# The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918/Part 2/Chapter 1

1. RED AND WHITE: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
In the preceding pages a summary has been given of the events before the outbreak of the insurrection. This was necessary in order to show the causes of the Red revolution. With all brevity they may be summarised as follows:—
As a background, the twenty years of Russian oppression from which the community had suffered, as well as the Russian revolutionary movement, with the fanatical and Utopian views of which the Finnish Labour Movement had been inoculated.
That is to say: Russian infection.
As chief cause, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, which turned the heads of the Labour Party, who lusted after power, and so tempted them to follow the example.
That is to say: Russian infection again.
As a largely contributing cause that the movement was not even stopped on the verge of the abyss of civil war, the Russian Bolshevik Government's combined plans of a reconquest of liberated provinces, and a social conquest of the world.
That is to say: Russian infection once more.
The programme of, and part played by, the Labour Party was much more simple; they fought solely for the power or rather to actually get to show and feel their power. The majority in parliament in the spring and summer of 1917 was not enough for them. Strikes without number were organised. When later they lost ​their majority in the Lantdag, the party went over to "unparliamentary means of force," and created the Red Guard. And when the activities of the latter met with opposition from the Government, the Government was overthrown. Though the party did not intend to carry out a social revolution, they did not scruple to employ anything Russian Bolshevism could offer them of fine phrases, catch words, and other means of agitation as weapons.
From the previous statement, it would appear, too, why a revolution, an insurrection which lacked all ideal merit, which had no other purpose than that of dragging Finland into an Eastern chaos, and giving the power to a small set of political adventurers, why this revolution found the number of adherents it really did: the Red numbered more than 100,000 men.
The reason was that the masses did not at all understand the significance of the events they had been drawn into. Everything came little by little. Strike had followed on strike, disturbance on disturbance. This was "revolution." The lawful authorities of the country had not been able to check the lawlessness. They stood powerless. So then it was the "people" that had the power. And the attempts of the upper class to stop the manifestations of this curious popular rule were then a "shameful attempt at a State-stroke and a counter-revolution." It must be beaten down. Therefore, one entered the Red Guard, one armed oneself, and therefore one was willing to fight against the "slaughtering corps." It was a question of honour to serve the efforts of the proletariat and safeguard its position of power—all scruples were silenced by the mighty word "revolution." This word was also sufficient to quiet conscience if the sanguinary deeds of the comrades were felt as a heavy burden. And if that was not sufficient, there was the ​magic formula "provocation"; if even this did not suffice, then the magic word "butchers" never failed of effect.
If, therefore, the Government wanted to prevent the "just endeavours" of the proletariat, would "deprive the Labouring class of the fruits of its struggle," nothing was easier than to remove this Government. Already twice the Government of Finland had been overthrown by revolution, in November, 1905, and in March, 1917. Each time the whole people had rejoiced. Nothing, it was supposed, could prevent it from being overthrown a third time, as it was said that it was "black" and "counter-revolutionary," and an enemy to liberty, now, as the two former times. One revolution or another, one master or another, the proletariat had once got into power, and this power was to be defended and asserted.
The insurrection was the unavoidable consequence of all that had happened. Therefore, with much the greater portion the question did not arise: Am I right in rising against the lawful authorities? No question arose at all—except among the corporations standing as it were immediately between the "proletariat" and the "citizens," among railway, post office, and custom-house officials, the staff of the tramways, cabdrivers, etc. Here a great division reigned, and here it was mainly dependent on how strongly the individual had been influenced by the agitation of the Labour Press, whether he was "Red" or "White." On the other hand, it must be noted that the number of working-men, who more and more clearly perceived the corruption of the rule of violence, was considerable. It was hardly the revolution itself, the overthrowing of the Government itself, which made them hesitate, but it was the sight it the advance of all the low elements within their own organisation; it was the many outrages which made them keep back a little. The position of these working-men ​was extremely difficult, for a refusal to join the ranks of the Red was dangerous if once they belonged to the co-operating trade unions. With threats and violence they were forced into the movement, and those who resisted compulsion as long as possible were disposed of with a couple of shots.
