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Nebakenezzer posted:
I could write an effort-ish post later about how unlikely Finnish independence was, and how several different events had to happen in very specific ways for it happen when it did, if anybody is interested.
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Dec 7, 2020 08:03
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Trin Tragula posted:Effortposts I Made That I Still Like Aaaaaand there goes my afternoons for the foreseeable future.
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Dec 7, 2020 12:11
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Yooper posted:
Ok, this will be my first time doing something like this, so be gentle. How Finland became Finland - Part 1 (of 3 or 4, I think) Alright, I am going to go a bit further into the past because understanding some of the history behind Finnish nationalism is going to be very relevant for understanding the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. 11th to 15th centuries: Humble beginnings of Swedish "Eastland" Right, so our first misconception that we’re going have to fix is that there ever was a “Finland” or any one “Finnish people” caught between the power struggles of Sweden and Russia. There were lots of different tribes whose ancestors had migrated from all over Eurasia living in what is present-day Finland, but they lived in small villages with low hierarchy, no writing, and no common “Finnish” language. People from the west coast could mostly make themselves understood when talking with people from the Karelian Isthmus but both were SOL if they tried talking to the Sámi peoples of the north. Sweden and Novgorod both extended their influence to the area from somewhere around 11th century onwards, first by traders and missionaries and then military conquest and annexation. They clashed, but eventually signed the Treaty of Pähkinäsaari in 1323, which divided the area into spheres of influence, where Sweden got what’s today southern and some of central Finland plus most of Karelian Isthmus and Novgorod got the rest in theory, but most of it was empty wilderness and the Sami people didn’t really give gently caress about what any southerners might have claimed about having sovereignty over them. Finnish ancient paganism was stamped out and the people living here started speaking, and eventually writing, Swedish, though various Finnish dialects persisted in spoken form as home language. 16th and 17th centuries: Rise of an Empire In the 16th century the vigorous new king/usurper of Sweden Gustav Vasa and his successors extended their borders and managed to claim most of the northern parts of today-Finland and pushed the border a bit eastwards as well. There was no division between “Sweden” or “Finland”, they were simply two different parts of the same realm where everything east of the Gulf of Bothnia was “Eastland”. This didn’t go unchallenged and Swedish expansion ran against Russia’s interests, which led to war. The battles with Russia raged for 25 years until the Treaty of Täyssinä in 1595 which settled the matter for a while. We call it the “Long Wrath”, because it was light on big battles and mostly consisted of raids and guerrilla warfare and a gently caress-ton of atrocities committed by both sides mostly against civilians. “The Long Wrath” was followed by “Clubwar” in 1596-97, a rebellion by local big farmers who were sick of the strain the wars had placed upon them and wanted their rights respected and better treatment. The rebels got crushed by military force and occasional treachery (“surrender your arms and we will allow you to go home unharmed, honest”), and the rebellion was over. Finnish nationalists later tried to mythologise the rebellion in 19th century as a proto-fight for independence, but that is not true. The rebellion wasn’t by Finns against the Swedes, it was Swedish smallfolk versus their rulers, and the rebellion was connected to the power struggles between the inheritors of the Vasa kings, one of whom egged it on to weaken his rivals. In actual fact, there was no division between “Swedes” or “Finns”, people considered themselves members of their tribe first, and subjects of the Swedish crown second. For example, I am a Savonian from the Savolax region. People from around here have stereotypically been seen as lazy, cunning and funny-talking. People from the Häme region are seen as slow, simple, but hard-working and durable, and people from Ostrobothnia are both the most patriotic and most short-tempered, with their knives at ready at all times. Incidentally, genetically there are very sharp differences between Finns from the different regions to this day. People from west coast and people from the east are less related to each other genetically than Norwegians and Italians, for example. In the 17th century Swedish kings, such as Gustav Adolphus, the Lion of the North, pushed the Swedish Empire’s borders as far as they would ever be, but this was mostly due to Russia’s temporary weakness, a modernized Swedish army and bureaucracy. Sweden gained the control of the rest of Karelian Isthmus and also areas on the north shore of Lake Ladoga, and most of present-day Estonia. People from Eastland served in the wars, most famously as “Hakkapeliittas”, cavalry who gained a reputation for savagery and ferocity in battle. Sources are contradictory about whether Hakkapeliittas were light cavalry or heavy cavalry, they seem to have done both at different times. 18th Century: Sweden gets hosed by Russia, over and over again Russia struck back in the 18th century, and the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 hosed the Swedish Empire so badly that it never recovered, and the eastern parts got the worst of it. Russia seized what is today Finland in 1714 and occupied it for seven long years. Our name for the period translates as the “Great Wrath” and it really lived to its name. The laundry list of atrocities is very long, so I won’t go to detail, but suffice to say it was bad even by the standards of the time period. In the Treaty of Uusikaupunki in 1721 which finally settled the bloody mess Russia got the whole Karelian Isthmus and some other parts of eastern Eastland. Sweden tried for a rematch in the War of Hats in 1741-1743 and the outdated and outmatched Swedish army got their teeth kicked in and Russia occupied Eastland again. It wasn’t as bad this time around, with only some massacres and crimes against humanity in response to small-scale guerrilla warfare, so we call it “the Little Wrath”. The result of the mess was that Russia pushed their borders westward here and took the cities of Hamina, Lappeenranta, and Savonlinna to guard against further attacks from Sweden. Sweden and Russia had two more wars in the 18th century, in 1757 and 1788, but they did not go as disastrously, so it didn’t lose any more parts of its eastern half. Not until the beginning of 19th century and the Napoleonic Wars, which I will cover in the next part, alongside with the “awakening of the Finnish national spirit” and how Finnish started to become and actual language. --------------- So that was part one. I am aware that I didn’t actually cover the things I said I would, but I’ll get to that later. My fellow Finnish posters may now feel free to ream me for any factual mistakes or omissions. Edited thanks to Ataxerxes pointing out a couple of mistakes. Warden fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 15:55
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Arbite posted:Oh, it's a great story, I wrote a university paper called "The Accidental State." poo poo, now I feel like you are more qualified to write it, but since I already started... 
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Dec 7, 2020 15:56
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Ataxerxes posted:It was actually the predecessors of Charles/Karl XII, dude who lost the Great Northern War and died during it, who pushed the borders of Sweden to its furthest extend (Charles X and XI if memory servers). Also, the Hakkapeliittas are a matter of considerable discussion. The Swedish Intelligencer, a series of books written during the 30yw by English/Scots officers in Gustafs army mentions Torsten Stålhandske (who was fluent in Englishj) talking about how some of his cavalry, the "hackapels" were Finnish troops who were ferocious. The people in our 30yw re-enactment group (many career historians and museum staff) have dug up descriptions of Swedish orders of armour for cavalry during the war. Also the fact that Stålhandskes cavalry (which at Lutzen included all the ethnic Swedish and Finnish cavalrymen left) beat and routed heavy Imperial cavalry at Luetzen would imply that they can't have been lightly armoured/armed by that point. The ferocity often attributed to the Hakkapeliittas might be due to the fact that they had few if any pistols initially (so the would have to charge and fight hand to hand) and I think Hey Guns mentioned ages ago that they trounced Imperial Croat cavalry during the first winter after Sweden entered the war (as they were likely used to harsher winters than the Croats). Yeah, you're correct about the Swedish expansion, I'll edit that later. As for Hakkepeliittas, like you said, sources are contradictory. Lots of accounts of primarily scouting, raiding and harassing flanks, which means light cavalry but also accounts of getting stuck in where the fight is the thickest, which is something that heavy cavalry do. I recall reading something about how their role changed based upon what equipment was available, but it was basically the same dudes doing both things at different times. I think Part 2 will be tomorrow and cover (briefly) the Finnish War, autonomy, and the birth of Finnish nationalism. Part 3 will be times of oppression/Russification of Finland, ww1, and declaration of independence. Part 4 will be civil war and the aftermath, and how Finland almost became a German vassal state and a monarchy.
