Finland Divided: The Finnish Civil War 1918

https://finlanddivided.wordpress.com/

by rsj_hn • 5 years ago

138 99 5 years ago

finlanddivided.wordpress.com

1cvmask• 5 years ago

This is a decent resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

hulitu• 5 years ago

It is a resource. Decent, not so.

thirteenfingers• 5 years ago

One question that I, as a non-Finn who has had more than a passing interest in Finnish history, have never seen a compelling answer to is how reconciliation was ultimately achieved after the civil war. The accounts I've read refer in very general terms to both sides making compromises after having been simply exhausted by it all.

Can any of you provide some details? Multiple viewpoints if possible?

mistrial94• 5 years ago

some of the resolution was the new territory boundaries, securing Vyborg as a Russian city ?

edit- incorrect, mixed the conflicts, reading more now

eMSF2• 5 years ago

Vyborg was annexed by the Soviet Union in WW2. That had nothing to do with the Finnish Civil War.

nabla94• 5 years ago

Reconciliation never fully came. People lived and died with their grudges and hate. I remember the bitterness of old people around the issue from the time when I was young.

Soon after the civil war Social Democratic party was the government and Finns had a president that was social democrat. It made it possible for reds and whites to live together without killing each other.

Then Winter War came (1939) and Finns united to defend the country against common enemy. That created aseveliakseli (comrade-in-arms axis) where both whites (captialists) and red (socialists) fought together against common enemy (Soviet Union)

pasiaj3• 5 years ago

Finns were segregated to different sports leagues, different youth groups, different stores etc. based on families political leanings for decades after the war.

If you go to any small town in Finland, you'll still find an "S Market" and a "K Market" that have their roots in this left-right segregation going back all the way to the civil war.

pasiaj3• 5 years ago

Here are my two cents:

Lots of international pressure was put on Finland due to malnutrition and poor treatment of prisoners in the fall of 1918 that led to mass pardons in October of 1918.

My ancestors who fought amongst the "reds" and were convicted to prison camps emmigrated a hundred kilometers north after the war after being pardoned, as things got quite heated where they were from. They seemed to have regretted their actions in the war and expressed gratitude for being welcomed to the their new surroundings. My grandfather remained a communist, and was actually killed by a "white" veteran in 1958 after a municipal government meeting (got hit with a big log).

A new Finnish identity was built in 1920s as a unifying narrative. Sports were an important part part of it. Finland had been under the rule of other countries before, but now it started to develop an identity if its own. Paavo Nurmi, the original Flying Finn won 9 olympic gold metals in 1920, 1924 and 1928. Ville Ritola won 6 medals in 1924 olympics. Hannes Kolehmainen won the olympic marathon in 1920. (He was treated as a class traitor by the left.)

In 1930 there were significant anti-communist / anti-socialist / far right movements in Finland. "Meetings held by leftist and labour groups were also interrupted, often violently. A common tactic was "muilutus", which started with kidnapping and beating. After that the subject was thrown into a car and driven to the border with the Soviet Union." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapua_Movement

Politically the left and the right were united in 1937 in the selection of Kyösti Kallio as president. A coalition government was formed, largely based on the deep anger and resentment by the left against Stalin's empty promises.

The biggest unifiers in the end were the Winter War and the Continuation War against Russia in 1939. It forced ex-enemies to fight side by side against the Russians. Finland was at war from 1939 to 1944. Next, the nation united to take care of war reparations worth 5.52 billion in 2020 dollars. It took until 1952 to to pay off the debt, and I think Finland still claims to be the only country to have paid war reparations in full.

drcongo3• 5 years ago

This is a fantastic answer, thank you. It does however raise two other questions... 1. Why was Hannes Kolehmainen treated as a class traitor? And 2. What on earth happened with that big log?

throwaway2077• 5 years ago

Many of the Finns deported by the Lapua Movement were later caught up in Stalin's Great Purge and executed; while persecuted in Finland as communists, Stalin accused them of being "Nationalists".[9]

heh

selimthegrim• 5 years ago

Paavo Nurmi, the original Flying Finn

Is Mika Häkkinen the new Flying Finn?

Jensson• 5 years ago

All the red supporters were dead, in prison or fled to Soviet, they just lost. Reconciliation is very easy then, the whites just did what they wanted to do.

