Prologue: Independence, the Interbellum and the National Path
Risen from the collapse of the Russian Empire at the end of the Great War, the young nation still looked with alarm to its its increasingly revanchist, powerful neighbor to the East
The Birth of Finland
A part of Sweden since the 12th century, Finland became part of the Russian Empire in 1809 following the Finnish War, where it became an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Empire. As Tsar Alexander I put it, Finland was a "nation among nations", a status most other subject peoples of the Empire were not granted. However, despite this autonomy towards the end of the 19th century, as with those other subject peoples, a fierce policy of "Russification" became implemented on the Finns. This, of course, was occurring at the same time as the rise of the era of nationalism throughout Europe, where oppressed peoples started developing national consciousness and a will to break free. In 1899, Tsar Nicholas II published the
February Manifesto which curtailed the autonomy of the Finnish Grand Duchy. Furthermore, in 1901, the Tsar tightened conscription rules on the Finns, mandating they serve to protect the Russian Empire as well as the Finns. In 1908, a further restriction was applied, this time curtailing the power of the Finnish parliament, increasing centralization in Saint Petersburg.
Then came the Great War. With the Russian Empire's military collapsing on the front, the Tsar was forced to abdicate in February of 1917, and then, with the provisional government unwilling to put an end to a deeply unpopular war, Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional coup in November 1917, following a spontaneous assault on the Winter Palace in Petrograd. After the Bolsheviks declared the right of national minorities to self-determination, including the right to secession, on November 15th, Finland had their chance.
Independence
The Finnish Parliament Convenes to Approve the Declaration of Independence
That same day, the Finnish Parliament declared the assumption of legislative powers, and began the process to independence. Though still technically a monarchy, due to the personal union with the Tsar being abolished with Nicholas II's February abdication, and the general apathy towards the idea of monarchism, which the Finnish elite considered outdated, forming the groundwork for the new state was necessary. On November 27th, Pehr Evind Svinhuvfud, the newly appointed Prime Minister, formed a Finnish Senate and gave them a mandate to forge the path to Independence as soon as was possible. On December 6th, the Senate officially declared independence, and on the 22nd, the Soviet government recognized the Finns' Independence. The first step of building a nation was complete.
The Civil War
Immediately however, the new state was in crisis. In the years prior to independence, Finland had gone a rapid period of industrialization and a rising labor movement which led to an increase of socialist popularity amongst the workers; on the flip side, the architects of the newly independent Finnish state largely comprised of conservatives, monarchists and anti-communists. In the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Russian Empire and the proclamation of a new Finnish state, both groups looked to exert their control on the country. These simmering tensions soon boiled over.
Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, White Marshal
The first clashes between Red Guards, determined to start a socialist revolution in the country, and Civil Guards, otherwise known as the Whites, who favored a nationalist Finland, began in early January, in Karelia, which was the industrial heartland of the newly born nation. On January 12th, 1918, the Finnish government led by Svinhuvfud appointed Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, a former general in the Imperial Russian Army, as commander-in-Chief of the White Army. Mannerheim issued a decree to his forces to prepare for an offensive against the communists. The Reds, with their headquarters in Helsinki, mobilized their forces on January 27th. Battle lines were drawn and civil war fired up.
Battle Lines of the Civil War
When hostilities erupted, the front line developed through southern Finland. The Finnish Reds largely controlled the urban centers of the south, with nearly all of the major cities and industrial hotbeds of the nation under their control, areas prime for socialist movements, with the exception of Viipuri. The Whites controlled most of the northern areas of Finland, with the exception of Oulu and Varkas. Seizing the enclaves controlled by the other became a high priority for both sides.
The Reds, while differing from the Soviet Russians on the question of how to rule, being much more social democrats than Leninist authoritarians, still looked to Lenin and the Soviet Russians for help. This, however, was less an alliance than a "realpolitik" partnership, with infighting amongst the Finnish and Russian reds on national borders and demarcation lines being a consistent theme. It was an uneasy alliance, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed between the Bolsheviks and Germans in March 1918, which officially handed Finland over to the German "sphere of influence" splintered this partnership even more. Though in combat over the type of governance, where both Reds and Whites were united in was the question of Finland's national borders, with both left and right having revanchist idea of a "Greater Finland".
Where the Germans were hostile to the Reds, they were more than reliable for the Whites. Marshal Mannerheim sought material support from Germany, and on February 14th, Berlin gave him what he wanted. The Imperial German Army sent troops to Aland on March 5th, two days after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been signed. Alongside them came Jaegers, elite Finnish light infantry trained in Germany and deployed on the Eastern Front during the Great War. Alongside them also came Estonian and Swedish volunteer divisions.
With material support, backing from a major power, and a new spirit, Marshal Mannerheim decided to go on the offensive. In late March, the Whites struck the Red stronghold of Tampere, an industrial center, where one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war would be fought. In a bloody two week battle, where street-by-street fighting took place for control of the city, and immense losses on both sides, Tampere fell on April 6th.
Soon after, German troops, with the help of the Jaeger units, attacked Helsinki, Finnish capital and White stronghold on the Baltic coast. In a blitz reminiscent of their tactics during the Michael Offensive on the Western front, they quickly seized control of the city, and, joined by White Guard partisans in the city, quickly overwhelmed the Red garrison. On April 14th, the Red garrison of Helsinki surrendered, and an Imperial German Army military parade marched through the center of the city.
