1 Socialists within the Polity
The working-class movement penetrated into the polity easily as a result of the 1905 revolution in Russia. It considered itself the leading protagonist of the extension of democracy, its conception of revolution was extremely vague, and it was dominated by a party â the largest in parliament â that devoted its energies to parliamentary activity. But although the party had access to government-controlled resources, this access was not routine, as it was for the other members of the polity. Much like its smaller Scandinavian sister parties, it was not (yet) a full member.1 The working-class movement had not secured a position for itself in the upper echelons of either the government or the administration, much less civil society, and consequently the party was largely isolated.
The February 1917 revolution in Russia was a great relief for all Finnish political groups, and the ensuing reactivation of the political system was especially important for the Social Democrats. One week after its formation, the Provisional Government in Russia issued a manifesto restoring full constitutional rights to Finland. In the parliamentary elections of 1916, the Social Democrats had gained an absolute majority, 103 seats out of 200, but parliament had not been allowed to convene. Now the partyâs foremost goal became not only the guarantee of rights gained in 1905 but also their extension. The party wanted full internal autonomy for Finland, leaving only foreign and military policy and mutual relations between Finland and Russia to the Provisional Government. The party programme also included several legal reforms championed unsuccessfully in the previous decade, particularly the eight-hour workday, the democratisation of local government (which had not been reformed in the countryside since 1865 and in the towns since 1873), and the enfranchisement of the crofters and other tenant farmers.
The party entered the government (the Economic Department of the Senate), in which it had six ministers (senators) out of twelve, including the prime minister â the first time in any country that a socialist had become the head of a government.2 (The other ministers came from the large bourgeois parties.) The Social Democratic party was now clearly a member of the polity, and its demands for reforms certainly did not constitute âexclusive alternative claims to the control over the governmentâ.3 Cooperation between socialist and bourgeois ministers remained good well into the summer.4
The socialists had begun to share political power in a bourgeois state at a difficult moment. The economic and social situation was becoming worse. Grain imports from Russia were drying up, foreshadowing a shortage of food; the cutback in the Russiansâ fortification and military procurement programmes in Finland contributed to mass unemployment; and inflation accelerated. These short-term problems aggravated a more profound, institutional problem, which the Social Democrats had to face. The prevailing conditions made effective execution of political decisions necessary, but there could be no guarantee that the existing administrative apparatus would prove to be a pliable instrument for Social Democratic policy. The Social Democrats led the government and had a parliamentary majority, but the apparatus they were supposed to work with was solidly bourgeois. Nineteenth-century Finland had been bureaucratically organised, and the bureaucracy remained strong â with the Senate still at the top (see Chapter 2).
Civil society, likewise, had remained highly stable. Unlike much of the rest of Europe, Finland was still institutionally intact in March 1917; economic and social structures had not been undermined by the post-1907 integration measures (as in the Baltic Provinces, for example) or by the war, even though short-term problems were inevitable. Thanks to the suspension of conscription in 1905, the Finns were not called to arms to defend the empire.
If this had been all, the Social Democrats would have shared political power under conditions rather similar to those in many Western European countries, such as Sweden in 1917, for example. But the Finnish state had suffered damage in one essential respect as a result of the February revolution: it was left without control of the principal concentrated means of coercion.5 After the dissolution of the domestic troops from 1901 to 1905, the only armed forces the state could rely on in a possible crisis were, in the last analysis, the imperial troops stationed in the country â and the Russian revolution largely paralysed this force. The Finnish police also disintegrated. In the years following the revolution of 1905 the police had been largely âRussifiedâ, that is, reorganised to comply with imperial policy. Immediately after the February revolution policemen and rural police officials were again forced to resign, much as they had been in 1905. Until the end of 1917 Finland was not to have a police force strictly constituted according to prevailing legal stipulations.6 The reorganisation of the police force was to obscure the borderline not only between the state and the working-class movement but also between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activity in the labour movement.
Symptomatic of the relationship between the state apparatus and the working-class movement was the replacement of the police by the militia in March and April. As in 1905, workers participated actively in the militia. Initially, however, they were far from alone. The democratic maintenance of order was a generally supported goal after the dismissal of the âRussifiedâ police.7 At the same time, specific worker militias were founded in a few urban centres. These were often rudimentary and transient in character, organised largely to maintain order among the workers themselves. In several cases they overlapped partly or wholly with the communal militias, or else the latter were supervised by committees in which the Social Democrats were represented through the worker councils that had been founded in many towns in the spring. Hence, the distinction between public and private maintenance of order was not clear immediately after the February revolution.8
At first the bourgeois groups did not oppose the setting up of communal militias,9 because they considered them necessary in the short run and, in any case, provisional. Soon, however, they began to call for a return to ânormalcyâ, and in the spring all bourgeois parties agreed on this demand.10 In the towns the militias were partly disbanded in early summer. The bourgeois minister for the interior, without consulting his Social Democratic colleagues, sent a circular calling on local authorities to appoint chiefs of police who would cooperate with local militia committees to get the police back âon a regular footingâ. Because these efforts were not supported by the Social Democrats and because the workers were generally not well represented in local government, it is no wonder the workers were usually not ready to disband the militias.11 The line between public maintenance of order and the workersâ own initiative remained vague: militias continued to be worker-controlled, but they were often paid by the local authorities.12
In other words, from the winter of 1917 on, the agents of government would have been incapable of suppressing an alternative coalition â if there had been one. The dominant Finnish groups had lost the ultimate protection which control of the armed forces gives, at the very moment that the Russian autocracy collapsed. And they were unable to rebuild the instruments of violence without the consent of the socialist parvenus. Contrary to the âidealised sequenceâ, the decomposition of the armed forces and the dismissal of the domestic police had not been the last stage in the movement toward multiple sovereignty. The means of coercion collapsed because of events outside the Finnish polity, and no contender presenting exclusive alternative claims existed. The Social Democrats had penetrated into a polity unable to resort to force but still rooted in a solid bourgeois institutional structure. In the long run, the absence of the instruments of coercion, together with shared control of the provisional arrangements for maintaining order, was an asset for the Social Democrats, a potential weapon for exercising pressure on the state power.
The militias, however, which were official, semi-official, or private to varying degrees, were of value to the party only if they could be kept under control â that is, only if the movement, headed by the parliamentary party, could control extra-parliamentary activity. In the spring this did not appear too difficult: the party was well organised, most militia members were also members of the party, and the overall number of distinct worker militias remained small.13 But serious problems were in sight. Unemployment was increasing and the food situation deteriorating. As a result of the revolution in Russia, wartime regulations were repealed and strikes were again permitted. All this contributed to an enormous wave of organisation and mobilisation, which had already started in 1916. At that time the partyâs adherents had grown in number from 52,000 to 73,000; by the end of 1917 this number was to rise to between 120,000 and 130,000. The growth in the trade union movement was faster still: in 1916 membership figures increased from 30,000 to 42,000, and by December 1917 they had climbed to 165,000, a fourfold increase. For the first time in Finland trade union membership exceeded that of the Social Democratic party.14 In the spring and summer the figures were still far from their peak, but the balance between the established leaders and older members on the one hand and the new adherents on the other was becoming delicate within both the party and the working-class movement as a whole.
The party did not â and possibly could not â take a clear-cut stand when the rapidly mobilised masses presented the state with their demands. The party had not consolidated itself in the polity; therefore it needed the support of the masses. Characteristic of the ambiguous situation is the fact that the Social Democratic ministers were not leading figures and that the party did not form the government alone, although it could have in March. Thus the government did not have the whole-hearted support of the movement.
The partyâs ability to solve the short-term problems and carry through the reforms it considered central was extremely important. Party objectives could be achieved only if life continued in an orderly fashion, and achieving these objectives would make it easier to maintain order. At first everything seemed quite satisfactory, even though some untoward incidents occurred.
The eight-hour workday, local government reform, and the enfranchisement act were presented to Parliament, and their consideration proceeded rapidly. In April, however, just as the eight-hour-day legislation was being considered, strikes spread in industry, and soon employers in a number of industries were forced to accept the workersâ demands. In early May the strikes spread into agriculture, continuing into early June. The Social Democrats were surprised and disturbed by the farm strikes. The main party paper urged the agrarian labourers not to waste their energies in strikes but to build up solid trade unions, and the government, which had become a âmediator in labour disputesâ, issued a statement urging the strikers not to intensify their action and to come to terms with the landowners.15 But strikes broke out again at the end of June and continued here and there until August; they had, however, practically no effect on the harvest.16 The workers also exerted pressure on local government, which was dominated by the urban bourgeoisie or wealthy landowners. In these cases, too, the party tried both directly and indirectly, through the government, to control the movement.17
In the spring the government took up the impending food crisis. Finland had escaped the war, and the scarcity of food was not comparable to that in the countries devastated by battle. Modest measures of rationing had been initiated only at the end of 1916, and even in spring 1917 grain, the main staple, was not rationed.18 But when grain imports from Russia began to dry up, the situation deteriorated. In June a food law was enacted which regulated consumption, controlled prices, and made the expropriation of food possible. The government announced that all grain reserved for home consumption was to be confiscated and began to organise its distribution. The problem of assuring support of inventory-taking and rationing on the part of producers and consumers alike was solved by co-opting the various âsocial forcesâ into the organisation responsible for rationing. This system was controlled by the government, which urged the formation of local food committees âaccording to the local social structureâ. On the whole, the strategy proved successful: the inventory appears to have provided fairly accurate statistics, even though the farmers supplied the information on their own. In other words, despite the farm strikes in May and June, the grain confiscations and the rationing of consumption were tacitly approved. The rationing worked moderately well: grain and other foodstuffs were available, and there was no real shortage in the summer, even in the towns.19
All in all, no serious disorders occurred in the spring or summer. The Social Democratic party strove to maintain calm, and by and large it succeeded. In this the worker militias, based on party cadres, played no small role. Their principal task was to prevent possible disturbances in strikes and demonstrations held in support of the new communal law and the eight-hour workday.20 In June the party ignored demands â which were few â to call a general strike.21 As Anthony F. Upton sums it up, âUntil August 1917 the situation in Finland, in spite of the revolution and the disorders it had occasioned, was still recognizably normal. A legitimate Finnish government and parliament governed the country, however unsatisfactorily, within the bounds of the constitution and the lawâ.22
Nevertheless, it is no wonder that by the summer maintenance of order had become the major problem confronting the bourgeois groups. The dismissal of the police had deprived the state of the only apparatus that truly safeguarded individual and property rights, and interventions by the mobilised workers, few as they were, seemed to constitute a great potential threat. But in the situation that prevailed there was no legal recourse to âtraditional repression to deal with disordersâ. When in June the bourgeois minister for the interior was asked about legalising the bourgeois counter-militias or setting up a paramilitary police force, he rejected both ideas: the bourgeois militias would be an incitement to civil war, and the Russians would not permit the raising of a paramilitary police.23
These impediments notwithstanding, there were grounds for a bourgeois paramilitary organisation, whose rise would eventually accentuate the private character of the worker-controlled militias. Even if it had had an official or semi-official status, a militia could not have avoided a choice when confronted with mass demonstrations for the eight-hour day, the democratisation of local government, the control of prices, the confiscation of grain stocks, or communal relief work for the unemployed. The problem was aggravated by the fact that the bourgeoisie continued to exercise power at the local level, as Parliament had not yet passed the new communal law. Often the situation was inherently ambiguous. For example, the governmentâs injunction to set up the food committees in line with the numerical strength of local social groups was only a recommendation. If the local powerholders did not comply, disagreements and conflicts between the landowners and the organised workers were imminent, whatever the status of the local militia. Also, the reorganisation of the urban police, mentioned above, incited the workers to set up militias of their own, or at least not to disperse the existing ones.24
Because the working-class movement had a share in political decision-making at the top of the polity and in the maintenance of order, every bourgeois attempt to restore the pre-March situation was bound to lead to private organisation â that is, outside the governmental apparatus. Civil society was in good shape, so this kind of organisation was easy. A telling example is the Farmers Congress in Helsinki at the end of May, during the first wave of farm strikes. The farmers were contemptuous of the government and its measures, which they said were leading to the breakdown of law and order; the congress therefore asked the farmers to organise their own defence. For the most part, however, âanti-hooliganismâ organisations existed only on paper until August, in all regions except south-western Finland. There the farmers established âfire brigadesâ and âsecurity corpsâ in answer to the farm strikes.25
Another factor contributed to the establishment of a bourgeois force. A group of âActivistsâ had worked for Finnish independence since 1915. Until the spring of 1917 the most nationally oriented Social Democrats were numbered among their supporters.26 The Activists looked to Germany for help. In 1915 and 1916 Germany had created a Jäger battalion consisting of 1,500 Finnish volunteers, which fought on Germanyâs eastern front and was, given opportune conditions, supposed to act to separate Finland from Russia, with German help, using an organisation to be set up in Finland. The Activists considered their principal enemy to be the Russians stationed in Finland, who at the beginning of 1917 numbered 40,000 and by August had reached a peak of 100,000 men. In the summer of 1917, however, the Activists received only limited support; some anti-Russian security guards were created by August, mainly in Ostrobothnia, a region with many Russian troops. Although Finnish independence was the Activistsâ objective, the fact remains that they envisioned an armed bourgeois organisation. Therefore their efforts were potentially linked with more popular bourgeois efforts to ârestore internal orderâ: both had as their ultimate goal the protection and fortification of the bourgeois state and civil society.