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Dec 8, 2020 15:08
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How Finland became Finland Part 2 Part 1 here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3950461&pagenumber=3#post510537591 I am only going to cover Finnish war briefly, though it deserves a larger effort post of its own. Maybe someone more qualified than me will take up the task sometime? 1805-1807: Prelude to the Finnish War Sweden joined the third coalition against France and Napoleon in 1805. Initially Sweden had attempted to remain neutral, but that didn’t work for Denmark and it didn’t work for the Swedes, with British Royal Navy practically robbing neutral ships and Great Britain assaulting Copenhagen in 1801 and threatening to do the same to Karlskrona. Sweden declared war against France at the end of October, and didn’t anticipate having to much of fighting, what with Russia and Britain at its side, and actually partially paying for the expenses of war. Naturally things went to hell, the French gave the coalition a beating and Sweden lost its territory in northern Germany in 1807, though it managed to evacuate its forces to Skåne. Russia was beaten and forced to sign the Treaty of Tilsit with France, and British aggression and assault on neutral Denmark pushed it into waiting French arms. King Gustav IV Adolp refused to make peace with France and remained loyal to its British allies, which was surprising considering how bad Sweden’s position now was and its relative military weakness. I’ve heard it described as “not having the actual military its chosen foreign policy demanded”. The last months of 1807 saw high-staked diplomatic poker game, where Russia initially tried to resist French demands to force Sweden to break its alliance with Britain and join the trade embargo and naval blockade, Sweden attempting get Russia to agree to a Baltic Sea free trade zone, and resigned Russia preparing for an offensive war while simultaneously misleading Sweden about its plans. Sweden made some preparations in case of Russian attack on the eastern part of the realm, but mobilisation was started late in the year, and it wasn’t until late January 1808 that Sweden realized that war was going to happen. Unfortunately, by then it was too late. 1808: War comes to Finland Ironically, despite its name, the Finnish war is far more traumatic for Swedes than Finns. They consider it the final sundering of the realm, where the eastern parts of Kingdom of Sweden were lost forever, and the brotherhood of Finns and Swedes was severed. Our attitude is more like ”eh, it happened, but Alexander I was a really good emperor and we got autonomy out of it”. The Russians started the war with a bold offensive plan, which begun the attack while the winter war still on. They had a major advantage in planning the war over the Swedes: They knew their enemy. So, the Russians had this officer by the name of Georg Magnus Sprengtporten in their ranks. He was a former Swedish officer who had described himself as “a Russian officer born in Finland”. He was a rare breed, a man born in the eastern side of Kingdom of Sweden who thought that Finland should either be independent, or part of Russia since the Swedish crown had proved itself incapable of protecting the land throughout 18th century. Understandable sentiments, but his way of thinking was not popular. He had defected to Russia and served on their side in the war of 1788-90 but was not given important tasks and didn’t achieve much. Swedes saw him as a traitor and Russians as someone who had made lots of promises about the Finns willingness to join Russia but failed to fulfil them. However, Sprengporten got his second chance, and contributed towards the plan of attack for 1808. He knew the strengths and disposition of troops in the eastern part of the realm and had suggested attacking during the winter, when southern Finland couldn’t be reinforced via sea thanks to being mostly frozen. Sprengporten would later become the first general-gonvernor of the Grand Duchy of Finland, but he’d resign his post after a year, since traitors are not popular and die in relative obscurity. The Russian forces crossed the border on the 21st of February 1808, without any declaration of war. Stockholm learned of the attack on 28th of February. Russian forces crossed the border in five different places and advanced as well as they could in freezing weather, with Swedish forces pulling back. On paper, Sweden had around 20 000 soldiers available, but almost 7000 men were garrisoning the fortress of Sveaborg (Viapori in Finnish), and there were other smaller garrisons around Finland. In practice, Sweden had around 10 000 – 12 000 soldiers available to actually fight the invasion. The Russians committed 20 000 – 24 000 soldiers in the first attack, and they had more cannons, especially heavier ones, and their forces were far more experienced. This meant that not only did Russia have the strategic initiative, they also outnumbered, outgunned and outmatched the Swedish army. The Swedish forces retreated north, were they planned to link up with reinforcements and then launch a counter-attack, planning that Swedish fortifications in the south would resist the Russians and tie them down. This didn’t happen. The Russian advance was swift. The Russians placed the incomplete fortress of Svartholm under siege in the first days of war, and got the garrison to surrender in mid-March. Helsinki fell on 2nd of March, and Åbo (Turku), Vaasa, Hämeenlinna and Kuopio were all taken in March. The mighty fortress of Sveaborg was placed under siege, and despite the strength of its fortifications, its supplies and around 7000 soldiers it capitulated on 3rd of May 1808, which was pretty much the deathblow to Swedish war efforts. The reason why the fortress surrendered so soon and so easily has been debated endlessly and its commander ended up court-martialed for high treason but was acquitted. Some of have blamed Russian disinformation, where the defenders were made to believe that the Swedish field army had already been caught and annihilated and that the situation was hopeless. To make the situation even worse, Denmark (which included Norway) declared war in March. Sweden now faced a potential three-front war, which it could not win, despite Great Britain increasing its support to its ally. Now, I could go on and on about the war, and also talk about the war at the sea and British contributions, but in practice it was already lost. The Swedes, after linking up with reinforcements, launched counter-attacks in late summer and early fall, won several victories in northern Ostrobothnia and pushed the Russians out of central Finland, but the Russians received reinforcements in August and their numbers swelled to over 55 000. Even by trying conscription for the first time Sweden couldn’t match those numbers, since it had a shortage of NCOs and officers and also had to keep sizeable numbers of soldiers in southern Sweden in case a joint Danish-French attack. By November, the Russians had taken control of what is today Finland and stamped out almost all guerrilla resistance. Sweden had to pull back its forces, but did not capitulate, so Russian started planning further offensives for the next year. What is interesting about the Finnish war is that it appears the Russia didn’t have annexation in mind initially, but changed the plan when things went unexpectedly well. It is rather understandable considering that the eastern half of Sweden (Finland) had 25% of the population, but only 14% of the realm’s total wealth. Finland was poor and sparsely populated, but controlling it would allow Russia to almost wholly control the Gulf of Finland, which would secure St Petersburg. The precise date has been debated, but at least in February the Russian army operated under the assumption that it would occupy Finland temporarily and later pull back, but it appears that Czar Alexander I changed his mind at some point in March, and the orders were changed and the Russian army was told to be at its best behaviour, which was a very welcome development to the Finns since people remembered well what had happened during the Great Wrath. 1809: the conclusion March 1809 was a bad month for Sweden. King Gustav IV Adolf was dethroned due the poorly-gone war and replaced by his uncle, Charles the XIII, and Russians marched across frozen Baltic Sea in two different places. They took Åland islands, and continued onwards, eventually reaching the outskirts of Stockholm itself. The other force crossed the Gulf of Bothnia in the north and took Umeå. Not content with two-pronged assault on Swedish heartland, Russians crossed Torniojoki in the north and pushed on to northern Sweden. Battles raged throughout the spring and summer, but in August 1809 Sweden was ready to call it quits and began peace negotiations. The talks concluded in September with the Treaty of Fredrikshamn, where Sweden ceded everything east of Tornioriver and Muonioriver and also the Åland isles to Russia forever. Interestingly, Åland isles are still the most Swedish part of Finland, at the time they pretty much were Swedish through and through, but they were seen as strategically vital, so Russia wanted them included in their new prize, the Grand Duchy of Finland, to which were also added/returned the eastern parts that Russia had conquered during the last century. Interestingly, the newly-Finnish elites of the new duchy had actually already sworn loyalty to Russia, before the peace treaty was signed and the region was ceded by Sweden. That happened earlier in the year, during the Diet of Porvoo. 1809 March to June: The Diet of Porvoo Alexander I was a shrewd man and Russians were no strangers to running multi-ethnic empire. They had spotted a possible fault line in Swedish kingdom and planned to exploit it for all it was worth. Most of the people in the eastern Sweden (Finland) were ethnically different from Swedes and had different home language, so it should be possible to convince them accept Russian rule. After all, what difference would it make if their rulers spoke Russian instead of Swedish, as long things otherwise remained much the same? In March 1809, while the war was still on, Alexander travelled to Porvoo and summoned the four Estates (nobility, clergy, burghers, farmers) of eastern Sweden, and told them that Russia would annex the area, and create a Grand Duchy of Finland. He wanted their oaths of loyalty, and in return he would respect the laws, customs and religion of the land. He promised not to institute serfdom, curtail the privileges of the nobility or try to convert the Lutheran-population to Orthodox Christianity. He pledged to “raise Finland to a nation among nations” and grant it lots and lots of freedoms and benefits and develop it economically. All the Estates had to was to renounce their fealty to Sweden forever and accept him as the new monarch. The Estates agreed, enthusiastically. Alexander the first was wildly popular in Finland and was hailed as a next best thing to a saint. In truth, he was a pragmatic ruler who was anticipating a renewed conflict with France and was worried that Sweden would try for a rematch when that happened. He needed his newest conquest pacified and peaceful and willing to serve him and not rise up if Sweden struck back. He was an absolute ruler, he could easily break all of his promises in the future, if needed. He didn’t consider any of his promises binding, they were simply things that he decided to do at that point. Later on, Finnish nationalists would point at the Diet of Porvoo, and argue that a binding constitutional agreement had been reached between the Czars of Russia and the people of Finland, and neither could one-sidedly change anything that had been agreed upon there. Needless to say, this interpretation has never been accepted in Russia. Why Finnish War is important for future Finnish independence I am absolutely 100% convinced that Finland would not have become independent in 1917 if Sweden had not lost the war in and Russia not annexed Finland 1809. There hadn’t ever been a Finland before it was created as a Grand Duchy of Russia, it had simply been the eastern part of Sweden, where the coastal inhabitants were basically Swedes, and in the easternmost and northernmost regions lived people who were ethnically different and spoke various Finnish dialects at home, but considered themselves as subjects of the Swedish crown. There had been rare secessionists before, but they actually spoken Swedish, and simply thought that the Swedish crown was running things badly and neglecting/mismanaging the eastern parts of the realm, and felt it would either fare better as a separate state or Russian vassal. They had no lofty ideas of uplifting a “Finnish people” or creating a “Finnish nation”. Their idea of Finland was basically Sweden Jr. It was Alexander I who planted the idea of Finns as a people and Finland as a nation in people’s heads. Severing Finland from Sweden and forcing the Swedish crown to vow to never to attempt to reclaim it forced people to change, to think, and reinvent themselves as Finns, not Swedes. I am going to cover this in the next part, but Finnish nationalism would not have developed as it did during the 19th century and Finnish language would not have become a proper written language if Finland had simply remained as “Eastern Sweden”. I think that there would have been an emergence of Finnish nationalism, but it would have happened later, and Finland would probably have separated from Sweden at some point, like Norway did, but it would most likely happened much later, and Swedish language would be more prevalent in Finland and there would much more Swedish-speakers as there are today. --- So, it turns out I underestimated how much time this would take, and overestimated my energy levels, so I am going to stop here for now. Next time I’ll cover Finnish autonomy during the 19th century and the birth of Finnish nationalism. Like before, feel to free to point out any glaring omissions or factual mistakes. And like I said earlier, it would be great if someone more knowledgeable than me were interested in covering the Finnish war in more detail sometime in the future.