Or do you wonder why there was no more resistance afterwards? I think that the people were happy that they weren't under foreign rule for once, they didn't rebel against Russia so why rebel against a Finn ruler now? They were used to living under much worse conditions without complaining.

aqsalose• 5 years ago

It is difficult to give a comprehensive answer in a fly-by HN comment.

Very brief answer: It was complicated. It is complicated.

Slightly less brief answer: Define reconciliation. I doubt any kind of perfect, ideal reconciliation was ever reached. It is not like there were two sides who agreed to something: there were many political actors, with different opinions. It was a mess, and it still is a mess. Many people who had first-hand experience of the war or the terror or its consequences remained bitter. The distinction between the Red and the White social sphere continued for a long time (Anecdote: there were Red and White country-wide sports unions SVUL and TUL until 1993.)

Some people remain bitter. The kind of people who like to have arguments about history and historical figures continue to debate the matter and legacy of Mannerheim and which was worse, the White terror or the hypothetical Red terror if the Reds had won.

Another anecdote. A couple of years ago a student chapter at one university put a portrait of Mannerheim on the wall of their club room. One professor made a very angry public complaint. I don't know what happened afterwards, but there were lots opinions in newspapers and social media, for a moment.

If we define "reconciliation" as "why there was no further violence, at least not much", one reason was that some of the political leaders on White pushed through torpparilaki (a land reform). SDP could participate in the elections, and due to efforts of some centrist politicians on White side, could once enter a government. Economy was good, the Great Depression wasn't as bad as in many other places. When Winter War happened, many regular people on the Red side felt their lives were improving and were distrustful of Stalin's clumsy propaganda moves (it helped that many Reds who "escaped" to the USSR during 1920s-1930s were shot or imprisoned with other ethnic Karelians and Finns in Stalin's purges; the word eventually got back that the USSR was not a paradise). The Reds were divided: non-communist socialists like SDP leader Väinö Tanner enjoyed electoral support among the working class, but were also quite hated by the pro-Soviet left. Maybe the White-aligned political police simply was very efficient at suppressing the would-be revolutionary left (some true believers on the Red side attempted to continue underground pro-Soviet / revolutionary efforts, not very successfully.)

Other part of the answer is that there was a lot of ...not-exactly-reconciliation for several decades.

Remember, some on the Red side continued with not necessarily reconciliatory political efforts? Some on the White side were actively not pleased about this at all, and some objected to any leftists being allowed to participate in politics at all. Feeling the legacy of their Independence War Victory was being squandered. In the 1920s/30s, for several years, some white extremists burned leftists printing presses, kidnapped and roughhoused lots of perceived communists, killed some, and the state apparatus turned a blind eye. Eventually they proceeded to kidnap bourgeois politicians not deemed anti-communist enough, including the ex-president Ståhlberg. At some point the danger of a genuine coup / intra-white civil war was real. (Google for Mäntsälän kapina.) In the end, after the parties and politics to the left of SDP were effectively banned, the extreme right lost its steam.

After the WW2, many outright communists and other on the Red side of left who had spent 1920s-1930s out of politics or in prison were able to enter the politics (thanks Finland mostly losing the WW2 to the Soviets) in force. In some respects, they got some amounts of revenge, when the most bourgeois party, Kokoomus, could not enter the government for decades because of Soviet objections. Google for Kekkonen and Finlandization.

jabl3• 5 years ago

Some people remain bitter. The kind of people who like to have arguments about history and historical figures continue to debate the matter

It's a really strange human quirk to get so worked up about historical events. Finland has these, yes, as excellently explained by the parent and parent's sibling comments. In the US you find people who get really really angry if somebody suggests that a civil war 150 years ago wasn't about slavery.

Heck, you'll even find people who somehow identify with ancient Sparta, apparently based on watching that really terrible movie (or even more terrible successor movies), and thinking that Spartans were uniquely badass and honorable and whatnot.

doikor2• 5 years ago

one reason was that some of the political leaders on White pushed through torpparilaki (a land reform)

This is a often overlooked but very important part of making the post civil war much more peaceful. A large portion of the reds were tenant farmers (torppari) and giving them their own land basically made them "whites" (basically all the landed farmers were on the whites side) and thus fixing one of the biggest issues a very large portion of the reds actually had with the situation before the civil war.