The working-class movementâs position in the polity was put to an explicit, even decisive, test when Parliament took a stand on Finnish independence and the way in which exercise of the imperial prerogative should be transferred to the Finnish government after the February revolution. This event was to be the single most important step toward multiple sovereignty.
In the grand duchy the laws passed by Parliament needed the emperorâs confirmation. The government, moreover, was not a sovereign executive: it was rather a committee of departmental heads, appointed by and answerable to the emperor, whose representative, the governor general, could preside over its meetings. After the February revolution these rights of supervision and approval were transferred to the Provisional Government.
The Social Democrats aimed at the extension of autonomy and, if possible, full independence. This as such would have enhanced their room for manoeuvre. The party was also willing to raise Parliament to a politically dominant position, which would have strengthened the socialistsâ institutional hold on the state, although the state would have remained unquestionably bourgeois. National orientation in the party was now accompanied by increasing nationalist fervour among the masses. In the working-class movement, orientation toward independence and the goal of extending political democracy were seen to be intimately connected.27
The party worked for independence both in government and outside, ignoring the negative attitude of the Provisional Government. After having made contacts with various political groups in Russia, the party finally pushed through a so-called law on authority (valtalaki) on 17 and 18Â July.28 This law proclaimed the full internal autonomy of Finland and the transfer of imperial prerogatives to Parliament. Only foreign policy and military affairs were left under the jurisdiction of the Provisional Government.
There were protagonists of independence in the bourgeois parties as well. Disorder in Russia led many people to strive for at least an extension of internal autonomy, if not full independence. The Activists and some other supporters of independence at first backed the Social Democratsâ efforts. But the bourgeois groups generally opposed the valtalaki, notably because it would have increased the socialistsâ grip on the state, but also because the Provisional Government could have used the armed forces to suppress it. When the decisive votes were cast, though, most bourgeois representatives backed the law: they followed a course they believed was massively supported by the population.29
The socialists had envisioned the formation of a purely Social Democratic government after the approval of the valtalaki. Once the Provisional Government had endured the so-called July Days, however, it refused to approve the law, dissolved Parliament, and ordered new elections. It was of utmost importance that all bourgeois groups sided with the Provisional Government. Many bourgeois proponents of the valtalaki dissociated themselves from it, and opponents of the law actively cooperated with the Provisional Government in order to make sure that it was rejected and new elections ordered.30 By the same token, the eight-hour workday and local government acts, which had already gone through Parliament, were left unconfirmed.
In a sense, the valtalaki led to a bourgeois coup dââ¯Ã©tat. For besides the problem of law and order in 1917 Finland, there was the relationship with Russia, and the bourgeois groups utilised this second ambiguity to their advantage. The Social Democratsâ position in the polity was challenged in a manner unacceptable to all tendencies in the socialist movement. Thus, because the valtalaki had been passed by Parliament in accordance with regular procedures, and because it rejected the authority of the Provisional Government, the Social Democrats were never to regard the new elections and the subsequent developments as legal.31
Just what was and was not legal in that spring and summer is of secondary importance here. What is essential is that both the socialists and the bourgeois groups utilised the stateâs prevailing ambiguities and weaknesses in their struggle to gain control. After the February revolution in Russia the state had been damaged and was incapable of guaranteeing some of the basic conditions of the prevailing order. Now the conflict with the Provisional Government broke its fragile structure, and the way was paved for the struggle between the social classes to grow. In the late summer and the autumn, two polities began to take shape. And both had troops which sought arms.
2 The Rise of Multiple Sovereignty
In practice, the socialists had to confront the fact that the valtalaki had been rejected and Parliament dissolved. The bourgeois groups sided unanimously with the Provisional Government, which presumably would also have been able to resort to force. No open conflict occurred, however.
First the socialist ministers left the government. Only the bourgeois ministers stayed, and their first objective became âachieving a powerful security force for the countryâ. The government was willing to dissolve the militias and re-establish the regular police, but because the ministers feared that the radicalised Russian soldiers would intervene, it did not do so. And certainly the militias themselves would not have disbanded voluntarily. Therefore, the government resorted to semi-secret operations. In August it was decided to raise a clandestine police force in Helsinki, and in September the government initiated the training of a mounted police force. The latter plan was official, but the socialists learned about it only afterward. It met with difficulties mainly because the Russians did not deliver arms.32
Links were soon forged between the government and the Activists. An Activist entered the government, replacing the former socialist minister for food, and the government set up a committee composed of Activists âfor establishing our own domestic armed forceâ. The secret police force in Helsinki was placed under its jurisdiction, and these police were to be integrated into the proposed armed force.33 In addition, Activists attempted to create a nationwide organisation, but really succeeded only in Ostrobothnia. On 31Â October the first noticeable shipment of arms from Germany arrived in Ostrobothnia.
Other efforts specifically intended to restore internal order also gained momentum after the collapse of the valtalaki, and the distinction between these attempts and Activist efforts to achieve independence nearly disappeared: both were aimed at fortifying the prevailing societal system, including its constellation of political power. The economic elite and other groups supported both types of activity, but they saw the Activists as struggling against âhooliganismâ within the country. The organisation for restoring internal order gained the upper hand and soon mushroomed: by the end of September there were considerably more bourgeois guards than worker militias or guards.34
The bourgeois partiesâ main theme in the electoral campaign preceding the October elections was law and order. The largest bourgeois parties agreed to support a common ticket and concentrated all their efforts on achieving a bourgeois majority. The Social Democrats, for their part, campaigned on the valtalaki â that is, on independence â and did not say much about their social objectives. They thought that they would succeed simply as proponents of independence.35
The socialist party was defeated, however. It lost eleven seats, and the bourgeois parties won a majority. The defeat made the party confront the problem that the leadership had been well aware of since the failure of the valtalaki: how to control the rising revolutionary mood of the masses. Above all, the Social Democrats feared that the âattempted bourgeois coupâ would reverse the gains that the workers had made since March.36 Many leaders had been wary about withdrawing from the government in August because they saw participation as a means of holding off the masses. The same idea was expressed during the electoral campaign. O.W. Kuusinen, one of the leading figures of the party, saw the implications of losing in this way: âWhat will happen if we are defeated in the elections? Then a revolution could be sparked off amongst the people. But there is no knowing how such a revolution would end. It could bring disaster to the whole labour movement, and that is one reason why we should endeavour to win victory in the electionsâ. After the elections were over, but before the results were known, Kuusinen said that âa general rising of the people must be held off until the election is declaredâ.37
Less than a fortnight after the results were announced, a national Worker Security Guard was established. There were, of course, worker militias, and in Helsinki some members of the 1905 Red Guard had attempted to revive that organisation. But, despite popular pressure, the party had been able to prevent the establishment of militant guards. In the early fall, however, after the suppression of the valtalaki, and particularly with the proliferation of the bourgeois guards in August and September, conditions began to change. Organisation started from the grassroots: militant security guards, willing to acquire their own arms, tended to form within the existing militias and other groups. They were conceived as protecting workers, mainly against the bourgeois guards but also against the state (often seen as synonymous with these guards). In early September the formation of a nationwide armed workersâ organisation was proposed, and the party began to acquiesce, mainly because a central organisation seemed the only way of controlling the swelling movement. The decision was made before the movement got off the ground outside the biggest centres: by 20Â October, when the decision was published as a statement of the trade union organisation, only Helsinki, Tampere, and Turku had substantial security guards.38
According to the rules, the worker security guards were to be disciplined, and the traditional working-class movement was to have complete control over them. Actually, the partyâs authority in the movement was on the decline. Sometimes, notably in the largest population centres, the guards were started by militias or other groups with only loose connections to the party. But this decline was by no means a loss of authority. Despite radicalisation and rapid expansion of other branches of the movement, the party was not overwhelmed. Even though its authority was questioned, it was able to maintain a central position. Defence of the rights won after the February revolution remained the main task of the national Worker Security Guard, the core, probably even the majority, of which consisted locally, the sudden expansion notwithstanding, of established members of the party and trade union branches.39 The partyâs dominant role in the working-class movement and its central role in the nationâs political life could not be eliminated overnight.
The worsening food shortage played a central role in radicalising the masses. In late September the party leaders stated that the masses were getting restless about the food situation, and a few days before the foundation of the national security guard organisation, party and trade union leaders unanimously agreed that the workers could not be held back if the government did not take action on food. Thus the call of 20Â October for the workers to join the security guards was accompanied by an ultimatum concerning food.40
Toward autumn, grain imports from Russia declined even from the low level of the preceding months, but conditions did not yet appear critical to the authorities. (For example, rations of grain products were increased in August.)41 At the same time, however, the whole system of rationing began to break down. After the valtalaki had been rejected and parliament was dissolved, mass meetings and demonstrations against the food supply policy became common. Social Democratic members began to resign from the local food committees, which were accused of rationing food in a perfunctory manner and raising prices without reason. In early August the first food riots occurred in Turku and Helsinki. Yet it was not a food shortage, and especially not a shortage of grain, that caused the disorders. In Turku no butter had been distributed for a week, and the rioters believed it had been hidden in the hope that the price would rise. In the same month several mass meetings demanded a reduction in controlled prices and an end to speculation and urged that ârepresentatives elected by the consumersâ find and distribute food. As a consequence, the organisation in charge of butter distribution ceased operating, and the central committee on food, which was subordinate to the ministry for food, resigned.42 On this note the Social Democrats also began their withdrawal from the government as the socialist minister for food resigned â one week before the party decided to leave the government altogether.