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Dec 9, 2020 17:29
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Ataxerxes posted:conscript effectively I thought it was the allotment system (= "ruotuväki") they reorganized in the 17th century and conscription is what they tried for the first time during Napoleonic Wars? Or did I get my translations mixed up?
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Dec 9, 2020 19:28
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Part III of How Finland became Finland delayed to tomorrow, I chipped a teeth.
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Dec 11, 2020 15:47
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How Finland became Finland Part III Part II here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3950461&userid=225843#post510599739 Finland as an autonomous grand duchy Finland became a Grand Duchy of Russia with quite a lot of autonomy in 1809, which was not unprecedented, since as parts of Russia Poland and Georgia had arrangements similar to it (but with more repression). Finland got a Senate of its own, whose members were Swedish speaking Finnish nobles nominated by the Emperor for three years at time. The Senate was divided into two departments: economics and justice, and they also in charge of both raising and spending taxes in the duchy. Finland got to spend its own taxes instead of them being funneled to Russia, which was a welcome change and allowed the region to develop during the 19th century. Access to the Russian domestic market and relaxations of legislation related to economic matters together with foreign entrepreneurs and capital from Europe meant that Finland started changing from rural, agrarian backwater to a part of the larger European economy although the change was gradual and Finland industrialized relatively late, and in 1900 three-fourths of the population got their living by tilling the land. The senate ran things day to day in Finland, but there was a five decade gap in calling the Diet and letting the Estates have any influence on how things were done in the duchy, but after the regressive Nicholas I his successor, the more liberal Alexander II called the Diet in 1863, and they started assembling every 3 to 5 years. The Diet of 1863 is going to be important in a bit, since it has a crucial role in Finland actually becoming Finnish instead of remaining Swedish. A Russian Governor-General was nominally the head of the Senate, but since the Senate’s language was Swedish, he usually left them to their own devices and focused on overseeing the Russian soldiers garrisoned in Finland, which was his most important job. Speaking of soldiers, Alexander I discontinued the allotment system which had been in effect under Swedish rule, which made him even more popular, since the burden it placed on farmers was rather notable. Instead, a small core of professional soldiers was raised and paid for by the Russians. However, the allotment system made a comeback during the Crimean war when Russia needed more troops and Finnish coast came under British assault. We call that part of the war the Åland War, and Russia's defeat during it was one of the causes for late 19th century build-up of Russian navy. Interestingly, it is because of 1854-1856 Åland War that the Åland isles remain demilitarized to this day, since it was one of the conditions Britain demanded for peace treaty, and it stuck. In 1881 Finland got conscription-based army of its own of about five and half thousand, which was organized into separate units, where the career officers spoke Russian and Swedish, the NCOs spoke Swedish of Finnish, and bulk of the grunts spoke Finnish. If that sounds impractical, it’s because it was. In addition, there usually was between 10 000 and 20 000 Russian soldiers garrisoned in the duchy. Finnish troops served abroad in Russian wars, but they fought in their own units, with their own officers leading, which was not always appreciated by Russian career officers. Incidentally, Finnish national archives has recordings of the recollections of some Finnish veterans of Turkish war of 1877-78 publicly available, recorded in 1937. I should probably listen to them one of these days. The Finnish army as a separate force was abolished in 1901 for reasons I am covering in part IV. The capital of Finland was switched from Turku (Åbo) to Helsinki in 1812, which was much smaller but a lot closer to Russia and farther away from Stockholm. When there was a major fire in Turku in 1827, its university was also moved to Helsinki (both later had their own universities) because the Russians felt that they needed to keep an eye of student movements and possible new ideas that might threaten its rule. Things weren’t all sunshine and puppies. Finland was ravaged by the British navy during the Crimean war, and there was a very bad famine in 1866-68, which killed over 150 000 people out of a population of about 1.8 million. On the plus side, the state started to modernize Finland in earnest after the Years of Hunger and a railroad connecting Helsinki and St Petersburg was finished in 1870 and there were a lot of improvements (steam-powered machinery, new breeds of cattle more suitable for the cold north, etc.) made to agriculture to avoid such a catastrophe in the future. Despite these efforts, Finland never became self-sufficient in food, which would bite us in the rear end during both World Wars. Finland got its own currency, “markka” in 1865, and foreign trade restrictions were removed in 1868, and guild system was abolished the same year. The Russian Empire saw Finland as a “window to the west” and also a test laboratory for new economic policies, and did its very best to attract foreign capital and entrepreneurs to Finland, which led to the birth of Finnish wood industry in the second half of the 19th century. Finland industrialized and the cities grew, but ultimately the region remained primarily agrarian one for a lot longer. This had the effect of creating a new working class in Finland and chipping away at the old Estates of the Realm since most people were technically members of no estate. Later the working class would organize and become a powerful political force in Finland, but that comes later, with a political party founded at the turn of the century. Awakening of the Finnish national spirit After separating from Sweden, the people in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland gradually started to formulate ideas about a separate Finnish people, who had their own history and national characteristics. "Swedes we are no longer, Russians we do not want to become, let us therefore be Finns", were the words of the “father of Finnish nationalism” Adolf Ivar Arwidsson, who actually spoke the credo in Swedish, since it was his mother tongue. Russian authorities tolerated the idea as long as it had no political aspirations of independence, since it could be used to further reinforce the wedge between Sweden and Finland. Finnish nationalism mostly expressed itself as national romanticism through art, literature and music, since the Finns had observed the Polish rebellions getting crushed and thought that there was no way of resisting Russian dominance. Interestingly, most early Finnish nationalists spoke and wrote in Swedish. For example, the national poet J.L. Runeberg was pessimistic about Finnish ever becoming the language of literature and poetry, and thought that the language of science, culture and economy should remain Sweden. Not all agreed, and for example, Elias Lönnrot’s national epic Kalevala, which was collection of mythic poetry in Finnish, directly challenged this view. While Russian authorities encouraged the Finns to think themselves separate people from the Swedes and allowed the publication of art and poetry, they also imposed censorship on political texts, and closely supervised the university, since they did not want the dangerous ideas of liberalism and socialism spreading to their backyard. The struggle over language In 1860s, about 80 to 85% of Finns spoke Finnish as their first language and the rest spoke Swedish. Swedish however was the official language used in education and government, which meant that you either studied Swedish or resigned yourself to never reaching any significant position in society. Johan Vilhelm Snellman was a originally Swedish-speaking Finnish writer, politician and journalist who did more for Finnish language than anyone else. He had ambitions of academic career, but he was seen as potentially dangerous radical by Senate and had to resign himself to becoming the principal of a secondary school in one of the smaller and remote towns. He didn’t give up though and kept hoping that Finnish would eventually become a proper language of culture, politics and art, and that the Swedish-speakers would voluntarily give up on Swedish and start using Finnish. When Czar Alexander II summoned the estates for Diet in 1863, Snellman took the opportunity to convince the Czar to sign the Language Act which officially made Finnish equal with Swedish in all official contexts. The law stated that the transition period would be 20 years, but angry Swedish-speakers did their best to sabotage it, so it took more like forty years. The issue over language led to the birth of the first political parties of Finland: Fennomans and Svecomans. Fennomans changed their surnames to more Finnish-sounding ones and did their best to promote Finnish as language, founding Finnish-speaking schools and publishing literature and newspapers in Finnish. They were popular among the Lutheran clergy and farmers. Swecomans were keen on the racial theories of day and espoused the idea that Finland had two races: a culture-producing, superior, Swedish-speaking race, and a culture-receiving, Finnish-speaking lower race. The superior race should therefore lead and the rest should fall in line and recognize their betters. They were popular among old nobility who had established themselves in government and senate and did not want to lose any of their privileges and were distrustful of new ideas. There were also liberals, who were basically centrists, who were for bilingual Finland, but old man Snellman dissed them so bad in the 1880s they got pissed and joined the Svecomans (not a hyperbole, it actually happened). Russians, by and large, did not care that much, but the language issue could keep the Finns divided among themselves and distance them from Sweden, so there was official support for improving the lot of Finnish language. At that point Russia was mostly concerned for Finland remaining pacified and loyal, although there was a growing discontent over the fact that the bureaucracy of the Grand Duchy was pretty much closed to ethnic Russians, and some annoyance over the fact the Finland had its own postal service and separate customs between Finland and Russia proper. Many ambitious young Finnish men learned Russian and entered either the army or the civil service. Most famous example is, of course, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, of whom we’ll hear more later. ----- That was part III. Next time I will cover the Russification period, Finland during the outbreak of World War and the Declaration of independence. Part V will finally be cover the civil war and the aftermath. Questions, comments and criticism welcome, and yes, I am aware that this post didn't have that much to do do with actual MilHist. Also, I am summarizing a lot here, in the interests of restricting the length of these entries and to try to keep them from bogging down. Warden fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Dec 12, 2020 |
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Dec 12, 2020 14:20
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ChubbyChecker posted:What did the Empire do to make this happen? Mostly relax the incredibly restrictive and old-fashioned laws and regulations. For example: - they allowed joint stock companies to be founded in the Grand Duchy of Finland and invited foreign entrepreneurs to country, in some cases granting them monopolies, for example one company got the sole right to brew and sell beer in Helsinki in 1819. Finland had huge forest reserves, and very cheap labor thanks to surplus population from the countryside. - founded/allowed founding of banks in Finland starting in 1823 - allowed the use of steam-powered lumbermills in 1857 and removed the quotas and restrictions on how much wood they could chop in 1861 - previously only certain towns were allowed to conduct foreign trade in specified amounts, but this was repealed 1866 - Finnish currency moved from silver standard to gold standard in 1877 - guilds were abolished in in 1868 and complete freedom of establishment was passed in 1879 Finland had separate legislation and laws to Russia proper, but no laws could be passed without the Emperor's consent. It wasn't unusual for Russia to try something in Finland first and see what happened. They also started to build a railroad network in Finland and also built the Saimaa channel in 1856 to connect most of central Finland to Viipuri and St Petersburg via waterways which boosted trade and transportation. Russian Empire was facing a lot of criticism in the west due its backwardness, which led to abolition of serfdom in 1861 in Russia proper, and the comparatively light-handed treatment and economic development of Finland was something they tried to use as an counter-argument. Warden fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Dec 12, 2020 |
