Finland 1917-1918
After counselling with
@Karelian , I have decided to change Finland’s alternate history slightly.
In a previous update, I had stated that the great National Coalition of bourgeois and agrarian parties and the SDP, which held a majority of seats in the 1916 Eduskunta, falls apart over questions of economic policies already by mid-1917, and that only a “Red Earth” coalition of Social Democrats and the agrarian Maalaisliitto goes forward with drafting a Compact with the CA in Petrograd, thereby establishing an autonomous Finnish Federative Republic. After this has been achieved, they embark on a land reform project which is more radical than OTL’s.
Scratch that.
The National Coalition does not break apart in 1917. The moderate Social Democrat
Oskari Tokoi continues to lead the Coalition, in which his equally moderate party colleagues Vainö Tanner (Senator for Finances) and Matti Paasivuori (Senator for Industry and Commerce) work together with Young Finns like Antti Tulenheimo (Senator for Justice) and Agrarians like Kyösti Kallio (Agriculture). The Compact with Petrograd is negotiated like I have stated, but it is ratified in the Eduskunta by a very large majority stretching from the right to the left. And then land reform is tackled by the same parliament, and probably resembles OTL’s version greatly. When Russia drifts further to the left in November, Finland maintains its all-party Coalition in the Senate, even though radical Social Democrats like Otto Kuusinen or Kullervo Manner prefer to stay in touch with radicalized Southern Finnish proletarian activist groups, who demand bread and socialist reforms now and “soviet control over the economy” like in Russia.
Things are, thus, a lot calmer and more stable than IOTL until spring 1918, and the young Finnish Federative Republic is not only tackling the long-standing grievances of its rural population, but is also restoring public safety and order – well, not perfectly, but more so than IOTL – by building up a robust police force (a territorial defense force like Ukraine’s has not been made a part of the Compact, since, just like IOTL before the October Rev, few Finns – apart from the radically nationalist “Activists” and the Jääkäri movement – supported such an idea at that point in time). This force, named “Järjestyskunta”, is stitched together and includes both some experienced men from the old Tsarist apparatus and new recruits, drawing on militias both from the Right (Suojeluskunta) and the Left (Red Guards) and also on less politicized hires.
That preserves calm throughout the winter of 1917/18. But it is not enough by far to deal with what Finland faces when large numbers of Finnish refugees from Petrograd seep back into the country, followed by a very large number of Petrograders and retreating soldiers and sailors. Leon Trotsky organizes the latter into another Republican Guard formation tasked with securing the Karelian isthmus, and attempts to send the former into Southern Finland’s factories in order to take control of, redirect, and step up production of militarily relevant material.
The Tokoi Senate protests against these plans, assembles its security forces, and even mobilises additional factory militia to prevent any illegal takeover. The only problem is, these factory militia are not exactly loyal to the Coalition, and Trotsky’s ragtag, starving crowds can’t really back down because their meagre food reserves have run out and the Finnish authorities have nothing really to spare. Trotsky’s plan, when he heard of the defensive measures taken against his attempted takeover of Southern Finland’s industry, was to send only infiltrators – but instead, thousands upon thousands of Petrograders storm factories in Southern Finnish towns along the railroad line from Vyborg to Helsinki, and not everywhere are they met with resistance. In quite a few places, local worker guards join the new arrivals in taking over the factories and then pillaging the surrounding countryside in search of “hoarded foodstuff”. [1]
The Senate is almost brought to the breaking point by the question of how to deal with this situation. On the Right,
Pehr Evind Svinhufvud leads those voices who demand to draft conscripts from among the rural Finnish population into the Republic’s security forces, and to confront the raiders and factory squatters, shoot all who oppose them, and restore order and the rationing regime. On the SDP’s left, protests are forming against a shooting order for the workers.
Tokoi wavers for a few days – enough for the wildfire to spread farther West and reach Helsinki. Heavily criticized by his bourgeois coalition partners, Tokoi meets Trotsky for direct talks on April 16th, and insists that he respect the Compact and Finnish laws. He urges him to turn back, confront the Germans and their puppet Markov, and restore control over Petrograd and thus Finland’s railroad connection to the rest of the country. Trotsky replies that it is not his intention to violate Finnish economic independence, and that the Soldiers and Disposed Workers’ Soviet, whose speaker he formally is, fully intends, in coordination with Voykom, to strike back against the Germans, but for that they need more ammunition and weaponry, and in the meantime they must eat.