It was more difficult to take an inventory of the harvest in the autumn than in the spring; because the shortage was expected to worsen, causing prices to rise, considerably more grain was hoarded. Statistics based on the inventory amount to only about 60 percent of the grain shown by the official statistics collected with more reliable methods.43 In towns, serious fears about scarcity began to arise. The rural food committees delivered grain only reluctantly, and the central organisation was unable to rectify the situation. Moreover, the new Activist minister for food felt that his foremost task was to make preparations for âthe future military operationsâ,44 and the steps he took to augment the food stocks in the towns only increased disorder. Prices continued to rise, and farmers delayed their sales in the hope that prices would rise even more.45
But although the situation was alarming, it was far from catastrophic. Despite all the problems, the food committees were able to administer the distribution of grain even in the towns,46 and the shortage was by no means out of control. Rather than being ruthlessly present, scarcity was stealthily lurking around the corner.
The last step preceding the beginning of the revolutionary situation was taken on 1 November, when the Social Democrats issued a programme called âWe Demandâ. It stated that the dissolution of parliament had resulted from a conspiracy between the Finnish bourgeoisie and Russian reactionaries and that the old parliament was still the only legal one. The central demands included the election of a constituent assembly, immediate action on food and employment, implementation of the reforms passed by the previous parliament, and the dissolution of the bourgeois civil guards. The party was fully aware of the strong pressure from below; thus, the programme was issued above all in order to relieve this pressure and find an escape from the situation â as a last chance for the bourgeoisie to avert a revolution.47 It did not constitute a challenge to the basic structure of capitalist society but rather appears to have been a genuine attempt to settle the political crisis,48 motivated by the partyâs desire to stave off the revolution. As a leader pessimistically prophesied a few days before the program was issued: âWe cannot avoid the revolution for very long ⦠Faith in the value of peaceful activity is lost and the working class is beginning to trust only in its own strength ⦠If we are mistaken about the rapid approach of revolution, I would be delightedâ.49
But, understandably enough, the bourgeois groups had no intention of giving in to the central demands. Notably, they were not ready to dissolve the civil guards, to admit the illegality of the new parliament, or to have a constituent assembly elected.
In a word, multiple sovereignty had begun to emerge. In one polity the active role was played by the bourgeoisie and the peasant landowners, who had regained control of a state that still suffered from the lack of an armed force. The other polity was composed of the various parts of the working-class movement. It had originated in the period when the Social Democrats had participated in the government owing to the necessity of establishing a (temporary) force for maintaining order. This polity began to take shape rapidly after the socialists were debarred from political power and after the bourgeois organisations promoting law and order had proliferated. It had three constituent elements: the party, the trade unions, and the Worker Security Guard. The role of the party and the trade unions was clear: to consistently hamper the guards from advancing exclusive alternative claims to control over the government. Although they succeeded in this effort for several months, in early November their position became critical.
Developments in Russia played a part in the Finnish situation in three main respects. First, the Social Democratsâ penetration into the polity had been facilitated by the stateâs lack of a monopoly on physical force. Second, the bourgeois groups had forced the socialists out of the polity with the help of the Provisional Government. And third, Russian troops were in the country. Their number rose to about 100,000 by August 1917 and then began to decline rapidly. The Activists believed that considerable German support was needed to rid Finland of these troops and achieve independence, and they were actually ready to reduce the country to the status of a German protectorate.50 The majority of the bourgeoisie, however, saw the Russian soldiers as only another element contributing to the mounting disorder. In the autumn of 1917 there were only a few effective military units; often the soldiers confiscated food or caused other disruptions. Especially irksome was the socialistsâ alleged fraternisation with them â a claim that carried some truth: Russian soldiers often took part in the workersâ mass meetings and demonstrations, and they even raided a bourgeois security force stronghold on behalf of the Social Democrats. Some worker guards or militias succeeded in obtaining a few Russian rifles. Party representatives made similar attempts but met with no success.51 Conditions were so chaotic, however, that the Russians also sold arms to bourgeois purchasers and were often not trusted by the working-class movement. Frequently, fear of Russian soldiers, the desire to prevent the soldiersâ possible interference in the maintenance of order, and the socialistsâ wish to promote the national cause were among the main reasons why the worker militias were set up. In fact, this last, national, motive was one reason why more militias emerged in localities where there were Russian troops than in those where there were none.52
On the whole, though, direct intervention in Finnish affairs by the Russians remained very limited â which is not to say that their presence was not strongly felt, notably by the bourgeois groups. Another important factor was the Social Democratsâ connections with the Bolsheviks, who, alone among the Russian political groupings, supported the socialistsâ demand for Finnish independence. Thanks to this attitude, the Bolsheviks were, paradoxically, able to press the âsocial-patrioticâ Finnish party to join the radical Zimmerwald International in the summer of 1917. But otherwise they had little effect on the Finnish worker movement.53 Among the Russian troops in Finland the Bolsheviks gained a majority in late September.
3 The Revolutionary Situation
The general strike in November sparked off the revolutionary situation. Although it was not until one and a half months later that hostilities broke out, the revolutionary situation was imminent from the general strike on as the government became the object of effective, competing, mutually exclusive claims by two distinct polities. True, the effectiveness of the contendersâ claims might be questioned before late January, but placing the starting point in November focuses attention on an important feature of the Finnish revolution: no one date or single event marks its beginning. The country drifted into revolution, and from early November it became virtually impossible to avert.
The new Parliament convened at the beginning of November. The party and trade union leaderships had decided to urge acceptance of the âWe Demandâ programme, a programme for recapturing the partyâs hold on the government. The Bolshevik revolution had just taken place in Petrograd, and there was no fear that the Russians would intervene to suppress the separatist claims of the valtalaki, or any other analogous demands. Pressure from below was still increasing, and the only real alternative envisioned by party and trade union leaders was that âthe organized workers would take power into their own handsâ.54 But at the same time there was âno clear idea of what to do with the powerâ.55
Because the bourgeois parties stood firm against the socialistsâ demands, the party leadership was forced to consent to a general strike. The strike call, containing largely the same points as the âWe Demandâ programme, was published on 14Â November. Now the party leadership had to face the problem of the seizure of power. Many trade union leaders had urged such a course in the meeting that preceded the strike, and the militant worker guards in Helsinki and other centres backed their proposal.56 The party, which was still in command of the movement despite all the opposition, was now forced to make a decision.
Insofar as the control of everyday activities was concerned, the strike was enormously successful. Revolutionary councils were set up in most areas, particularly in population centres, to oversee the orderly execution of the strike, to maintain calm, and to control the local worker guards. The bourgeoisie was unprepared, disorganised, and poorly armed, and as a result the guards usually gained control. In some cases the Russians were willing to lend â but only lend â rifles to the guards, but on the whole the Russians, the only real armed force in the country, were reluctant to get involved, and their basic attitude toward the worker guards was one of âbenevolent neutralityâ. The strike was also effective in that the local government bill was finally passed and the eight-hour workday established by Parliament.57
Soon the Social Democratic party took a clear stand: it would do all it could to prevent the strike from turning into a full-scale seizure of power. There is no reason to marvel at this attitude, whether in light of the situation at hand or of the partyâs earlier history. The Bolsheviks had taken power only one week before the general strike, and for the Finns the events in Petrograd were mainly a nearby struggle, the outcome of which remained unknown.58 At that moment no one could be sure about the future: âDuring the days which preceded the October insurrection, nobody imagined, and certainly not the Bolsheviks, that Leninâs party would seize the power for itself all alone and foreverâ.59 One week later the situation had not greatly changed. The Bolshevik revolution had in no way provoked the general strike in Finland, and the two events were not connected, as they were in the Baltic Provinces. Of the World War I revolutionary situations not directly connected with the October revolution, only the Finnish one began at virtually the same time that the Bolsheviks seized power. The Bolshevik takeover did not really figure in the Finnish socialistsâ calculations, as it was to do a little later in Hungary and Germany, where the revolutionary leaders had witnessed at least the temporary stabilisation of Soviet power. There, only the final collapse in war created the revolutionary situation; in Finland, it was the disappearance of dependence on Russia in the spring, summer, and autumn of 1917 that was critical.
The Finnish Social Democrats could not envision a socialist revolution âin tiny, underdeveloped Finland in isolationâ.60 If power were seized it would be held only until a constituent assembly could be elected, which would then enact laws in a country that would remain capitalist but in which the rights the workers had gained in 1917 were guaranteed. While an alternative polity was taking shape, a total seizure of power was not feasible: taking care of the administration and of other basic tasks of the state seemed to be beyond the partyâs capacity. Even the militant worker guards did not envision a social revolution.61 As one Social Democratic leader put it in his diary during the strike: âThe revolution is preposterous, we cannot force the civil servants to obey when we cannot even force them to go on strike ⦠As a consequence of our lack of intellectuals, we shall not be able to master the machinery of governmentâ.62
This was so because the alternative polity did not result from the fragmentation of the existing polity but from its penetration by the working-class movement at a moment of weakness. The party leaders were compelled to participate in the general strike, but they had no real vision of what should be done with the power they obtained. Thus in a sense, although the objective causes of revolution existed, the subjective causes â the instruments of revolution â were lacking. Favourable as the situation was, no revolution occurred, for want of an organised revolutionary movement armed with a doctrine, long-term objectives, and a clear political strategy â to paraphrase Lucien Biancoâs analysis of the Chinese revolution. The contrast is at least as striking if the Finnish Social Democrats are compared with the Bolsheviks.63 The entire earlier history of the Finnish movement spoke against organised revolutionary action: it could not be created in a few months.
Within a couple of days, confronted with disorder and uncertainty about the final goal, the party and trade union leaders tried to stop the strike. Although in most regions the strike was peaceful, the party leadersâ fears were justified in a number of cases: sixteen murders were committed during the strike, notably in Helsinki and its surroundings. Fourteen members or supporters of the bourgeois guards and three members of the worker guards died in encounters. Also, as the strike went on, demands for a full-scale seizure of power became increasingly forceful: âWe cannot have two governmentsâ, insisted the Tampere worker guard.64 Of great importance, the strike emphasised for the first time the existence of a few revolutionary Red Guards in Helsinki and elsewhere, as distinct from the party-dominated worker security guards. The division had begun to evolve in September, but only now did the militant â largely anarchic â line openly challenge the authority of the party.65
Although the bourgeois groups made no concessions, the strike was called off on the fifth day. The mobilised masses accepted the decision, but with great resentment and bitterness.66 The general strike showed that an alternative polity really existed, but it also showed this polityâs limits.
The strike closed the ranks of the bourgeoisie more effectively than anything else: the government began to work firmly and resolutely, and civil society considerably increased its material and other support for the maintenance of order; moreover, the two efforts were united. Only a week after the end of the strike a coalition government of all bourgeois parties was formed, with the Activists well represented. The most important tasks were identified as âthe securing of Finlandâs political independenceâ and the establishment of a strong force for the maintenance of order.
The issue of independence was brought to the fore by the October revolution, which caused utter dismay among the Finnish non-socialist politicians. By mid-November, when parliament assumed the exercise of sovereign powers in the country, independence was supported also by all bourgeois parties, for which, however, this question was inseparable from the problem of internal order. The bourgeois leaders wanted to exploit Germanyâs and the Ententeâs anti-Bolshevik feelings in order to win independence. For them, Germanyâs attitude was crucial. In early January 1918 the Germans were secretly asked to provide arms and to send the Finnish Jägers home. The bourgeois leaders wished to mobilise Germany in order to compel the Bolsheviks to recognise Finnish independence and withdraw the Russian troops from Finland. Only then would they be free to restore internal order.67
Independence was proclaimed on 6 December and recognised by the Bolshevik government, at the Finnsâ request, three weeks later. It was decided to form the force for maintaining order from the civil guards, which had grown considerably after the general strike and were now increasingly supported by businessmen and local authorities. (In this respect it was helpful that the Activist leadership had close links with the countryâs economic elite.)68 Training was provided by former domestic army officers and by Jägers who returned home before the main body of troops. Their impact has been considered incalculably important.69 By the end of January they were able to train a cadre having military skills their opponents lacked.