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Dec 12, 2020 15:33
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ChubbyChecker posted:So it looks like that the empire didn't actively help much, more that they didn't actively hinder the autonomous province's modernizations. That's one way of looking at it, sure. But it should be mentioned that often the old-fashioned regulations were relaxed first in Finland to observe the results a bit before doing the same in Russia proper. And Russians made a concentrated effort to attract foreign capital and entrepreneurs specifically to Finland ("Come to Finland! Untapped resources! Cheap labor! No worker rights! Possibility of getting a state-approved monopoly!"). quote:While the railroads also help locals, they aren't built by empires from altruism, but to tie the conquered areas more tightly to the empires, and to extract more money from them. That's certainly true yes, but taxes raised in Finland were not spent elsewhere in the Empire but instead within the Grand Duchy itself, unlike how it was under Swedish rule, where there often was the sentiment that the eastern part of the realm had to bear the heaviest burdens for smallest rewards. It was one of the changes made by Alexander I that won over many Finns in the beginning of the autonomy. quote:I don't think that it was Western criticism that led to the abolition of serfdom, but rising Russian liberalism. That's a fair point. Although one could argue that Russia falling behind the west and people being aware of it was one of the reasons for rising Russian liberalism. Edit. Towards the end of the 19th century there was a growing feeling within Russia proper that the Empire was not benefiting adequately from the Grand Duchy of Finland, and that Finns got more out of the empire than they put in. It's one of things that leads to the Russificiation period (We call them "the Ages of Oppression") which I will cover in my next entry, probably tomorrow. Warden fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Dec 13, 2020 |
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Dec 13, 2020 16:23
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Apologies for taking a while, this part was a pain to write. How Finland became Finland Part 4: Russification and independence Russification Near the end of the 19th century Russia was backwards Empire, which was lagging behind western powers. Its agriculture was inefficient, it industrialized slower than other European countries, and its economy was not strong. The empire was multi-ethnic, with several minority peoples with varying amounts of freedoms, and number of non-Russians has been estimated to have been larger than the number of ethnic Russians in the Empire. The bureaucracy was slow and inefficient, and it had the issue that several parts of the Empire had their own laws and were using their own languages instead of Russian. The Grand duchy of Finland was no exception The state sought to strengthen itself by means of Russification, a program meant to strengthen the position of Russian language in every part of the Empire, at the expense of minority languages. Additionally, the state sought to curb freedoms and privileges granted to different parts of the empire, streamline the bureaucracy and improve the effectiveness of its processes. These too happened at the expense of minority peoples, like Jews, Poles, people from the Baltic nations and Finns. The rising tide of nationalism also had an effect, and there was a rising sentiment that Russian Empire should contain only Russians, which meant that everyone living there should adopt Russian language and culture. Naturally, this didn’t go down well. Russification of Finland 1899-1905 Finland had lots of small perks and freedoms that annoyed many Russians. It had its own customs, which were lower than Russian customs, and Russian couldn’t use their own language for almost anything there. Official positions within the Grand Duchy were closed to ethnic Russians, and reserved for Swedish-speakers, whereas many Finns could move to Russia and have successful career in the military, as long as they learned Russian, of course. Russia started relatively small in 1890 by dissolving the Finnish postal office as a separate organisation and absorbing it to Russian postal office, which was a blow to Finnish self-esteem, but not otherwise threat to autonomy. It did cause some protests, and Finns stubbornly pasted their own postmarks to letters in addition to the then only allowed Russian postmarks. Things didn’t truly get serious until 1899, when Nicholas II issued the February manifesto, which decreed that Finland could not pass any laws concerning Finland anymore. Henceforth, all laws concerning either the whole empire or Finland specifically would be legislated in Russia, with Finnish senate allowed to provide opinions but have no other effect. Finns were shocked, but thought it had to be a some sort of mistake. The Czar was good, so this had to be a plot by evil counsellors. The Finns decided to appeal straight to the emperor and gathered over 500 000 signatures for a petition, which they delivered in two dozen heavy leather-bound books to St Petersburg. The Czar refused to mee the delegation, but his secretary delivered the message that the Czar was not angry, and the delegation would not be punished for impertinence, as long as they went home straight away. Finns felt betrayed, since they had interpreted the promises of Alexander I in 1809 and binding constitutional treaty between Finnish people and Russian Empire which was now being violated. The Russians simply saw Finland as part of Russian empire, which they could handle as they saw fit, and never accepted the Finnish version of events. The “First period of Oppression” had begun. In 1900 Russian was decreed to become the official language of the highest levels of government in Finland, replacing Swedish. School curriculums were changed to have Russian language, history and geography as subjects. Newspapers criticizing the changes were censored or shut down. In 1901 the Finnish army as a separate unit was discontinued and henceforth Finns would be selectively conscripted for 3 years of service in the Russian army. Finns refused to accept this, and wouldn’t answer when called, and point-blank refused to serve. This caused lots of protests, some of which turned to riots, and Cossacks were deployed to smash the protestors. In the end, Finns were exempted from service in Russian army, but in return the Grand Duchy had to pay separate reparations for the exemption. In 1903 the General-Governor of Finland, Nikolai Bobrikov, was given full dictatorial rights to pacify the Grand Duchy and bring its people to heel. He didn’t get to enjoy them very long however, since he was assassinated in the 1904. And that bring us to our next topic. Finnish reactions and resistance to Russification The Finns had realized that Russia was serious about curtailing Finnish autonomy and the Emperor would not help. Opinions differed about what to do next, but can be roughly divided to those who cautioned acceptance and not resisting in order to preserve autonomy and avoid more heavy-handed repression, those who favoured passive resistance in protest, and those who were willing to resort to direct action, and even very drastic measures. A minority were even A-OK with Russification, either because they already had a career in the Russian army or civil service, or had somehow gotten the impression that the Emperor was going to take land away from rich landowners in the Grand Duchy to break their power and redistribute it to poor people. The activists printed underground leaflets and newspapers, conducted sabotage, organized strikes and demonstrations and also resorted to political violence. The most famous activist was ironically not a member of any underground organisations, but a socially awkward, partially deaf and sickly minor civil servant by the name of Eugen Schauman, who had gotten beaten up Cossacks during some protests and rejected by the woman he was courting. It came as a huge surprise when he strolled into the Senate and shot General-Governor Bobrikov dead and then killed himself, leaving behind a letter explaining his actions. The Senate and major newspapers condemned the cowardly murder, of course, but to many Finns Schauman was a hero, a slayer of tyrants and a martyr. Our current crop of extreme right-wing fuckheads hold rallies on his gravesite, which is ironic since our right-wingers are pro-Putin and Pro-Russia. But they just love a militaristic strongman whose country is anti-LGBT, pro-Christianity and anti-feminism. The murder didn’t actually achieve much, but caused the Russian Empire to further crack down on dissidents and censor even more. Russification halted What made the Russian Empire temporarily stop their campaign of Russification was their own internal troubles. Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, which increased unrest within the empire and caused lots of protests and strikes. There was a massive empire-wide general strike which also spread to Finland. Factories, schools, shops and offices all closed and people took to the streets. Even some Russian soldiers mutinied in 1906, although the mutinies were squashed While most Finns participated on the strike, their goals and demands were far from united. Some people simply wanted Russification to stop, while others demanded a parliament of their own to legislate Finland. Some even wanted the senate dissolved and Finland to try for independence. The Czar had to capitulate and promise a parliament for Russia (the Duma) and Finland both. The Czar proclaimed the November Manifesto of 1905, which halted the Russification of Finland and cancelled some of the changes which had already been implemented. Finland had its first parliamentary elections in 1907, where both men and women of 24 years of age could vote and stand as candidates. 200 members of parliament were elected to a one-chamber parliament (“eduskunta” in Finnish) for four years at time. This event also saw the dissolution of the four estates of Finland and the Diet of Finland was formally abolished. The Social Democratic Party of Finland, founded originally in 1899 as the Workers’ Party of Finland was the biggest party, and got 80 seats, but the bourgeois parties had more seats in total, which mean SDP didn’t get to form a government, but ended in opposition instead. Finns were initially were hopeful about their shiny new parliament, but would eventually become disillusioned, since the Czar had to sign their laws to get them passed, which he didn’t do often, and he dissolved the parliament often, with elections held in 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1916. It didn’t help that the largest party which tried to improve the lot of the common man was kept out of power by forming coalitions, and municipal elections were still based on property, which meant that for most Finns their hometowns were dominated by the rich and powerful, who got more votes per person thanks to their wealth, whereas the poorest didn’t get any votes. The Second period of Oppression 1908-1914 In 1908 Russia passed a law which curtailed Finnish Minister-Secretary’s access to the Czard, and hencefort he had to go through the Russian government first. This was seen as the first move of the second period of Russification in Finland. In 1910 Finland lost the right to legislate itself, and all laws would be passed in Russia, and Finland was invited to send a delegate as observer, which Finland refused to do as a protest. In 1912 Russian citizens gained full access to all levels of civil service in Finland, and had not war broken out in 1914, the Russians would have completely Russified all levels of government in Finland, but that had to be put on hold. Finnish people were more united in their opposition, but they lacked the means of resisting Russia, or the suitable opportunity to stage a revolt without getting crushed, since Finland had its small army abolished in 1901. Finns would get their chance soon, and the outbreak of war in 1914 both diverted Russian attention elsewhere and also demonstrated its weakness relative to the might of Imperial Germany, which caught the attention of many activists. Finland during WW1 Finland was a not a battleground of WW1, and Finns didn’t have to serve in the Russian army, albeit a couple of hundred of volunteers joined the Russian army, for various reasons. The Russians did start a program of building a series of fortifications in Finland, anticipating a possible German attack through Finland towards St Petersburg, which offered employment to many Finns. Russia also garrisoned more troops than usual in Finland, reaching 70 000 at one point. Finland was wholly dependent on peaceful trade in Europe, and