finland's eastern frontier. A significant incident during that war
was the mutiny of a group of Finnish military officers, the Anjala
League, the members of which, hoped to avert Russian revenge against
Finland. A leading figure in the mutiny was a former colonel in the
Swedish army, Göran Sprengtporten. Most Finnish officers did not
support the mutiny, which was promptly put down, but an increasing
number of Finns, especially Finnish nobles, were weary of Finland's
serving as a battleground between Sweden and Russia. Because of Russia's
simultaneous involvement in a war with the Ottoman Empire, Sweden was
able to secure a settlement in 1790 in the Treaty of Varala, which ended
the war without altering Finland's boundaries.
Sweden's frequent wars were expensive, and they led to increased
taxation, among other measures for augmenting state revenues. A system
of government controls on the economy, or mercantilism, was imposed on
both Sweden and Finland, whereby the Finnish economy was exploited for
the benefit of Sweden. In addition to hindering Finland's economic
development, Sweden's wars enabled Swedish aristocrats and military
officers to gain large estates in Finland as a reward for their
services. The Swedish-speaking minority dominated landholding,
government, and the military. Although free of serfdom, peasants paid
high taxes, and they had to perform labor for the government. Through
the provincial assemblies, the peasants retained a small measure of
political power, but the Swedish-speaking nobility held most political
and economic power in Finland.
Throughout this period, the peasantry continued to be the backbone of
Finland's predominantly agrarian society. The frontier was pushed
northward as new stretches of inland wilderness were settled. The potato
was introduced into Finnish agriculture in the 1730s, and it helped to
ensure a stable food supply. Although Finland's trade in naval
stores--timber, tar, pitch, resin--was expanded considerably, the growth
of an indigenous Finnish middle class was retarded by the continuing
dominance of foreign merchants, especially the Germans and the Dutch.
The centuries-old union between Sweden and Finland came to an end
during the Napoleonic wars. France and Russia became allies in 1807 at
Tilsit, and Napoleon subsequently urged Russia to force Sweden into
joining them against Britain. Tsar Alexander I obliged by invading
Finland in 1808, and, after overwhelming Sweden's poorly-organized
defenses, he conquered Finland in 1809. Sweden formally ceded Finland to
Russia by the Treaty of Hamina (Swedish, Fredrikshamn) on September 17,
1809.
Finland - THE RUSSIAN GRAND DUCHY OF FINLAND, 1809-1917
Over the centuries, Finland underwent various political changes, but
its society and economy remained fairly static. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century, Finland was a predominantly agrarian country; about
90 percent of its population was engaged in farming. The scourges of war
and famine had kept down the population, which in 1811 numbered just 1
million, only about 4 percent of which lived in cities.
Except for some copper, Finland was without important mineral
deposits. During the nineteenth century, its sole natural resource was
timber, and this became to be the basis on which industrialization was
launched. By the mid-nineteenth century, wood was beginning to be in
short supply in Central Europe and in Western Europe, but at the same
time it was needed in unprecedented quantities for railroad ties,
mineshaft supports, construction, and paper production. Finland thus
found a ready and expanding market for its wood.
The development of the lumber industry was retarded for a time,
however, by the lack of a modern economic infrastructure. Into the
breach stepped the Finnish government, which promulgated a number of
measures aimed at creating the needed infrastructure. Railroads and
inland waterways were developed, beginning in the 1850s and the 1860s,
to connect the interior of the country with the coast; and harbor
facilities were built that, through merchant shipping, connected Finland
with the rest of the world. In addition, the Bank of Finland and the
monetary system were reorganized, antiquated laws restricting economic
activity were repealed, and tariff duties on many items were reduced or
were abolished; thus, the Finnish government promoted industrialization
and general progress in Finland.
The 1860s and the 1870s witnessed a tremendous boom in the Finnish
lumber industry, which put Finland on the road to industrialization.
Between then and 1914, the lumber industry spawned a number of
associated industries for the production of wood pulp, paper, matches,
cellulose, and plywood. The profits earned in these industries led in
turn to the creation of numerous other enterprises that produced, among
other things, textiles, cement, and metal products. Finland's leading
trading partner by 1910 was Germany, followed by Russia and Britain. The
trade in lumber products also stimulated the rise of a relatively large
and modern Finnish merchant marine, which, after 1900, carried about
half of Finland's foreign trade. Meanwhile, however, the steady
conversion of merchant shipping from woodenhulled sailing ships to
iron-hulled and steel-hulled steamships curtailed Finland's traditional
export of naval stores.
The growth of industry was accompanied by the emergence of an urban
working class. As in early industrialization elsewhere, the living and
working conditions of the new industrial laborers were poor, and these
laborers sought to improve their situation through trade unions. Trade
unions were legalized in 1883, and soon a number of them were
established, including, in 1907, a national trade union organization,
the Finnish Trade Union Federation (Suomen Ammattijarjestö--SAJ).
