Finland 1918. Civil war in Finland and the genocide of the Russian population. We draw our own conclusions, as always.

Civil War in Finland.

Let us recall some political events that preceded the start of the Civil War in Finland.
In 1916, the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDPF) received the majority of votes in the elections to the Sejm. The left wing of the party, headed by O. Kuusinen, K. Manner and J. Sirola, maintained close ties with the Bolsheviks and Lenin personally.
After the victory of the February Revolution in Russia, workers' diets, the Workers' Guard of Order, and the Red Guard were created in the industrial centers of Finland. The leading revolutionary bodies were the Helsingfors Diet of Workers' Organizations (established in March 1917) and the left wing of the SDPF, which cooperated with the Russian Soviets of Soldiers' Deputies, the Sailors' Committees of the Baltic Fleet, and the Soviets of Workers' Deputies.
On March 7 (20), 1917, the Provisional Government of Russia restored the autonomy of Finland, but opposed its complete independence. At the request of the Social Democratic faction, the Finnish Seimas adopted on July 5 (18), 1917 the "Law on Power", which limited the competence of the Provisional Government to questions of military and foreign policy. The Provisional Government, with the help of the national bourgeoisie, dispersed the Seim on July 18 (31). The bourgeoisie and nationalists set about creating armed assault squads, called shutskor (from the Swedish word Skyddskar - security corps).
In October 1917, new elections to the Sejm were held, as a result of which the bourgeoisie and nationalists received a majority there.
On November 13 (26), the Sejm approved the Senate headed by Per Evind Svinhufvud. On November 23 (December 6), the Seimas unilaterally proclaimed Finland an independent state. On December 18 (31) in Smolny, Lenin signed the "Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars on Recognizing the Independence of the Republic of Finland."
The decision of the Council of People's Commissars was personally accepted in Smolny by Per Evind Svinhufvud, the Prime Minister of the newly formed state. The Bolshevik commissars did not know that as early as December 1917 Svinhufvud entered into negotiations with the Germans and sent all the gold of the Finland Bank from Helsingfors to the north of the country.

The current critics of the Soviet period in our history are very fond of accusing the Bolsheviks of "connections with the German General Staff" and so on. things.
As we will see, it was Finland, from the very beginning of its independence, that established the closest contacts with Kaiser Germany and concluded an agreement with it on March 7, 1918 (recall that Germany was at that time waging a difficult war with the Entente), and then invited German troops to your territory.

On the night of January 10, 1918, there were clashes between the shutskor and the armed detachments of Finnish workers (the Red Guard). On January 12, the Seim recognized the shutskor as government troops.
On January 16, the Senate, which received emergency powers from the Sejm, appointed the former tsarist general Carl Gustav Mannerheim commander-in-chief of the White Guard.

It would be necessary to briefly talk about the baron himself, especially since there have been plenty of myths and lies about him in the liberal press and media in recent years.
They like to portray him as a kind of knight without fear and reproach, a fiery Finnish patriot, at the same time in love with St. Petersburg and even supposedly saved him from the Germans during the Leningrad blockade. Let us recall some pages of his biography.
Carl Gustav Mannerheim was born in 1867. At the age of 15, Karl Gustav entered the cadet corps in Finland, and in the spring of 1887, he entered the Nikolaev Cavalry School, from which he graduated in 1889.
The baron began his service in the 15th Alexandria Dragoon Regiment, on the border with Germany. But a year later, thanks to the extensive connections of his relatives in the aristocratic circles of St. Petersburg, Carl Gustav was transferred to the guard in the most prestigious in the guards cavalry, the cavalry regiment.
On May 2, 1892, the wedding of Carl Gustav Mannerheim with Anastasia Arapova, the daughter of Major General Nikolai Arapov, who was part of His Majesty's retinue, took place. Then another wedding ceremony took place, but already at home, according to the Lutheran rite. (Despite the requests of the bride, Carl Gustav refused to convert to Orthodoxy).
Until 1917, he regularly served in the Russian army and was not at all interested in politics.
It is amusing that the Finnish nationalist newspaper Svobodnoe Slovo, which was printed abroad and smuggled into Finland, published a black list of those Finns who faithfully served the autocracy. This list also included the name of Baron Mannerheim.
We emphasize that Mannerheim did not know the Finnish language at all and, until February 1917, spoke rather contemptuously about the Finns in general.
The Finnish historian Vejo Meri wrote about him:
“During this period of his life, Mannerheim contemptuously, in a playful manner characteristic of schoolchildren, spoke about the Finnish language and Finnish-speaking people ...
In the summer of 1905, he wrote to his sister Sophie, who was going to Tavastland to learn Finnish, that it was the Chudi language. Chud is a historical name used by Russians. Mannerheim regretted that his sister was not going to Sweden, for example, but again to these "Chukhons".

During the years of the Russo-Japanese War, the baron took part in the fighting in the Far East. After returning from the war, it seemed to Mannerheim that his merits were not appreciated, that he was pushed aside
He even wrote that he "is going to join the police, because in the gendarmerie you can serve up to high positions."
But before entering the gendarmes, it did not come. Returning from Manchuria in November 1905, Mannerheim learned that his name was among the newly appointed regimental commanders. Then it was a VERY high and honorary position.
After February 1917, the collapse of the Russian army began. After October 1917, Mannerheim asked for medical leave and arrived in Petrograd, where he was nearly killed by revolutionary sailors. On December 18, 1917, Mannerheim arrived in Helsingfors by night train from Petrograd.
Since the gendarme career failed, why not become the leader of the "Chukhons" and even start learning their language?
Almost immediately, Mannerheim became commander of the White Finns.

A characteristic feature of Mannerheim's command (and the "calling card" of the White Finnish troops) was cruelty, brutal extrajudicial executions of captured prisoners and, in general, "suspicious persons".
Here is what Hjalmar Linder, Mannerheim's son-in-law, wrote (his article was published in Finland on May 28, 1918): “What is happening in the country is terrible. Despite the prohibition of the commander-in-chief, executions continue uninterruptedly. Red madness was replaced by white terror. The executions all the more give the impression of complete arbitrariness, since the victims are chosen and executed in places where no acts of violence were committed.
In prisoner of war camps, prisoners are dropping like flies.”

Historian Veio Meri noted: “A preventive measure and the basis for a tougher course was also an order promising to finally deal with the Russians who took part in the battles. These Russians served as advisers, machine gunners, artillerymen and staff officers.
After the capture of Tammerfors, 200 Russians were executed at the Tammerfors railway station. Among them were white Russian officers who were hiding in the city.

Does Russia remember these two hundred Russian people who were executed without trial or investigation at the provincial Tammerfort railway station?!
Has at least one book been written about their fate? Has at least one film been shot by Russian filmmakers, who shoot endless idiotic gangster-cop serials, with budget money?!

Finnish politicians and historians later justified their aggression and cruelty by supporting the Bolshevik government of the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic. These allegations simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
Russian troops in Finland had been incompetent since the spring of 1917.
The vast majority of Russian soldiers who were in Finland by February 1918 did not have the slightest desire to participate in the civil war, but only dreamed of leaving for Russia as soon as possible. The officers, for the most part, had a completely negative attitude towards the Bolsheviks, and accusing them of helping the Red Finns is simply vile.

Russian historian A.B. Shirokorad describes the beginning of the capture of Russian military facilities by the Finns as follows:
“In the first decade of January 1918, the White Finns approached a number of islands of the Aland archipelago on ice and attacked the units of the Russian army stationed there. The demoralized soldiers offered practically no resistance.
With large formations of Russian troops or ships, the White Finns acted more or less cautiously, and over small isolated units they carried out reprisals at their discretion.
I will cite the text of a very characteristic telegram from the head of the Abo-Aland skerry position dated January 16, 1918: “G.
Baca is occupied by a White Guard of over 5,000 men, armed with guns, machine guns, our rifles, [under] the firm leadership of German officers. I can’t resist, I’m waiting for the capture myself. The head of the Abo-Aland skerry position ... He (the head of the Abo-Aland skerry position) has already been arrested, they were kept only at the radio station, there is no district [communication service]. The communication service is all arrested. Reception, maybe the last. Duty telegraph operator.
On February 15, 1918, a detachment of Swedish ships approached the island of Aland. The Swedes presented an ultimatum to the Russian troops - before 6 am on February 18, to evacuate all Russian troops from Aland on Swedish ships to Revel. Leave all military equipment in place, with the exception of "one rifle per person." The intervention of the Russian consul in Sweden, Vaclav Vorovsky, did not help either.
In the end, military property had to be given to the Swedes and White Finns. The coastal batteries of the Abo-Aland position were of particular value. Already in January 1918, dozens of Swedish officers appeared in Vasa, who trained the White Finns. Moreover, many of them, without hesitation, walked the streets in Swedish uniforms.
An attentive reader will surely ask the question: and, in fact, on what basis could a squadron of neutral (!!!) Sweden enter Russian territorial waters and present an ultimatum to the Russian command?
... When the state is sick and its armed forces cannot fight back, there will always be more than enough hunters to rob. And what, in fact, are the Swedes worse than the Germans, the British or the Japanese?
However, the Germans intervened and the German government "asked" the Swedes, in turn, occupying the Aland Islands. The Swedes were forced to go home.