It may seem incredible that the greater part of the working-men had such a clouded conception of the situation. But nevertheless it was the case. All talk of starvation and oppression by capitalists being causes of the movement is false, for the insurrection did not break out because a sweated proletariat wanted to achieve an existence worthy of human beings, but because by the force of circumstances the masses had succeeded in establishing a dictatorship of violence, a terrorism which its leaders would not let go. And if we rightly consider how abnormal the state of affairs in Finland had been for the last twenty years, if we recollect that the whole people for two decades had aspired towards one single aim: liberation from political oppression, then we understand that in the soul of the people there slumbered mighty leanings towards such a thing as a struggle for liberty, a rising of the people, a revolution under any form. These were chords that vibrated to the lightest touch; it was a smouldering fire which could be brought to flame up in a fury the instant anything inflammable came near it.
The leaders of the Labour Party were guilty of the greatest of crimes when they directed this stream of yearning for liberty against their own countrymen, against the first Government of independent Finland, against the most democratic of all parliaments. When they pointed out those who had fought in the first rank against Russian oppression, and were the most pronounced democrats and most eager fighters for Finland's ​liberty, pointed them out as the tools of Tsarism, black reactionaries, the executioners of the people and more to that effect—then they were guilty of a baseness, a meanness, and an infamy which can never be forgiven. For it was done against their better knowledge; it was an undisguised and conscious lie. What they built upon in the last instance was the old thirst for liberty among the masses which mainly concentrated in hatred against those in power, whoever they were. Therefore the social questions played only a negligible part in the whole tragedy.
If these, broadly speaking, were the motives of the Red, those of the White may be still more briefly summarised. White, before all, were those who understood that Finland must be plucked from out of the whirlpool of the Russian revolution, so as not to be destroyed, who perceived the difference between a Western state of culture, law and order, and the Eastern chaos of Russia, who comprehended into what an abyss a proletariat dictatorship, like that of the Bolsheviks, hurled a country and a people. To these belonged also all "bourgeois," all the "cultivated" classes, the whole "intelligentsia"—apart from pecuniary circumstances. The Red met with complete, unanimous resistance from board-school teachers, subordinate functionaries, clerks, technicists and the like. Again, all those were White who had come under the direct rule of violence of the Red. To these belonged all peasants, the majority of the population of the country. They were not without the universal yearning for liberty, but with them it had remained healthy. They felt the brutal violence intensely, whether it came from above or from below, and they reacted against it. On the whole, the country population was exceedingly sparsely represented among the Red. Only the random, unemployed population ​that had been employed at the fortification work had joined them in great numbers, and in like manner the greater part of the working-men from the centres of industry; but the following among farmhands and crofters was very slight, and—if they joined the Red—they mostly confined themselves to taking over "the power" in their parish, playing at district magistrates, police and parish council, and ordering about their former masters.
Hardly either to the peasants did the bold step of overthrowing the Government become decisive. The many months of mob-rule had brought them to despair. All ruffians, all Russian soldiers, all wretches and criminals freely made havoc of the country. There was no possibility of order and safety if one did not oneself take up arms and suppress the Russian terrorism. The White fought for liberty, law and order, a war of defence against all destructive, disintegrating forces. Their war was a war of liberation, not a struggle for power.
Plainer, perhaps, than by anything else, the Russian colouring of the Red is shown by the fact that they were entire strangers to such conceptions as law and order. Their whole rule bore the impress of the East, with contempt of the right of others, of discipline and self-control. In this they differed completely from all Western "Socialism." They had the purely Russian mania for giving orders to all the four corners of the earth, for writing ukases, manifestoes and decrees—which were never obeyed. They had acquired the Russian manner of intoxicating themselves in speeches and negotiations through long nights, of talking and smoking themselves into an over-excited frame of mind, of living on the enthusiasm fomented in monster meetings—on the whole, of playing with the fluctuating moods of an irresponsible crowd as the wind plays with the autumn ​leaves. Their life was to be one ecstacy of excitement, one intoxication of power. Motor-cars dashing about, telephones ringing frantically, heaps of telegrams, clicking type-writers, orders here and orders there, food snatched at any moment, an hour's sleep anywhere. What was order, what was cleanliness, what was all quiet and unpretending everyday life—nothing. To rule and reign, live in a fever, throw all middle-class ideals to the winds, that was the thing to do. The revolution of the Red was as foreign as possible to our character, as it was foreign to any deliberate, carefully planned, coolly carried-out revolution. It built on the hypnotism of the mass meetings, it was a riot, no conspiracy.
In the following pages details and facts will supplement this characterisation. It is not intended to give any historical account of the course of the civil war, but only to describe certain aspects of the Red rule as it shaped itself in the south of Finland, and briefly to touch on the outbreak of the insurrection and its final suppression