German Troops in Helsinki
After the loss of Helsinki and Tampere, the Reds were in full retreat towards the Karelian Isthmus, to their last remaining stronghold, in Viipuri. Seeking to avoid having to lay siege to the town and avoid the bloody street to street combat that occurred at Tampere, Marshal Mannerheim devised a new plan. They focused on getting the Reds out of the city proper and into the outskirts. White forces performed a flanking maneuver, cut off the supply lines to Viipuri from Petrograd, and destroyed the bulk of their forces in the Karelian Isthmus. With Red forces weakened and lacking supply, Jaeger troops sent out an artillery barrage that demoralized what was left of the White garrison, and swept them aside, capturing Viipuri within two days.
Marshal Mannerheim leads the victory parade, May 16th, 1918.
With control of the country lost, Red leadership fled to Petrograd. They had been defeated, the attempts to establish a socialist Finland had collapsed, and the civil war was over. White forces held a parade through Helsinki on May 16th, and the newly independent Finnish state would be outside of the socialist world.
Aftermath
The civil war had left the nation in tatters. Major cities were in ruins, 35,000 people had lost their lives, 15,000 children had been orphaned. Both Whites and Reds had committed atrocities against those they perceived as sympathizers of the other. Despite consolidating control of the country, deep divisions still remained in Finnish society. Socialists were seen as Russian agents. Even amongst the whites, the issue of how to rule still hung over their heads. Conservatives favored a return to the monarchist system, while liberals favored a democratic republic, in the mould of other nations born from the former Russian Empire. Remaining socialists were themselves divided, with communists, social democrats, and radical, non-Bolshevik supporting socialists, all disagreeing on how to organize the movement.
Building the Nation and "The Compromise"
Kaarlo Juho Stahlberg, the first President of Finland
Due to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the role the Germans played in helping the Whites win the civil war, and considerable monarchist support amongst the ranks of the whites, there was originally pressure to restore a monarchy, with German prince Frederick Charles of Hesse to be made king. However, with the German collapse in the Great War and abdication of the Kaiser, along with pressure from more socially moderate wings of the Whites, this was shelved. Eventually, the liberal faction of the Whites managed to get their way. With both sides tired of bickering amongst themselves, and wanting to rebuild the nation after the civil war, conservatives got in line in support of a Republican form of government. One of the prevailing arguments amongst the conservatives was that going any further right would only enable socialist movements further, and after the bloody civil war, both sides just wanted to focus on building the nation. On December 20th, 1918, Finland became a Republic, and this was confirmed in July 1919 by the Constitution Act. Kaarlo Juho Stahlberg, a liberal nationalist and Republican, was elected as Finland's first President, defeating Marshal Mannerheim overwhelmingly.
The young state largely focused on social and economic reforms in its early days. Many Reds were pardoned, trade unions were strengthened, and the Lex Kallio Law, a sweeping land reform law that redistributed land from wealthy landowners to the peasants, quelled the socialist movement. These policies also greatly earned the favor of the farmers, who had lent their support to the White movement during the civil war. Both sides of the aisle, however, were very much against the Communists, and the Communist Party was banned in 1931. Furthermore, a right wing nationalist movement named the
Lapua Movement, who preached Finnish ultranationalism, pro-Germanism, anti-Communism, and fascism, also grew in strength throughout the 1920s. Very much similar to Mussolini's Black Shirts or the SA Brownshirts of the German National Socialists, their methods of street fighting led to them being banned in 1932, though an underground movement still operated quietly.
Foreign Policy and the (still existing) Soviet danger
Although having secured independence from the remnants of the Russian Empire, finding their place geopolitically would still prove to be a challenge for the young nation. Finland joined the League of Nations in 1920, and began a pursuit of policies strengthening ties with the Scandinavian nations of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, along with the Baltic statelets that too had achieved independence in the chaos of the Bolshevik takeover. In particular, however, Sweden and Estonia were the two main geopolitical allies for the Finns. Between the Swedes and Finns, however, laid territorial disputes over the territory of Aland, a set of Islands in the Upper Baltic between the two, where an ethnic Sweden majority lived. To settle the issue, Aland was demilitarized and given autonomous status by the Finns. The Estonians in particular provided a special bond for the Finns, with both Estonians and Finns tracing back to a common Finno-Ugric background. There was even talk of creating a union between the two nations, yet it never materialized.
With all that said, however, the Finns still looked with caution at their former overlords in Russia. Lenin's Bolsheviks, who had originally accepted Finnish Independence in 1918, and who preached "self-determination" upon taking power, quickly reneged on those principles after the nullification of Brest-Litovsk, and entered into a string of wars with the various other states that had been born of the Russian Empire's collapse. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia all had to fight wars of independence to preserve their fragile freedom, the Ukrainians who had attempted their own fight for freedom, were subdued back into Russian control, and even Poland, who had risen back like a phoenix in 1918, had to defeat the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw to prevent being swallowed back into this *Socialist* Empire. For the Finns, Bolshevik attempts to retake Finland were a matter of if, not when.
Signing of the Soviet - Finnish Non-Aggression Pact
During the 1920s, the Soviet Union and Finland each went about ways to destabilize the other. Finland covertly supported Finnish Karelian uprisings on the other side of the border in the dreams of a "Greater Finland", while the the Soviet Union backed Finnish Communists in the USSR, with the aims to eventually have them stage another socialist uprising back in their homeland. Trade between the two was almost non-existent as well, with only 1% of Finland's foreign trade involving the Soviets.
Despite the consistent tension between the two, a Non-Aggression Pact was signed between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1932, and it was re-affirmed for a 10 year period in 1934. Though, with growing revanchism across Europe, only time would tell if this would last.