Then dramatic events began with the ships of the Baltic Fleet, which the Finns tried to capture:
“The command of the Baltic Fleet hastily removed the ships from Helsingfors. The first detachment left on March 12, 1918. It included the battleships Petropavlovsk, Sevastopol, Gangut and Poltava, the cruisers Rurik, Bogatyr and Admiral Makarov, accompanied by the icebreakers Ermak and Volynets. Five days later they all arrived safely in Kronstadt.
The Germans did not object to the withdrawal of Russian ships to Kronstadt.
But the White Finns and, first of all, Mannerheim himself did everything to seize the ships in Helsingfors, on March 29, Yermak left Kronstadt for Helsingfors for a new batch of ships. However, it was fired upon by a coastal battery from the island of Lavensaari, which had been captured by the White Finns the day before. Then "Ermak" was attacked by the icebreaker "Tarmo" captured by the Finns.
"Ermak" was forced to return to Kronstadt.
As a result of this, the second detachment of the Baltic Fleet left Helsingfors on April 4, accompanied by only three small icebreakers. This detachment included the battleships "Andrew the First-Called" and "Republic" (formerly "Emperor Paul I"), the cruisers "Bayan" and "Oleg", the submarines "Tour", "Tiger" and "Lynx", as well as a number auxiliary courts. All ships and vessels, except for the Lynx submarine, which returned to Helsingfors, safely reached Kronstadt
In Helsingfors, representatives of the consolidation of Finnish banks came to the commander of the Baltic Fleet A.V. Razvozov and offered ... to sell part of the ships of the Baltic Fleet to Finland. When asked by the fleet commander what kind of "Finland" they are talking about, representatives of the banks said that they meant, of course, the "legal government of Finland", but that they were negotiating on their own, without official authority from the white government ...
The capture of ships by the White Finns was carried out by the old pirate methods. So, the Volynets icebreaker on March 29, 1918 left Helsingfors for Revel, but on the way it was captured by an armed group of White Finns who penetrated the icebreaker under the guise of passengers (In December 1918, the Finns handed over the icebreaker to Estonia, and only on August 6, 1940 Volynets returned to its rightful owner - the Russian state, which at that time was called the USSR).
In addition to Russian ships, a detachment of English submarines was based on Helsingfors. With the permission of the Soviet government on April 4, 1918, British teams blew up submarines E 1, E 8, E 9, E 19, C 26, C 27 and C 35 on the outer Sveaborg roadstead.
From April 7 to April 12, ships and vessels of the third detachment of the Baltic Fleet left Helsingfors, a total of about 170 pennants. All ships safely reached Kronstadt. Only the hospital ship "Riga" was delayed due to fog and was detained by German ships.
37 Russian ships remained in Helsingfors under the military flag, 10 under the flag of the Red Cross and 38 under the commercial flag ...
On the morning of April 12, skirmishes began in Helsingfors between detachments of white and red Finns. By noon, German troops entered the outskirts of the city. On April 13, a detachment of German minesweepers entered the Helsingfors raid and opened artillery fire on the city. Following the minesweepers, the German coastal defense battleship Beowulf appeared on the raid and began firing 240 mm cannons at the positions of the Reds. On the evening of April 12 and on the night of April 12-13, the Germans landed a large landing in Helsingfors.
The Red Guard fiercely resisted the Germans, but by the evening of April 13, most of the buildings occupied by the Red Guards were taken.
The sailors of the Baltic Fleet maintained complete neutrality. Russian losses were random. So, on the hospital ship "Lava" a doctor died from a stray bullet.
On April 13, the dreadnoughts Westfalen and Posen entered the internal raid of Helsingfors in addition to the Beowulf. On the same day, despite the protests of the Russian command, the Germans occupied the Sveaborg fortress.
On April 14, the atrocities of the Finnish White Guard began in Helsingfors.
In order to avoid accusations of bias, I will quote the book “Civil War. Combat actions on the seas, river and lake systems”, and for non-specialists I will explain that this is not a propaganda, but a purely military publication, which until 1991 was in a special depository. “On April 14, announcements about the proposed urgent eviction of Russian citizens from Helsingfors were posted around the city. Then the White Guard began to seize Russian ships under a commercial flag, which was protested by the Russian command. Mainly tugboats and minesweepers were captured, and this was carried out in the most unceremonious way: teams they were expelled, having 5 minutes of time to collect their things, and all the provisions were taken away.
In the city and on ships, German and Finnish troops arrested Russian officers and sailors on the most ridiculous pretexts.

Local newspapers showed exceptional malice towards Russia and poured buckets of dirt on everything that was somehow connected with the Russian name ... The Finnish government imposed an embargo on hospital ships and did not at all take into account either the Red Cross flag or the Danish flag , raised after the adoption of the flotilla under the auspices of Denmark ...
All sailors and soldiers who were caught in the ranks of the Red Guards with weapons in their hands were rigorously shot. In Tammerfors alone, the number of those shot reached 350 people. Here, according to information from the newspapers, several Russian officers were also shot.

As you can see, independent Finland, capturing Russian ships at that time, spat "from a high bell tower" on the flag of the Red Cross, and on the patronage of neutral Denmark, and on the norms of international law.

Let's continue the story of A.B. Shirokorad on the tragic end of the Finnish Civil War:
“After the capture of Helsingfors, the German fleet landed troops in the eastern Finnish ports of Loviza and Kotka. From there, the German troops moved to the Lakhta-Tavastgus region, where there were significant forces of the Red Guard. By the end of April, the combined forces of the Germans and the White Finns managed to surround the Red Finns and force them to surrender.
A significant part of the prisoners were shot, the rest were sent to concentration camps.
On February 25, 1918, the decree of Baron Mannerheim was read in all the churches of Finland, according to which everyone who “provides armed resistance to the legitimate military forces of the country ... destroys food” and, in general, everyone who keeps weapons at home without permission, was to be shot.
According to Finnish, extremely underestimated data, in the spring of 1918, 8,400 Red Finns were executed, including 364 underage girls.
12.5 thousand people died in concentration camps. In general, so many people were driven into the camps that in May 1918 the Senate proposed to Mannerheim that ordinary Red Guards be released so that there would be someone to do the sowing (famine was raging in Finland at that time).
At the end of April 1918, the White Finns captured the city and fortress of Vyborg. There they took 15 thousand prisoners and about 300 Russian guns (mostly serfs). At least ten ships managed to leave Vyborg for Kronstadt with the Red Guards and their families.

By the beginning of May, the entire territory of the former Grand Duchy of Finland was in the hands of the White Finns. But this was not enough for the top of the White Finns - they dreamed of a "Great Finland".
On March 7, 1918, that is, at the height of the civil war, the head of the Finnish government, Svinhufvud, announced that Finland was ready to make peace with Soviet Russia on "moderate terms", that is, if Eastern Karelia, part of the Murmansk railway and the entire Kola Peninsula were transferred to Finland .
On March 15, General Mannerheim signed an order for three Finnish invasion groups to set out to conquer East Karelia. Mannerheim approved the "Wallenius plan", that is, a plan to capture Russian territory along the line of Petsamo - the Kola Peninsula - the White Sea - Lake Onega - the Svir River - Lake Ladoga.

Mannerheim also put forward a plan to eliminate Petrograd as the capital of Russia and turn the city and the adjacent territory of satellite cities (Tsarskoye Selo, Gatchina, Peterhof, Oranienbaum, etc.) into a “free city-republic” like Danzig ...
The objectives of the Finnish invasion of Karelia and the Kola Peninsula were not only territorial gains. A huge amount of weapons, food and various valuable equipment has accumulated in Murmansk. All this was delivered by sea by the allies in 1915-1918.
Before the revolution, the tsarist administration was unable to organize the export of all this, but during the years of the revolution, the export was completely stopped. At the end of April 1918, a large detachment of White Finns on skis moved to the port of Pechenga.

An interesting (and little-known) fact is that then, TOGETHER WITH THE BOLSHEVIK TROOPS, English and French ships and detachments fought against the White Finns !!!
“At the request of the Murmansk Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies, the English Admiral Kemp ordered to put a detachment of Russian Red Guards on the cruiser Cochrane (Cochrane, displacement 13550 tons, armament: six - 234-mm, four - 190-mm and twenty-four - 47- mm guns). On May 3, the Cochrane arrived in Pechenga, where it landed the Red Guards. To help them, the captain of the cruiser Farm sent a detachment of English sailors under the command of Captain 2nd Rank Scott. The first attack on Pechenga was carried out by the Finns on May 10th. The main forces of the Finns attacked the allies on May 12. However, by joint efforts, the English sailors and the Red Guards (mostly sailors from the Askold cruiser) managed to disperse and drive away the Finns.

In early April, the Allied command sent the French cruiser Amiral Aube to Kandalaksha to help the Soviet forces repulse the alleged Finnish raid. But the cruiser could not pass through the ice in the throat of the White Sea. Then 150 British marines were sent to Kandalaksha by rail. The Finns decided not to contact the British, and the attack on Kandalaksha was called off.
Thus, with the help of the British and French, the local Russian authorities managed to defend the Kola Peninsula from the Finns.

On May 15, Mannerheim's Headquarters published "the decision of the Finnish government to declare war on Soviet Russia" !!!
(Isn't it an extremely “peaceful” gesture of the Finnish government towards the government of the country, which just six months ago granted independence to it for the first time in history?!)

“On May 22, justifying the decision of the Finnish leadership to start a war against Soviet Russia at a meeting of the Sejm, a deputy and one of the leaders of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (later, in 1921 - 1922, vice-premier) Professor Rafael Voldemar Erich said: “Finland will bring Russia's claim for damages caused by the war (meaning the civil war in Finland. -A.Sh.). The size of these losses can only be covered by the annexation of Eastern Karelia and the Murmansk coast (Kola Peninsula) to Finland.

But then Germany intervened. Her government wisely judged that the capture of Petrograd by the Finns would cause an explosion of patriotic feelings among the population of Russia. And a direct consequence of this could be the fall of the Bolshevik government and the establishment of the power of patriots, supporters of "one and indivisible Russia", who would inevitably declare war on Germany.
As early as March 8, 1918, Emperor Wilhelm II officially announced that Germany would not wage war for Finnish interests with the Soviet government, which signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and would not support Finland's military actions if she transferred them beyond her borders.
In late May - early June, the German government, in an ultimatum form, offered Finland to abandon the attack on Petrograd. The Finnish government had to come to terms, and the overzealous "hawk" Baron Mannerheim was dismissed on May 31. As the Finnish historian Veio Meri wrote: "The Germans prevented Mannerheim from carrying out his main plan - to capture St. Petersburg." As a result, the baron had to move from Helsingfors to the Grand Hotel in Stockholm.

These historical facts are very useful to know for those Russians who now admire Baron Mannerheim, considering him a liberal, "in love with St. Petersburg and its inhabitants" and in general a "darling" and a sweet ladies' man. Unfortunately, we have a lot of such “experts in history”.

A full-scale civil war began on the night of January 27. Both sides started it simultaneously - and independently of each other. In the north of Finland, the Whites attacked the Russian military units and the Red Guards, and in the south, the Red Guards carried out a coup. The country has split.

Whites held 4/5 of the territory, but it was sparsely populated and backward Northern Finland. Developed Southern Finland with large cities of Helsingfors (Helsinki), Tammerfors (Tampere), Vyborg, etc. remained with the Reds. In terms of population, both Finlands were approximately equal.

