V. I. Musaee "RED REAR REVOLUTION": FINLAND AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN THE BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY
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Finland played a special role in the development of the Russian revolutionary movement. In 1905-1907. it was called "the red rear of the revolution." Such a characteristic which belongs to the pen of one of the active participants in the revolutionary movement V. M. Smirnov, is quite fair: indeed, not only during the years of the first Russian revolution, but throughout the entire period of the late XIX - early XX centuries. the territory of the Grand Duchy of Finland served as a base for Russian revolutionary groups of the social democratic and (to a lesser extent) populist direction. Here the revolutionaries hid from persecution on the territory of crown Russia, here they held their meetings and conferences, published illegal literature, stored weapons and engaged in other activities in relative safety, feeling much more at ease than in Russia proper. The activity of Russian revolutionaries in Finland often developed with the obvious connivance of local authorities: the officials of the Grand Duchy not only turned a blind eye to their activities, but sometimes even assisted them, hiding from the Russian police and gendarme authorities information about the presence and activities of revolutionaries on Finnish territory or warning them of the danger that threatened them.
Such a seemingly paradoxical situation was associated with increased dissatisfaction with the policy of the imperial government and the growth of separatist sentiments in Finland. The Finnish authorities were jealous of the attempts of the Russian police to suppress the activity of revolutionary groups in the territory of the Grand Duchy, seeing this as interference within their competence, and in fact sabotaged the efforts of the Russian law enforcement agencies to combat opponents of the regime on the territory of the Grand Duchy. In one of the reports on the situation in Finland it was noted: “The commanding officers of the police, with their defiant behavior, only kindle passions among the population and encourage all sorts of secret organizations in the region. With such in this situation, not only are all persons and organizations hostile to the empire in Finland not detected by the police, but, on the contrary, all of them from her side meet with the most energetic and active support. Therefore, here the revolutionary organizations have woven themselves reliable nests and, having settled down, act on the whole empire.
Сonnivance towards individuals and organizations engaged in anti-government activities was one of the ways to once again emphasize their independence, a kind of opposition. The more strained relations between Finland and the imperial center in the so-called "periods of oppression", all the more cordial welcome was met on Finnish soil by the Russian opposition, and the more obstacles the Russian police and gendarmerie authorities encountered here in the fight against them. Finnish radical opposition organizations of various orientations - from the Red Guard to the nationalist "Active Resistance Party" - directly collaborated with the Russian revolutionaries. The latter, opposing the tsarist regime, turned out to be natural, albeit temporary, allies of the supporters of Finnish independence: the principle “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” worked.
The first Russian revolutionary groups arose in Finland as early as the last quarter of the XIX century. So, in September 1882, the Finnish press reported that in Helsingfors (Helsinki) and Sveaborg, a branch of the “criminal society existing in Russia” was opened, the members of which were Russian officers, civil officials and teachers of the Russian Alexander Gymnasium. The investigation showed that it was a group of the military-revolutionary organization "Narodnaya Volya", founded in Helsinki, a member of the organization N. Rogachev, closely associated with A. Zhelyabov. Six members of the group were arrested (later on the territory of Russia were Three more have been found and arrested. At the same time, as the Uusi Suometar newspaper noted, “the prosecutor of the Finnish Senate made a statement regarding the order in which these arrests were made”, due to the fact that “Russian subjects, excluding military personnel, are under the protection of the laws of the Grand Duchy; in this case, the arrests were not made by the Finnish authorities.” The Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries managed to establish their own printing house near Vyborg, in which in 1901 they began to print the underground newspaper Revolutionary Russia. This, however, soon became known to the police, and the Minister of the Interior, D.S. Sipyagin, personally ordered that measures be taken to stop the work of the printing house. But the Social Revolutionaries were warned in time about the intentions of the police and managed to move the printing house to Tomsk. On April 15, 1902, Minister Sipyagin was killed in St. Petersburg by a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary militant organization, student S. Balmashov, who, a few days before the assassination attempt, stayed at a hotel in Vyborg and had a meeting with a well-known leader of the militant organization G. A. Gershuni, who gave him the relevant instructions.