the war messed that up. Finland wasn’t, and isn’t, self-sufficient in food, which meant that things started to get dicey as unemployment increased at the same time as the prices of food went up. Things got even worse with bad harvests, and 1917 in particular was very bad, and the food shortage started to approach almost the levels of famine in certain parts of Finland, which was one of the destabilizing factors that led to the civil war of 1918. Finnish activists sought help from Sweden in their quest for independence but as a neutral nation, Sweden refused. Germany was far more willing and offered to train Finnish volunteers and provide them with arms, in exchange of Finns rising up in rebellion against Russia. It should be noted that the idea of violent revolt wasn’t widely accepted, and opinions differed radically about what Finns should do, but the active minority was tired of waiting and saw their chance. About 2000 young Finnish men left the country in 1915-1916 and served in the German army, where they saw combat against Russia in German eastern front. These volunteers are called “Jääkärit” or “Jägers” in Finnish. The volunteers came from all walks of society, but university students and people from the western coast were over-represented. Some of them were from working-class backgrounds and some harboured socialist leanings, but when the Jägers were returned to Finland in February 1918, the so-called “Red Jägers” were left behind, because the Germans didn’t want them joining the wrong side during Finnish Civil War. Towards an uncertain future After the February Revolution of 1917 Finland entered a very uncertain stage, where revolutionary Russian sailors and soldiers, often drunk and belligerent, where often seen in city streets and nobody knew what would happen. Finland didn’t have an army, and very little police forces, so there was vacuum. The workers started organizing and arming themselves, founding paramilitary Red Guards to protect themselves and their rights, while farmers and the middle-class formed paramilitary White Guards to keep order and protect their possessions. Tensions started rising, which was unsurprising when a country has two non-professional armed forces who are very opposed ideologically. The Red Guards didn’t start full on revolutionary forces, but they would gradually become so as the problems in Finland caused the moderates within them to lose support, and workers became more willing to fix all societal issues with huge sweeping changes. The Social Democrats had gotten a majority of 103 MPs in the parliament, and tried to pass the Power Act which stated that parliament would now hold all powers of legislation, but Russia would still handle foreign policy and military issues, and also declared that it could be dissolved only by itself. The bourgeois parties were damned if they were going to let filthy socialists emancipate Finland, so they tattled to Kerensky’s provisional government in St Petersburg, which dissolved the Finnish parliament. SDP was considering not complying, but the other parties would not support them, so new elections were held, where the disillusioned and unhappy workers didn’t show up as much as before, and other parties campaigned more actively, which led to SDP losing its majority. This was one of the events that moved SDP further towards left, and radicals within the party gained more support, and the idea of revolution became more accepted within the Finnish political left. On the first of November, SDP published their “We demand”-manifesto, where they, well demanded, sweeping societal changes and more equality, but the Finnish cabinet rejected it, which increased the support the of the radical, revolutionary wing of SDP. On November 7th, the Bolsheviks started their revolution in Russia. Simultaneously, they were in contact with Finnish leftists, and urged them to start and revolution of their own, and then prepare to repel possible German assault towards Russia through Finland. A general strike started on 14th of November, and there was major unrest, and clashes between paramilitary White and Re Guards and a few dozen people died, but the radicals in SDP drew back, and refrained from trying to start an actual revolution, which was something the Bolsheviks gave them a lot of poo poo for later. The cabinet passed laws reducing the working day to eight hours and changed how municipal elections were held, but it was too little, too late. Finnish society was becoming so divided and there was so much unrest that it was only a matter of time before things went to hell. Both the Red and White Guards further organized and armed themselves as well as they were able during the general strike, and tensions rose even higher. Violence was in the air, and in late 1917-early 1918 Finland saw armed robberies, assaults, and murders almost weekly. Declaration of independence Finnish parliament decided on independence in November 1917, but there were two competing proposals for the declaration and how to go about it. SDP wanted to co-operate and negotiate with the Bolsheviks, but the bourgeois parties over-ruled them, and decided on unilateral declaration, which was presented to the parliament on 4th of December, and which passed the majority vote on the 6th of December. Finland immediately started seeking recognition, approaching Great-Britain, Sweden, the United States, France and Imperial Germany. Everybody told them to square things with the Bolsheviks first, and Great-Britain and the US were suspicious because their spies had reported Finnish volunteers joining the German army. Speaking of Germany, it was in the middle of negotiations with the Bolsheviks, and their preliminary drafts for what would become Brest-Litovsk Treaty had Finland as independent, neutral nation. Germany would change its mind about that in early 1918 after Trotsky pulled his “No war, no peace” gambit and walked out of negotiations to avoid having to make huge territorial concessions. Finnish cabinet didn’t initially want to ask for recognition from the Bolsheviks, since that would be the same as recognizing their legitimacy as the government, but on 20th of December the parliament voted to seek recognition from Russia. Social Democrats’ most pro-revolutionary members were in contact with the Bolsheviks through December, who were curious whether their Finnish comrades were going to cast of the shackles of capitalist overlords or if they were all talk. They did agree to recognize Finnish independence, should it be sought. Finnish cabinet sent a delegation to St Petersburg, and on 31st of December 1917 Lenin and the Bolsheviks recognized Finnish independence. Germany, France and Sweden followed suit on the 4th of January 1918. Great-Britain and the US did not, and would not do so until May 1919, because of the events that were about to transpire in 1918. Why did Lenin recognize Finnish independence? Many reasons, primarily because Russia had bigger fish to fry with impending civil war of their own. Also, Bolsheviks were ostensibly all about peoples’ right to self-determination, although they never truly respected it. They had strong influence on the Finnish left and were exhorting their Finnish comrades to start a revolution, promising weapons and troops and all kinds of aid. Russia wanted Finland on their side, preferably with as little Russian blood shed as possible, since they really did not want to grant German demands in exchange for peace, and were anticipating a possible German push towards St Petersburg through Gulf of Finland and Karelian Isthmus, and Finnish cabinet had let it be known that if that happened, Finland would be neutral. So the Bolsheviks needed a regime change, but if they had tried to attack Finland, it would have provoked Germany, which they tried to avoid. Also, while the leadership of SDP's radical wing were on Russians' leash, the vast majority of the workers of Finland would have rallied to defense of Finland, since the attack would have been seen as further Russian aggression once again, not an attempt to liberate the workers. In fact, that's exactly what would happen in 1939. ------------ Phew, that took more out of me than I thought. Next time, Civil war, White and Red Terror, Finland almost becomes a monarchy, and Finnish adventurers try to carve up Russian territory in the name of nationalism.
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Dec 17, 2020 19:22
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tokenbrownguy posted:Keep Finnposting. This rocks. Thanks, mate.  I'll try to get the last part finished before Christmas.
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Dec 18, 2020 12:35
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:You mentioned a separate military for the Grand Dutchy - what was the status of a unit like the Finlandsky Guards Regiment and Guards Rifle Battalion? Part of the Finnnish army, or not? Were the units comprised of ethnic Finns in Russian service? Finlandsky Guards were not a Finnish unit. Russia had seized territories during the 18th century that at some point had been under Swedish rule and as a result had people of Finnish origin living there, but they lost their rights and were turned to serfs. Russia later recruited troops from people with Finnish roots there and formed the original Finlandsky Guards in 1806. The unit continued until WW1, and they joined the Bolshevik Revolution in late 1917 and were later incorporated into Red Army. Later, units of the Russian army (ethnic Russians) that were garrisoned in Finland were also sometimes labeled Finlandsky Guards, not to be confused with the Finnish Guard. As for the Guards Rifle Battalion, it's colloquially known as the Finnish Guard, but the official name translates to "Russian Imperial Guard's 3rd Finnish Sharpshooter Battalion". They were seen as a separate elite unit, and they served in several Russian campaigns, for example in Polish rebellion in 1831 and Russo-Turkish War in 1877-78. They started as a Finnish unit belonging to the Russian Army stationed in Helsinki, but were incorporated into Finnish army in 1880 when conscription was invoked. When the Finnish army was dissolved in 1901, they were exempt for that, although a number of officers resigned their commission as protest to Russification. When Russian government got worried about Finnish separatism, they dissolved the Guard in 1905, and after that there were no Finnish troops at all in the Grand Duchy. Warden fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 17:35
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Really interesting, thanks! Finnish Broadcast company (YLE) has some recorded interviews from 1937 publicly available where they interviewed old veterans from the Finnish Guard about their service, during the Russo-Turkish War and during peacetime as well. The funniest parts are about how they earned some extra cash by chopping wood for gentlefolk and sometimes got laid with their servant girls, but occasionally had to rush to hiding half-dressed when the master or mistress of house arrived unexpectedly. Also stories about looting pieces of cowhide and trying to fix their lovely boots so that their feet wouldn't freeze during wintertime. The veterans also reminisced about one their buddies who wasn't a very good shot until he got his one of his eyes shot off and his aiming improved dramatically after that. Apparently, he never got the hang of closing one of his eyes when aiming, but when that got taken care of by enemy he became a prize-winning sharpshooter. Warden fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 19:00
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Kemper Boyd posted:
I was going to talk about that in the last part when I bring up the issue that the "heroic Jägers and the winners of the Freedom War" had in fact committed high treason in 1915-17 and in 1918 were all-in for turning Finland into a vassal state of Imperial Germany with no real sovereignty. quote:To hop a bit forward in the whole nationbuilding thing, this later on created narratives as Finns being an exploited nation under earlier Swedish rule, while the reality of things was that Sweden treated parts of Finland as integral and central parts of the state, mostly Western Finland which had good communications with the capital, and much of the rest was a similar periphery in Sweden as the backwoods parts of Sweden proper. These narratives also led, interestingly enough, to thoughts among right-wing conservatives in Finland that Finland had been a colonial nation, and there was a bunch of anti-colonialist thought in conservative circles. Yeah, I made a point of talking about Eastern Sweden or the eastern parts of the Swedish realm instead of "Finland" in the earlier parts because of that. People living here did have some cause for discontent though, as it was always the eastern part of the realm that got hosed by the Russians for centuries and most of the taxes went to fund Swedish wars elsewhere of develop the heartland of the nation. There was the whole Anjala conspiracy in 1788 due to Swedish officers in the east feeling that the crown was so incompetent that they had to take matters into their own hands.