On 9 January 1918 the government, despite fierce opposition by the Social Democrats, sought, and a few days later received, authorisation from parliament for the creation of a strong security force. Civil society again provided abundant support, especially in the form of rapid financial aid.70 The last step was taken on 25 January when the civil guards were officially declared the troops of the government. On the morning of 28 January their supreme commander, a former general of the Imperial Russian Army, C.G.E. Mannerheim, began to disarm Russian garrisons in Ostrobothnia. Thus began the revolutionary war on the White side.
By this action the state apparatus, put on the defensive in a revolutionary situation, co-opted one of the two class-based organisations that had taken shape in civil society during the summer and autumn. On the one hand, it was perfectly clear that in the long run the country could not âhave two governmentsâ, and after the general strike the bourgeoisie was fully prepared to restore its monopoly on physical force by invoking the civil guards, that is, to exercise a kind of coup dââ¯Ã©tat. On the other hand, it was just as clear that the working-class movement would not voluntarily comply and dissolve the alternative polity. During December and January the socialist leaders repeatedly spoke about bourgeois aggression and the intended seizure of power by government. The rules of the worker guards, confirmed in late December, stated that their purpose was the defence of the working class from armed attack, a formulation imposed by the party. In practice, however, a more militant view stressing the guardsâ active role in opposing the bourgeoisie rapidly gained ground.71 Raiding parties searched for food and arms or exerted pressure on local bourgeois authorities. More important, revolutionary tendencies were gaining ground in the worker guards, and in mid-January they came to predominate when the government received authorisation to create a strong security force.72 Even the party leadership could not ignore the governmentâs intention to put down the worker security guards as soon as it felt strong enough. After encounters with the bourgeois guards in several localities, and after the civil guards gained official status as governmental troops, it was decided, with great reluctance, to launch the revolution on 27 January. Not surprisingly, it was described as having âa defensive characterâ.73 Revolutionary spirits ran generally low among the party leaders, but despite misgivings and opposition in previous months, few felt that they could distance themselves from the attempt.74
But the Red Guards â as all guards were now called75 â were far from ready to wage war. On the contrary, they were very much in disarray. The central organisation was inchoate, and the local branches often had not the slightest idea of the most elementary rules of military conduct. Unlike the Whites, the Red Guards had no military cadre. The first commander in chief was an ex-lieutenant from the Imperial Army, the only former Finnish officer among the Red troops, who, however, was demoted at the beginning of the hostilities. Initially the Red Guards had no military plans. Also, arms were in short supply â to a considerable degree they were obtained only after the war had broken out, and then thanks to Russian deliveries.76 Otherwise the Russiansâ contribution was minimal: they confined themselves mainly to giving advice and exhortation. For them, getting their own disorganised troops home was a demanding enough task. Their primary concern lay in Petrograd and the situation there.77
The revolution began right in the core of Finland. It was declared at the Helsinki headquarters of the Social Democratic party, and in a couple of weeks the southern core regions of the country were established as the revolutionary stronghold (see Map 2, p. 55). The Whitesâ stronghold was Ostrobothnia, particularly southern Ostrobothnia, the largest city of which, Vaasa (Vasa), became âthe capital of the White Finlandâ.
At first the two armies had roughly the same number of men, although later the Red Guards had a slight edge. In the beginning the revolutionaries had 12,000â15,000 troops, by the end of February 40,000, and in late March 76,500. Frontline troops, however, numbered far fewer: 35,000 in mid-March, for example, but even these could not be used effectively because of poor organisation and a shortage of weapons. Although arms were obtained by mid-February, the commandâs poor performance was not rectified, and it became the most fateful problem for the revolutionary army.78
Under these conditions, the help that some Russian officers offered the âamateur Red armyâ had only a modest impact.79 Russian soldiers played a minor role in the battles: at its highest their number at the front was only about 2,000 troops, just a few percent of the total Red Guard strength; after early March the number declined to less than 1,500. In addition, the Russians continued to send their troops home throughout the war: after one month of armed conflict, which at first was fairly mild, only 6,000 Russian troops were still in the country. Russian arms deliveries â received both from Petrograd and from the troops stationed in Finland â were, however, critical.80
One indication of the revolutionâs defensive character is the passivity of the military operations. After Helsinki and southern Finland were in their control, the socialist leaders considered the revolution more or less over: they thought the situation was similar to the one in November at the time of the general strike. The socialists, unlike the Whites, therefore devoted considerable attention to consolidating the administration at the expense of military development. To be sure, to a certain extent this task was necessary. Practically the entire central administration had deserted, and the Social Democrats had to work hard to keep it running81Â â another indication that the revolutionary polity did not result from the fragmentation of the old polity but that power was being seized by another polity whose members had been only marginally involved in the old one.82
Also, the goals of the revolution are expressive of its character: they were not very ambitious. Governmental organs were established largely following the organisational principles of the earlier government and the parliament.83 Civilian and military functions were separated, and after the revolution Finland was to become a democratic, parliamentary republic with a controlled capitalist economy. In line with these plans (and because of the revolutionariesâ need to secure allies), tenant farmers were enfranchised and became independent smallholders. The constitution â worked out mainly by O.W. Kuusinen and proposed by the revolutionary government (called the Peopleâs Deputation) â envisaged a political system modelled on the Swiss one.84 In the short run, existing practices were maintained. Despite the war, legal principles were usually respected, even to the extent that the ârepression of the internal enemy by the Red regime was suicidally lenientâ.85 Each local takeover was to be decided case by case and was always considered a temporary necessity made inevitable by the war. The worker movement captured full power in only three of every five communes in the region dominated by revolutionary forces. In a number of communes local elections were held in which bourgeois candidates ran, and often the bourgeois chairman of the communal board kept his post.86 Consolidation was attempted without the usual instruments of revolutionary dictatorship, such as a powerful police force or monopoly over the diffusion of ideas.87 All in all, life went on fairly normally for most of the bourgeois citizens.88
Of course, this does not necessarily imply that only limited changes would have followed if the revolution had really been successful. Revolutions have often concluded with results not intended or foreseen by their principal makers, and radical designs for thorough change have often been as much the products as the precursors of revolutionary upheaval.89 This line only shows that in the winter of 1918 the revolutionary polity followed the course that the Social Democratic party had adopted in the previous decade.
Undoubtedly, the maintenance of legality was motivated in part by the hope to win allies outside the working class. This feature, too, is distinctive of the Finnish situation. The building of a new socialist economic and political order was not envisioned; rather, the leaders of the revolution clung to the views they had adopted in previous years and advocated during the general strike. The Finnish revolution was really a defensive revolution that strove more to secure the advantages gained in 1917 than to create a fundamentally new society.
The governmental troops were also poorly prepared for war. At the end of January the new security forces were not yet ready for action, and the government had tried to postpone armed confrontation for as long as possible. In the early phases of the war, the White army was roughly as strong as the Red, with about 12,000 to 15,000 men.90 But because society had not been seriously damaged during the earlier revolutionary process, White Finland remained superior in resources and organisation. Most important, the upper echelons of the White army consisted of professional soldiers â former Imperial Army officers, Swedish officers who had volunteered, and, especially, the 1,200 Jägers who had returned home in late February. Weapons were acquired first from disarmed local Russian troops, but above all from Germany. In late February general conscription was enforced, and at the beginning of May White troops numbered about 70,000.91
Germany contributed decisively to the Whitesâ warfare. Not only did it deliver arms and send home the Jägers who had been trained in Germany, but it also intervened in the war. In February the Activists presented a request for intervention and then made the politicians approve an agreement reducing Finland to the status of a German vassal.92 At the beginning of April, German troops landed on the southern coast and marched into Helsinki; at nearly the same time, the Finnish Whites won their first decisive victory by taking Tampere. In a couple of weeks the revolutionary troops collapsed, and by early May the entire country was in White and German hands.
4 The Aftermath
During the war neither the Reds nor the Whites were able to prevent a number of terrorist acts. Despite repeated and unequivocal condemnation of terrorism by the Peopleâs Deputation, about a thousand White sympathisers had been killed outside the battles by mid-April; with the collapse of discipline in the last two weeks of the war and early May, 600 to 650 more murders were committed.93 Wartime terror perpetrated by the Whites was somewhat more regular and more extensive, the number of killings rising to at least 1,200â1,300 by mid-April,94 when the Reds were in chaotic retreat. Then, at and following the end of the war, a large-scale reign of White terror broke out. During the first week after the war the Whites executed on average 200 people a day, and the total number of Reds executed in the last weeks of the war and immediately thereafter rose to about 5,600. In addition, roughly 12,500 persons died in prison camps, in which the victors incarcerated about 82,000 people.95 In a country of 3.1 million people, the executions and camp deaths were so extensive that they exceeded, both relatively and absolutely, the contemporaneous ones in Hungary.96
In the short run, the attempt at revolution was followed by a distinct counterrevolution. The Social Democratic party was prevented from participating in the political system, and the Communist party of Finland, founded by emigrants in Moscow, was declared illegal. During the war the White supreme commander, General Mannerheim, had assumed nearly dictatorial powers because the bourgeois political leadership, partly in Vaasa and partly hiding in Helsinki, had been unable to act jointly. For example, the prime minister, Svinhufvud, managed to escape from Helsinki and arrive in Vaasa only in March. But the arrival of the German troops and the end of the war changed the balance of power in favour of Svinhufvud, who worked to create a monarchy dependent on Germany. In autumn 1918, a German-born prince was preliminarily elected king. After Germanyâs defeat, however, the Entente-oriented Mannerheim became head of state in Svinhufvudâs place. Democratic general elections â one of the Ententeâs conditions for the recognition of Finnish independence97 â were held in 1919, with reasonable Social Democratic success and great advances by the Agrarian Union (see Table 11, p. 206). In the same year, a republican constitution was confirmed, and a Liberal was elected president, supported by the Social Democrats.
Just as the international power constellation had decisively contributed to the revolutionary situation, so too did it influence the post-war political system in Finland. When the revolution was crushed, the counterrevolutionary forces (which, it is true, had no deep roots in the social structure) were the first to gain the upper hand. But then, thanks to the Entente victory, the protagonists of the republican constitution and political democracy moved to the fore, and soon a part of the elite was forced to surrender the counterrevolutionary gains. Both Svinhufvud and Mannerheim, the two leading figures in putting down the revolution, were compelled to step aside, leaving a significant potential for discontent within the dominant groups. In 1919 Mannerheim and an influential rightist group had a plan not only for an attack against Petrograd but even for a coup dââ¯Ã©tat in Finland. The opponents of the new political system were mainly former Activists who had key positions in the national civil guard organisation, established after the war, and, to a lesser extent, in the army and the state police.98
5 The Social and Regional Basis for the Revolution
In the parliamentary elections of 1916, the Social Democratic party had won 103 seats out of 200 and 47 percent of the total vote, being backed mainly by industrial workers, agrarian workers, and crofters. Yet what effectiveness did this coalition of interests have in the revolution itself? Both weak and strong organisation may produce electoral success, but presumably only strong organisation can provide a basis for effective action in a revolutionary situation.