Workers founded a political party in 1899 to represent them in the Diet,
and in 1903 it was renamed the Finnish Social Democratic Party (Suomen
Sosialidemokraattinen Puolue--SDP). By the elections of 1907, the SDP
was already the largest single party in politics. Both the SAJ and the
SDP were heavily influenced by their counterparts in Germany, and, as a
consequence, their doctrines had a pronounced Marxist character. The SDP
grew even more radical, in part because of the resistance of the middle
class parties to virtually all aspects of social reform, but also
because of its strict adherence to the Marxist dogma of class conflict.
One example of its radicalism was its persistent unwillingness to
cooperate with any of the other political parties. Another was its
program, which began in 1911 to change from upholding the right of
farmers to own their own land to demanding that land be nationalized--a
change that cost the SDP most of its support among agricultural
laborers.
In spite of industrialization, Finland in the early twentieth century
was still predominantly an agrarian state. Agriculture also had
undergone modernization, however, a process that had had a significant
impact on Finland. The introduction of the potato in the eighteenth
century had significantly reduced the threat of famine; the gradual
introduction of scientific agricultural techniques during the nineteenth
century had brought about further increases in productivity.
The ultimate consequence of this increased agricultural productivity
was a significant increase of the population from 865,000 in 1810 to
2,950,000 in 1910. Some of this surplus rural population was absorbed by
the growing urban factory centers, but the rest of these people were
forced to stay on the land. Because the amount of arable land in Finland
was limited, about twothirds or more of the agricultural population was
relegated to the status of tenant farmers and landless agricultural
laborers. These people's lives were precarious because of their large
numbers and their dependence on the vagaries of the harvests. The
tsarist government did little on their behalf, and the Diet, which was
dominated by middle-class interests, showed no great concern for them.
As a result, from about 1870 to 1920, approximately 380,000 people left
Finland, more than 90 percent of them for the United States. Of those
remaining in Finland, many were initially attracted by the SDP, until
its pronounced atheistic outlook and its aim of nationalizing land
alienated them. A program of land reform, begun after independence,
eventually integrated these agricultural laborers into the Finnish
economy.
One expression of popular discontent with the status quo during the
nineteenth century was the rise of religious movements that challenged
the formalistic and rationalistic Lutheran state church. Of special
significance was the Pietist movement, in which the farmer-evangelist
Paavo Ruotsalainen (1777-1852) was the most important figure. The
Pietists popularized the notion of personal religion, an idea that
appealed to the agrarian population. Pietism eventually had much
influence within the Lutheran Church of Finland; it was also influential
among Finnish emigrants to the United States, where, among other things,
it provided an effective counterweight to Finnish political radicalism.
Finland - The Russian Empire
The Russian Empire in the late nineteenth century faced a number of
seemingly intractable problems associated with its general backwardness.
At the same time, ethnocentric, authoritarian Russian nationalism was on
the rise, as manifested both in an aggressive foreign policy and in a
growing intolerance of non-Russian minorities within the empire. The
Russian government began implementing a program of Russification that
included the imposition of the Russian language in schools and in
governmental administration. The goal of these measures was to bring
non-Russian peoples into the Russian cultural sphere and under more
direct political control. Poles bore the brunt of the Russification
policies, but eventually other non-Russian peoples also began to feel
its pressure.
Russian nationalists considered the autonomous state of Finland an
anomaly in an empire that strove to be a unified autocratic state;
furthermore, by the 1890s Russian nationalists had several reasons to
favor the Russification of Finland. First, continued suspicions about
Finnish separatism gained plausibility with the rise of Finnish
nationalism. Second, Finnish commercial competition began in the 1880s.
Third, Russia feared that Germany might capitalize on its considerable
influence in Sweden to use Finland as a staging base for an invasion of
Russia. The Russian government was concerned especially for the security
of St. Petersburg. Fourth, there was a growing desire that the Finns,
who enjoyed the protection of the Russian Empire, should contribute to
that protection by allowing the conscription of Finnish youths into the
Russian army. These military considerations were decisive in leading the
tsarist government to implement Russification, and it was a Russian
military officer, Nikolai Ivanovich Bobrikov, who, in October 1898,
became the new governor-general and the eventual instrument of the
policy.
The first major measure of Russification was the February Manifesto
of 1899, an imperial decree that asserted the right of the tsarist
government to rule Finland without consulting either the Finnish Senate
or the Diet. This decree relegated Finland to the status of the other
provinces of the Russian Empire, and it cleared the way for further
Russification. The response of the Finns was swift and overwhelming.
Protest petitions circulated rapidly throughout Finland, and they
gathered more than 500,000 signatures. In March 1899, these petitions
were collected, and they were submitted to the tsar, who chose to ignore
this so- called Great Address. The February Manifesto was followed by
the Language Manifesto of 1900, which was aimed at making Russian the
main administrative language in government offices.