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Dec 20, 2020 12:31
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Nenonen posted:You don't have to go across the border for Finnish colonialism, it's not like Finns haven't been exploiting Lapland for resources and trying to assimilate the indigenous people there. Even today it's easy for capitalists in Helsinki to dream of building a railroad to connection to the Barents Sea, ah the reindeer herders will have to adjust! Don't get me started on the Finnish state's past attempts to take Sámi children away from their parents, force them to live at schools and use physical punishments if they were caught talking their native tongue. Also digging up their ancestral tombs and taking the skulls away to Helsinki to be measured. Then again, we mostly gave them back, Swedish universities still refuse to give back the skulls they stole from Finnish tombs to prove that we were an inferior race.
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Dec 21, 2020 07:56
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So, this entry was a pain to write, and I still didn’t manage to cover everything I said would, but I’ll write one more entry after this. No idea when I’ll get around to that. This time I linked some maps from Wikipedia, because otherwise this would be impossible to follow. part 1 here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3950461&userid=225843#post510537591 part 2 here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3950461&userid=225843#post510599739 part 3 here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3950461&userid=225843#post510684760 part 4 here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3950461&userid=225843#post510821472 How Finland became Finland part V: What’s so civil about war anyway? Finnish Civil War: January 27th to May 15th Even 100 years after it happened, the Civil War remains the most divisive topic amongst Finns. One of things that was argued to death over the past century was the name of the sorry mess. Today we use the name Civil War, but right after it ended the official name used in history books for the decades to come was “Freedom War” or the “War for Finnish Freedom”. Some people also used “Independence War”. Other names were “Rebellion”, “Red Rebellion”, “Brother’s War”, “Class War” or “The Reds and the Whites”, all emotionally charged. After WWII the name Freedom War was phased out, at least officially, and the name “Citizens’ War” became more common, since it didn’t take sides and emphasized the conflict as having been fought among Finnish citizens, and try to downplay that half of Finland sided with Bolshevik Russia and the other half with Imperial Germany. What name people use tells a lot about them. If somebody uses the name “Freedom War” today, they are either old and probably from a well-off, conservative family OR an extreme right-wing hatemonger. And if someone uses “Class war”, expect a Soviet apologist. I’ll cover the causes, the sides, and the main events in this entry. Causes of Civil War Finland had gotten its independence recognized by Bolshevik Russia, Sweden, Germany and France. The situation was unclear and precarious. The country didn’t have a constitution, its parliament had been elected while Finland was still a grand duchy of Russia, and it didn’t have an army of its own, but there were two paramilitary organisations which were ideologically opposed and had already clashed during the general strike of November 1917 which had led to deaths. There was a small police organisation, but it was a remnant from the Russian rule, and they were poorly trained, and not trusted by anyone. There were tens of thousands of Russian soldiers still garrisoned in the country, but they had no clue what they were supposed to be doing or who to obey. Some had gone full revolutionary and murdered their officers, while some were still under control of old imperial officers who refused to recognize the Bolsheviks as legimate authorities. Street violence, robberies and murders were a weekly occurrence, and the country was teetering on the brink of complete civil unrest and upheaval. The lot of ordinary citizens was very poor. The economy was completely hosed by the world war, with Finland’s GDP having dropped by a third, the harvest had been bad, and some parts of Finland had almost reached famine levels of food shortage. Huge numbers of unemployed, and those who were unemployed had poor wages and working conditions, though the workers had managed to force concessions out of the employers during the strike, which emboldened the more radical elements among the Red Guards and the Social Democratic Party. Speaking of SDP, some of its MPs had lost faith in the democratic process, and very becoming more receptive to the idea of violent revolution to enact sweeping social changes. They were egged on by the Bolsheviks, who really wanted Finland to turn socialist and either ally with or join the Bolshevik Russia once more. They promised both arms and soldiers to fight the revolution to their Finnish comrades, and were becoming increasingly impatient, since they were in the midst of negotiations with Imperial Germany, which they planned to walk out on if Germany wouldn’t soften their demands. They needed Finland as a buffer state, in case of renewed hostilities. During January, the revolutionary wing of the SDP managed to seize power during party conference, and those opposing revolution either walked out, or bowed to the will of the majority. So, the country was divided into two, its economy was ruined, its political situation was unclear, and the state had no official means of enforcing its will, with armed gangs prowling the streets. To add insult to injury, Finland had an outbreak of smallpox which killed over 10 000 people in a couple of years, which is a significant number of people when you take into account that Finland had only 3,1 million people then. Later the influenza epidemic would reach Finland as well and kill tens of thousands of people more. So the year 1918 was shaping up to be extra special horrible. January 1918: The beginning The White Guards were declared as the official army of Finland on January 25th, and Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, a former general of the Russian Imperial army was appointed as their commander in chief. Under his orders the White Guards began to disarm the Russian garrisons on January the 27th-28th and attempted to escort the soldiers out of the country. In many cased Mannerheim had the full co-operation of surviving Russian officers, who were allowed to remain free and had their wages paid by Finland. After it proved impossible to escort the Russian soldiers out of the country, many of whom were actually not ethnically Russian thanks to the war, they threw them into prison camps to wait until things cleared up. Later, once hostilities began, there would be clashes between Russian soldiers and Finnish White Guards, but that was yet to come. The Red Guards were enraged by the government’s actions and refused to disband and surrender their weapons. The newly-radicalized Social Democrat Party had made the decision to start a revolution at some point, and they had already drafted a new constitution, and this event kick-started the actual revolution. At 23.00 on January 26th a red lantern was lit in Helsinki to give the signal, and the Red Guards began to move. They seized Helsinki by the 28th, and the cabinet of Finland had to flee to Vaasa, in some cases escaping via sleds over the frozen Baltic Sea. The Red Guards in other Finnish industrial towns followed suit and seized them in the name of Revolution. These events are seen as the official start of the Finnish civil war, but there were clashes in Viipuri a week earlier, though it is unclear whether the local White and Red Guards were acting under orders or on their own initiative. Viipuri was a vital railway hub, and Russian arms to Finland came through it, so both sides had strong interest in controlling it and seizing the shipments, since there was a lack of both guns and ammunition among both Reds and Whites. Here’s a map of the situation at the early stages of Finnis Civil War. Note that neither side had full control of the areas depicted as under their influence. Finland had limited railroad network and bad roads, plus huge areas of wilderness. Arrows with red borders and white interior are attacks by Whites, arrows with white borders and red interior are attacks by Reds.  Participants of the Finnish Civil War Estimating the numbers of either side has been somewhat tricky, with the numbers fluctuating, and some debate whether everyone who was forced to wear either a red or white armband should be counted, or only those who actively participated. Current estimates are that both sides had a total of 80 000 – 90 000 Finns fighting on their side, though not all at once, and not at the start. I’ve also seen some sources claim that the actual number of combatants was around 50 000 for either side. Note that I am not using the word “soldiers” or “men”, which I will explain shortly. Most of the members of the Red Guards were volunteers, usually either industrial or farm workers who were paid a salary and got food, which was a significant motive for joining for many of their members. They were not necessarily keen on fighting anyone, and didn’t really know anything about the revolution preached by the more fervent agitators, but they were unemployed and hungry. Depending on which sources you cite, the Whites had either around 15 000 or between 30 000 and 40 000 volunteers, mostly farmers and middle class, at the outbreak of the war, and the rest were conscripts plus later volunteers. Theoretically as the forces of the recognized government of Finland the Whites should have been able to conscript a lot more troops, but it is estimated that maybe as many of the third of the men called to draft simply did not show up, since they did not want to fight other Finns. The White Guards did their best to paint a picture of the Civil War as a “Freedom War” against Russians, since getting Finns to sign up to kill other Finns proved rather difficult, but their success varied. Finnish Civil War was mostly fought by amateurs, with few trained soldiers, since Finnish army had been dissolved in 1901, and the Finnish Guard (unit which was part of Russian army) was dissolved in 1905. Veterans of both were to be found on both sides, though their numbers were not that large and their skills and know-how were partially outdated. Some 25 Jäegers returned from Germany to train White Guards in January, and 1300 more were returned to Finland in February 1918 to fight for the Whites by Imperial Germany, and they served mostly as officers and NCOs, often holding officer ranks they were wildly underqualified for. The Whites founded a military academy for training officers in January, but the war started before they could really get that off the ground. Some high-ranking former Tsarist officers also returned to Finland, like Mannerheim, but there was mutual distrust and friction between the younger Jägers who were pro-Germany and the old Finnish officers of the former imperial army, many of whom were pro-White Russia. Even though the number of Jäegers was relatively small, they were trained and experienced soldiers, and they formed the core of White forces. The Jäegers did their best to quickly train the volunteers and conscripts. Their experience and leadership were a crucial advantage to the Whites, but the Jäegers would cause their own problems for independent Finland later. The Reds received some Russian officers from Bolsheviks, mostly as military advisers, but some of them took part in combat and tried to lead the Red Guards, which didn’t go well thanks to the language barrier and rank and file’s distrust of Russians. Most of the local Red Guards elected their own platoon and company commanders, many of whom had no military experience. Yes, this was as bad idea as it sounds. In general, lack of training and discipline hampered the