In the future, the activity of Russian revolutionaries in Finland increased in parallel with the development of the activities of the Finnish opposition proper. groups. A. Mustonen, a former member of one of the underground Finnish revolutionary organizations, engaged in the "expropriation" of funds for the needs of the revolution, noted that "members of secret revolutionary organizations ... act together with Russian revolutionaries in favor of the Russian and Finnish revolutions", and pointed out on various forms of this cooperation: assistance to the Finnish opposition in arming the Russian revolutionaries, agitation among the troops and direct handing sums of money to Russian revolutionaries. At the same time, the Voima, a right-wing secret society formed on the basis of the Active Resistance Party, was also ready to cooperate with Russian opposition organizations: according to the report of V. I. Musaev. "Red Rear of the Revolution": Finland and the Russian Revolutionary Movement at the Beginning of the 20th Century. Minister of the Interior P. A. Stolypin dated June 2, 1906, the central committee of the society sent out a circular in which he called on the population of Finland to prepare for an armed struggle against the tsarist government and, in particular, recommended that the Finns “support the Russian revolutionaries in every possible way in their struggle against the government” , "so that weaken Russia as much as possible. There were also specific examples of Voima's connections with Russian opponents of the tsarist regime. Finnish Governor General at the end August (early September NS) 1908 informed the Secretary of State of the Grand Duchy of Finland that the Voima branches operating in the Vyborg province collaborated with Russian revolutionary circles, and a member of the society, Oikonen, who had extensive connections throughout the country and abroad , received smuggled weapons, which he transferred to Russian revolutionaries who came to Imatra through the owner of the local hotel U. Sirenius, a member of the Karyalan Kansan Makhti organization.
Russian, Finnish and other national opposition groups sought to coordinate their actions and agree on cooperation. On September 30, 1904, a congress of Russian revolutionaries of various nationalities was held in Paris, at which a declaration was signed on joint actions against the tsarist government. The initiative of this congress came from Finnish politicians, and the declaration adopted by the congress was signed on behalf of the well-known Finnish separatist leaders Konni Zilliakus and Arvid Neovius. In January 1905, as an echo of the events in St. Petersburg on January 9, demonstrations took place in various cities of Finland, coinciding with the day of the resumption of the Seimas of 1904-1905. The bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs stated a partial transition of passive resistance to active. A series of political assassinations and assassinations follows: the prosecutor of the Finnish Senate Jonson, the gendarmerie lieutenant colonel Kramarenko were killed, attempts were made on the privy councilor Deitrich, the Vyborg governor Myasoedov, there was an increase in agitation and secret transportation of weapons to the region. The unity of the Finnish and Russian opposition was demonstrated during a mass demonstration and rally in Helsingfors May 21 (June 3), 1906, organized by the Red Guard and social democratic groups. Representatives of Russian, Estonian and Latvian Social Democrats took part in the demonstration. Among the speakers at the rally were two Russian orators who introduced themselves as deputies of the State Duma. They addressed the audience with a message from the Duma with the following content: “There is a terrible discord between the State Duma and the State Council, and therefore, as it is believed, the Duma will disbanded soon. Then a general revolution will break out, during which Finland must organize the whole people and help the Russian revolutionaries overthrow the tsar from throne." The Ministry of the Interior had undercover information about what some members of the Duma expected if the Duma was dissolved or the deputies will leave for the summer holidays, go to Finland and continue their meetings here. As you know, this is exactly what happened: on July 9, after the dissolution of the First Duma, many of its deputies went to Vyborg. The meeting continued all night in the Belvedere Hotel in Vyborg, and the next day the famous Vyborg Appeal was adopted.
After the suppression of the first Russian revolution, its participants, wanted by the police, often found refuge in Finnish territory. SR militant organization, which was led by the notorious E. F. Azef, had one of her bases in Finland.
Azef himself, as well as B. V. Savinkov, who was associated with the military organization, repeatedly visited Finland. In particular, Savinkov and Azef stayed for some time with the famous Finnish artist Eero Jarnefelt. Not far from Imatra, the Zilberberg terrorist group was hiding, with the aim of killing Stolypin. In the summer of 1905, Trotsky came to Finland to escape persecution. About the stay of V. I. Lenin in Finland, about Lenin's places on the Karelian Isthmus more than well known. In 1906-1907. the headquarters of the Bolsheviks and the main residence of V. I. Lenin was the dacha "Vaza" in the village of Kuokkala. In the village and other revolutionaries also hid in the vicinity, as well as in Terijoki. In addition to Kuokkala, Lenin also repeatedly visited Terijoki, Vyborg, Helsingfors and Tampere (Tammerfors), where, as is known, the first Social Democratic Party Conference took place in December 1905, at which Lenin met JV Stalin for the first time. In total, four Social Democratic conferences were held in Finland: the second conference was also held in Tampere in November 1906, the third in Kotka in August 1907, and the fourth in Helsinki in November of the same year. The Socialist-Revolutionaries also held their conferences in Finland. One of them was organized at the Valtio Hotel in Imatra in 1906, the other in Tampere in February 1907; it was organized by the socialist Timo Korpimaa with the help of local activists. In Finland, there was a committee for helping political refugees, which supplied the hiding revolutionaries here with money, participation in it was taken, in particular, by university professors. The secretary of the committee V. M. Smirnov handed over the collected funds to L. B. Krasin, who lived in Kuokkala. A few kilometers from Kuokkala, on the Haapala farm, in the spring of 1907, a Bolshevik laboratory for the manufacture of explosives was founded, which, however, was soon discovered, 11 people were under arrest. In 1908, in connection with the events at the Khaapala farm, Krasin was arrested, but soon he had to be released due to insufficient evidence?