In spite of the impressive show of unity displayed in the Great
Address, the Finns were divided over how to respond to Russification.
Those most opposed to Russification were the Constitutionalists, who
stressed their adherence to Finland's traditional system of government
and their desire to have it respected by the Russian government. The
Constitutionalists formed a political front that included a group of
Finnish speakers, called the Young Finns, and most Swedish speakers.
Another party of Finnish speakers, called the Old Finns, represented
those who were tempted to comply with Russification, partly out of a
recognition of their own powerlessness and partly out of a desire to use
the Russians to undermine the influence of Swedish speakers in Finland.
These Finns were also called Compliants, but by 1910 the increasingly
unreasonable demands of the tsarist government showed their position to
be untenable. The SDP favored the Constitutionalists, insolar as it
favored any middle-class party.
The measure that transformed Finnish resistance into a mass movement
was the new conscription law promulgated by the tsar in July 1901. On
the basis of the February Manifesto, the tsar enacted a law for Finland
that dramatically altered the nature of the Finnish army. Established
originally as an independent army with the sole mission of defending
Finland, the Finnish army was now incorporated into the Russian army and
was made available for action anywhere. Again the Finns responded with a
massive petition containing about half a million signatures, and again
it was ignored by the tsar; however, this time the Finns did not let
matters rest with a petition, but rather followed it up with a campaign
of passive resistance. Finnish men eligible for conscription were first
called up under the new law in 1902, but they responded with the
so-called Army Strike--only about half of them reported for duty. The
proportion of eligible Finns complying with the draft rose in 1903,
however, from about half to two-thirds and, in 1904, to about
four-fifths. The high incidence of non-compliance nevertheless convinced
the Russian military command that the Finns were unreliable for military
purposes, and, as a consequence, the Finns were released from military
service in return for the levy of an extra tax, which they were to pay
to the imperial government.
The Finns' victory in the matter of conscription was not achieved
until the revolution of 1905 in Russia. In the meantime, the Russian
government had resorted to repressive measures against the Finns. They
had purged the Finnish civil service of opponents of Russification; they
had expanded censorship; and, in April 1903, they had granted
dictatorial powers to Governor- General Bobrikov. These years also
witnessed the growth of an active and conspiratorial resistance to
Russification, called the Kagal after a similar Jewish resistance
organization in Russia. In June 1904, the active resistance succeeded in
assassinating Bobrikov, and his death brought a lessening of the
pressure on Finland.
The first era of Russification came to an end with the outbreak of
revolution in Russia. The general strike that began in Russia in October
1905 spread quickly to Finland and led there, as in Russia, to the
assumption of most real power by the local strike committees. As in
Russia, the revolutionary situation was defused quickly by the sweeping
reforms promised in the tsar's October Manifesto, which for the Finns
suspended, but did not rescind, the February Manifesto, the conscription
law, and Bobrikov's dictatorial measures.
In 1906, the tsar proposed that the antiquated Finnish Diet be
replaced by a modern, unicameral parliament. The Finns accepted the
proposal, and the Eduskunta was created. Also included in the tsar's
proposal was the provision that the parliament be elected by universal
suffrage, a plan that the Finns accepted, thanks to the spirit of
national solidarity they had gained through the struggle against
Russification. The number of eligible voters was increased thereby from
125,000 to 1,125,000, and Finland became the second country, after New
Zealand, to allow women to vote. When the new parliament met in 1907,
the SDP was the largest single party, with 80 of 200 seats.
Partly out of frustration that the revolution of 1905 had not
accomplished more, the Finnish SDP became increasingly radical.
Foreshadowing the civil War, the short-lived revolutionary period also
brought about, in 1906, the first armed clash between the private armies
of the workers (Red Guard) and the middle classes (Civil Guard or White
Guard). Thus the Finns were increasingly united in their opposition to
Russification, but they were split on other major issues.
By 1908 the Russian government had recovered its confidence
sufficiently to resume the program of Russification, and in 1910 Russian
prime minister Pyotr Stolypin easily persuaded the Russian parliament,
the Duma, to pass a law that ended most aspects of Finnish autonomy. By
1914 the Finnish constitution had been greatly weakened, and Finland was
ruled from St. Petersburg as a subject province of the empire.
The outbreak of the World War I had no immediate effects on Finland
because Finns--except for a number of Finnish officers in the Russian
army--did not fight in it, and Finland itself was not the scene of
fighting. Finland suffered from the war in a variety of ways,
nevertheless. Cut off from overseas markets, Finland's primary
industry--lumber--experienced a severe decline, with layoffs of many
workers. Some of the unemployed were absorbed by increased production in
the metal-working industry, and others found work constructing
fortifications in Finland. By 1917 shortages of food had become a major
problem, contributing further to the distress of Finnish workers. In
addition, sizable contingents of the Russian army and navy were
stationed in Finland. These forces were intended to prevent a German
incursion through Finland, and by 1917 they numbered more than 100,000
men. The Finns disliked having so many Russians in their country, and
all of this discontent played into the hands of the SDP, the main
opposition party, which in the 1916 parliamentary elections won 103 of
200 seats in the Eduskunta--an absolute majority.