Power in red Finland passed to the Council of People's Deputies (SNU), whose chairman was Kullervo Manner. To control the SNU, the Main Workers' Council was created from representatives from the SDPF, trade unions and the Red Guard. No organizations similar to the Soviets appeared in Finland. The workers acted through their old organizations - the trade unions and the SDPF. The only new organization that emerged during the revolutionary period was the Red Guard.

At the end of February, the SNU published a draft constitution, written mainly by Otto Kuusinen. It was supposed to be adopted in a referendum, which never took place due to the civil war. The Constitution recognized the supreme power of the Parliament, elected by universal suffrage. The power of parliament was supplemented and limited by popular referendums. In the event that the majority of Parliament violated the constitution and wanted to usurp power, the people had the right to revolt. It is curious that nothing was said about socio-economic transformations in the draft Constitution.

There was no split in the SDPF into left and right. Representatives of both the radical and moderate wings of the party are active in the revolution. Of the 92 deputies of the Seim from the SDPF, only one went over to the side of the Whites. This absence of a formalized split in the labor movement is an important difference between the Finnish revolution and other revolutions of that period.

The new government carried out the nationalization of industry very moderately and cautiously. Only enterprises abandoned by the owners were transferred under the control of the workers. In other cases, the enterprise remained with the capitalist, although there were elements of workers' control on it.

SNU took control of the state-owned Finnish Bank, but did not touch private banks. Such duality in the financial sphere created many opportunities for fraud for the owners of private banks, which negatively affected economic life.

SNU transferred the ownership of the torpars - small tenants of Southern Finland - to the lands they cultivated. The rest of the land remained with the previous owners. The laborers received nothing from the revolution. Also, the Reds could not offer anything to the peasantry of Northern Finland, which formed the basis of the White Guard - and this became one of the main reasons for the defeat of the revolution.

The Finnish revolution did not create any specialized organization for the fight against counter-revolution - no analogue of the French Committee of Public Safety or the Russian Extraordinary Commission for the fight against counter-revolution, profiteering and banditry. As a result, counter-revolutionary conspiracies acted almost with impunity. By the time the civil war began, all members of the bourgeois government were in southern Finland. But the Red Guards did not bother to find and arrest them, and they were all able to get out to white, northern Finland.

On February 2, the SNU abolished the death penalty and did not reinstate it until the end of the war. A revolutionary government waging a civil war without resorting to the death penalty is an extremely rare occurrence.

In the battles for the entire war, 3.5 thousand Red Guards and 3.1 thousand Shyutskorovites died - approximately equal losses. 1,600 people became victims of the Red Terror - Red Guard lynching. According to the minimum estimates, the White Guards shot 8 thousand people, according to the maximum - 18 thousand. There were two waves of red lynching - at the beginning of the war, when the workers and torpari, who went to the Red Guard, took revenge on the propertied classes for centuries of humiliation, and at the end of the war, when the defeated Red Guards, knowing that they were doomed, sought to take with them to the next world fallen into the hands of their enemies.

Unlike the white command, the reds vigorously fought against lynching. The proclamation of the command of the Red Guard of February 2 prescribed:

"one). In relation to unarmed prisoners of war, any use of violence is strictly prohibited;

2). All criminals for crimes committed during the revolution must be handed over to the military courts of the working class. This also applies to captured enemies; mistreatment and revenge against them is unacceptable. The honor of the revolutionary people obliges us to this. The military courts now being set up also investigate and deal with all the crimes of the counter-revolutionaries; unauthorized revenge on the part of individual Red Guards is strictly prohibited.

One of the veterans of the social democratic movement in Finland, very popular in the working environment, Yury Mäkelin, who belonged to the right wing of the SDPF, published an appeal in which he condemned the Red Guard lynching:

“The feeling of revenge should be alien to the fighter for the cause of the proletariat .... With his weapon, the worker must hold back all the bad elements that usually come out in revolutionary times. These include, for example, robbers... They are no less dangerous for the proletariat than those who are currently fighting against the workers with arms in their hands, since many, even among those who sympathize with the aspirations of the proletariat, will by misunderstanding to attribute the crimes of these elements to the workers. We want to be sure that before the god of history and the international proletariat we dare to answer for every shot fired from our ranks ”(V.M. Kholodkovsky. Revolution of 1918 in Finland and German intervention. M., 1967, p. 107).

The Finnish Reds were not Bolsheviks. They were left-wing and not-so-leftist Social Democrats who were driven by the implacable intransigence of their enemy into a civil war they did not want. And which they lost.

The fate of the war was decided at the front. The front after the first battles stabilized for some time.

There were 75,000 fighters in the Red Guard, and 70,000 in the Shutskor. Quite comparable forces with a small quantitative advantage of the Reds. But White had a qualitative advantage. The core of the shutskor was made up of rangers who had experience of the war on the side of Germany. Former tsarist officers and generals, mostly from the Swedish-speaking Finnish elite, were thrown into the shutskor. The commander-in-chief of the whites, the Finnish Swede Mannerheim, who did not know the Finnish language, was also a tsarist general.

During the civil war in Russia, most of the Red Army soldiers had the experience of the First World War behind them. A considerable part of the talented Red commanders (as well as the commanders of the Makhnovists and other peasant rebels) advanced from the non-commissioned officers of the world war. The Finnish workers and torpari who joined the Red Guard had no military experience and had to learn basic things as they went, like how to handle a rifle. They had almost no commanders of their own with combat experience, and there were much fewer Russian officers who went to fight for the Finnish revolution, like Lieutenant Colonel Svechnikov or Colonel Bulatsel (the latter would be shot by the Whites - like his two teenage sons) than the officers who fought for the Whites. Intelligent red commanders gradually developed from among the Red Guards, but time was needed, and there was not enough time. All historians say that unexpectedly great military talents were discovered by metal worker Hugo Sammela, commander of the Red Western Front. He died on March 28, 1918 during the battles for Tammerfors as a result of an accidental explosion of military depots.

Military affairs were the weakest point of the Reds. There was no military intelligence, no reserves. Commanders were chosen, orders were often discussed even at the time of the battle and were not executed. In the first half of April, when, after catastrophic defeats, the command of the Red Guard ordered an organized retreat to the east of the country, the red detachments of the Western Front, who were fighting successful battles at that time, refused to retreat and fell into the cauldron, where most of them were destroyed.

Attempts by the Red Guard to go on the offensive in February and March ended in failure. White held their positions. Nevertheless, there was hope that the situation would change in the spring. The peasants of northern Finland - most of the fighters of the shutskor - will return to plow the land, and this will drastically weaken the whites.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk changed the situation sharply in favor of the Whites. Among his conditions was the withdrawal of Russian troops from Finland (which, however, was planned to be done in any case after the end of the war with Germany) and the refusal of the Bolsheviks to help Red Finland. Part of the army was released from the Germans, and by agreement with the head of the Finnish white government, Svinhufvud, 20 thousand German soldiers under the command of General von der Goltz were sent to Finland. In exchange for military assistance, the Finnish whites agreed to the complete control of German capital over the Finnish economy and to turning Finland into a vassal of Germany.

In conditions of an approximate balance of power between the Reds and the Whites, 20,000 German soldiers became a weight that tipped the scales in favor of the Whites.

On the moral impact of the news that German troops are coming to the aid of the Whites, M.S. Svechnikov writes:

“The moral impression made by the German intervention was enormous. The latter literally paralyzed the actions of the government, not to mention the masses, who, after a great upsurge, unprecedented in the history of the labor movement, had a time of nervousness, uncertainty about their successes, and brought on panic.

At this time, Germany reached the apogee of its glory, its power, and as a result of its successes, by this moment in the world war, it was able to dictate its demands to the Soviet Government. What could little Red resist?

Finland, when a big neighbor - Soviet Russia - gave in to the Germans? It was all the more impossible for her. that all its forces were at the front against the no less strong White Army” (MS Svechnikov, op. cit., p. 90).

German troops landed on the Finnish mainland on April 3 (they occupied the Åland Islands on March 5). Even before they landed, on March 26, the Shutskorites approached Tammerfors. The fighting for Tammerfors continued until 6 April and became the decisive battle of the civil war. The Reds fought desperately, many of the Whites lost up to two-thirds of their personnel in battles, but nevertheless Tammerfors fell when the Reds ran out of ammunition. The White Terror began.

The fall of Tammerfors and the landing of the Germans became a turning point in the civil war. The unstable balance changed dramatically in favor of White. And a significant part of the workers, and - what is more terrible - the Council of People's Deputies - ceased to believe in the possibility of victory. As a result, the SNU fled from Helsingfors to Vyborg on April 8, when it became known that German troops were approaching the capital of Red Finland.

The battles for Helsingfors went on April 12-13. Abandoned by their leadership, the Red Guards of Helsingfors fought with great courage, but were defeated.

“Women played a significant role in the defense of Helsingfors. One of the participants in the struggle tells about this: “It seemed that the outcome of the battle was already a foregone conclusion, the battle began to subside, the Germans were advancing from all sides, the streets were filled with “liberators” when armed women and young girls appeared. Fighting women had already been in the Red Guard, but now they appeared in multitudes. And their appearance in Helsingfors among the Red Guards gave the latter vigor and inspiration ... They put on their best dresses, realizing that this was the last time in their lives ”... 175 workers who occupied the Burgstrem tobacco factory held back the enemy’s offensive for 6 hours. Almost all of them died.

Perhaps it was the heroic defense of Helsingfors or Tammerfors that the Finnish labor poet Cassie Kaatra had in mind when he wrote in his Legend of the Red Banner:

The pavement smoked with blood;

At the cost of countless deaths

Men and women and children

The city held on ... "(V.M. Kholodkovsky. The Revolution of 1918 in Finland and the German intervention. M., 1967, p. 281).

The fall of Helsingfors meant that the civil war was lost. The SNU, having gone to Vyborg and having lost faith in victory, decided to organize the retreat of the Red Guard units to Soviet Russia. Members of the SNU frantically shuttled between Vyborg and Petrograd, rumors spread in the Red Guard units that “treason had settled in all headquarters” and that the leadership was going to escape, leaving the rank and file fighters behind. Rumors have been confirmed. When the Germans and White Finns approached Vyborg on April 24, most of the members of the SNU fled on a steamer to Petrograd.