The question is, were all voter groups mobilised in the revolution? The answer is clear: the industrial working class and many agrarian workers backed the revolution, but the crofters were rather passive; and typically, the intellectuals provided no support.
A crucial indicator of revolutionary mobilisation is the social composition of the Red troops: here, the industrial and agrarian proletariat dominated.99 These two groupsâ grievances were fused to a large extent after the 1905 revolution, as the spread of the worker associations indicated. There were also important institutional and cultural linkages between town and country (see Chapter 6). In the countryside, the worker associations presumably consisted much more of agrarian workers than of crofters, not only absolutely but also relatively. The worker security guards in 1917 and the Red Guards during the war appear to have recruited their troops notably from among the members of the worker associations and other Social Democratic organisations.100 And, as had been the case when the worker associations were set up, the towns and other industrial centres took the lead, with the countryside soon following.101 The character of the revolutionary sequence, moreover, probably helped to maintain links between various worker groups. Because the mass mobilisation of late 1917 and the rise and culmination of the revolutionary situation were largely defensive, there was little room for serious cleavages among the core supporters, the industrial and agrarian workers. It may be hypothesised that an active seizure of power might have divided various elements of the working-class movement but that a defensive revolution instead caused them to close their ranks.102 This situation may be clearly seen in the attitude of the leadership. Despite serious disagreements before the war, virtually every top leader took part in the revolution once it broke out; some stepped aside, but nobody worked against it.103 Also, local government was built using experienced party cadres.104
The crofters, however, remained âpassiveâ, not even reacting to their enfranchisement at the beginning of the war. Their attitude â that is, strong electoral support for the Social Democrats on the one hand and relatively weak political organisation and limited mobilisation during the revolution on the other â may be explained by viewing the crofters as a pre-capitalist group suffering from the intrusions of capitalism.
Eric Wolf has observed that the middle peasants have played a central role in most important revolutionary wars of the twentieth century, as the stratum âmost instrumental in dynamiting the peasant social orderâ.105 Paradoxically, at first sight, the Finnish crofters had many characteristics of the middle peasants, as Wolf defines them. For him, middle peasants are those who have secure access to land of their own and who cultivate it with family labour, as well as many of those whose holdings lie within the power domain of a superior. These cultivators are able to protest because they possess the âminimum tactical freedom required to challenge their overlordâ.106 But even somewhat poorer groups may be in a similar position: âThe same ⦠holds for a peasantry, poor or âmiddleâ, whose settlements are only under marginal control from the outside. Here landholdings may be insufficient for the support of the peasant household; but subsidiary activities such as casual labor, smuggling, livestock raising â not under the direct constraint of an external power domain â supplement land in sufficient quantity to grant the peasantry some latitude of movementâ.107 Peasants of this kind have more resources than the landless, but their interests do not tie them to the prevailing economic and political system, as is the case with the wealthier peasants. At the same time, the economic position of these middle peasants is based on pre-capitalist relations of production, and their social relations remain encased within the traditional design. They therefore tend to be quite vulnerable to the economic changes wrought by commercialisation. Their âbalance is continuously threatened by population growth; by the encroachment of rival landlords; by the loss of rights to grazing, forest, and water; by falling prices and unfavorable conditions of market; by interest payments and foreclosuresâ.108
During the twentieth century middle peasants in Third World countries particularly have been hurt by capitalist development and have been able to react collectively. By protesting, they have tried to regain their lost rights. âThus it is the very attempt of the middle ⦠peasant to remain traditional which makes him revolutionaryâ.109 This was true in revolutionary Russia as well: the Bolsheviks were supported not only by the industrial proletariat but also by the peasantry, all except the upper strata. The peasants fought against the restoration of the landownersâ repression, not for a socialist society.110
Wolfâs description throws light on the leasehold question in Finland. The Finnish crofters were poor or âmiddleâ peasants whose holdings were subject to the power of a superior. Significantly, the first indication that agrarian conflicts were worsening lay in the reaction of the crofters (not the agrarian workers) from the 1880s onward. Leasehold was made an issue by a group whose position was based on pre-capitalist relations of production, a group especially vulnerable to the economic changes brought about by commercialisation. At the same time, the crofters had more resources and capacity for collective action than the landless population.
Unlike the countries in Wolfâs analysis, however, Finland was not in a colonial position, nor was it as dependent on âNorth Atlanticâ capitalism.111 Finland was developing into a capitalist country; the peasants were becoming farmers, that is, commercial producers. The croftersâ demands did not stand in real contradiction to this development. By the early years of the twentieth century, the crofters were becoming progressively bound to the market as small producers, all the limitations notwithstanding.112
The crofters wanted to strengthen their access to the land â to improve the conditions of leasehold or to become landowners. In the countryside, socialism was often understood to involve the redistribution of land.113 This objective was not inconceivable for the bourgeoisie in the 1910s, a significant part of which supported, at least in principle, the conversion of the crofts into the property of the leaseholders. The Social Democrats also had to concede to the croftersâ demands. The party strove to strengthen the croftersâ position and, at one moment in the 1910s, proposed that the crofters should in practice become landowners. The croftersâ political strength can be seen in the fact that up to 1918 their position was safeguarded by various measures. Most important, their leases were prolonged for seven years from 1909, and extended again in 1915 until the legislation defining the croftersâ position had been prepared and approved. By January 1918 a law had been prepared that would have allowed the crofters to become the owners of the land they cultivated.114
This perspective explains both the importance of the leasehold question at the turn of the century and the croftersâ passivity during the revolution, or, put another way, both the electoral support the crofters gave the Social Democrats and the minor role they played in the war of 1918. Their problems never became so serious that they would have become âinstrumental in dynamiting the peasant social orderâ. If the working-class movement had actively attempted to seize power, the crofters might well have dissociated themselves still more from the revolution.
But it is not only the croftersâ passivity that is important. In a larger perspective their reaction meant that the âmiddleâ and âpoorâ peasants did not join forces in Finland: the two groups proved unable to engage in concerted collective action in the revolutionary situation. The Finnish revolutionary challenger, the Social Democratic party, could not create a common front of various peasant groups. As many commentators have pointed out, an appeal to different peasant strata has been paramount in all successful revolutionary movements, the central role of the middle peasants notwithstanding. In these cases the revolutionary parties have been able to stimulate demand for, and then supply, tangible collective benefits at the local level, such as local political power or redistributed land, thereby uniting different kinds of cultivator and landless groups. In the next phase the parties have profited from the peasantsâ willingness to act together in defence of the collective benefits they have gained.115 In Finland the alliance between the party and the peasants was different because of the non-revolutionary character of the party as well as the limited scale of agrarian class conflicts. On the one hand, the Social Democrats advocated proletarian policies for the workers, but on the other, they were forced to take into account the croftersâ aspirations for their own farms. Even if some of the benefits proposed to the two subgroups, the landless and the crofters, were collective (such as the democratisation of local government), others were not (such as the strengthening of the croftersâ position, which was not accompanied by a corresponding demand that land be redistributed to the landless).116 Besides, even in 1917 the party was only just starting its work: it had not yet supplied collective benefits; it had merely been stimulating demand for them. Finally, these attempts had taken place notably at the national level, in the Parliament, and were by 1917 little based on direct collective action at the local level, within the agrarian communities themselves.
On the bourgeois side, the independent peasantry provided the backbone of the army, which was rightly called a âWhite peasant armyâ; there were many crofter and worker recruits as well, especially after the introduction of general conscription.117 The upper and middle classes, including the intellectuals, were also in the White camp. There had been no long-term loss of legitimacy among the Finnish intellectuals who had created and consolidated the national culture only a few decades earlier, nor had sharp conflicts of interest developed within the dominant classes. A telling example is the role of the university students, who have been conspicuous in several revolutions. According to one study, in Finland only two students were among the revolutionary dead, whereas on the bourgeois side the corresponding figure was 251. The entire Red local government, moreover, recruited only a dozen people who had passed the university entry examination,118 and only one major writer rallied to the revolution.119
The main regional variations dealt with in Chapters 4 and 7 were reflected in the consolidation of Red and White Finland. The revolution was declared in Helsinki, and the revolutionaries seized the entire core of the country (see Map 2, p. 55), where a certain radical solidarity among agrarian workers seems to have developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eastern Finland, although it strongly supported the Social Democrats in the elections, was, with only few local exceptions, immediately dominated by the Whites.120 As was stated above, the dissolution of the agrarian community appears to have provided little basis for collective action in the east, and the Social Democratsâ rural organisation remained weaker than in the south-west. The region also lagged behind the core in industrialisation. The Whitesâ real stronghold, however, was in Ostrobothnia. In that region the local peasant capacity for collective action had already manifested itself, notably in the great peasant rebellion of the late 1500s, in powerful revivalist movements, and in other processes of popular organisation in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Now the peasantsâ conservative solidarity led them to play a prominent role in the âWhite peasant armyâ and also to influence the White side ideologically.121
Regional variations in both organisation and the nature of solidarity can be seen in the spread of the worker militias and security guards and the civil guards in 1917. The worker militias were first set up in the largest towns and other centres in the south. The rural worker militias, for their part, were strongest in the three south-western counties, where the farm strikes had been concentrated. The White organisation grew most rapidly in Ostrobothnia: in the summer of 1917 this province had far more civil guards than did other regions; in central and southern Finland they gained ground only later, the most important exceptions being localities where bourgeois âsecurity corpsâ were formed after the farm strikes.122
Finally, the same pattern may be seen in the regionally varying conceptions of the nature of the revolution. In the core the war was, naturally enough, conceived of in class terms. But in Ostrobothnia, where the strong, conservative solidarity of the peasant community had been preserved and where more Russian troops were stationed than elsewhere, it was defined in different terms. During the fighting the Ostrobothnian newspapers depicted the war above all as a âstruggle for liberationâ, whereas in other White Finnish regions it was often called a civil or internal war.123 For the Ostrobothnian peasants, it was a war of liberation against the Russian troops still in the country; the revolutionaries were traitors to the nation. Moral indignation was directed against disruptive class antagonism in the south and against the increasing indifference to religion that accompanied it. Characteristically, âfor the revivalists, this war was a holy warâ; âone made his way to the liberation war as to a prayer meeting: the war was also a war against the devil and the godlessâ.124
6 On the Character of the Finnish Revolution
The Finnish revolution may be viewed as the outcome of the long-term factors dealt with in Parts I and II of this study and the short-term factors laid out in this section. It was an encounter, on the one hand, of the class relations institutionalised in the state and, on the other, of the domestic consequences of Russiaâs collapse.
As to the long-run developments, it was argued above that the nature of class relations, the strength of the domestic state structures, and the character of national and class-based political organisation at their intersection encompass the main processes in Finnish state-making and nation-building by the early twentieth century. What, then, was their role in the abortive revolution of 1917â18?