There were no longer any doubts about Russia's long-term objectives
for Finland after November 1914, when the Finnish press published the
Russian government's secret program for the complete Russification of
Finland. Germany appeared as the only power capable of helping Finland,
and many Finns thus hoped that Germany would win the war, seeing in
Russia's defeat the best means of obtaining independence. The German
leadership, for its part, hoped to further its war effort against Russia
by aiding the Finns. In 1915, about 2,000 young Finns began receiving
military training in Germany. Organized in a jaeger (light infantry)
battalion, these Finns saw action on the eastern front.
By 1917, despite the divisions among the Finns, there was an emerging
unanimity that Finland must achieve its independence from Russia. Then
in March 1917, revolution broke out in Russia, the tsar abdicated, and
within a few days the revolution spread to Finland. The tsarist regime
had been discredited by its failures and had been toppled by
revolutionary means, but it was not yet clear what would take its place.
Finland - INDEPENDENCE AND THE INTERWAR ERA, 1917-39
The Revolution that was underway in Russia by March 8, 1917, spread
to Helsinki on March 16, when the Russian fleet in Helsinki mutinied.
The Provisional Government promulgated the so- called March Manifesto,
which cancelled all previous unconstitutional legislation of the tsarist
government regarding Finland. The Finns overwhelmingly favored
independence, but the Provisional Government granted them neither
independence nor any real political power, except in the realm of
administration. As during the Revolution of 1905, most actual power in
Finland was wielded by the local strike committees, of which there were
usually two: one, middle-class; the other, working-class. Also as
before, each of the two factions in Finnish society had its own private
army: the middle-class, the Civil Guard; and the workers, the Red Guard.
The disintegration of the normal organs of administration and order,
especially the police, and their replacement by local strike committees
and militias unsettled society and led to a growing sense of unease.
Contention among political factions grew. The SDP first sought to use
its parliamentary majority to increase its power at the expense of the
Provisional Government. In July 1917, it passed the so-called Power Act,
which made the legislature supreme in Finland, and which reserved only
matters of foreign affairs and defense for the Provisional Government.
The latter thereupon dissolved the Finnish parliament and called for new
elections. The campaign for these new elections was bitterly fought
between the socialists and the nonsocialists. Violence between elements
of the middle class and the working class escalated at this time, and
murders were committed by both sides. The nonsocialists won in the
election, reducing the socialist contingent in the parliament to 92 of
200 seats, below the threshold of an absolute majority.
Meanwhile, the socialists were becoming disillusioned with
parliamentary politics. Their general failure to accomplish anything,
using parliamentary action, from 1907 to 1917 contrasted strongly with
their successes in the 1905 to 1906 period, using direct action. By
autumn 1917, the trend in the SDP was for the rejection of parliamentary
means in favor of revolutionary action. The high unemployment and the
serious food shortages suffered, in particular, by the Finnish urban
workers accelerated the growth of revolutionary fervor. The SDP proposed
a comprehensive program of social reform, known as the We Demand (Me
vaadimme) in late October 1917, but it was rejected by parliament,
now controlled by the middle class. Acts of political violence then
became more frequent. Finnish society was gradually dividing into two
camps, both armed, and both intent on total victory.
The Bolshevik takeover in Russia in November 1917 heightened emotions
in Finland. For the middle classes, the Bolsheviks aroused the specter
of living under revolutionary socialism. Workers, however, were inspired
by the apparent efficacy of revolutionary action. The success of the
Bolsheviks emboldened the Finnish workers to begin a general strike on
November 14, 1917, and within forty-eight hours they controlled most of
the country. The most radical workers wanted to convert the general
strike into a full seizure of power, but they were dissuaded by the SDP
leaders, who were still committed to democratic procedures and who
helped to bring an end to the strike by November 20. Already there were
armed clashes between the Red Guards and the White Guards; during and
after the general strike, a number of people were killed.
Following the general strike, the middle and the upper classes were
in no mood for compromise, particularly because arms shipments and the
return of some jaegers from Germany were transforming the White Guard
into a credible fighting force. In November a middle-class government
was established under the tough and uncompromising Pehr Evind
Svinhufvud, and on December 6, 1917, it declared Finland independent.
Since then, December 6 has been celebrated in Finland as Independence
Day. True to his April Theses that called for the self-determination of
nations, Lenin's Bolshevik government recognized Finland's independence
on December 31.