Two years later, a group of former soldiers of the Finnish Red Guard, who became Bolsheviks and Red Army soldiers in Soviet Russia, committed a deed, the only one in the history of the world communist movement - on their own initiative they shot some of the leaders of the Communist Party of Finland. In an explanatory note to Lenin, which was written by members of the “revolving opposition” who surrendered to the Cheka, among the crimes of the leadership of the Communist Party of Finland was indicated a double flight in April 1918 - from Helsingfors and Vyborg:

“... You [Vladimir Ilyich] did not hear the curses expressed by the workers when these gentlemen cowardly fled at the most decisive moment, leaving tens of thousands of workers to be torn to pieces by the White Guards. They could have saved them, but they didn't even try. We heard these furious curses, which were shouted out by a huge revolutionary-minded mass, left without a leadership in a disorganized state, not knowing what to do when the deadly ring of the White Guards was compressed from all sides. The horrific news was on everyone's lips that the management had run in disgrace to save their own skin - not to save the idea! (Comintern and Finland. 1919-1943. M., 2003, p. 79).

Of the members of the SNU, he refused to flee to Petrograd and remained with the doomed Red Guards until the end only Edward Gylling, who was in charge of finance in the SNU. An economist and historian by education, before the revolution he belonged to the moderate wing of the Finnish social democracy. Gylling participated in the battles for Vyborg all 5 days - from April 24 to April 29, then managed to escape, illegally made his way to Helsingfors, and from there to Sweden. There he moved to the Bolshevik positions, in 1920 he moved to Soviet Russia, met with Lenin and became the leader of Soviet Karelia, where he pursued a policy of Finnization. In 1935 he was removed from the leadership of Soviet Karelia, and in 1937 he was shot.

In the Stalinist concentration camp in 1939, the former chairman of the "red diet" and the Council of People's Deputies Kullervo Manner, who had headed the Communist Party of Finland for many years, died. In 1936, Eino Rakhia and Yurie Sirola died in the USSR. Both of them by that time had lost political influence. In 1923, Yury Mäkelin, a veteran of the Finnish labor movement, who by that time had become one of the leaders of the legal Socialist Labor Party, died under mysterious circumstances in a Finnish prison. Other leaders of red Finland survived Otto Kuusinen, who died in 1964 in the USSR, and who died in 1963 in the USA, who had long since retired from politics and did not become a Bolshevik, Oskari Tokoi.

After the fall of Vyborg, another orgy of white terror began. Among the victims of the White Terror, in addition to the Finnish workers and the Red Guards, there were also Russian speakers living in Vyborg. Moreover, the Russian speakers, who sympathized with the Reds, tried to escape from Vyborg together with the Red Guard detachments, and apolites or people in general who sympathized with the Whites and were waiting for them as liberators from the revolutionary nightmare fell under the distribution.

The names of 327 Russians shot by the Whites after the occupation of Vyborg have been precisely established. According to the modern Finnish researcher L. Westerlund, the number of those executed was somewhat higher - from 360 to 420 people. In 1910, 5240 Russian-speaking people lived in Vyborg. Thus, about a tenth of the Russian-speaking population of Vyborg was shot, and given that almost exclusively adult men were shot, in this group of the Russian population, the proportion of those shot is generally off scale. Among the 327 "Russians" shot there were 37 non-Russians, including 23 Poles and 4 Ukrainians. (L. Westerlund. We were waiting for you as liberators, and you brought us death. St. Petersburg, 2013, pp. 28, 40, 87).

Very often, the motive for the execution was the desire of the advocates of sacred private property to enrich themselves at the expense of the property of the person being shot:

“It was said that the director of the grocery store, Antonovsky, shouted: “They took all the money from me, 16,000.” In some cases, the fingers of the executed were cut off to remove the rings.

The Russians who were shot on April 29, 1918 between the ramparts were robbed so thoroughly that the next day the relatives found their dead half-naked. On the morning of April 30, 1918, merchant Vilhelm Kontula visited the place of executions, "when the partisans took off clothes and other things from the dead."

The commander of the Vyborg guard Turunen also visited there in the interval of 04/01/05/1918. “The bodies were in the same positions as on April 29, all the officers were robbed almost naked. Only a few were still wearing blue officer trousers. Georg Hemberg, a military officer from the Vaasa regiment, who was present on the scene, saw how some of the soldiers participating in the mass shooting began to inspect the belongings of the dead, apparently in order to appropriate boots and belts, as well as valuable items such as watches,

wallets and money. When one of the soldiers threw away a pair of bad boots, Hemberg took them for himself. In the stories of the relatives of the dead and in the demands for compensation, there are many statements about money and valuables missing from the deceased. The tailor Markus Weiner, according to his wife, lost his ring, silver pocket watch and 5,000 marks after his death. On the day of his death, the executed civil engineer Nikolai Nikitin had with him a silver cigarette worth 200 marks, a gold ring with a signet for 100 marks, ten gold Finnish coins, a nickel watch for 50 marks and 1,500 marks, which disappeared after his death.150 A military engineer Konstantin Nazarov lost a gold watch on a gold chain for 600 marks, an engagement ring for 90 marks, and a wallet containing 2,500 marks and an unknown but even larger amount of Russian money. On the day of his death, the former junior artillery officer Martin Eck had 1,200 rubles, a silver watch, a gold ring and other family valuables that were not found with the body. Piano master Fritz Touklenok's pocket was lined with money and securities that had been stolen. He had 4,000 marks, 2,000 rubles and securities whose total value was approximately 30,000 marks. The sexton of the Roman Catholic Church, Stanislav Zakrevsky, had 1,000 marks on the day of the murder, a silver pocket watch worth 80 marks, an engagement ring worth 125 marks, as well as a rosary and clothes worth 200 marks. Money and things are gone. Body

worker Alexei Zykov was found robbed. He had 800 marks and 800 rubles with him. On the day of his death, the tailor Andrei Pchelkin had a silver watch worth 100 marks, an engagement ring and 25 marks, which were missing. Tailor Alexander Pchelkin lost a gold ring with a stone for 75 marks and 50 marks in cash.

Based on all these data, it can be concluded that the embezzlement of money and valuables was at least one of the good reasons for the murders of Russians that occurred in connection with the capture of Vyborg. It is possible that some of the killers participated in the executions, primarily guided by their own thirst for profit, while the motive of the Jaeger leadership was the elimination of Russians in Finland. The goals of looting are explained by the mixed composition of the executioners. Probably, the opportunity to get easy money seduced adventurers, criminals and money-hungry ordinary soldiers to participate in mass executions, clearly organized by people from the command. ((L. Westerlund. We were waiting for you as liberators, and you brought us death. St. Petersburg, 2013, pp. 58–59)

In total, after the defeat of the revolution, from 80 to 90 thousand Reds were arrested. Of these, from 8 to 18 thousand were shot, from 12 to 15 thousand starved to death in concentration camps. At that time, 3.5 million people lived in Finland, while half of the country's population supported the Reds, so the proportion of those executed and tortured among the Reds' supporters is huge.

“What is happening in the country is terrible. Executions continue unceasingly. The red madness was actually replaced by white terror. And these executions give the impression of arbitrariness, for the victims are seized where no violence [by the Reds] has been committed and arouse unquenchable hatred where there was none before. Thousands of widows, tens of thousands of orphans have lost their breadwinners, and the state has not taken the slightest step to mitigate their need, or even give instructions about it. In the camps prisoners are dropping like flies. In the prison camp at Jakobstad, in the first three weeks of May, 21 prisoners died from an epidemic and 26 from starvation. In Sveaborg, the prisoners are in an unheard-of difficult situation. And representatives of the good upper classes walk around and say: "Let them die, they deserve it, the infection will be destroyed by the roots." But a simple person in the village, even one who throughout the entire rebellion, despite all the threats and promises, was white, says: this will give rise to hatred that will not go away for generations. It goes without saying that for those who survive these months of horror, anxiety and despair due to the death of their relatives, due to the destruction of their home or because of the humiliation of the fatherland, it will be difficult to forget this ... ”(V.M. Kholodkovsky. Revolution 1918 in Finland and the German intervention. M., 1967, p. 298).

Back in the 1980s in Finland, veterans of the Red Guard and veterans of the shutskor were sent to different nursing homes to avoid fights caused by the events of 70 years ago.

What would happen if the Reds won the civil war in Finland? The Finnish Reds were not Bolsheviks. They advocated not for the dictatorship of the proletariat, but for a parliamentary system and their socio-economic goals were very moderate. Left to its own devices, the Finnish Revolution, if it had won, would have created a welfare state with a parliamentary system - and this could have influenced events throughout northern Europe. A modern author writes:

“The victory of the Reds in Finland would greatly change the course of historical events in Scandinavia and the Northwest. With a high probability, the Norwegian Workers' Party could come to power in Norway, which at that time was much more left-wing than the current one - it even entered the Comintern.

In Sweden, the Social Democrats were also very strong, although there were not as leftists as Lenin's Social Democrats. But the Finnish socialists were by no means as radical as the Bolsheviks - by the way, maybe that's why they lost.

So there was quite the prospect of forming a left-wing socialist alliance in Scandinavia, which would be in allied relations with Soviet Russia and to some extent replace Germany, which Lenin counted on in the event of the victory of the German revolution - as a source of technology and an example of industrial culture.

This, once again, is guesswork, but the entire development, including the USSR, including its configuration, could have taken a different path. The Russian revolution and everything that followed it, precisely because it took place in the weak link of capitalism, depended very much on many accidents: let Lenin live a little longer, do not prevent the rebellion of Grigoriev of the Red Army from coming to the aid of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, develop according to the Battle of Warsaw is different... And there are a number of such points that could change the course of history in the USSR and in Europe very much.

So the idea that the victory of the Red Finns would have simply made another republic in the USSR, and everything else would have been as it was, is very naive.

We don't know how it would be. But very, very much would have been very different. Maybe even better.

This option has not been implemented. The defeat of the Reds and the rampant White Terror in Finland became an important factor due to which the events in Soviet Russia went exactly the way they went. The Finnish Reds wanted to preserve democracy, sought to avoid the Red Terror, abolished the death penalty and did not create the Cheka. The Finnish propertied classes, having won a victory over a humane enemy, did not make any concessions to the vanquished for their humanity and flooded the country with blood. The Bolsheviks made the logical conclusion from this that they have one alternative in front of them - victory or death. And that you need to win at any cost. Otherwise, the Russian whites will flood the workers and peasants with blood on Russia, just as the Finnish whites flooded Finland with the blood of the workers and torpari. The victorious White Terror in Finland became one of the important incentives for the introduction of the Red Terror in Russia...

