page_title: Finnish Civil War
section_title: War-torn nation
hierarchical_section_title: Finnish Civil War / Aftermath and impact / War-torn nation
caption_attribution_description: English: Rump Parliament of Finland in Helsinki during its first session since the Civil War. German army officers (incl. Rüdiger von der Goltz) standing in the left corner, P.E. Svinhufvud third from right and one social democrat (Matti Paasivuori) on the right representing the Finnish socialists alone. Some of the other 33 social democrats had fled to Russia, but some were not allowed entrance. Suomi: Suomen tynkäeduskunta Heimolan talossa; eduskunnan ensimmäinen istunto sisällissodan jälkeen. kuvassa viidentenä vasemmalla aition etualalla Rüdiger von der Goltz. Kolmantena oikealta seisoo P.E. Svinhufvud. Puhemiehestä vasemmalla istuntosalissa on runsaasti tyhjiä paikkoja, sillä sosialidemokraateista vain yksi oli istunnossa paikalla. Osa 33 muista sosialidemokraateista oli Venäjällä pakomatkalla, mutta osaa ei päästetty istuntosaliin.
context_page_description: The Finnish Civil War was a civil war in Finland in 1918 fought for the leadership and control of Finland during the country's transition from a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire to an independent state. The clashes took place in the context of the national, political, and social turmoil caused by World War I in Europe. The war was fought between the Reds, led by a section of the Social Democratic Party, and the Whites, conducted by the conservative-based Senate and the German Imperial Army. The paramilitary Red Guards, composed of industrial and agrarian workers, controlled the cities and industrial centres of southern Finland. The paramilitary White Guards, composed of farmers, along with middle-class and upper-class social strata, controlled rural central and northern Finland.
  In the years before the conflict, Finnish society had experienced rapid population growth, industrialisation, pre-urbanisation and the rise of a comprehensive labour movement. The country's political and governmental systems were in an unstable phase of democratisation and modernisation.
context_section_description: The Civil War was a catastrophe for Finland: around 36,000 people – 1.2 percent of the population – perished. The war left approximately 15,000 children orphaned. Most of the casualties occurred outside the battlefields: in the prison camps and the terror campaigns. Many Reds fled to Russia at the end of the war and during the period that followed. The fear, bitterness and trauma caused by the war deepened the divisions within Finnish society and many moderate Finns identified themselves as "citizens of two nations."
  The conflict caused disintegration within both socialist and non-socialist factions. The rightward shift of power caused a dispute between conservatives and liberals on the best system of government for Finland to adopt: the former demanded monarchy and restricted parliamentarianism; the latter demanded a democratic republic. Both sides justified their views on political and legal grounds. The monarchists leaned on the Swedish regime's 1772 monarchist constitution (accepted by Russia in 1809), belittled the Declaration of Independence of 1917, and proposed a modernised, monarchist constitution for Finland. The republicans argued that the 1772 law lost validity in the February Revolution, that the authority of the Russian czar was assumed by the Finnish Parliament on 15 November 1917, and that the Republic of Finland had been adopted on 6 December that year. The republicans were able to halt the passage of the monarchists' proposal in Parliament. The royalists responded by applying the 1772 law to select a new monarch for the country without reference to Parliament.
  The Finnish labour movement was divided into three parts: moderate social democrats in Finland; radical socialists in Finland; and communists in Soviet Russia. The Social Democratic Party had its first official party meeting after the Civil War on 25 December 1918, at which the party proclaimed a commitment to parliamentary means and disavowed Bolshevism and communism. The leaders of Red Finland, who had fled to Russia, established the Communist Party of Finland in Moscow on 29 August 1918. After the power struggle of 1917 and the bloody civil war, the former Fennomans and the social democrats who had supported "ultra-democratic" means in Red Finland declared a commitment to revolutionary Bolshevism–communism and to the dictatorship of the proletariat, under the control of Lenin.
  In May 1918, a conservative-monarchist Senate was formed by J. K. Paasikivi, and the Senate asked the German troops to remain in Finland. 3 March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and 7 March German-Finnish agreements bound White Finland to the German Empire's sphere of influence. General Mannerheim resigned his post on 25 May after disagreements with the Senate about German hegemony over Finland, and about his planned attack on Petrograd to repulse the Bolsheviks and capture Russian Karelia. The Germans opposed these plans due to their peace treaties with Lenin. The Civil War weakened the Finnish Parliament; it became a Rump Parliament that included only three socialist representatives.
  On 9 October 1918, under pressure from Germany, the Senate and Parliament elected a German prince, Friedrich Karl, the brother-in-law of German Emperor William II, to become the King of Finland. The German leadership was able to utilise the breakdown of Russia for the geopolitical benefit of the German Empire in Fennoscandia also. The Civil War and the aftermath diminished independence of Finland, compared to the status it had held at the turn of the year 1917–1918.
  The economic condition of Finland deteriorated drastically from 1918; recovery to pre-conflict levels was achieved only in 1925. The most acute crisis was in food supply, already deficient in 1917, though large-scale starvation had been avoided that year. The Civil War caused marked starvation in southern Finland. Late in 1918, Finnish politician Rudolf Holsti appealed for relief to Herbert Hoover, the American chairman of the Committee for Relief in Belgium. Hoover arranged for the delivery of food shipments and persuaded the Alli
caption: The Rump Parliament of Finland, Helsinki 1918. German army officers stand in the left corner. Social Democrat Matti Paasivuori is on the right, representing Finnish socialists alone.
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