Throughout December 1917 and January 1918, the Svinhufvud government
demonstrated that it would make no concessions to the socialists and
that it would rule without them. The point of no return probably was
passed on January 9, 1918, when the government authorized the White
Guard to act as a state security force and to establish law and order in
Finland. That decision in turn encouraged the workers to make a
preemptive strike, and in the succeeding days, revolutionary elements
took over the socialist movement and called for a general uprising to
begin on the night of January 27-28, 1918. Meanwhile, the government had
appointed a Swedish-speaking Finn and former tsarist general, Carl
Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867-1951), as the commander of its military
forces, soon to be called the Whites. Independently of the Reds,
Mannerheim also called for military action to begin on the night of
January 27-28. Whether or not the civil war was avoidable has been
debated ever since, but both sides must share in the responsibility for
its outbreak because of their unwillingness to compromise.
Within a few days of the outbreak of the civil war, the front lines
had stabilized. The Whites, whose troops were mostly farmers, controlled
the northern and more rural part of the country. The Reds, who drew most
of their support from the urban working class, controlled the southern
part of the country, as well as the major cities and industrial centers
and about one- half of the population. The Red forces numbered 100,000
to 140,000 during the course of the war, whereas the Whites mustered at
most about 70,000.
The soldiers of both armies displayed great heroism on the
battlefield; nevertheless, the Whites had a number of telling
advantages--probably the most important of which was professional
leadership--that made them the superior force. Mannerheim, the Whites'
military leader, was a professional soldier who was experienced in
conducting large-scale operations, and his strategic judgment guided the
White cause almost flawlessly. He was aided by the influx of jaegers
from Germany, most of whom were allowed to return to Finland in February
1918. The White side also had a number of professional Swedish military
officers, who brought military professionalism even to the small-unit
level. In addition, beginning in February, the Whites had better
equipment, most of which was supplied by Germany. Finally, the Whites
had the benefit of more effective foreign intervention on their side.
The approximately 40,000 Russian troops remaining in Finland in January
1918 helped the Finnish Reds to a small extent, especially in such
technical areas as artillery, but these troops were withdrawn after the
signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, and thus were
gone before fighting reached the crucial stage. On the White side,
however, the Germans sent not only the jaegers and military equipment
but also a reinforced division of first-rate troops, the Baltic
Division, which proved superior to the Reds.
The Red Guards suffered from several major disadvantages: poor
leadership, training, and equipment; food shortages; the practice of
electing officers democratically, which made discipline lax; and the
general unwillingness of the Red troops to go on offensive operations or
even to operate outside their local areas. Ultimately, the Reds suffered
most from a lack of dynamic leadership. There was no Finnish Lenin to
direct the revolution, and there was no Finnish Trotsky to vitalize the
Red armed forces. These Red disadvantages became apparent in late March
and early April 1918, when the Whites won a decisive victory by reducing
the Red stronghold of Tampere, the major inland industrial center. At
about the same time, German forces landed along the southern coast,
quickly driving all before them, securing Helsinki on April 13 and, in
the process, destroying about half of the remaining effective strength
of the Red Guards. The last Red strongholds in southeastern Finland were
cleared out in late April and early May 1918, and thousands of Finnish
Reds, including the Red leadership, escaped into the Soviet Union. On
May 16, 1918, General Mannerheim entered Helsinki, formally marking the
end of the conflict. Each year thereafter, until World War II, May 16
was celebrated by the Whites as a kind of second independence day.
The tragedy of the civil war was compounded by a reign of terror that
was unleashed by each side. In Red-dominated areas, 1,649 people, mostly
businessmen, independent farmers, and other members of the middle class
were murdered for political reasons. This Red Terror appears not to have
been a systematic effort to liquidate class enemies, but rather to have
been generally random. The Red Terror was disavowed by the Red
leadership and illustrated the extent to which the Red Guard evaded the
control of the leadership. More than anything else, the Red Terror
helped to alienate the populace from the Red cause; it also harmed the
morale of the Reds.
The Red Terror confirmed the belief of the Whites that the Reds were
criminals and traitors and were therefore not entitled to the protection
of the rules of war. As a consequence, the Whites embarked on their own
reign of terror, the White Terror, which proved much more ferocious than
the Red Terror. First, there were reprisals against defeated Reds, in
the form of mass executions of Red prisoners. These killings were
carried on by local White commanders over the opposition of White
leadership. At least 8,380 Reds were killed, more than half after the
Whites' final victory. Another component of the White Terror was the
suffering of the Reds imprisoned after the war. The Whites considered
these Reds to be criminals and feared that they might start another
insurrection. By May 1918, they had captured about 80,000 Red troops,
whom they could neither house nor feed. Placed in a number of detention
camps, the prisoners suffered from malnutrition and general neglect, and
within a few months an estimated 12,000 of them had died. The third
aspect of the White Terror was legal repression. As a result of mass
trials, approximately 67,000 Reds were convicted of participating in the
war, and of these 265 were executed; the remainder lost their rights of
citizenship, although many sentences were later suspended or commuted.