Alexey Kupriyanov, for Strike.

The centenary of the October Revolution in modern Russia was not celebrated in any way, except for showing a few rather primitive pseudo-historical films. But in fairness, it should be noted that in other countries where their own revolutionary events have taken place, they try not to remember them.

The events of October 1917 in Petrograd caused not only a civil war in Russia, but an attempted red revolution in Finland, which led to a short but very brutal civil war between Reds and Whites, which ended in victory for the Whites. In Finland itself, the authorities still cannot give a neutral name to the events of 1918. Previously, the civil war was called the "war of independence", referring to the participation of some Russian military units in the battles on the side of the Reds. Sometimes the bloody year of 1918 was called the time of the "red rebellion". Only recently has the neutral term "civil war" been adopted. But what kind of war was it, which is still an unhealed wound in Finland?

After another Russian-Swedish war of 1808-09. Finland was annexed to Russia. But the idealist Tsar Alexander I, instead of making a couple of new Russian provinces out of the annexed territories, decided to play with constitutionality and created an autonomous state under his leadership - the Grand Duchy of Finland. Status of Finland 1809-1917 still not understood by historians. The Finns themselves for the most part consider their Grand Duchy to be an independent state, connected with Russia only by a dynastic union and in contractual relations with the Russian Empire (although the autocracy, by definition, cannot have contractual relations with anyone). By the way, the Finnish constitution granted by Alexander I was in force until 2000. However, when in Finland there is a need to inflate Russophobic sentiments, then the times of the Grand Duchy are considered Russian authorities, which “oppressed” the Finns. But be that as it may, the Grand Duchy had its own parliament (the Russians called it the Sejm), the government (Senate), the monetary unit - the Finnish mark, and also, for some time, its own small army. Under the scepter of the Romanovs, the principality prospered, the Finns did not pay general imperial taxes, did not incur recruitment duties (instead of it they paid a cash contribution of 1 ruble 35 kopecks per inhabitant per year). For a century of existence in greenhouse conditions, Finland became very rich, its population grew from 860 thousand inhabitants in 1809 to 3.1 million in 1914, despite the emigration of 300 thousand Finns to the USA and Canada.

Finland tried in every way to show its "independence". Already in 1915, at the height of the First World War, Finland declared its neutrality. True, about 500 Finns joined the Russian army, and about 2 thousand other Finns, mostly of Swedish origin, went to Germany, where they joined the so-called. "Finnish rangers" who fought on the side of the Germans. The first three years of World War I were a period of prosperity for Finland. Like other neutrals, Finland made very good money in a foreign war. For 1914-16 several tens of millionaires appeared in the country. The Finnish countryside flourished especially. There was never serfdom in Finland, there was basically enough arable land, there was a problem of economic development of unused land in the north of the country, agricultural technology was at a very high level. Food products, especially livestock products from Finland, generously paid for in Russian gold, were distributed throughout the Russian Empire, since most of the adult men and horses were mobilized from the Russian village and it was difficult to take anything from there without a surplus. Through neighboring Sweden, the Finns also traded with Germany. True, the golden rain that fell on Finland only exacerbated many social problems, because those who are called the working masses did not benefit from the prosperity of the war years, since the growth in wages of workers was neutralized by inflation. Speculation on the black market caused the high cost of food, official statistics ascertained the facts of starvation among the urban unemployed. It was necessary to introduce a card system for the distribution of essential goods. It is not surprising that left-wing ideas became popular in Finland, the Social Democratic Party (similar in program to the Russian Mensheviks, however, the party also included a militant wing of the radical left) became a mass party. Basically, the party had supporters among the urban workers, part of the urban middle strata, and only a small part of the torpari - rural tenants.

Meanwhile, in February 1917, the Russian monarchy collapsed, which at the same time was the Finnish monarchy, because the autocratic Emperor of All Russia was also the constitutional Grand Duke of Finland. The Finns are a solid people, but slow, they thought for a long time what to do now. While they thought, another revolution took place in Russia, and the Bolsheviks took power. Seeing that Russia was slipping into chaos, on December 6, 1917, the Finnish Sejm proclaimed the independence of Finland. However, in order to gain recognition of independence in the world, Finland had to be recognized by Soviet Russia. And then the Finnish government delegation went to bow to Lenin in Petrograd. The leader of the world proletariat graciously received the leaders of the Finnish bourgeoisie and gave the Finns freedom. On the evening of December 31, 1917, a few hours before the new year 1918, the Council of People's Commissars officially recognized the independence of Finland. In Finland, at first, independence was vigorously celebrated for several days, and then the Finns began to shoot at each other.

Like any civil war, in Finland, long before the outbreak of hostilities, there was a psychological readiness for war. As early as the summer of 1917, detachments of the Red Guard, oriented towards the Social Democratic Party, began to spring up spontaneously. The Bolshevik units of the Russian army stationed in Finland provided some assistance to the Finnish Reds. But, in contrast to Russia, paramilitary units of supporters of the bourgeois parties also began to appear at the same time. They went down in history under the name of shützkor (Swedish for "security corps"). Unlike the Red Guards, among whom there was no single command and there were very few weapons, the Shutskorites were well organized and armed. The shutskor received weapons from Sweden, as well as from the arsenals of the Russian army in Finland, which were quickly captured by the beginning of autumn 1917. On January 16, Lieutenant General of the Russian army, a Swede by birth, who became a Finn only at the age of 50, but until the end of his long life did not learn the Finnish language well, Baron Mannerheim, was appointed commander-in-chief of the formed white units for the future civil war already on January 16.

The whole of 1917 in Finland was spent in strikes, street rallies, and sometimes skirmishes between the Red Guards and the Shutskorites. It became clear that the country was heading towards a general civil war. And the war began.

At the same time, the Finns themselves have not fought for more than a century. Actually, the Finns were not previously a people of warriors. The Swedish kings recruited from their Finnish possessions, but in general, quite a few natives of Finland became officers and generals. In the Grand Duchy of Finland, representatives of the Swedish nobility made a career in the ranks of the Russian imperial army and navy, but, as was said, for almost the entire history of being part of the Russian Empire, the Finns were not subject to conscription into the Russian army. There were very few people who served in the army, and even more so, combatants among the inhabitants of Finland. It is precisely the lack of military traditions, paradoxically, that explains the ease with which both red and white Finns rushed into battle against each other with some kind of calf enthusiasm. Among the paradoxes of the Finnish civil war was also the fact that the Finns, who have many virtues as a nation, never gravitated towards radical, and even more so, revolutionary transformations. In the history of Finland before 1918 there were neither popular uprisings, nor, of course, revolutions. In Finnish folklore there was not even an image of a noble robber. The Finns have always respected private property, and all possible conflicts sought to be resolved by compromise. But in 1918, the Finns suddenly decided on a social revolution and civil war.

The Finnish bourgeois parties, having government power, quickly realized that the Reds would have to be suppressed by military force, and therefore, arming and training shutskor, they negotiated with the Germans about the return to Finland of the “Finnish rangers”, who had extensive military experience. The Reds, in turn, decided to play ahead of the curve and decided on the evening of January 27 to launch an armed uprising, which would be the beginning of a revolution.

Late in the evening, at 11 p.m. on January 27, 1918, an uprising of detachments of Finnish Red Army soldiers broke out in Helsingfors (Helsinki). The same date is also considered the date of the start of the Finnish Civil War. On the same day, the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (Suomen sosialistinen työväentasavalta) was proclaimed. The coup was supported by 89 out of 92 Seim deputies elected on the list of the SDPF. Soon, the Reds occupied most of the cities. The country was divided into the south, where most of the industrial cities (and, accordingly, a significant part of the working class), were located, which came under the control of the reds, and the north, agrarian and conservative, became a stronghold of the whites. Since the days of Swedish rule, a Swedish minority has lived in western Finland, a very prosperous one. Although a number of Red commanders came from among the Finnish Swedes, the Swedish regions of the country supported the Whites in the main. There, in the Swedish region of Osterbotnia, in the coastal city of Vasa, was the political headquarters of the whites.

To a large extent, this war was unprofessional, most of the fighters on both sides were amateurs in military affairs, and the Reds had no military discipline. Therefore, clear front lines arose only near large settlements of strategic importance, as well as near railway junctions and major roads.

For several months there were battles, without bringing an advantage to either side. There were about 30 thousand Red Guards at the beginning of the war, by the summer their number exceeded 70 thousand. About 10 thousand Russian soldiers and sailors from among the Russian garrisons, supporters of the Bolsheviks, also fought on their side. At the beginning of February, there were still 75,000 Russian soldiers in the country. However, they did not feel much desire to take up arms. Russian troops sought to return home, and the civil war of the Finns was a foreign war for them. The situation became even more aggravated after the conclusion of the Russian-German peace on March 3, 1918 in Brest-Litovsk: under the terms of the agreement, the Bolsheviks undertook to withdraw Russian soldiers from Finland, which was done. A certain number of Russians continued to fight on the side of the Reds after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. However, there were also Russians who fought on the side of the Whites. In a three-volume study by Finnish historians about the human losses in Finland in 1918, Bogdanoff Nikolai, who were killed by the Shutskors, are mentioned; Feobanov Wasilii, Miinin Nikolai, Terehoff Nikolai, etc.

But if the Russian troops left, then other foreign soldiers came. From the very beginning of the war, volunteers from Sweden fought on the side of the whites. At the end of February 1918, huntsmen who had received education there returned from Germany, who immediately took the lead of several formations. The number of whites almost equaled the number of reds, reaching 70 thousand fighters. But still, the turning point in the war came only when the German intervention began. On March 7, the White Finns concluded a peace treaty with Germany, an agreement on trade and navigation, as well as a secret military agreement that actually establishes a German protectorate over Finland. On April 3, a German division under the command of Rüdiger von der Goltz landed at Cape Gangut in the southwestern part of the country. From the sea, the German division was supported by a detachment of German ships of Admiral Moyer. Russian sailors in the roadstead of Hanko blew up 4 submarines and 1 floating base, so that they would not get to the Germans. 12 thousand battle-hardened soldiers of von der Goltz quickly swept away the scattered Red detachments. Eleven days later, the division paraded through the central streets of Helsingfors. The Russian ships of the Baltic Fleet left Helsingfors for Kronstadt. On April 6, in Loviza, east of Helsingfors, in the rear of the Reds, a three thousandth German detachment landed under the command of General Brandenstein. At the same time, the white units of Mannerheim also went on the offensive. The agony of Red Finland began. The remnants of the Red Guard retreated towards Vyborg, and along with the soldiers were their wives and children with home belongings. On April 29, Vyborg was captured by the Finns. On May 5, the Whites reached the border with Russia. Actually, individual detachments of the Reds still continued to resist, but, having no hope of success, broke through into Soviet Russia. The last clash took place on May 15. The civil war, which lasted 108 days, ended with the victory of the Whites.