Among Finnish cities and towns, a special place in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, along with Vyborg, Tampere and Kuokkala, was occupied by Terijoki, which after 1905 was the stronghold of the revolutionaries in Finland. Here, since the end of the summer of 1907, there was a secret dacha of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. In 1906-1907. conferences of the St. Petersburg organization of the party were also held here. In addition, Terijoki in 1905-1907. was known as a venue for opposition rallies, which were attended by many Petersburgers. One of these rallies, which took place in June 1907, is described in the report of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: “On June 4, in a public garden near the station Terijoki on the Finnish Railway held a rally organized on the initiative of the members of the "labor group", representatives of the Socialist-Revolutionary parties, the Russian Social Democrats and the Finnish and Finnish Red Guards. After mutual greetings, the crowd, lining up at the station and raising red flags with various revolutionary inscriptions in Russian and Finnish, moved to the public garden singing "La Marseillaise", "Varshavyanka" and other revolutionary songs, and passing by the Finnish workers' house, stopped for a few minutes and sang "The Internationale". <...> All speeches were distinguished by an extremely revolutionary content, and almost every speaker ended his speech with a call for an active struggle with the government, after which those present applauded and shouted: “Long live the armed uprising.”
In the second half of the 1910s, when ties with Zilliacus were cut off among Russian socialists, the “Finland route” for smuggling was no longer used, but soon attempts began to be made to restore it. Another such attempt took place after the outbreak of the First World War. Autumn 1914 A. Shlyapnikov went to Stockholm to establish new contacts. Here he came into contact with the Swedish left and moderate social democrats, made inspection trips to the Swedish-Finnish and Norwegian-Finnish border areas. Transportation through the Finnish ports of Turku and Rauma with the onset of winter had to be stopped due to freezing and tightening of military and police control. In the summer of 1915, however, a new route was opened: by land through the Swedish-Finnish border in the north, in the Haparanda-Tornio region. Shlyapnikov was given effective assistance in organizing this route by the Finnish socialists Adam Laaksonen from Kemi and Hannes Uksila from Oulu, who also helped Finnish volunteers to cross the same route to Germany, where at that time the Finnish Jaeger battalion was being formed. Shlyapnikov himself used this route in October 1915 to return to Russia. Shlyapnikov's main assistant in Finland was Karl Wiik, who in 1910 met with Lenin in Copenhagen, was in correspondence with Alexandra Kollontai (perhaps it was she who attracted him to underground activities). At first, both Bolshevik and Menshevik literature were transported along the secret route, but with In 1916 preference began to be given to Bolshevik publications.
Underground periodicals were not only transported through Finland, but also published there. In August-September 1906, the publication began in Vyborg Bolshevik newspapers "Proletary" and "Forward", which were then also transported to Russia. The Police Department had information that a Russian revolutionary publication was being printed in the printing house of the Finnish newspaper Tyuyo, for which Russian typesetters were specially invited and a supply of Russian type was purchased (it was about the newspaper Proletariy), however, at the request of the department to take measures addressed to the Minister of State Secretary of the Grand Duchy of Finland A.F. Langof, he gave a characteristic answer: “The Vyborg Governor, with whom I really entered case for intercourse, reports that although the local police carried out a thorough investigation into the case, no circumstances confirming the information about the printing of revolutionary publications in the mentioned printing house were established. The story of the secret printing house, discovered in February 1907, is also very indicative. in Helsingfors, in the apartment of the engineer V. S. Alanna, in which the newspaper "Barracks Bulletin" and various leaflets were printed. Аlanne, having received a subpoena, disappeared from the city, and the arrested compositor, an Estonian native VG Arman, was acquitted by the Ratgauz court. The Finnish governor-general called the actions of the court “an inexcusable leniency towards political criminals.” In Vyborg, in the autumn of 1906, the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Trud was published. In 1908, the owner of the newspaper Viborgs Nyheter, G. Ekholm, was fined for allowing the newspapers Za Narod and Vperyod to be printed in his printing house. Later, in the years preceding the revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks founded their own printing house in Helsingfors, printed here and then transported another newspaper, Volna, to Petrograd.