The civil war was a catastrophe for Finland. In only a few months,
about 30,000 Finns perished, less than a quarter of them on the
battlefield, the rest in summary executions and in detention camps.
These deaths amounted to about 1 percent of the total population of
Finland. By comparison, the bloodiest war in the history of the United
States, the Civil War, cost the lives of about 2 percent of the
population, but that loss was spread out over four years.
The memory of the injuries perpetrated during the war divided the
society into two camps; victors and vanquished. The working class had
suffered the deaths of about 25,000 from battle, execution, or prison,
and thousands of others had been imprisoned or had lost their political
rights. Almost every working-class family had a direct experience of
suffering or death at the hands of the Whites, and perhaps as much as 40
percent of the population was thereby alienated from the system. As a
result, for several generations thereafter, a large number of Finns
expressed their displeasure with the system by voting communist; and
until the 1960s, the communists often won a fifth or more of the vote in
Finland's national elections, a higher percentage than they did in most
Western democracies.
The divisions in society that resulted from the conflict were so
intense that the two sides could not even agree on what it ought to be
called. The right gave it the name "War of Independence,"
thereby stressing the struggle against Russian rule, for they had feared
that a Red victory could well lead to the country's becoming a Soviet
satellite. Leftists emphasized the domestic dimensions of the conflict,
referring to it by the term "Civil War." Their feelings about
the course of the hostilities were so intense that, until the late
1930s, Social Democrats refused to march in the Independence Day parade.
Today, with the passing of decades, historians have generally come to
define the clash as a civil war.
Finland - The Establishment of Finnish Democracy
The end of the civil war in May 1918 found the government of Prime
Minister Svinhufvud seated again in Helsinki. Many Finns, however, now
questioned establishing the republic mentioned in the declaration of
independence of December 6, 1917. Monarchist sentiment was widespread
among middle-class Finns after the civil war for two reasons: monarchist
Germany had helped the Whites to defeat the Reds, and a monarchy seemed
capable of providing strong government and, thus, of better protecting
the country. Owing to the absence from parliament of most of the
socialists, rightists held the majority, through which they sought to
establish a monarchal form of government. On May 18, 1918, that is, two
days after General Mannerheim's triumphal entry into Helsinki,
Svinhufvud was elected the "possessor of supreme authority,"
and the search for a suitable monarch began. The new prime minister was
a prominent White politician, Juho Kusti Paasikivi. Its strongly
pro-German mood led the government to offer the crown to a German
nobleman, Friedrich Karl, Prince of Hesse, in October 1918. The sudden
defeat of Germany in November 1918, however, discredited Svinhufvud's
overtly pro-German and monarchal policy and led to his replacement by
Mannerheim.
Meanwhile, the SDP was reorganized under Vainö Tanner, a Social
Democrat who had not joined in the Red uprising, and this newly formed
SDP repudiated the extremism and violence that had led to civil war. In
the general parliamentary election of March 1919, the SDP again became
the largest single party, winning 80 of 200 parliamentary seats. In
conjunction with Finnish liberals, the SDP ensured that Finland would be
a republic. On July 17, 1919, the parliament adopted a constitution that
established a republican form of government, safeguarded the basic
rights of citizens, and created a strong presidency with extensive
powers and a six-year term of office. This Constitution was still in
effect in 1988. Also in July 1919, the first president of Finland was
elected. He was a moderate liberal named Kaarlo Juho StAhlberg, who had
been the primary author of the Constitution. White Finland's main
leaders, Svinhufvud, Mannerheim, and Paasikivi, retired from public life
in 1918 and 1919, but each of the three would later be recalled to serve
as president at a crucial moment in Finland's development--in 1931,
1944, and 1946, respectively. It is a tribute to the strength of the
democratic tradition in Finland that the country was able to undergo a
bloody and bitter civil war and almost immediately afterward recommence
the practices of parliamentary democracy.
The achievement of independence and the experience of the civil war
helped to bring about a major realignment of the political parties. The
Old Finn Party and the Young Finn Party were disbanded, and Finnish
speakers were divided into two new parties: conservatives and
monarchists formed the National Coalition Party (Kansallinen
Kokoomuspuolue--KOK); and liberals and republicans formed the National
Progressive Party (Kansallinen Edistyspuolue--ED), the ranks of which
included President StAhlberg. The Agrarian Party (Maalaisliitto--ML)
took on the interests of farmers, and the Swedish People's Party
(Svenska Folkpartiet--SFP), which had been founded in 1906, continued to
represent the interests of Swedish speakers. The process of
rehabilitating the SDP proceeded so far that in 1926 it was entrusted
briefly with forming a government, with Vainö Tanner as prime minister.