101keyboard• 5 years ago

And over 20 years later...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9AVu6KupNg

(English subs are very very bad)

comrh• 5 years ago

Wow I never knew this existed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_and_Mannerheim_recordin...

webwielder2• 5 years ago

"The SS guards demanded the tape be destroyed, but YLE was allowed to keep the tape in a sealed container with the promise that it never be opened again"

How odd and weirdly naive.

panick21_2• 5 years ago

Pretty interesting historical document for the content. And interesting to hear Hitler speak normally. He accent is little funny but he does not sound significantly Austrian or strange to me.

Mannerheims german is excellent. Outside of a few strange things he speaks perfect high german.

waihtis• 5 years ago

Mannerheim was, to put it mildly, a pretty extraordinary character. Among other things, he met the 13th Dalai-Lama in Tibet while the Dalai-lama was in exile - to whom he gifted a pistol and instructed how to operate it.

imajliv• 5 years ago

To anyone interested in learning more about the man I recommend Jonathan Clements' book Mannerheim: President, Soldier, Spy. As a Finn it was very fascinating how there was so much more adventure in his life than WWII, presidency or any Finland related wars/politics

euroderf3• 5 years ago

His trip thru Tibet was ostensibly to gather plant samples and such, but he conveniently was also rather well placed to gather information for the Tsar.

miiiiiike• 5 years ago

"All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland, 1917-18" is a great game covering the Finnish Civil War. https://www.gmtgames.com/p-675-all-bridges-burning-red-revol...

YeGoblynQueenne3• 5 years ago

Massive sidetrack but there's a performance by a Finnish band called Horna, of a song called "Oi kallis kotimaa". I remember reading that it's about a famous battle in WWI or WWII involving a Hungarian regiment, but I can't find any information about it online, except in Finnish, which I regrettably do not speak. Could any friendly Finnish person please explain what "Oi kallis kotimaa" is about?

Thanks! And many apologies for hijacking the thread, again!

eMSF2• 5 years ago

If I found the correct lyrics, it's a "cover" version of a folk song and the lyrics refer to the 1877 Russo-Turkish war.

YeGoblynQueenne3• 5 years ago

Oh, thanks! I thought there was something about a regiment of Hungarians dying far from their motherland? But if it was the Russo-Turkish war I probably misremember it and it was a Finnish regiment dying far from home. I think it all had something to do with the fact that Finno-Ugric is one language family and I got the feeling it meant that Finnish and Hungarian people feel connected through it somehow?

Edit: thanks to your pointer, I had a look around and I think the song refers to the battle of Gorni Dubnik, where the Finnish Guard sharpshooters fought (but didn't all die, as I remembered).

Thanks and again sorry to the thread for hijacking it!

pqs4• 5 years ago

The opening paragraph, describes very well what I think would happen in Catalonia the day after a hypothetical independence, at least one achieved in the way the pro-independence movement wanted to achieve it (with extreme polarization of the Catalan society and antagonization of the different sectors of society that did not support the so-called Process).

"On December 6th 1917 the Grand Duchy of Finland declared independence, becoming the first nation to independently secede from the corpse of the Russian Empire and the embryo that was to become the Soviet Union. Just fifty-three days later on the night of January 27th 1918, Finland erupted into a brutal civil war. Two opposing movements had polarized the Finnish people to the breaking point. For the next three and a half months, the Finnish people tore their nation apart in a conflict that would claim the lives of 36,000 people, out of a total population of just 3 million"

The pro-independence factions are also very divided, even though they always achieve to form a coalition to govern the region. Thus, the tension would be fractal.

p.s. I live in Catalonia and lived the 2017 events with more fear of the aftermath of the events, than the events themselves.

rightbyte2• 5 years ago

Finland had a contingent of Russian troops at the time many of which refusing to turn over weapons and later fighting for the Red side. Are you talking about Catolonia seceding {edit: not conceding} without the king of Spain allowing it? Otherwise there is no standing army to make a mess.

pqs4• 5 years ago

We are in 2021, so it would be a very different kind of conflict. I definitely see terrorism, house by house arrests, some urban guerrillas or self-defense units that protect neighborhoods, etc.

I'm not sure if I fully understand "Catolonia conceding without the king of Spain allowing it". What do you exactly mean?

pqs4• 5 years ago

Yes, I was talking about a unilateral independence.

spurgu2• 5 years ago

Something I've wondered, how would Catalonia feel about independence if it was neighbouring Morocco instead of France?

rendall2• 5 years ago

What a curious and intriguing thing to always wonder! Why Morocco? What do you think the difference would be?

lixtra• 5 years ago

Pr it could have gone all peacefully like Czechoslovakia split in two.

pqs4• 5 years ago

Maybe. The point is that you don't know. Is the risk worthwhile?