It is helpful first to look at colonial peripheries, where these three factors seem to have been paramount in giving momentum to the development of revolutionary challenges and situations. Theda Skocpol has pointed out that the two major consequences of globally expanding capitalism for peasant-based revolutions have been shifts in (agrarian) class relations and disintegration of the metropolesâ controlling capacity. The capitalist expansion has caused market economics to impinge on agrarian strata, arousing peasants to defensive revolts or creating new social strata prone to revolution. It has also created interstate rivalries, which have loosened the grip of large powers on smaller ones.125
It is in this twin context that the third long-term factor, the role of the organised challenger in the rise of revolutionary situations, should be assessed. The first two long-term factors have placed constraints on challengers in their political struggle to bridge the gap between peasants and the national state or a nationally distinct but dependent region. Success in the countryside has depended on the specific features of local class and institutional arrangements among the peasantry and on the degree of political control faced by the native challengers. Both local class relations and state controls have played their part in determining what strategies have been feasible in the mobilisation of the peasantry â whether challengers have been in a position to successfully offer collective benefits for various strata of the peasants and thereby actively mobilise them to a revolution, or whether the challengers have been well advised to offer more modest, economic benefits to particular subgroups within the peasantry.126
Viewed in this triple perspective of class relations, state structures, and political organisation, the Finnish revolution seems a very unlikely event. Peasants in colonial states have been hurt by capitalist commercialisation to a much greater degree than peasants in Finland. Preconditions for forming a revolutionary alliance between peasants and political parties were therefore from the outset much more favourable in the colonial cases. Increased market participation by peasants â stemming from economic crises and accompanied by corruption, monopoly, and the lack of viable, well-regulated institutions â has enabled revolutionary organisations to absorb peasants and thereby expand power. Just these conditions have made not only the middle peasants but also various other segments of poorer peasants amenable to revolutionary mobilisation.127
Finland is peculiar in that a revolution occurred without either similar threats from capitalist penetration or a comparable revolutionary party. In Finland the worker movement was obviously advised to offer economic benefits to various subgroups in the peasantry â that is, it was ready to improve the conditions of the landless and to strengthen the position of crofters even up to the point of supporting de facto landownership. This course was reasonable not only because of the croftersâ incipient changeover to commercial production but also because of rather loose political control â in other words, because of the opportunities offered by the political system after 1905.
The revolutionâs hesitancy, even defensiveness, is very much a result of these conditions. No revolutionary alliance existed between the peasantry and an organised revolutionary movement headed by intellectuals, simply because few peasants were amenable to revolutionary mobilisation and because there was no truly revolutionary party. The problem was recognised by the two foremost leaders of the revolution, who later concluded that its failure could be traced to weak support by the âtoiling peasantryâ and to the reformist character of the party.128
But, paradoxically, the same set of factors is important in explaining why the revolution broke out. The extensive but âreformistâ mobilisation in the countryside helped the Social Democratic party secure a comparatively solid position in the polity by 1917. At that time the simple fact that they had access to political power proved paramount in producing the revolutionary situation.
What having sudden access to political power in 1917 implies, however, is that in the end a fourth factor was decisive for the outbreak of the Finnish revolution: the mode and timing of the final collapse of the metropolitan power. This feature â together with the simultaneous disintegration of the apparatus of coercion in the small polities themselves â differentiates all the European revolutionary challenges from the mainstream of the Third World situations. The breakdown of three European empires in the world war, combined with direct pressure the war exerted on local structures of dominance, was so thorough and abrupt that it is hardly equalled by any other favourable situation faced by revolutionaries in smaller countries seeking liberation from political dependence. Also unlike many colonial countries, the collapse took place before any widely organised revolutionary challenger had emerged in the Eastern European countryside (see Chapter 11). Although, to be sure, defeats in wars and international military interventions have often created favourable situations in colonial countries as well, generally the revolutionary organisations have grown up earlier, with recurrent disruptions in metropolitan control. When the favourable situation has finally come, the organised challengers have been ready to exploit the situation. Unlike several colonial cases, the local challengers among the smaller European nationalities were generally poorly organised or concentrated in urban areas and played no role whatsoever in the sudden disappearance of external control.
With this fourth factor added to the character of class relations, state structures, and political organisation, the specificity of the Finnish case becomes obvious. With the abrupt end of the Russian Empire and the sudden disappearance of state control, the reluctant but strong Social Democrats were finally pushed to revolution. Yet the whole nature of the alliance between the party and the peasantry made the attempt hollow, or at best half-hearted. Its tragedy was that it was so hopelessly ambivalent.
The specific character of the Finnish revolution may also be formulated in terms of both Mooreâs view of the preconditions for major revolutions and Tillyâs model of the proximate causes of revolutionary situations. A revolution was attempted despite the fact that the country had long avoided war, with its accompanying threat to the integrity of both the polity and civil society, and the fact that the Social Democratic party did all it could to prevent the revolution. Nor was the Finnish revolution preceded by a decay of the prevailing systemâs legitimacy among the intellectuals. With few exceptions, the Finnish educated class unanimously shared the categories and explanations developed in the national culture during the previous seventy or eighty years. No insurmountable contradictions existed between the educated class and the tiny socialist intelligentsia, or, for that matter, within the dominant classes, which were basically united. Moreover, the developments leading up to the revolutionary situation did not begin with the gradual mobilisation of contenders making exclusive claims to governmental control, followed by a rapid increase in the number of people accepting these claims, and finally by the incapacity or unwillingness of the agents of the government to suppress the alternative coalition.
What initiated the process in Finland was governmental incapacity, which was followed only slowly and painfully by mobilisation and an increase in the number of people accepting exclusive alternative claims. Of crucial importance was that the Social Democrats happened to enter into government just when the state lost the instruments of coercion. The essential precondition for the onset of the whole process was the existence in 1917 of a worker movement that was well organised and comparatively well entrenched in the political system. The February revolution in Russia led to this movementâs acquiring a central political role, corresponding to its electoral strength. Multiple sovereignty resulted only when the movement was deprived of institutionalised political power. In the summer of 1917 all the Provisional Government and the Finnish bourgeois parties could do was expel the socialists from power: they could not eliminate or control them. This expulsion united and consolidated the alternative socialist coalition, and dual power accordingly emerged. The revolutionary determination that existed â and there was not much â mattered little. What did matter was, first, the labour movementâs strong grip on state power, which had no coercive apparatus of its own, and, second, the contested loss of this control.
The Finnish revolutionary sequence, then, did not fully follow the âidealised sequenceâ depicted by Tilly, and the third proximate cause played a far more central part than the first two. According to Barrington Mooreâs perspective, then, the loss of unified control over the instruments of violence proved to be decisive. This framework helps us see how the specific features of internal revolutionary developments resulted from Finlandâs external dependence. The process was genuinely internal in that it took place within the Finnish polity and the main contenders were Finnish groups; it was initiated, however, by the collapse of imperial authority, on which the maintenance of internal order ultimately depended.
7 Breakdown of Society or Contest for State Power?
The treatment of the revolution in the historical literature may be commented upon briefly using the above perspective. Conceptions of the prime reasons for the revolutionary situation, the role of the Social Democratic party, and the social basis for the revolution are crucial to an overall assessment.
Understandably, all students of the revolution have portrayed it as a coincidence of both the crisis in Russia and domestic factors. In this view a critical role was played, first, by long-term internal strains, which the Russian collapse allowed to come to the surface: âThe Russian revolution with its consequences had released the forces pent up in Finnish society, giving them a chance to burst outâ.129 Reference has been made to the grave problems of the industrial and agrarian workers and of the crofters; the political stagnation resulting from the reintroduction of Russification and the state of emergency during World War I, which had stopped social and economic reforms; the weakening of social and cultural restraints on violence because of the continued struggle against Russia; and the example and memory of mass action in 1905.130
Usually, however, attention has focused on short-term problems. In full accordance with the opinion of the contemporary Social Democratic leaders, the food shortage has been seen to be decisive, as the primary factor responsible for the establishment of the worker security guards. More generally, the fear of starvation, accompanied by the increasing unemployment and inflation, has been thought to be the single most important factor behind the popular unrest and, ultimately, the revolution.131 Because of the food shortage and the Bolshevik revolution, âthe party was rolling down tracks, like a heavy train, and the leaders had only to avoid being crushedâ.132 In this view the main causal chain begins with the collapse in Russia (which led to the drying up of the Russian grain supplies, mass unemployment because of the stopping of the Russian fortification works and military procurement programmes, problems in the maintenance of order, disturbances caused by undisciplined Russian troops, and general economic dislocation) and runs to the fear of starvation, to large-scale unrest, to the organisation of the militant Red Guards, and finally to the outbreak of the war.133
Essential to this perspective is the idea that the food shortage and related problems brought existing social strains to the surface. As Viljo Rasila concludes his study of the social background of the war: âOnly the events linked to the two successive revolutions in Russia, particularly the unemployment and starvation prevalent in the most industrialized areas, could aggravate [the long-term internal tension] to such an extent that it broke out as Civil Warâ.134 Studies based on this perspective vary only in the relative weight given to the long-term preconditions and the short-term aggravation of the economic and social situation.
This approach seems to have one fundamental problem: it does not take seriously the fact that the arena of a revolution is the state â the state understood in Weberâs sense, that is, as the institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.135 Revolutions are contests for state power. Significantly, the upheaval is commonly called the Civil War in the Finnish scholarly literature and practically never, in the strict sense of the word, the revolution.136 The state has not been totally ignored, of course, but over the long run it figures mainly through Russification and legislative dependence on Russia (the emperorâs veto stopped several political reforms). And in the short run, the disintegration of order as a consequence of Russiaâs collapse figures only as one more factor responsible for general social disruption.
Basically, the long-run argument as it is presented above states only that the contenders on opposite sides in 1917â18 were largely from different social classes and that therefore (long-term) strains related to the social structure must have existed. In this view it appears self-evident that the pre-1917 Social Democratic party adopted a âradical lineâ focusing on the âclass struggleâ â that is, that it was ârevolutionaryâ.137 The assertion, however, is retrospective: the strength of previous conflicts is simply deduced from the social basis of the revolution. Actually, the nature of earlier conflicts should be assessed independently of the revolution itself, and in particular they should be related to the state, which determined the preconditions for collective action on the part of the working classes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. In Chapter 6 it was argued that although the class conflict was pervasive, in the sense that the structural preconditions for collective action were favourable, the easy penetration of the working class into the polity in 1905â7, aided by those very same structural factors, led to its increasing integration into the state by 1917. In a comparative perspective this tendency seems much more characteristic of the pre-revolutionary period than an existence of acute tensions (see Chapter 11).
Similarly, the state should be taken into account in analysing short-term problems. There is considerable evidence that starvation has not been a central factor leading up to revolutionary situations.138 Starvation has afflicted much of humankind for centuries, often in conjunction with more general disorder, but a revolution is something very exceptional. In Finland the disastrous famine of 1867â8 led to the decimation of eight percent of the population without provoking the slightest sign of revolt. The same goes for the fear of starvation: it can be seen as a prime reason for revolution, or even revolutionary unrest, only if an extremely narrow perspective is used. The state, however, provides the necessary context for an analysis of the fear of starvation and related problems. The food shortage played an important role, but only because of developments in the state, that is, only because of the governmentâs inability to suppress alternative claims. Governmental inactivity became clear in early August. At that time, the scarcity of food itself was not critical, but the decomposition of the system for rationing was. The system could not work because the governmental apparatus was disintegrating, and it was disintegrating because the governmentâs capacity to act effectively depended entirely on the Social Democratsâ continued presence in the government. This dependence, furthermore, resulted from the working-class movementâs share in the maintenance of order or, ultimately, from the absence of the established instruments of coercion. By the early autumn a rudimentary alternative polity had grown up, partly outside the state and partly under its protection, owing to the Social Democratsâ position in the state. When the party was ejected from the established polity, an alternative polity gradually consolidated itself, gaining strength from the fear of starvation. In these institutional conditions, rumours of food scarcity and starvation easily spread. Basically, though, it was the emerging multiple sovereignty or dual power that mattered, and the food shortage (which was not actually critical in 1917)139 only acted as tinder. Indeed, it is highly significant that the only exhaustive local study of the worker security guards in existence accords the food shortage and related factors only a very minor role.140
The character of the revolutionary process has a considerable bearing on the Social Democratic partyâs position in the alternative polity. Students of the revolution have generally portrayed the party as being unable to resist the militant Red Guards, and consequently as being largely responsible for the war.141 In this view, the party gradually crumbled and finally capitulated to the guards in the period running from the general strike to the end of January 1918. In a larger perspective, however, exactly the opposite seems true: the party was able to postpone the outbreak of the revolution until long after the beginning of the revolutionary situation. True, it could not confine the guards strictly within the rules, but it was able to neutralise their militancy until the government had definitively decided to restore order and had energetically begun to make preparations for doing so â up to the point, that is, when the government decided to make the bourgeois paramilitary organisation the core of its armed forces. The worker guards did not launch a revolution in November, when the working-class movement was playing an active role, but only in late January when it was forced to react to the bourgeois initiative (as O.W. Kuusinen noted in a sharp-sighted comment written in the summer of 1918).142 The Finnish abhorrence of fragmentation in popular organisations, the early development of the working-class movement in a more general process of organisation, its easy penetration into the polity in 1905â7, its strength based on extended agrarian electoral support, its focus on the state and on reforms in the framework of the prevailing political system â all these factors make it perfectly understandable that the core of the movement, the party, was able to postpone the revolution for so long. Ultimately the working-class movement was drawn into it. The Finnish situation is radically different from what took place in Estonia and Hungary. There, the working-class movement became linked with a new militant grouping and was rapidly and rather easily overwhelmed.
