The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-03-05
BY a Red Cuardist.

SoN-f
made sufficiently available for the comrades Of
other countries. There is pamphlet of Comrade
O. w. Kusinen "The Finnish Revolution A
Self-Criticism,' which is available in English but
is very little known in this country. In Finnish
there are many publications on the question from
both sides which give interesting material about
conditions before and during this armed strug
gle of the-casses, where the proletariat was com
PEELED to take up arms without being prepared
for it and in which it made some Of the same mis-
takes as were made in the Paris Commune
In ~White Finland" there is published in six
large volumes a history of "Ihe Finnish War OF
Liberatonn-so these allies of the German call
their murderous warfare against the toilers OF
their own country. From this the following les
sons can be drawn:
1. The preparations of the whites. AS early
as 1917, a military commission was appointed
whose first task was to investigate the geograph
zeal terrain, and especially to seek basis for
operation They selected the coast Of the Gulf
of Bothnia in midde-western Finland. The rea
sons were: The population is of conservative
middle peasantry, where strong sentiment had
been aroused against the Reds and the Russian
soldiers. In this region there was big railway
center with roads running to the north, east and
SOUTH and west to the future white capital, Vasa.
From this point it was possible to have connec
tons with the western countries over the sea and
north of the gulf. The whites had already made
arrangements to get financial help arms and sup
plies from Germany (oficially) and from Sweden
(unoficially). AS is known, the Germans sent
troops to Red Finland to the rear of the Reds,
which decided the outcome of the civil war.
The lesson: In the sense Of military prepare
tons and foreign connections, the whites were
Yell,prepared the reds had neglected these mat
tiers.
2. A plan to isolate the Russian military by
surprise, was worked out. AS the war with Ger
many was still pending, there were small Rus
sian detachments scattered thru Finland and the
revolutionary soldiers friendly towards the
Finnish Reds, the workers and poor peasants
The whites organized besieging rings of armed
"white" organizations around every unit and
even succeeded in isolating them from each other,
and from the Finnish Red Guards. The prepare
tons of the latter to Illustrate these plans were
too late as a result of the lack of an intelligence
service.
3. Preparations to clean out Reds from the
hinterland. There were big industrial centers
in north Finland, saw mills and lumber works,
and rebellious poor peasantry. To capture
the southern part of East Bothina would give
the whites opportunity to strike a blow
against these Reds and to make their own rear
safe. The whites succeeded in carrying out this
plan They were met by hard fighting on the side
of the industrial workers and rural scouts but
succeeded in. crushing them.
A. The military leadership. There were
number of former officers among the Finnish
bourgeoisie. Some of them had been officers in
the Finnish army, dissolved by czarism in 1901,
and some had been officers in the czarist army.
Then the whites had made arrangements to get
staff and noncommsisoned officers from Sweden
and Germany. Then they had over two thousand
"Jegers"-bourgeois youths, students and even
peasants and workers, who had gone to Germany
during the war in order to get military training.
Most of them had honest intentions of preparing
themselves for a fight against czarism in order
to liberate Finland They were regarded as adj
venturers by big part of the Finnish bour-
geoisie, which lined up with czarism for their
profits in producing war supplies. But when
power in Russia passed into the hands of the
workers and peasants, the big bourgeoise man
aged to get those patriots to fight the Finnish
toilers under the cover of "ousting the Russians"
But hundreds Of these boys did not let them