The end of the war was only the beginning of mass terror. Even during the period of hostilities, both the Reds and the Whites carried out massacres. But these were excesses generated by the chaos of war. But the systematic mass destruction of their political opponents, including ordinary Red Guards and their families, began after the victory of the Whites. Along with mass extrajudicial executions, captured Reds were driven into concentration camps, where there were about 70 thousand people.

But along with the Red Finns, repressions fell upon the Russian population of Finland. The result of the war was the ethnic cleansing of Finland from the Slavic population. The capture of Vyborg, in which the Russian population exceeded 10% of the total 50,000th population of the city, was accompanied by the mass destruction of Russians. Finnish historian Lars Westerlund, editor of the three-volume edition "Venäläissurmat Suomessa 1914─22", that during the capture of the city by the Whites, more than 3 thousand Russians were killed, that is, more than half of the Russian Vyborzhans. In general, the Russians who permanently lived in Finland were mostly businessmen, engineers, freelancers, as well as retired officers and officials. Almost all of them were wealthy people who did not support the Reds. But the triumphant Finnish "freedom" led to the expropriation of Russian property in Finland, and the expulsion, and sometimes even the destruction of most Russians. The result was a sharp decline in the Russian (and, more broadly, the entire non-Finnish) population of the country. It is significant that the majority of white Russian emigrants, once in Finland, did not stay there, leaving for other, more Russian-friendly countries. After the Finnish Civil War of 1918, Russophobia did not disappear in Finland. The Russians who remained in Finland were given unbearable living conditions, which forced many of them to emigrate.

In total, according to the modern Finnish historian H. Meinander, almost 11 thousand soldiers died in this war (5300 Reds, 3400 Whites, 600 Russians, 300 Germans). Taking into account all those executed, as well as victims of terror and disease, the total number of human losses reached 38,500 people. More than a quarter of them (13,500) died from epidemics and exhaustion in the camps where the Red prisoners of war were kept. For a country with a population of 3 million, these were terrible numbers. This is approximately the same as in the USA in 2018, 3 million 800 thousand Americans would have died in six months. Another 30,000 Red Finns (1% of the population) left for Soviet Russia.

Actually, the war continued, but already in the adjacent territory of Soviet Russia. At the height of the civil war, when its outcome was not yet clear, on February 23, 1918, Mannerheim declared that "he would not sheathe his sword until Eastern Karelia was liberated from the Bolsheviks." Two weeks later, the future president issued an order to occupy the territory along the line of the Kola Peninsula - the White Sea - Lake Onega - the Svir River - Lake Ladoga. By January 1919, they occupied the Porosozersk and Rebolsk volosts, and by the end of April they reached the near approaches to Petrozavodsk. On May 15, 1918, the Finnish government officially declared war on Soviet Russia. The counteroffensive of the Red Army, which began, ended with the defeat of the Finns near Vidlitsa and Tuloksa, but the defeat did not cool their warlike ardor. The Finns participated in the defeat of the Reds in Estonia, continued to make incursions into Russian Karelia. It is characteristic that the Red Finns, who found themselves in exile in Soviet Russia, continued to fight against the White Finns. So, at the beginning of 1922, a detachment of Red Finns under the command of Toivo Antikainen inflicted a number of defeats on the White Finns. These were the last battles of the civil war in Finland.

However, historically the winner of the war was the Finnish working class. The bourgeoisie of Finland, who did not want to experience the fear of 1918 any longer, preferred to buy off their proletarians, creating a state with strong social protection as a whole. Thus, the proletarian revolution won with its military defeat.

April 7th, 2016

"In the city of Tammerfors, which became the vanguard of the struggle of the workers against the White Guards, almost from the very first days of the revolution (February), the local Committee of the Social Democratic Party took over the general leadership of the training of the workers. This Committee set itself the task of forming, with the assistance of the Russian troops, the core of the Finnish Red Guard.
For this purpose, I, as the head of the 106th Infantry Division, together with the Divisional Committee, placed at the disposal of the party 300 rifles (that is, supernumerary in terms of the available number of soldiers). Every precaution was taken to hide this transmission from the Finnish bourgeoisie and their own rank and file soldiers.
These rifles were transferred from the barracks to the headquarters of the 106th Infantry Division, which was located next to the workhouse, where these rifles, sealed in boxes, were transferred.
The training of the members of the Social Democratic Party in the military formation began, which was carried out in the workers' house and in its yard at night. I personally took an active part in this training, along with some Russian instructors.

Despite all the measures taken, the bourgeoisie nevertheless found out about the transfer of weapons and the preparations of the Social Democratic Party, and, on occasion, Colonel Kremmer, assistant to the governor, unofficially let me know that they knew about our connection and assistance to the Finnish Red Guard and advised us not to interfere in these local affairs.
Lieutenant Mukhanov, appointed by me as the commandant of the city of Tammerfors (later shot by the Whites), took an active part, together with the police (exclusively workers) in the work to detect White Guard organizations, weapons depots in the city and surrounding areas and liquidate them.
True, there were cases when the White Guards put up desperate resistance and had to call on Russian troops to help the police.

By these measures, the Tammerfors area was largely cleared of the White Guards, which was especially useful to us at the outbreak of the civil war in January, when the Whites were still too weak to attack our garrison and the Finnish Red Guard. Of course, the secret footage of the White formations, as the future showed, still remained.
The main areas of the formations of the Red Guard were large work centers, which were also occupied by Russian troops, while the White Guard, pursued by the Reds, was grouped mainly in the north, west, in the area of ​​Vaza, Nikolaistadt, and also in the east, in Karelia .
The sources of the formations of the Reds were the workers, the Whites - the peasant population and the intelligentsia, mainly Swedish. There is no doubt that the Finnish bourgeoisie, in their calculations to rely on armed force, had in mind, in addition to part of the Finnish population, also the help of the Germans and Swedes.

At first, the government of Svinhufvud had at its disposal no more than 2,000 White Guards in the Nikolaistadt region, trained even before the break with the left. But their contingent was quite good, consisting of young people, quite courageous and disciplined. Subsequently, the Shutskor formations joined there.
The core of the formations was the 27th Jaeger Battalion, which was quickly transferred from Germany in anticipation of a civil war. There were many officers in the battalion. The soldiers received excellent military training during the World War while on the Northern Front against the Russian troops.
The Finnish riflemen, still under the impression of their service in Germany, were hostile to the Russian troops, which, in connection with the agitation of the whites, who blamed the Russian Bolsheviks for the outbreak of the civil war, created fertile ground for inspiring the Finnish white troops.

Finally, Swedish volunteers began to arrive to help the White Guard - partly from Sweden, partly from the local Swedish population, with an anti-Russian and Germanophile orientation. Of these volunteers, a Swedish volunteer brigade was formed, which significantly strengthened the White Guard army.
Some of the weapons were secretly transported by the White Guard government in advance from Helsingfors to Nikolaistadt; then he turned to Sweden for help and, although officially refused assistance in weapons and supplies, he received this assistance unofficially throughout the civil war.
But these weapons were not enough, especially artillery. Therefore, the White Guards came up with a plan for a surprise attack on the Russian troops stationed in Finland, and they managed to carry it out mainly in relation to the units located in the Nikolaystadt, Jakobstadt, Torneo and Seinajoki regions.
Parts of the border guards of the 1st Finnish border regiment, the l-th Petrograd cavalry border division, the 2nd separate Baltic cavalry brigade, subordinate to the command of the 42nd army corps, and the 423rd Luga infantry regiment with one light battery, were subjected to this attack, subordinate to the command of the 106th Infantry Division.

This attack on Russian units scattered in different places, which was carried out only with the assistance of a certain part of our disgruntled command staff, put into the hands of the Whites approximately two thousand rifles, twenty machine guns and one light six-gun battery with a cash set of ammunition.
The commanding staff of the Finnish White Guard was mainly from the Swedes, some who arrived with the Finnish rangers, some who joined voluntarily. Then, after capturing them, some Russians were invited to join the ranks of the White Guard. Who exactly got there, I do not know.
Here I will dwell on the characteristics of the 423rd Luga Infantry Regiment, which was subordinate to me as the elected head of the division, but which, in fact, was not subordinate to anyone.
This regiment (the 423rd Luzhsky), being previously quite disciplined, by the time of the struggle with the Finnish White Guard showed signs of complete decomposition, and even the elected commander of the regiment, Ensign Yushkevich (Bolshevik), was powerless to force this regiment to obey him.

It seemed that the White Guard, which attacked the Russian troops and the Finnish Red units at the same time, should have raised Soviet Russia to fight against them, but, apparently, the international situation did not allow this, and the Soviet Government left the question of further struggle in Finyandpi to the mercy of fate and refused to interfere in the initiative of political bodies and the military command of the Russian troops in Finland.
As for the condition of the Russian troops in Finland, then, as mentioned above, the military units were close to complete decay and did not have a particular inclination to fight the White Guard. These reasons later played an important role in the final failure of the struggle of the Finnish proletariat against its bourgeoisie and in the triumph of the latter.

Thus, the Finnish White Guards, taking advantage of the low vigilance of the Russian troops, launched a surprise attack on them. Parts of the border guards and the 423rd Luga Infantry Regiment, located in the Nikolaystadt-Uleaborg area, underwent an initial defeat.
Then they quickly continued their operations and by January 15/28 occupied the Kaske-Kristinenstadt-Seinajoki area, capturing the rest of the 423rd regiment, one light battery of the 106th infantry division, a position battery (6-inch guns) and parts of the border guards .
The soldiers were arrested in their barracks, the Bolsheviks were shot, and the officers without weapons were released. Among those shot was the commander of the 423rd Luga Infantry Regiment Ensign Yushkevich.
According to the plan of the whites, they intended to attack the Russian troops and the Finnish Red Guard throughout Finland, but this was not successful in other places.