Reds throughout the war, and entire Red Guard units had a bad habit of quitting and going home when they suffered casualties. The Red didn’t manage to train officers for their forces in time before they lost the war. In addition, there were women and children fighting. The Reds had units comprised of women soldiers, which infuriated the Whites, and the fate of these women after the war was even harsher than the treatment of the lost Reds in general. I trust I don’t have to draw you a picture, but let’s just say that the quasi-legal field courts treated them even more harshly and that their stay in prison camps after the was extra-horrible. Both sides also had fighters so young that we would consider them child soldiers today. This lad, who was KIA fighting for the Whites, was either 13 or 14. Note the Japanese Arikasa rifle. https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomen_sis%C3%A4llissota#/media/Tiedosto:LimingaSoldier13years.jpg The youngest fighter recorded was nine on the Reds’ side, though it was rather questionable whether he was a combatant, and he was executed in a prison camp rather than shot in the heat of battle. Excuse me for a moment while I fetch a stiff drink after writing that sentence. About 80 children (under 15 years of age) who were seen as combatants were killed during the hostilities. Three quarters of children killed were Reds, who were often victims of mass killings after the fighting ended. About 1500 children ended up in prison camps, many of whom died of disease and malnutrition there (estimates range between 100 and 200), and 1000 ended in front of an actual proper court for treason, though many got suspended sentences. The Whites received volunteers from abroad. The Swedes formed a 400-man strong “Swedish Brigade” which took part in the fighting and suffered casualties, plus there were a couple of hundred more Swedish volunteers. Polish soldiers of the former Russian army who were garrisoned in Finland also took part in the fighting (the so-called Polish Legion), and the were also Estonian volunteers, but they didn’t form their own unit. Interestingly, the Estonian Deputy Minister Jüri Vilms was also in the country and disappeared in March. His presumed death was initially blamed on the Reds, of course, but there is some speculation that he might have been accidentally murdered and robbed by the Swedish volunteers, who either thought he was a Russian, or they had learnt that he had large amounts of money with him. The most significant aid the Whites received was from Germany, and the 14 000 strong reinforced Baltic Sea Division led by Rüdiger von der Golz first captured Åland Islands in March and the made landing in Hanko in the beginning of April and then pushed on to capture Helsinki. The Germans took suffered around 360 KIA but they inflicted vastly more casualties on the Reds and their contributions were decisive and shortened the war by months. The Bolsheviks instructed the Russian troops in Finland to fight for the Reds, but their participation was lacking in motivation, coordination and actual effectiveness. After hostilities between Germany and Russia restarted in February, the Bolsheviks had to pull troops back to protect St Petersburg, and the Reds had to do without. After the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was signed, Germany got the right to have Finland as its satellite state, and the Bolsheviks left Finnish Reds hanging in the wind. Both sides of the Finnish Civil War had a shortage of weapons, there were barely enough rifles for everyone, often of wildly different vintage and manufacture, and few small artillery pieces and machine guns. Viipuri was very important city because it was where the weapons and ammunition from Russia ended up, and both sides tried to gain control of the town. January-February: Early phase of the war The Reds had the initiative, the element of surprise and they held the industrialized southern Finland, with its many ports and also had control of Viipuri and its vital railroad to Russia plus the industrial towns of Varkaus in eastern Finland and Oulu in northern Finland. They tried to launch offensives on several fronts to advance, but lack of co-ordination, lack of discipline and lack of arms meant that their advance stalled quickly during February. The Whites launched offensives to capture Oulu and Varkaus and both were quick successful. The engagements were quite small, but in Varkaus the Whites started mass executions after their victory. March-April: White storm In March the Whites went on the attack and chose Tampere as their target, surging southwards towards the important industrial city and railway hub. The fighting reached Tampere near the end of March, and after brutal street fighting the Whites claimed victory and the town on 6th of April. The Battle of Tampere was the largest and most significant battle of the civil war, and it is usually considered the decisive engagement. Another offensive was launched from Mikkeli and in the Karelian Isthmus the Whites were victorious in the brutal Battle of Rautu and gained control of a vital railway station, despite larger than usual Bolshevik troop presence, since the railway led straight to St Petersburg.  March-May: Germany joins the war and the Whites win After Trotsky walked out of Brest-Litovks negotiations in February, Imperial Germany restarted its offensive operations against Russia and gave them a beating. Russia was forced to accept bad terms, and they also agreed that Finland would become part of German sphere of influence, unlike what was initially planned on. Germany occupied Åland Isles without a fight in the beginning of March, which had temporarily been occupied by Sweden, and when they received formal request for military aid in the end of March, they dispatched their Baltic Sea Division to Finland. After winning the Battle of Tampere the Whites continued their advance towards Lahti, Kouvola, Helsinki and Viipuri. The Red leadership could see that the war had turned and moved to Viipuri, which unsurprisingly gave rise to lots of bitterness. German troops landed on Hanko in the beginning of April, captured the town, and pushed onwards to Helsinki. The Reds defending the capital were outnumbered and outmatched by the joint German-White assault which captured the city. Interestingly, Supreme Commander of the Whites, Mannerheim, had been against German intervention, and especially against them capturing Helsinki, since he didn’t want Finland to become a German vassal state, but he was overruled by the political leadership. The Battle of Viipuri was the last significant engagement of the war, and it was fought between 24th and 29th of April. Despite having near 7000 troops, the Red resistance was disorganized and sporadic, and Whites suffered only around 50 casualties, taking thousands of prisoners. Viipuri is also significant since the victorious Whites not only conducted mass killings of surrendered prisoners, they also massacred civilians who were on Whites’ side because they were either too Russian or too Jewish, which many Whites, especially Jäegers, connected to Bolshevism. The massacre of Viipuri can therefore be considered an example of ethnic cleansing. The Red leadership fled to Russia in once the fight for Viipuri was underway, but the last pockets of resistance hung on until 5th of May and the last Russian troops were kicked out of the country on 15th of May  The Whites had won the civil war, losing 3500 soldiers in battle, while the losing Reds had lost around 5700 fighters. However, the total death toll of the civil war was almost 37 000 people, out of population of 3,1 million. Next time I will go over what happened to the rest. Warden fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Jan 1, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2020 19:45
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feedmegin posted:I mean, I'm sure you're not wrong, but I'm not sure the Soviet guy is wrong either. After the Civil War everyone on the winning side used "Freedom war" most often. Nowadays, it is seen so politically charged thanks to massacres Whites perpetrated after their victory that few people use it. The majority of White Guards were farmers, albeit ones who owned their own small plots of land, so "Class war" is not a very good name. In 1920 about 66% percent of the Finnish workforce got their living from farming, with only about 15% earning their living from working in industry. Warden fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Dec 31, 2020 |
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Dec 31, 2020 22:40
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PittTheElder posted:Right, but what is the proportion of people who are large well-off landowners? I don't know poo poo about Finland in the 1910-20s so don't take this as an attack, but 66% of people making their living from farming does not mean that there wasn't a class of land owners and a class of agricultural labourers. You are correct that there was a class of tenant farmers, whose lot wasn't terribly good in Finland. In fact, right after the Civil War the parliament finally managed to pass a law which improved their situation somewhat. However, Finland, like Sweden and Norway, differed from other European countries in that there were comparatively few big landowners and lots and lots of small farmers with their own land. It's one of our historical peculiarities, alongside having had comparatively small and not as powerful nobility and not having ever had any form of serfdom. According to studies and statistics, small-time independent farmers were far more likely to side with the Whites and tenant farmers often sided with Reds. So whether "Class war" is appropriate depends whether you consider someone running a family farm, and having a couple of hired farmhands plus maybe a few seasonal workers as members of the exploiting class. Also, the name is a bit misleading since Finnish Civil war was also a part of the power struggle between Imperial Germany and Bolshevik Russia. Same reason why I hate the name "Freedom war" since if the Reds had won they would've started a internal power struggle about whether Finland would join Russia and the majority of the Whites tried to make Finland a German vassal state. Doesn't sound like freedom to me. I'll cover that more next time. Edit. More about the statistics. The 66% working in farming in 1920 includes the ~90 000 new small-time independent farms which were created in 1918-1919 with the law allowing tenant farmers to claim/redeem a plot of land on the cheap. Initially the law was supposed to exclude anyone who had been a member of the Red Guards but saner minds prevailed. Many historians consider the law which allowed tenant farmers to get their own land cheaply one of the factors which slowly healed the wounds of the civil war. Warden fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Jan 1, 2021 |
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Jan 1, 2021 09:58
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Tias posted:They immediately set about instituting a 40-hour workday and land reform This gave me a chuckle.
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Jan 1, 2021 15:03
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Ataxerxes posted:Also, I noticed a rather harrowing description of a field hospital during the summer battles of 1944 Grandpa was a medical officer and a surgeon during that time. After the war he was alternatively a respected pillar of the community or when the black mood took him, a haunted, drunken wreck. He never really talked about it, or the war in general, except one time he mentioned he still had nightmares about the "two lines". See, they sorted the incoming wounded into two lines, one for him and the second one for the priest. My mother has some of his war-time letters to my grandmother in storage, but they only contain personal stuff, and little of anything that would be of interest to milhist. Edit. Also, thanks for writing the additional info about Civil war.