Of the twenty governments formed from 1919 to 1939, one was headed by
the SDP; five by the KOK; six by the ML; and eight by the ED. On the
average, there was thus one government a year, but this apparent
parliamentary instability was balanced somewhat by the continuity
provided by the office of president--in twenty years there were only
four presidents.
Another major political party was the Communist Party of Finland
(Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue--SKP), which was founded in August 1918 in
Moscow by Finnish Reds who had fled to the Soviet Union at the close of
the civil war. During the interwar period, the party was headed by Otto
Kuusinen, a former minister in the Finnish Red government. Like much of
the SKP leadership, he remained in exile in the Soviet Union, from where
he directed the party's clandestine activities in Finland. The SKP
attracted mainly left-wing militants and embittered survivors of the
civil war. In the 1922 election, the SKP, acting under the front
organization of the Finnish Socialist Workers' Party (Suomen
Sosialistinen Työvaenpuolue--SSTP), received 14.8 percent of the total
vote and twenty-seven seats in parliament. The following year the SSTP
was declared treasonous and was outlawed. As a result, the communists
formed another front organization, and in 1929 they won 13.5 percent of
the vote before being outlawed in 1930. Deprived of political access,
the communists tried to use strikes to disrupt the country's economic
life. They had so far infiltrated the SAJ by 1930 that politically
moderate trade unionists formed an entirely new organization, the
Confederation of Finnish Trade Unions (Suomen Ammattiyhdistysten
Keskusliitto-- SAK), which established itself solidly in the coming
years.
The competition between Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers was
defused by the Language Act of 1922, which declared both Finnish and
Swedish to be official national languages. This law enabled the Swedish
speaking minority to survive in Finland, although in the course of the
twentieth century the Swedish- speakers have been gradually Finnicized,
declining from 11 percent of the population in the 1920s to about 6
percent in the 1980s. The unanimity with which both language groups
fought together in World War II attested to the success of the national
integration.
The enduring domestic political turmoil generated by the civil war
led to the rise not only of a large communist party, but also to that of
a large radical right-wing movement. The right wing consisted mainly of
Finnish nationalists who were unhappy with the 1920 Treaty of Dorpat
(Tartu) that had formally ended the conflict between the Soviet Union
and Finland and recognized Soviet sovereignty over Eastern Karelia. The
more extreme Finnish nationalists hoped for the establishment of a
Greater Finland (Suur-Suomi) that would unite the Finnic peoples of
Northern Europe within boundaries, running from the Gulf of Bothnia to
the White Sea and from Estonia to the Arctic Ocean, that included
Eastern Karelia. Eastern Karelia was the area, located roughly between
Finland and the White Sea, that was inhabited by Finnic-speaking people
who, centuries before, had been brought under Russian rule and had been
converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Since the nineteenth century,
romantic Finnish nationalists had sought to reunite the Karelians with
Finland.
The most prominent organization advancing the Greater Finland idea
was the Academic Karelia Society (Akateeminen Karjala-Seura- -AKS),
which was founded in 1922 by Finnish students who had fought in Eastern
Karelia against Soviet rule during the winter of 1921 to 1922. In the
1920s, the AKS became the dominant group among Finnish university
students. Its members often retained their membership after their
student days, and the AKS was strongly represented among civil servants,
teachers, lawyers, physicians, and clergymen. Most Lutheran clergymen
had been strongly pro-White during the civil war, and many of them were
also active in the AKS and in the even more radical anti- communist
Lapua movement. Thus the AKS created a worldview among an entire
generation of educated Finns that was relentlessly anti-Soviet and
expansionistic. (The Eastern Karelians were eventually assimilated into
Russian culture through a deliberate Soviet policy of denationalization,
aimed at removing any possibility of their being attracted to Finland.)
The military muscle for the right wing was provided by the Civil
Guard. In the 1920s, the Civil Guard had a strength of about 100,000,
and it received arms by parliamentary appropriation; however, Social
Democrats, branded as leftists, were not welcome as members. Finally
during World War II, the Civil Guard was integrated into the regular
army, and peace was made with the Social Democrats. The Civil Guard
included a women's auxiliary called Lotta Svard after a female hero of
the war of 1808 to 1809. This organization performed important support
work, behind the lines during the civil war and later during World War
II, thereby releasing many men for service on the front.
The apogee of right-wing nationalism was reached in the Lapua
movement, from 1929 to 1932. The emergence of the SKP in the 1920s had
contributed to a rightward trend in politics that became evident as
early as 1925 when Lauri Kristian Relander, a right-wing Agrarian, was
elected president. In November 1929, a rightist mob broke up a communist
rally at Lapua, a conservative town in northern Finland. That event
inspired a movement dedicated to extirpating communism from Finland by
any means, legal or illegal, an imperative that was termed the "Law
of Lapua."