Having captured, by means of a sudden attack on the Russian troops, weapons, uniforms and all kinds of valuable property of the units of the troops, in which the White Guard felt a special need, General Mannerheim brought the White Guard units into order, bringing the forces to about two regiments of infantry with two batteries and a cavalry regiment, a total up to ten thousand people.
General Mannerheim promised the White Guard government of Svinhufvud to put an end to the Red uprising within two weeks, and on January 15, 1918, he moved to the city of Tammerfors, with the immediate goal of capturing the headquarters of the 106th Infantry Division and the working center of Finland.
From Petrograd and Helsingfors there were absolutely no indications of what course of action to take in relation to the outbreak of civil war between white and red Finns.
The mood of the garrison, it should be noted, has significantly decreased these days. Voices were already heard that there was no need to intervene in the civil war. This was the mood of the majority of the Tammerfors garrison.

Considering all the circumstances, on the one hand, the need to prevent the troops of the Tammerfoor garrison from suffering a fate similar to other garrisons of northern Finland, and on the other, the need for a common front with the Finnish workers to fight the White Guards, so as not to undermine the authority of the Russian army among the population of Finland, I quite independently and without hesitation decided to come out with the troops not only of the Tammerfors garrison, but of the entire division in defense of the working class of Finland.
Having made such a decision, I immediately sent forward detachments of mixed composition, i.e. part of the Russian soldiers, part of the Finnish Red Guards, to occupy the stations of Orivessi and Nokkia, and, in addition, assigned the task of liquidating the small white gangs scattered in the Tammerfors area to the Finnish Red Guard.
At the same time, I began the concentration of parts of the division along the Tammerfors-Rihimaki railway line. Before the start of the struggle, I called out the machine-gun team of the 421st Infantry Regiment of Tsarskoye Selo from Raumo, and the regiment itself was to be concentrated in Abo. The damage to the railroads, however, delayed the execution of my plan for a long time.

Volunteers of the 422nd Kolpinsky Infantry Regiment, together with the Finnish Red Guard, whose number increased every day, formed a detachment of about two infantry battalions, two guns and ten machine guns. The Finnish Red Guards included about five hundred people in this detachment.
Parts were loaded onto the train and reached the station. Korkiakoski, which was occupied by our advance detachment, moving from Orivessi along the railway.
In the area of ​​​​July station, which is 30-35 kilo. northeast of Tammerfors, the first clash occurred with the advanced units of the White Guard, which were defeated, driven back to the north and then fortified in the Vilnul region, occupying the railway bridge, the station buildings and the isthmus between the lakes.

This clash can be considered the first serious battle between the Reds and Whites during the outbreak of the civil war in Finland.
It was of great importance in that regard. what happened between the Russian revolutionary troops and the Finnish White Guard, and then made it possible for the Whites to feel that more serious preparation and a longer period were needed to defeat the Reds, and by no means the two weeks during which General Meinerheim was going to put an end to the Red uprising.

From January 18 (31) to maintain the garrison of the mountains. Tammerfors, the following units arrived: a detachment of scouts of the 421st Tsarskoye Selo Regiment (volunteers) with ten machine guns; about two hundred and fifty volunteers of the 114th Infantry Regiment.
Armored train, built by the Finnish Red Guard in the mountains. Helsingfors and consisted of several wagons protected by thin armor from rifle and machine gun fire and armed with machine guns and several detachments of the Finnish Red Guard of various sizes.
Finally, the Baltic Fleet sent a detachment of anarchist sailors of two hundred and fifty people, who, having appeared in the mountains. Tammerforse with black banners made a depressing impression on the Finnish bourgeoisie and cheered up the Red Guards and Russian volunteers. The sailors turned to me with a request to send them to the most dangerous place, which soon became possible.

On January 23, our detachment, consisting of two companies of Russians with a small part of the Red Guards and two machine guns, sent even earlier to occupy the Nokkiya station, upon reaching Laviya, attacked the whites, who, numbering about five hundred people, dispersed at the first shots.
On January 24, a detachment of Red Guards, consisting of two hundred people, with two machine guns, under the command of sailors, attacked and dispersed a detachment of whites in the Lautakil region, south of the railway.
From that moment on, the situation on the Bjørneborg-Tammerfors railway was restored, and the latter was at our complete disposal.
On January 19, in the city of Björneborg itself, battles began between the White Guard, formed in its district by force before the Revolution and thousands of people, and the Red garrison, assisted by Russian troops, consisting of border guards, sailors and artillerymen of the 2nd group of positional batteries.
Especially serious fighting took place on January 21, after which the Whites withdrew to the north. By January 24, a detachment of Reds, consisting of three hundred people, moving north with the help of Russian troops, captured the estate, in which, after a shootout, eleven whites and carts with rifles were taken prisoner.

In the Abo area, the troops were first commanded by Colonel of the 421st Tsarskoye Selo Infantry Regiment Bulatsel, and then by Captain I Rank Vonlyarevsky. The struggle was carried out by sailors and had as its object the Ilyane region, 25 kilometers northeast of Abo, where large formations of White Guard detachments were noticed. These units were dispersed.
Taking advantage of the distraction of the detachment to the northeast, on January 26 (February 8) at 15 o'clock, the Whites attacked the battery and whine on Lipperto Island. In 24 hours, the whites took this post and fortified themselves on the island.
A gunboat with a detachment of one hundred and fifty men was sent against them, as a result of which the whites in the Abo region were liquidated.
On January 28, information was received that White Guards were found in the Alberg area, 10 kilometers west of Helsingfors, and a detachment of volunteers from the 34th squad and Finnish Red Guards was sent to eliminate them.
On approaching Alberg, the whites, with a force of about four hundred or five hundred people, fortified in stone buildings, opened rifle fire. To achieve success, the Red detachment, which had only rifles and machine guns, called in artillery from Helsingfors. As a result of the battle, our losses were two sailors killed, three soldiers wounded and twenty Red Guards.

At the end of February, the position of the Russian troops, in terms of their combat readiness and suitability for combat operations to help the Finnish Red Guard, changed significantly and for the worse. There were enough reasons for this.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, according to which the Soviet government decided to withdraw Russian troops, and the possible intervention of Germany immediately led to an outflow of volunteers, both commanders and soldiers.

Finally, on March 2/15, an order was issued by the Military Department of the Regional Committee for Ka 40, which stated:
1) from March 15, the old army must be considered liquidated in Finland. 2) all who wish to defend the revolution and the interests of the working class and who do not put their personal interests above the interests of the revolution and socialism must prepare themselves to join the red Soviet troops in order to decisively rebuff the white guards, as well as the Germans and the usurpers of the bourgeoisie.
This order finally gave impetus to the evacuation of even volunteers from Finland, since many were bound by service in general, and now it was possible to go home. The longing for home among many, even those who were devoted to the revolution, took precedence over their international tendencies.
In general, we can say that by the beginning of March, there were no more than one thousand volunteers in the troops of western Finland. With the beginning of the demobilization and evacuation of Russian troops from Finland, the first period of the civil war ends.

Lieutenant Colonel M. S. Sveshnikov.

These are the memoirs of M. S. Svechnikov, a lieutenant colonel of the Russian Imperial Army. From the nobles of the Don Cossacks, a participant in the campaign against China in 1900-1901 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, in the First World War, a participant in the defense of the Osovets fortress.
Awards:
St. George's weapon (VP 09/26/1916)
Order of St. George 4th class. (VP 09/26/1916; for distinctions, chief of staff of the Osovets fortress).
Order of St. Anne 4th class (1904);
Order of St. Stanislaus 3rd class with swords and a bow (1904);
Order of St. Anne 3rd class with swords and a bow (1904);
Order of St. Stanislaus 2nd class (1905).

Military theorist and, in fact, one of the authors of the ideology and concept of creating special forces (special forces), brigade commander (1935).
He took an active part in the assault on the Winter Palace on October 25 (November 7), 1917. After the defenders repulsed the first three attacks, Svechnikov led a detachment of grenadiers (440-450 soldiers of the 106th Infantry Division, who arrived with him from Finland) for the fourth assault. The attack took place from the side of the Neva embankment and was crowned with success.
08/26/1938 sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court (VKVS) of the USSR on charges of participating in a military fascist conspiracy to capital punishment.

Original taken from mikhaelkatz in the Forgotten Soviet-Finnish war of 1917-1922

The history of the Finnish state dates back to 1917. A month and a half after the October Revolution, on December 6 (19), 1917, the Finnish Parliament approved the declaration of state independence of Finland. Already 12 days later - on December 18 (31), the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Republic adopted a Decree recognizing the independence of Finland, signed personally by V. I. Lenin.

Nevertheless, after the recognition of the independence of Finland by Soviet Russia, already in Helsinki on January 27, 1918, an uprising of detachments of Finnish Red Army soldiers broke out. The same date is also considered the date of the start of the Finnish Civil War. On the same day, the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (Suomen sosialistinen työväentasavalta) was proclaimed. A further attempt by the Finnish Red Guard to develop an offensive to the north fails, and in early March the Whites, under the command of General Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim, go over to the counteroffensive. On March 5, 1918, German troops landed on the Aland Islands, on April 3, an expeditionary force of about 9.5 thousand people under the command of General Rüdiger von der Goltz landed on the Hanko Peninsula, where it strikes in the back with red and begins an attack on Helsinki, which was taken on April 13 . On April 19, Lahti was taken by the White Finns, and the Red groups were thus cut. On April 26, the Soviet government of Finland fled to Petrograd, on the same day the White Finns took Viipuri (Vyborg), where they carried out mass terror against the Russian population and the Red Guards who did not have time to escape. The civil war in Finland was actually over, on May 7, the remnants of the red units were defeated on the Karelian Isthmus, and on May 16, 1918, a victory parade was held in Helsinki.

Having gained independence, and waging war with the Red Guards, the Finnish state decided not to stop at the borders of the Grand Duchy of Finland. At that time, among the Finnish intelligentsia, the ideas of Panfilanism, that is, the unity of the Finno-Ugric peoples, as well as the ideas of Great Finland, which were supposed to include the territories adjacent to Finland, inhabited by these peoples, gained great popularity - Karelia (including the Kola Peninsula), Ingria (neighborhood of Petrograd) and Estonia. The Russian Empire was collapsing, and new state formations arose on its territory, sometimes considering a significant expansion of their territory in the future.