The Social Democratsâ role raises a more general question about the character of the Finnish revolution. Practically all scholarly studies see the development leading up to the revolution as a breakdown or a sudden release of dark forces. Many of the above citations testify to this view.143 The image is âhydraulicâ, as Charles Tilly has called it: âhardship increases, pressure builds up, the vessel burstsâ.144 Rod Aya has termed this view the âvolcanicâ model: âThe onrush of uncontrolled changes in the structure of society begets multiplex tensions which, if unrelieved, erupt into mass violence where and when social controls relax or weakenâ.145
In the study of revolutions and collective violence, the âhydraulicâ or âvolcanicâ approach involves many insurmountable empirical and other difficulties. The most serious problems arise from concentration on states of mind, impulses, strains, and other ultimately psychological factors and the corresponding neglect of structural and institutional factors.146 The present study holds that the conditions that lead to violent protest are similar to those that lead to other kinds of collective action in the pursuit of common interests.147 This approach suggests, for example, that the revolutionary crowds were recruited from groups that were well integrated into the working-class movement rather than from the marginal, floating population in the towns and countryside. Recent findings seem to support this view,148 but the implications have not yet been completely worked out.
One qualification, however, is needed. The disappearance of the army and the police in the wake of the Russian collapse was more essential for the Finnish revolution than were other factors. Like other Eastern European latecomers in 1917â19, Finland was suddenly presented with the opportunity for collective action. This makes comprehensible the Social Democratic leadersâ fear that they would not be able to restrain the masses. It would be groundless to deny the existence of âimpulses and their releaseâ in the summer and autumn of 1917. But the ârelease of tensionsâ should be put in an institutional context in order to make it understandable.
The favourable opportunity for collective action is also reflected in the social basis of the revolution. The Red troops and the entire revolutionary organisation were predominantly proletarian. The Finnish revolution has even been called âperhaps Europeâs most clear-cut class war in the twentieth centuryâ.149 Of the more than 3,500 Reds killed in battle, 78 percent were workers. More than 90 percent of the worker security guard of Tampere, admittedly an industrial town, were from the working class.150 And the most serious problem in battle was the nearly total absence of trained leadership.
This situation contrasts strikingly with several other revolutions. As Rod Aya puts it, âPopular movements have been led, staffed, and supported by, not the altogether downtrodden and oppressed segments of society, but groups that, while having plenty to fight for and against, had something to fight withâ. The âmassesâ in various revolutionary upheavals âwere people of local standing and substance, however modest â small proprietors, mostly, peasant landowners, shopkeepers, artisans, journeymen, and snugly entwined in community networksâ.151 Besides grievances, then, tactical power was necessary, as Eric Wolf has pointed out in analysing the middle peasantsâ prominent role in various revolutions.152
Reasons were given above to explain why the support of Finnish âmiddle peasantsâ for the revolution was so limited. The revolution had a strong proletarian character, which of course did not prevent the industrial workers, particularly the most resourceful groups among them, from taking the lead.153 The proletarian character may be seen as resulting from the linkage to Russia. Thanks to fluctuations in imperial authority, the labour movement was able to gain access to the polity in 1905â7 and subsequently to tighten its grip in early 1917 with relative ease â and without assistance from allies within the polity. This is significantly different from Scandinavia, for example, where the early struggle to extend democracy was a joint enterprise of the working-class movement and the Liberals.
In late 1917 and early 1918 the working-class movement tried basically to maintain the power and advantages it had gained in 1917, not to seize power. As such, this attempt is not unique. âRevolutions commonly commence with efforts at conservative restorationâ, Rod Aya states. And when in certain revolutions the workers âtook up arms and marched under radical banners, it was to defend recent reformist gains against reactionary violenceâ.154 But in Finland the defence of recently gained advantages was linked with a high degree of class integration manifest in the working-class movement, an absence of a coalition partner for the Social Democrats among the established members of the polity, a revolutionary sequence starting from the governmental incapacity to make use of the means of coercion, and finally an irresolution of the revolutionaries after they had gained power. In this combination lies the specificity of the Finnish revolutionary situation.
Tilly 1978, p. 52; Elvander 1980, pp. 33, 35â47; Castles 1978, pp. 17â22.
Ketola 1981, p. 29.
Tilly 1978, p. 200.
Upton 1980, p. 35.
Cf. Weber 1948, p. 78; and Tilly 1978, p. 52.
Salkola 1975, pp. 30, 54â5, 145; Piilonen 1982, p. 65; Kirby 1971, pp. 203â4, 206â7; Soikkanen 1975, p. 229; Lindman 1968, p. 123.
Salkola 1985, 1: 45, 73â7; Soikkanen 1975, pp. 228â9.
Salkola 1985, 1: 53, 64, 74â80, 95â6, 185, 188, 377â80; Kirby 1971, pp. 206â9.
Piilonen 1982, pp. 65, 73; Salkola 1985, 1: 77, 131.
Salkola 1975, pp. 147â8.
See Piilonen 1982, pp. 66â7; Salkola 1985, 1: 77â78, 199; Upton 1980, p. 60.
Salkola 1985, 1: 74â76, 80â1; Piilonen 1982, p. 72.
Piilonen 1982, pp. 65â9, 73; Salkola 1985, 1: 148â149, 201â5, 377â80.
Soikkanen 1975, pp. 193â5, 260â2; Ala-Kapee and Valkonen 1982, pp. 406â10.
Ketola 1981, p. 59 (quotation); Upton 1980, pp. 58â9; Ala-Kapee and Valkonen 1982, pp. 393â403.
Kirby 1971, pp. 226â7.
Piilonen 1982, pp. 44, 48â56, 64; Upton 1980, pp. 60â2.
Rantatupa 1979, pp. 54â62, 69.
Rantatupa 1979, pp. 71â87.
Salkola 1985, 1: 197, 203, 206.
Piilonen 1982, p. 44; Upton 1980, pp. 52â3.
Upton 1980, p. 102.
Upton 1980, pp. 51 (quotation), 60.
Salkola 1975, pp. 53â70, 133â58, 277â8; Salkola 1985, 1: 377â80.
Salkola 1985, 1: 246â259, 290â310; Upton 1980, pp. 59, 62.
Ketola 1981, pp. 254â4; Hodgson 1967, pp. 21â2.
Soikkanen 1975, pp. 208â18; Ketola 1981, pp. 93, 118â19, 276â8; Salkola 1985, 1: 49â50; Ferro 1967â1976, 2: 171â5.
Upton 1980, pp. 86â92.
Ibid., p. 92; Lindman 1968, p. 83.
Polvinen 1967, pp. 91â3; Upton 1980, pp. 94â6.
Cf. Lindman 1978, p. xix. For one exception, see Lindman 1968, pp. 136â8.
Upton 1980, pp. 107â8 (quotation from p. 107).
Upton 1980, p. 112 (quotation from the same page).
Fol 1977, pp. 220â1; Upton 1980, pp. 109â10; Salkola 1985, 2: 164. According to Marja-Leena Salkola, by that time bourgeois guards had been set up at the most in 271 of the 509 communes, and workersâ militias or guards in 29. The comparison gives only a rough idea of the relative strength of the organisation on both sides, because the available sources for the bourgeois guards seem to exaggerate their number. Another form of workersâ organisation, more widespread but normally much looser and largely transient, consisted of picket marshals, whose principal duty was to maintain order during strikes. If these marshals are included, the number of communes in which the problem of maintaining order had led to organised activity by workers by the end of September rises to 202 (Salkola 1985, 1: 243â4, 298â9).
Soikkanen 1975, pp. 236â7; Upton 1980, p. 122.
Upton 1980, pp. 130, 137; Salkola 1985, 1: 52.
Cited in Kirby 1971, p. 248; and in Upton 1980, p. 126, respectively.
Salkola 1979, pp. 352â3; Salkola 1985, 1:320, 335â45, 365â6, 373, 484â8, 2:31; Upton 1980, pp. 114â18. By 20 October, worker security guards or militias existed in 37 of the 509 communes (Salkola 1985, 1:122).
Salkola 1985, 1: 350â2, 375, 2: 41, 68â76, 82â93, 142; Klemettilä 1976, pp. 40â1, 130, 141, 162â6, 177â8, 189, 196â7.
Upton 1980, pp. 117, 131â2.
Rantatupa 1979, p. 94.
Rantatupa 1979, pp. 88â90, 92.
Rantatupa 1979, pp. 96â7, 99.
Rantatupa 1979, p. 98.
Rantatupa 1979, pp. 98â100, 106.
Rantatupa 1979, p. 105.
Upton 1980, pp. 134â5.
Upton 1980, p. 135; Salkola 1985, 2: 144â5.
This leader was Kullervo Manner; cited in Upton 1980, p. 133.
Upton 1980, p. 113.
Kirby 1971, pp. 212â14; Salkola 1985, 1: 363â4, 2: 61â7, 147â50, 161â3; Upton 1980, 47â8, 60â1, 108â9, 118, 131â2; Ketola 1981, pp. 85â9, 92â103.
Tanskanen 1978, pp. 105â9; Upton 1980, pp. 111, 211; Salkola 1985, 1: 225â32, 238â40, 270â84, 384. In this light it is no wonder that in a number of communes the worker guards and the bourgeois guards were seen as parallel organisations and were even able to cooperate well into the autumn (Salkola 1985, 1: 291â6).
Ketola 1981, pp. 283â91, 292, 300 (quotation); Upton 1980, pp. 85â6, 126â7, and passim.
Cited in Upton 1980, pp. 140â1. See also Wiik 1978, pp. 23, 25â31.
Written in the diary of one of the Social Democratic leaders, 10 November 1917 (Wiik 1978, p. 29).
Salkola 1985, 2: 145â56, 173â6.
Upton 1980, pp. 150â1, 152â3 (quotation); Salkola 1985, 2: 158, 165â76.
Upton 1980, p. 147; Hodgson 1974a, p. 67; Salkola 1985, 2: 135, 148.
Ferro 1967, p. 24.
Cited in Upton 1980, p. 162. Cf. Kirby 1971, pp. 305â6; and Salkola 1985, 1: 49.