Under pressure from the Lapua movement, parliament outlawed communism
through a series of laws passed in 1930. Not content, however, the
Lapuans embarked on a campaign of terror against communists and others
that included beatings, kidnappings, and murders. The Lapuans
overreached themselves in 1930, however, when they kidnapped former
president StAhlberg, whom they disliked for his alleged softness toward
communism. Public revulsion against that act ensured the eventual
decline of the Lapua movement.
The final major political success of the Lapuans came in the election
to the presidency in 1931 of the former White leader, Svinhufvud, who
was sympathetic to them. In February 1932, the Lapuans began calling for
a "Finnish Hitler," and in March 1932, they used armed force
to take over the town of Mantsala, not far from Helsinki, in what
appeared to be the first step toward a rightist coup. Members of the
Civil Guard were prominent in this coup attempt. The Lapuans had,
however, underestimated President Svinhufvud, who used the Finnish army
to isolate the rebellion and to suppress it without bloodshed. The
leaders of the Mantsala revolt were tried and were convicted, and,
although they were given only nominal sentences, the Lapua movement was
outlawed.
The last flowering of right-wing nationalism began the month after
the Mantsala revolt, when a number of ex-Lapuans formed the Patriotic
People's Movement (Isanmaallinen Kansanliike--IKL). Ideologically, the
IKL, calling for a new system to replace parliamentary democracy, picked
up where the Lapua movement had left off. Much more than had the Lapua
movement, the IKL styled itself a fascist organization, and it borrowed
the ideas and trappings of Italian fascism and of German Nazism. Unlike
the Lapua movement, the IKL achieved scant respectability among
middle-class Finns. A future president of Finland, Urho Kekkonen, who in
1938 was minister of interior, banned the IKL. Like the communists,
however, the IKL demanded the protection of the Constitution that it
sought to destroy, and the IKL persuaded the Finnish courts to lift the
ban.
By the late 1930s, Finland appeared to have surmounted the threat
from the extreme right and to have upheld parliamentary democracy. The
White hero of the civil war, General Mannerheim, speaking in 1933 at the
May 16 parade, called for national reconciliation with the words;
"We need no longer ask where the other fellow was fifteen years ago
[that is, during the civil war]." In 1937 President Svinhufvud was
replaced by a more politically moderate Agrarian Party leader, Kyösti
Kallio, who promoted national integration by helping to form a so-called
Red- Earth government coalition that included Social Democrats, National
Progressives, and Agrarians.
A final factor promoting political integration during the interwar
years was the steady growth of material prosperity. The agricultural
sector continued to be the backbone of the economy throughout this
period; in 1938 well over half of the population was engaged in farming.
The main problem with agriculture before 1918 had been tenancy: about
three-quarters of the rural families cultivated land under lease
arrangements. In order to integrate these tenant farmers more firmly
into society, several laws were passed between 1918 and 1922. The most
notable was the so-called Lex Kallio (Kallio Law, named after its main
proponent, Kyösti Kallio) in 1922; by it, loans and other forms of
assistance were provided to help landless farmers obtain farmland. As a
result, about 150,000 new independent holdings were created between the
wars, so that by 1937 almost 90 percent of the farms were held by
independent owners and the problem of tenancy was largely solved.
Agriculture was also modernized by the great expansion of a cooperative
movement, in which farmers pooled their resources in order to provide
such basic services as credit and marketing at reasonable cost. The
growth of dairy farming provided Finland with valuable export products.
In summary, the agricultural sector of the Finnish economy showed
notable progress between the wars.
In addition, Finnish industry recovered quickly from the devastation
caused by the civil war, and by 1922 the lumber, paper, pulp, and
cellulose industries had returned to their prewar level of production.
As before the war, the lumber industry still led the economy, and its
success fueled progress in other sectors. By the Treaty of Dorpat in
1920, Finland had gained nickel deposits near the Arctic port of
Petsamo. These deposits were the largest in Europe, and production began
there in 1939. The success of Finnish products on the world market was
indicated by the general rise in exports and by the surplus in the
balance of payments. Finnish governments protected economic prosperity
by following generally conservative fiscal policies and by avoiding the
creation of large domestic deficits or foreign indebtedness.
In the 1920s and the 1930s, Finnish society moved toward greater
social integration and progress, mirroring developments in the Nordic
region as a whole. Social legislation included protection of child
workers; protection of laborers against the dangers of the workplace;
compulsory social insurance for accidents, disability, and old age; aid
for mothers and young children; aid for the poor, the crippled, the
alcoholic, and the mentally deficient; and housing aid. Finland
reflected European trends also in the emancipation of women, who gained
voting rights in 1906 and full legal equality under the Constitution in
1919. The 1920s and the 1930s witnessed a great increase in the number
of women in the work force, including the professions and politics.
Although in many ways Finland was predominantly nationalist and
introspective in spirit, it participated increasingly in the outside
world, both economically and culturally, a trend that contributed to its
gradual integration into the international community.
Finland - Finnish Security Policy Between the Wars