Thus, during the Civil War, the Finnish leadership planned to expel Soviet troops not only from Finland, but also from the territories, the annexation of which was planned in the near future. So on February 23, 1918, at the Antrea railway station (now Kamennogorsk), Mannerheim pronounces the "Oath of the Sword", in which he mentions: "I will not sheathe my sword ... until the last warrior and hooligan of Lenin is expelled from both Finland and Eastern Karelia". War on Soviet Russia was not declared, but since mid-January (that is, before the start of the Finnish Civil War), Finland has been secretly sending partisan detachments to Karelia, whose task was the actual occupation of Karelia and assisting the Finnish troops during the invasion. Detachments occupy the city of Kem and the village of Ukhta (now the village of Kalevala). On March 6, in Helsinki (at that time occupied by the Reds), a Provisional Karelian Committee was created, and on March 15, Mannerheim approved the "Wallenius plan" aimed at the invasion of Finnish troops into Karelia and the seizure of Russian territory along the line Pechenga - Kola Peninsula - White Sea - Vygozero - Onega lake - Svir river - Lake Ladoga. Parts of the Finnish army were to unite at Petrograd, which was supposed to be turned into a free city-republic controlled by Finland.

Russian territories subject to annexation by Greater Finland according to the Wallenius plan

In May 1918, after the victory in the Civil War, the White Finns begin an offensive in Karelia and the Kola Peninsula. On May 10, they attempted to attack the polar ice-free port of Pechenga, but the attack was repulsed by the Red Guards. In October 1918 and January 1919, Finnish troops occupied the Rebolsk and Porosozersk (Porayarvi) volosts in the west of Russian Karelia, respectively. In November 1918, after the surrender of Germany in the First World War, the withdrawal of German troops from Russian territory begins, and the Germans lose the opportunity to assist the Finns. In this regard, in December 1918, Finland changes its foreign policy orientation in favor of the Entente.

Front line in February 1918

The Finns are striving to create a state of the Finno-Ugric peoples in another direction. After the withdrawal of German troops from the Baltics, Soviet troops attempt to occupy this region, but they meet resistance from the already formed troops of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. At the end of November 1918, the Red Guards took Narva, which was part of the young Republic of Estonia, after the capture of Narva, the Estonian Labor Commune (Eesti Töörahwa Kommuuna) was proclaimed there and the Soviet government of Estonia was formed, headed by Viktor Kingisepp. The Estonian army retreats towards Reval (Tallinn). The Red Army occupied Dorpat (Tartu) and about half of the territory of Estonia and by January 6 was 35 kilometers from Tallinn. On January 7, the Estonian army launches a counteroffensive.

Territories occupied by the Finns by January 1919

The allies of the Estonian army fought mainly in their own interests. The Russian White movement used the Estonian army (as well as other national armies that arose on the territory of Russia) as a temporary ally in the fight against the Bolsheviks, England and France fought for their own geopolitical interests in the Baltic states (back in the middle of the 19th century, before the Crimean War, the head of the foreign policy Department of Great Britain Henry Palmerston approved the plan of rejection of the Baltic States and Finland from Russia). Finland sent a volunteer corps of about 3.5 thousand people to Estonia. Finland's aspirations were to first drive the Reds out of Estonia, and then make Estonia part of Finland, as a federation of Finno-Ugric peoples. At the same time, Finland did not send volunteers to Latvia - Latvians do not belong to the Finno-Ugric peoples. But back to Karelia. By July 1919, in the Karelian village of Ukhta (now the town of Kalevala), with the assistance of Finnish detachments that secretly penetrated there, a separatist North Karelian state was formed. Even earlier, on the morning of April 21, 1919, the Finnish troops, who had already occupied, as mentioned above, Reboly and Porosozero, crossed the Finnish-Russian border in the Eastern Ladoga region and in the evening of the same day occupied the village of Vidlitsa, and two days later - the city of Olonets, where a puppet Olonets government is created. On April 25, the White Finns go to the Yarn River, finding themselves 10 kilometers from Petrozavodsk, where they meet resistance from parts of the Red Army. The rest of the White Finnish detachments at the same time force the Svir and go to the city of Lodeynoye Pole. Anglo-French-Canadian troops were approaching Petrozavodsk from the north; the defense of Petrozavodsk lasted two months. At the same time, Finnish troops with smaller forces were conducting an offensive in North Karelia, using the North Karelian state to try to tear away the whole of Karelia.

Front line in Estonia as of January 1919

On June 27, 1919, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive, occupying Olonets by July 8, and knocking the Finns out of the border line. However, the world did not settle on this. Finland refused to negotiate peace, and Finnish troops continued to occupy part of North Karelia.

On June 27, just on the day of the end of the defense of Petrozavodsk, Finnish units under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Yurie Elfengren cross the border on the Karelian Isthmus and find themselves in close proximity to Petrograd. The Finnish troops meet resistance from the Red Army, in particular, the Finnish units of the Red Army, formed from the Red Finns who fled from Finland after the defeat in the Civil War, enter the battle with them. Two days later, Finnish troops retreat beyond the border line. On July 9, in the border village of Kiryasalo, the Republic of Northern Ingria is proclaimed, the head of which is a local resident Santeri Termonen. In September 1919, the Finnish units crossed the border again and held the territory of Northern Ingria for about a year. The Republic becomes a state controlled by Finland.

Military formation of the North Ingrian Republic in Kirjasalo

From September 1919 to March 1920, the Red Army completely liberates Karelia from the interventionist troops of the Entente, after which it begins to fight the Finns. On May 18, 1920, Soviet troops took the village of Ukhta without a fight, after which the government of the North Karelian state fled to Finland. By July 21, the Red Army had liberated most of Russian Karelia from Finnish troops. In the hands of the Finns, only the Rebolsk and Porosozersk volosts remained.

In July 1920, in the Estonian city of Tartu (where a peace treaty between Soviet Russia and Estonia was signed five months earlier), peace negotiations between Soviet Russia and Finland begin. Representatives of the Finnish side demand the transfer of Eastern Karelia. The Soviet side, in order to secure Petrograd, demands half of the Karelian Isthmus and an island in the Gulf of Finland from Finland. Negotiations last four months, but on October 14, 1920, the peace treaty was nevertheless signed. Finland as a whole remained within the borders of the Grand Duchy of Finland. Soviet Russia handed over to Finland the ice-free port of Pechenga (Petsamo) in the Arctic, thanks to which Finland gained access to the Barents Sea. On the Karelian Isthmus, the old border was also left, drawn along the Sestra River (Rayajoki). Rebolsk and Porosozersk volosts, as well as Northern Ingria, remained with Soviet Russia, and Finnish troops were withdrawn from these territories within a month and a half.

Territories occupied by the Finns by mid-1919

The Treaty of Tartu was intended to end hostilities between Russia and Finland. However, peace did not come here either. The Finnish leadership regarded it as a temporary truce and did not plan to give up its claims to Karelia at all. Finnish nationalist circles perceived the Treaty of Tartu as shameful and longed for revenge. Not even two months had passed since the signing of the peace, as on December 10, 1920, the United Karelian Government was created in Vyborg. Further, the Finns used the same tactics as in 1919 - during the summer of 1921 they sent partisan detachments to the territory of Soviet Karelia, which gradually occupied the border villages and engaged in reconnaissance, as well as carried out agitation and arming of the local population and thus organized the Karelian national insurrection. In October 1921, in Soviet Karelia, on the territory of the Tungud Volost, an underground Provisional Karelian Committee (Karjalan väliaikainen hallitus) was created, headed by Vasily Levonen, Hjalmari Takkinen and Osipp Borisainen.

On November 6, 1921, Finnish partisan detachments begin an armed uprising in Eastern Karelia, on the same day the Finnish army, led by Major Paavo Talvela, crosses the border. Thus, the Finnish intervention in the Russian Civil War resumes, although the Civil War in the North-West had already ceased by that time (not counting the Kronstadt uprising of 1921). The Finns counted on the weakness of the Red Army after the Civil War and a fairly easy victory. Leading the offensive, the Finnish detachments destroyed communications and destroyed Soviet authorities in all settlements. New detachments were sent from Finland. If at the beginning of the war the number of Finnish troops was 2.5 thousand people, then by the end of December the figure approached 6 thousand. There were detachments formed from the participants of the Kronstadt uprising, who fled to Finland after it was suppressed. On the basis of the Provisional Karelian Committee, the puppet North Karelian state was recreated, which was again planted in the village of Ukhta, occupied by Finnish troops. In Finnish historiography, these events are called the "East Karelian uprising" (Itäkarjalaisten kansannosu), and it is reported that the Finns came to the aid of the Karelian brothers, who voluntarily raised an uprising against the Bolsheviks who oppressed them.

Territories occupied by the Finns by December 1921

On December 18, 1921, the territory of Karelia was declared under a state of siege. The Karelian Front was restored, headed by Alexander Sedyakin. Additional units of the Red Army were transferred to Karelia. Red Finns who fled after the Finnish Civil War to Soviet Russia are fighting in the ranks of the Red Army. On December 26, Soviet units strike from the side of Petrozavodsk, and after a week and a half they occupy Porosozero, Padany and Reboly, and on January 25, 1922 they occupy the village of Kestenga. On January 15, in Helsinki, Finnish workers hold a demonstration in protest against the "Karelian adventure" of the White Finns. On February 7, the troops of the Red Army enter the village of Ukhta, the North Karelian state dissolves itself, and its leaders flee to Finland. By February 17, 1922, the Red Army finally knocks the Finns out of the state border line, military operations actually stop there. On March 21, an armistice was signed in Moscow.

On June 1, 1922, a peace treaty was concluded in Moscow between Soviet Russia and Finland, according to which both parties were obliged to reduce the number of border troops.

After the spring of 1922, the Finns no longer crossed the Soviet border with weapons. However, peace between neighboring states remained "cool". Finland's claims to Karelia and the Kola Peninsula not only did not disappear, but vice versa, they began to gain even more popularity and sometimes turn into more radical forms - some Finnish nationalist organizations sometimes promoted the idea of ​​creating Great Finland to the Polar Urals, which also had to enter the Finno-Ugric peoples of the Cis-Urals and the Volga region. In Finland, throughout the 1920s and 1940s, there was a powerful propaganda, as a result of which the Finns formed the image of Russia as the eternal enemy of Finland.