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Jan 3, 2021 10:31
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tokenbrownguy posted:Hot drat. What a miserable time to be a Finn. Thanks for the kind words. I could make a joke about how most of our history has been a miserable time to be a Finn. There's a reason my official provincial song has lines which translate to "its people has suffered everything and been content with their lot" and "here's where the folk of Savo fought and everyone died".
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Jan 3, 2021 14:41
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So, it's gonna be a while till I'll have enough time and mental energy to finish my effort-posts on how Finland came to be. I dun hosed up and agreed to teach some extra courses, and the next few months are gonna be a bit tough. I can make no promises if and when I find time to do it, but I swear I'll get it done eventually. Sorry about that.
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Jan 8, 2021 15:30
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Cessna posted:No, just no. Not even close. The gear and skills are completely different. I can ski and ski down hills, but I haven't ever done any downhill skiing as in the sport. We had to ski down some hills while loaded up with gear and carrying a RK95 when I was in the FDF (I was in Recon/Ranger company). We also did some live-fire exercises where we had to ski into position, shoot at targets and set up explosives. My hands shook so badly that it took me like three tries to lit the drat fuse. Warden fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Jan 16, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 08:51
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Ataxerxes posted:My one grandfather who fought in WW2 never talked about it and I kinda wanted to find more about it.  The only time he ever spoke about it even briefly was at grandma's funeral, and it was about how he developed a slight, irrational dislike of priests back in 1944, since he had to make a lot of snap decisions to decide whether any arriving casualty should be brought to him, a surgeon, or to the priest. That memory seemed to haunt him to the very end.
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Mar 3, 2021 21:32
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Ataxerxes posted:Oh, just came across this. A Finnish dude wrote a study on the social dynamics of a Finnish infantry company after WW2 and it seems there is a free, official English translation: https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/74160 Ataxerses most likely knows all of this already, but the rest of you might find some extra info interesting. The author Knu Pipping was a really interesting character. He served as a NCO during Winter war in and got sent to a officer course later. He then got court-martialed for pointing out how old-fashioned and dumb Finnish officer training was in his letters home and was sentenced to prison for "leaking military secrets". The sentence was commuted midway through since the military needed all the men it could get and he was sent to the front where he took part and was wounded in the Battle of Tali-Ihantala. Pipping had started his university studies between Winter war and Continuation war, and he made a lot observations about the social relationships between soldiers and he wrote everything down and made a formal academic study of it after the war. Warden fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Mar 10, 2021 |
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Mar 10, 2021 09:01
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Raenir Salazar posted:I hear good things about Golden Kamuy although its Milhist relevance might be debatable. Golden Kamuy is pretty great if you are at all interested in late 19th-early 20th century Japanese military/political/cultural history, indigenous Ainu culture, interesting cuisine plus beefy, PTSD-ridden ex-soldiers and hilariously over the top convicts murdering the poo poo out of each other in interesting ways. The very first scene is about a dude having a flashback to Siege of Port Arthur where he got a bullet to the neck but somehow didn't die and instead went on a berserk rampage through some poor, unlucky Russian conscripts. The series is very well researched, and lots of care is paid to period-appropriate clothing and weaponry and one can learn a ton. It occasionally goes into anime comedy, which can give a person whiplash. I prefer the manga version. Warden fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Mar 10, 2021 |
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Mar 10, 2021 20:28
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Tulip posted:
There's a book called Legion versus Phalanx, which all about Romans getting into it against Macedonian successor kingdoms and their armies. It's a decent read, aimed perhaps mostly at laymen, though the author is not a formally-trained classicist, and was outed as a bit of a sex pest couple of years ago. Warden fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Apr 1, 2021 |
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Apr 1, 2021 07:52
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Hannibal Rex posted:
I'm guessing that lecture is related to Tooze's The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, published in 2014. It's a really good book, but dense as hell. I particularly like the part where he opines that in regards to Versailles Treaty John Maynard Keynes should have shut the gently caress up, followed by him shutting the gently caress up some more, and not going to Germany for a book tour, where he was welcomed by adoring crowds.
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Apr 28, 2021 07:00
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PittTheElder posted:But also, take a guess as to when the Canadian government stopped conducting an active genocide against native peoples! Did you guess 1996? Because oh boy is it ever still a problem here. Alternatively, can you guess which province conducted a eugenics program until <checks notes> 1972?? Sweden had State Institute for Racial Biology until 1958, when they changed the name, though they stil continued the eugenics poo poo. They were really into forcibly sterilizing people they deemed inferior to the pure Nordic race as late as until 1975. They also still got the skulls of my ancestors, which they dug up to be measured in order to prove that Finns were inferior mongrels, stored in cupboards in Uppsala university's basement which they refuse to show to anyone or give back.
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May 31, 2021 10:18
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Nenonen posted:loving Swedes! I forgot to write "unlike us, who at least gave the skulls we stole back". But yeah, we did a lot of bad poo poo as well. Didn't we also forcibly sterilize people for being deaf too well unto 1960s or 70s? Also, the recent Yle article about how the Finns in 1920s explicitly talked about the Petsamo region as finally having gotten a colonial holding of our own was really yikes-worthy.
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May 31, 2021 17:13
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Nothing makes me prouder as a Finn that we definitely didn't have the same 
Now, how about that railroad to the Arctic Ocean...
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Fish of hemp posted:Hey now, all the cool kids were doing it. And it was only decade after a war which was partially fought over colonial holdings. That's the thing, the political rhetoric of the day was all about how Finland was finally a proper "European" nation like England and France, since it finally had a colonial holding to exploit, and like the French and the Brits before them, they had a moral obligation to civilize the Sami folk living there. Which is both "holy poo poo, guys" and very stupid, since Finns and the Sami had co-existed for centuries.
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Jun 1, 2021 16:47
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Cessna posted:
You're right, that is drat cool. Being in the French rearguard must have been a special slice of hell.
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Jun 8, 2021 18:35
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SeanBeansShako posted:They didn't have time to worry, they were sent off to try and contain the Prussians. Sorry, I meant the troops that had to try to cover the retreat, the ones who quit the field last. I think I used the wrong word.
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Jun 8, 2021 18:40
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Live-fire exercises on skis were a trip, let me tell you that. As was setting explosives and then skiing the gently caress away before they went boom. The combat boots we got in FDF were good enough that I usually buy similar boots from the same manufacturer, since I like to walk a lot all the year round in rough terrain.
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Jul 4, 2021 17:36
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That was really interesting, so thanks. Also: PeterCat posted:the results are armies that suffer 10% casualties due to foot injury just from road marching. Christ on a pogostick.
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Jul 4, 2021 19:22
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Cyrano4747 posted:
Interestingly, attitudes towards Mannerheim were far more mixed during and after Civil War compared to what they changed to after WW2. He was idolized on the Whites' side, but many of the Jägers who returned from Germany were suspicious and disdainful of him, and called him "Russkie General", and the commander of the German contingent Rudiger von der Gölz considered him a out-dated martinet. And the people who were on the Reds' side loving hated him and demonized him for years as "Butcher" or "Slaughterer-General". Not at all entirely without a cause though, since his "Shoot on the Spot Declaration" was of dubious legality, and the results which can be attributed to that could very well be considered war crimes. Mannerheim was sidelined for years after serving as regent and losing the presidential election, and returned to prominence in late 1930s, and was basically deified after WW2 was over. Of course, nowadays we know the reasons for his sidelining were partially: 1) some right-wing extremists were planning a coup in summer 1919 and wanted to install him as military dictator and they actually asked him, and while he didn't give them a solid answer, he also failed to notify the cabinet or the parliament about that poo poo. The coup attempt never materialized, since it was basically a pipe dream by a small group. 2) While serving as a regent, he wildly over-exceeded his authority and was conspiring to start joint military operations against the Bolsheviks in Russia with the British and White Russians. It got as far as sending drafts for alliance treaties to London before parliament caught wind about him almost dragging us to another war in an attempt to restore his beloved Imperial Russia.
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Aug 3, 2021 19:12
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Tias posted:Mannerheim was a gigantic piece of poo poo, and only the performance of the FDF( with and without his guidance) eventually rehabilitated him. I don't disagree with you, and the opinion of my relatives who ended up in prison camps or mass graves would rightly be even more negative, and I recall that Great-grandma hated him until her dying day. Mannerheim was a overtly ambitious and power-hungry glory-hound with inflated view of his own capabilities, who was more adept at political machinations than modern war. Plus, you know, White Terror, which he approved of, if his letters are any proof. Edit. Addendum: Credit where credit is due, Mannerheim was absolutely correct to disagree with Finland forming close ties with Germany in 1918 and was also correct when he insisted that the cabinet reach accord with Soviet demands in 1939 and do anything possible to avoid war, since he was under no illusions about Finnish readiness. Shame that Erkko didn't listen to him. Warden fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Aug 4, 2021 |
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Aug 4, 2021 07:52
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Kemper Boyd posted:Personally I think he was smart enough to see the Soviet side of things when it comes to the late thirties, and he was on the side of "we should seriously negotiate with them about moving the border" in 1939, which is smarter than what we did. Mannerheim was very good at dealing with Russians, despite Soviet war propaganda having depicted him as a monster. Stalin specifically instructed Zhdanov to leave Mannerheim out of the War responsibility trials, but singled out Väinö Tanner as someone who absolutely must be convicted. As a former officer and Russian army, they knew what to expect and how to deal with him. Tanner, on the other hand, was a filthy Social Democrat.
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Aug 4, 2021 10:31
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