Cooperation between Russian and Finnish radicals also manifested itself in the Sveaborg uprising of 1906. The uprising was planned by Russian revolutionary organizations, in particular the military organization of the Bolsheviks, whose branches operated in Helsinki, Vyborg, Lappeenranta and other Finnish cities. The main role in organizing the uprising in Sveaborg belonged, however, to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who insisted on hastening the preparations for the uprising, while the Bolsheviks considered it premature. The uprising was to begin simultaneously in Sveaborg, Kronstadt, Reval and Baltic Fleet, which was then to go to St. Petersburg to raise an uprising in the capital. The uprising of part of the Sveaborg garrison took place on July 30 (17), to him sailors stationed in the barracks on the island of Katajanokka also joined (Scatudden). 250-300 Finnish Red Guards joined the rebel sailors, who were transported by ship to one of the islands in the hands of the rebels, and participated in the shelling of government units. The Red Guards sent their people to blow up the railway track in order to prevent the delivery of troops sent to put down the uprising. The Finns also tried to campaign among the soldiers who arrived in Helsinki, which did not stop even after the suppression uprisings. The police were forced to turn to the military command with a request issue an order prohibiting military personnel from visiting cafes and restaurants where they were indoctrinated. Bolshevik military organization continued to act in the future, conducting agitation among the troops, until the arrests in August 1907 did not devastate its ranks. However, in 1908, the St. Petersburg Finn Adolf Taimi, sent to Finland a year earlier by N. K. Krupskaya, actively worked among military sailors. In 1911, fermentation began again on some ships, and from the beginning of the next year, the “revolutionary committee”, created by the Russian branch of the Finnish Social Democratic Party, began to prepare an uprising in the navy.
The activity of Russian anti-government organizations in Finland and the connivance towards them on the part of local officials caused understandable concern of the imperial authorities. Chairman of the Russian government and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs P. A. Stolypin on December 5 (18), 1907, sent a letter to A. F. Langof, in which he noted with alarm: “The information received by the Ministry of Internal Affairs since 1905 indicates that the territory The Grand Duchy of Finland, and especially the provinces of Vyborg and Nyland, became a permanent refuge for Russian revolutionaries, who not only systematically engaged in propaganda among the local troops, but also formed strong organizations there to lead agitation and prepare terrorist acts in the Empire.”39 According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 1907 alone, about 15 meetings and conferences of Russian Social Democratic and Socialist-Revolutionary organizations were held in Terijoki, Kuokkale and Tampere. In Finland, terrorist acts were “organized and prepared to the smallest detail”, including the assassination of the chief military prosecutor, Adjutant General Pavlov, and the assassination attempt on the Minister of War. The St. Petersburg police established "the existence in the town of Kellomyaki of a whole bureau of terrorists who prepared the murders ... and had cards of persons who took upon themselves the commission of political murders." “At the same time,” Stolypin continued, “search officials, trying to continue monitoring criminals within the Grand Duchy, find themselves in an exceptionally unfavorable situation, not only not receiving support from the local authorities, but meeting with some of its representatives, and then from population, a clearly hostile attitude, which in many cases has already reached open persecution. Thanks to this, the imperial government can now, on the basis of the indisputable data of hard experience, state that in all cases when Russian revolutionaries wish to move to Finland, they become inaccessible to a much greater extent than when they leave for one of the foreign states, the authorities of which show much more significant assistance to the stubborn struggle of the Russian government against the revolutionary movement than the organs of the Finnish administration.”41 When, in November 1910, the Special Conference on the Affairs of the Grand Duchy of Finland, chaired by Stolypin, raised the question of joining part of the territory of the Vyborg province to Russia, among the circumstances that dictated the need to move the border, the needs of the fight against revolutionary elements, "who are now able to find themselves .. ... a safe haven a few tens of miles from St. Petersburg. A draft law developed by a special commission on the transfer of the Finnish parishes of Kivennap (Kivineb) to Crown Russia and Uusikirkko (New Church), however, was not put into practice.
Under pressure from the center, the Finnish authorities were forced to abandon their former liberalism in relation to the opponents of the tsarist regime and demonstrate somewhat greater activity in their persecution. A. F. Langof, reacting to a letter Stolypin, outlined a number of measures that were supposed to increase the efficiency of work law enforcement agencies in the territory of the Grand Duchy. It was supposed to “prohibit until the time the Russians convene and arrange conferences, congresses and other meetings in Finland without the permission of the Governor-General; oblige the Finnish authorities to immediately take measures to remove Russian natives from the region, granted the right to stay in Finland, if the imperial authorities receive a message that these persons are deprived of the said right; to transform or strengthen the police in Finland to such an extent that they can more quickly and more successfully search for Russian political criminals who are hiding in Finland, keep them under unremitting surveillance, conduct searches and detain them. At the beginning of 1908, in Finland, “eight meetings organized by various Russian revolutionary organizations were warned or closed” There were also reports of arrests, confiscations of consignments of illegal literature, discovery of depots of weapons and ammunition. Despite this, until 1917, the territory of Finland remained a safer place for Russian revolutionaries compared to actually Russian regions, although they had to go deeper underground. It is well known that V. I. Lenin safely hid in Finland before going to Petrograd to lead an armed uprising in October 1917.