Upton 1980, pp. 144, 147â8; Salkola 1985, 1: 56, 2: 174â6, 179â80.
This leader was K.H. Wiik; cited in Upton 1980, 156. See also Lindman 1978, pp. xxiâxxii.
Bianco 1971, p. 203. The difference between the Bolsheviks and the Finnish Social Democrats is graphically reflected in the wide gap between Leninâs State and Revolution, written in the early autumn of 1917 (when Lenin was, incidentally, hiding in Helsinki), and O.W. Kuusinenâs views in 1917â18, when he was the partyâs theoretician and apparently the most powerful leader of the Finnish revolution (see Hodgson 1974b, chap. 3). The most eloquent testimony of irresolution among the Social Democratic leaders before the outbreak of the revolution is the detailed diary kept by K.H. Wiik (1978).
Salkola 1985, 2: 186â8; Upton 1980, p. 155 (quotation).
Salkola 1985, 2: 178â81. To be sure, the terminological distinction between the worker security guard and the Red Guard, although corresponding to an increasingly discernible division, was not systematically made in the autumn of 1917. Officially, after 1905â7 the term Red Guard was first used only when the Helsinki worker security guard declared its independence from the party in early January 1918 (Salkola 1985, 2: 346â54).
Kirby 1971, p. 308.
Upton 1980, pp. 140, 170, 183; Hodgson 1967, p. 33; Fol 1977, pp. 236â7.
Upton 1980, pp. 170, 210; Fol 1977, pp. 216, 218, 220â1, 327â30, 885, 908â9; Salkola 1985, 2: 271.
Upton 1980, pp. 210â11.
Fol 1977, pp. 353, 355; Upton 1980, p. 237; Mannerheim 1953, pp. 135â6.
Lappalainen 1981, 1: 18â21; Upton 1980, pp. 219â22.
Lappalainen 1981, 1: 20; Salkola 1979, p. 361.
Upton 1980, p. 265. See also Salomaa 1983, p. 183; Salkola 1985, 1: 57â9, 2: 372â381.
Salkola 1985, 2: 374, 377; Rinta-Tassi 1972, pp. 66â72. Cf. Wiik 1978, pp. 118â37.
Salkola 1985, 2: 388â9.
Lappalainen 1981, 1: 29â48, 52â8, 155, 205â28; Upton 1980, p. 267.
Upton 1980, pp. 187â9.
Lappalainen 1981, 1: 173â6, 205â28.
Tanskanen 1978, p. 207 (quotation); Lappalainen 1981, 1: 150â3.
Lappalainen 1981, 1: 167â8, 2: 259; Tanskanen 1978, pp. 39â42, 206; Hodgson 1967, pp. 74â80.
Rinta-Tassi 1972, pp. 90â3; Piilonen 1982, pp. 114â19.
Cf. Rinta-Tassi 1972, pp. 75â86, 160â71.
Salomaa 1983, pp. 184, 188.
Rinta-Tassi 1972, pp. 58â66; Martin 1970, 389â94, 466â77; Lappalainen 1981, 1: 122â7; Soikkanen 1975, pp. 273â75, 279â81; Salomaa 1983, pp. 188â92; Upton 1980, pp. 303â4; Hodgson 1974b, p. 51.
Upton 1980, p. 381. Cf. Fol 1977, pp. 403â4; and Piilonen 1982, pp. 119â24, 207â8.
Piilonen 1982, pp. 44â5, 82â4, 124â8, 135â8, 160, 167â73.
See Barrington Mooreâs discussion of this problem (1978, pp. 291â9); and Salomaa 1983, pp. 185â8, 194â6.
Upton 1980, p. 382.
Aya 1979, pp. 46â7.
Upton 1980, pp. 242, 263; Lappalainen 1981, 1: 176.
Upton 1980, pp. 325â30, 335â6, 342â3; Fol 1977, pp. 388â90, 438, 444, 554; Lappalainen 1981, 1: 176 (70,000 is the maximum figure).
Upton 1980, pp. 336â42; Fol 1977, pp. 448, 452â3, 459.
Paavolainen 1966â7, 1: 94â5, 271â313. Because of Paavolainenâs rough periodisation, the figures are only approximations. Cf. Rinta-Tassi 1972, pp. 211â14; Piilonen 1982, pp. 207â8; Upton 1980, pp. 376â82.
Paavolainen 1966â7, 2: 192â3; Upton 1980, pp. 314â18; Fol 1977, pp. 428â31, 472â4.
Paavolainen 1966â7, 2: 192â3; Paavolainen 1971, p. 332. The total number of victims of the White terror rose to 8,380.
See Barta et al. 1971, pp. 454â7.
Fol 1977, pp. 687â8, 692, 795â6, 817.
Ahti 1982, pp. 175â80; Ahti 1984a, p. 240.
Rasila 1968, pp. 32â3; Lappalainen 1981, 1: 168â73; Soikkanen 1975, p. 299. Various groups of rural workers made up 21 percent of the revolutionary dead, but the proportion of âworkersâ without more specific description was 48 percent, most of whom lived in the countryside and were largely sons of crofters and other workers closely involved with agrarian life. The proportion of industrial workers, craftsmen, and artisans among the dead was 12 percent (Rasila 1968, pp. 34â48).
Klemettilä 1976, pp. 40â1, 130, 141, 162â6, 177â8, 189, 196â7; Lappalainen 1981, 1: 157â64; Soikkanen 1975, pp. 299â300; Salkola 1985, vol. 1, chaps. 3â5 passim.
Salkola 1985, 1: 121â2; Lappalainen 1967, p. 86. Cf. Klemettilä 1976, p. 241.
Cf. Rinta-Tassi 1972, pp. 72â4; and Salkola 1985, 1: 173â4.
Rinta-Tassi 1972, pp. 66â72; Soikkanen 1975, pp. 270â2.
Piilonen 1982, pp. 322â5.
Wolf 1969, p. 292.
Wolf 1969, p. 291.
Ibid.
Wolf 1969, p. 292.
Ibid.
Wolf 1969, pp. 88â99; Ferro 1967â76, 2: 211â29.
Wolf 1969, p. 276.
M. Peltonen 1985, pp. 7â9.
Soikkanen 1978, p. 354.
See Rasila 1970, pp. 21â2, 122â4, 209â12, 230â2, 390.
Skocpol 1982, pp. 364â6; Goldstone 1982, p. 198. A case in point are the Vietnamese Communists; see Popkin 1979, pp. 223â42.
See Rasila 1970, pp. 95â105, 120â5.
Workers numbered less than one-sixth, and crofters and other tenant farmers a little more than one-tenth, of the total number of the White troops (Rasila, Jutikkala, and Kulha 1976, p. 87). Ohto Manninen, in his study on the White conscripts, does not explicitly deal with the impact of conscription on the social composition of the White troops, but obviously those who were most unwilling to be conscripted â who tried to avoid or resist military service â came overwhelmingly from the popular groups (O. Manninen 1974, esp. chaps. 6 and 7). Manninenâs conclusion that the âWhite army was not a class army in its aims, nor was it in its compositionâ (1978, 239) seems grossly misleading. Conscription was started in late February, as Manninen is well aware. Barrington Mooreâs remark about a Latin American country whose army is made up mostly of peasant conscripts is relevant here: the fact that casualties on both sides of a revolution are mainly peasants is certainly no indication of the absence of class conflict (Moore 1966, p. 518).
Rasila 1968, 34â35; Piilonen 1982, pp. 316â18.
This writer was Algot Untola; see M.-L. Kunnas 1976, pp. 25â37.
O. Manninen 1975, pp. 433â9.
E.g., Ylikangas 1981, pp. 232â4.
Salkola 1985, 1: 246, 480â1, 520â7; Piilonen 1982, pp. 65â74.
T. Manninen 1982, pp. 135â51.
Rosenqvist 1952, p. 45; Vilkuna 1950, p. 172.
Skocpol 1982, pp. 367â73.
Ibid., pp. 361â7; Migdal 1974, pp. 231â6.
Migdal 1974, pp. 230â2, 247; Popkin 1979, chap. 5; Skocpol 1982, pp. 364â6; Goldstone 1982, pp. 197â9.
Kullervo Manner (1924, pp. 3â6) discusses both problems, O.W. Kuusinen (1919, pp. 1â14) the latter one.
Paasivirta 1957, p. 59.
Kirby 1971, pp. 382â4; Paavolainen 1966â7, 1: 23â9; Paasivirta 1957, p. 59; C.J. Smith 1958, pp. 6â7; Soikkanen 1975, pp. 191â3, 220; Rasila, Jutikkala, and Kulha 1976, pp. 76â8; Martin and Hopkins 1980; Martin 1970, chaps. 2â5, esp. 117â22, 237â9, 324â32.
Soikkanen 1975, p. 224; Salkola 1985, 2: 432; Paavolainen 1966â7, 1: 31â54; Kirby 1971, p. 384; Rinta-Tassi 1972, pp. 6â8; Fol 1977, pp. 87â8, 127â8, 184â6, 225â6; Upton 1980, pp. 18, 64â5, 66â7, 123â4, 222â3; Holodkovski 1978, pp. 12â18, 132â8; Lappalainen 1967, pp. 55â8; Paasivirta 1957, pp. 59â60; Polvinen 1980, pp. 117, 118; Rasila, Jutikkala, and Kulha 1976, pp. 80â1; Jokipii 1981, p. 41; Hamalainen 1978, pp. 7â9, 115.
Hodgson 1967, p. 32, referring to Matti Turkia, the party secretary.
This sequence is implicit or very incomplete in a number of studies because they focus predominantly on the narration of political events.
Rasila 1968, p. 153; also Rasila 1982b, p. 165.
Weber 1948, p. 78.
It is a revolution especially for Holodkovski (1978) and Upton (1980). See also Martin 1970 and C.J. Smith 1971. The term also figures in the title of Piilonenâs study (1982).
Soikkanen 1967, pp. 190, 196â8; Lipset 1983, p. 15.
E.g., Aya 1979.
Rantatupa 1979, pp. 106, 108, 114â15.
Klemettilä 1976, pp. 171â2, 175â7.
Paasivirta 1957, pp. 65â71; Lappalainen 1967, 86â8; Rinta-Tassi 1972, pp. 21â41; Rasila, Jutikkala, and Kulha 1976, pp. 80â5; also Hodgson 1967, pp. 39â50, 53, 67. D.G. Kirby (1978, pp. 32â5) and V.M. Holodkovski (1978, pp. 55â82) stress the inability of the party to pursue a revolutionary course. So does Anthony F. Upton (1980, pp. 160â1 and passim), but in the last analysis he portrays the party as gradually capitulating (1980, pp. 206â8, 232â3).
Kuusinen 1919.
The only clear-cut exceptions are Holodkovski 1978 and Salkola 1985, vol. 2.
Tilly 1975a, p. 390.
Aya 1979, p. 51.
See, e.g., Aya 1979.
See Tilly, Tilly, and Tilly 1975, pp. 2â13, 239â45; and Aya 1979.
Klemettilä 1976; Salkola 1985.
Martin 1970, p. 412.
Rasila 1968, pp. 34â5, 41; Klemettilä 1976, pp. 154â5. On the largely similar composition of the revolutionary local government, see Piilonen 1982, pp. 309â14.
Aya 1979, p. 74.
Wolf 1969, p. 290.
The central role of the most resourceful industrial workers is evident in Klemettiläâs exhaustive study on the worker guard of Tampere (1976, pp. 153â7).
Aya 1979, pp. 46â47, 73.