Apocryphon• 5 years ago

Feels like we don't see many dedicated single interest web sites like this anymore. Glad someone made this.

troyvit• 5 years ago

There's a powerful trilogy called Under the North Star by Väinö Linna that covers in part the Finnish Civil War. It put a human perspective on all sides of the conflict. Even if you aren't interested in Finnish history those three books, which lead up to The Unknown Soldier, are incredible.

mongol• 5 years ago

I am a Swede who first learned of the Finnish Civil War when I read Väinnö Linna's novel triology "Under The North Star" (which I liked a lot). I was mesmerized and could not understand why I never learned about it before. I think in Sweden we have very poor knowledge of our eastern brotherly people's history despite being one country for over 400 years. This thread has helped me learn more about it. Thank you Finns!

DavidVoid• 5 years ago

Also a Swede and I don't think we learned much at all about pre-WW2 Finland. We mainly learned about the Winter and Continuation War and the many Finnish war children that ended up in Sweden [1]. I remember one of them visiting our school to speak about his childhood.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_war_children

timonoko2• 5 years ago

If you read the Swedish-speaking writer Kjell Westö, "Där vi en gång gått", you realize this was very much a language war. All big landowners of arable land in Finland were Swedish and even Mannerheim did not know much any Finnish at that time. Westö describes how a Swede was killed because he owned fishing rights on Baltic sea, and Finns could only fish in "mud and rocks".

This is very much a taboo subject even today, because 25% of the financial elite in Finland are Swedes and cultural elite much more. So you cannot deal much of this subject before becoming Fennomaniac racist nazi, who does not deserve any government money.

mistrial94• 5 years ago

yes thank you -- by coincidence I was reading a bit about the Northern Crusades this week (in English) -- we do not learn this in school in the USA !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades

fifilura• 5 years ago

I am a Swede. Kjell Westö is my go to author if I want to read good prose in Swedish. Beats all those hundreds of crime novel authors we have in Sweden hands down when it comes to care about the language.

pavlov2• 5 years ago

This is far too simplistic. A lot of the "whites" in the 1918 Civil War were Finnish-speaking and even Fennomaniac. In the preceding decades, there was this whole nationalistic boom where Swedish-speaking Finns translated their names to Finnish and adopted the language.

Right-wing nationalists were united by ideology, not by language.

timonoko2• 5 years ago

Totally so. But the lowest class did not see the bigger picture. Swedes and top hats were the masters, so better join our Russian comrades in total revolution.

"Independent Finland" was a concept only few could afford. And those few were planning to establish "Kingdom of Finland". They also selected the King of Finland, some fuckup German Hapsburg Prince.

mistrial94• 5 years ago

The Fennoman motto attributed to Adolf Ivar Arwidsson was actually coined by Johan Vilhelm Snellman: "Svenskar äro vi icke, ryssar vilja vi icke bli, låt oss alltså vara finnar."

"We are not Swedes, We do not want to be Russians, So let's be Finns."

EN Wikipedia

dustintrex• 5 years ago

The website covers this: https://finlanddivided.wordpress.com/ethnolinguistic-conflic...

But calling this only a language issue is a gross oversimplification. Neither is it really taboo, unless you start going overboard and claiming that all Swedes/Swedish-speakers are X and all Finns/Finnish-speakers are Y, which is racist pretty much by definition.

DrTung• 5 years ago

Born i Stockholm, I remember taking the ferry to Finland as a young boy for some cheap vodka (and you only had to be 18 years old, not 20).

This was in the late 70's and my first visit to Helsinki, I tried to order a drink in a bar. But no service until I discovered my mistake: I had spoken in Swedish.

Switching to English got me a nice Finnish beer. That was my first glimpse of Finland's "complicated" history.

euroderf3• 5 years ago

But also the accent of your Swedish probably pegged you as Swedish, not Finnish. And are you quite sure they actually even understood you ?

ZeroGravitas2• 5 years ago

From a (time, geographical, emotional) distance these often seem very transparently "rich" vs "poor" yet many poor people fought on the side of the "rich".

Is there any common thread that connects poor white non-slave owning southern American's dying to sustain plantation slavery for aristocrats to poor Finns dying to install a German Monarch to lead landowners to Q fans battling against Medicare for all?

Or is all just random historical happenstance?

Finland Divided: The Finnish Civil War 1918

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