Finland’s history has been, through much of the 20th century, marked by bitter debates about the real nature of this encounter, the intentions of both sides, and why any attempt to reach a compromise failed. What really caused the events unfolding in the following weeks, which would go on to shape the young nation so deeply?
The Finnish Right has argued that here a weak leader with no clear agenda (Tokoi) met a strong one with the wrong agenda (Trotsky), hence why any attempt to negotiate was a mistake from the start. Trotsky would have sought to impose himself anyway, and so the Finnish Senate should have used what time it had to build up a national defense so that they could disperse the Russian revolutionaries while they were still disorganized. Radical Left analysis shares some of these interpretations, only with an inverse evaluation: to them Trotsky stood for the Revolution, while Tokoi had already by this point given up on implementing socialism in Finland in any way. Tokoi’s indecision and the reactionary violence of the Finnish Right then coerced Trotsky into adopting more dictatorial measures out of pure self-defense. Those who view Tokoi as the real hero in this scenario see Trotsky not so much as a champion of socialism, but as an aggressive, power-hungry leader of a marauding mob, and they blame the Finnish Right for stabbing the Tokoi Senate in the back and sabotaging its defense as much as they blame Trotsky for pushing the Finns towards a militarization they had not wanted themselves.
The two men’s personalities, their cultural backgrounds, and their views on socialism were certainly not conducive to a compromise. It could also be argued, however, that the relevance of the encounter, which has even been immortalized in popular Finnish songs [2], was secondary at best because the underlying political, socio-economic and military dynamics could hardly have been stopped in their tracks.
Be that as it may – the negotiations failed. Immediately afterwards, Trotsky contacted Centrobalt and brought the sailors of Vyborg and Helsinki and the garrison at Kotka to his side, hoisting the banner of socialist revolution and managing to repeat his Petrograd performance by having himself invested with extraordinary emergency powers to defend the revolution. He travelled on the train - with seasoned revolutionary workers and sailors from Petrograd and Vyborg - Westwards. On April 20th, he held a fiery speech to workers and soldiers in Kouvola, where he called them the vanguard of the international proletariat entering the field of the last of all battles, in which the collapsing ruins of capitalist imperialism would be swept away for good. The cheering crowds were joined by detachments from Kotka and Hamina, who had secured control over their towns as well and brought arms and equipment with them on trains.
The fragile Finnish governing Coalition broke apart under the onslaught of the red tide, or rather, over the question of how to react. On April 17th, Oskari Tokoi gave a report to the Eduskunta regarding the negotiations, and informed the parliamentarians that he had appealed to Supreme Commissioner Boris Kamkov for assistance in calling Trotsky back and bringing the Union Armies to order again. The entire right wing of the Eduskunta frothed at Tokoi’s passive stance, with Svinhufvud denouncing Tokoi as “the Russians’ hapless running dog” and declaring that the threat with which the home country was faced required immediate action now.
Kamkov’s answer, which arrived on the 19th, did not help matters. He affirmed both the right of the Union Army, Republican Guard, and Baltic Fleet soldiery to elect their own soviets and commanders, including Trotsky if they so chose, and the right of the Finnish Federative Republic to organize its economic life autonomously and uphold its laws. He also clarified that Trotsky was only to act within Voykom’s common strategy for the defense of Finland, but otherwise left no doubt that he saw it not in his power to intervene in any more decisive way. He then appealed to all sides, asking them to remain calm, respect the Compact, and focus on the common enemy. Tokoi reacted by beginning the drafting of tens of thousands of citizens into the Järjestyskunta, but this was delayed by the various resignations of right-wing Senators, which left parts of the Tokoi administration temporarily without leadership. To the Right, which assembled behind Svinhufvud, all this was too little, too late. They had sought, and found, a different ally for what they saw as Finland’s safety and stability.
Accordingly, on April 23rd, the first shots in Finland’s Civil War were fired between the Järjestyskunta attempting to defend Lahti and local Red Guards aided by forces under Trotsky’s command, with the latter quickly prevailing and taking over control of factories and the railroad junction. As Lahti turned Red, the remaining Senate and the Eduskunta fled Helsinki – in two directions. The Social Democrats and Maalaisliitto members loyal to Tokoi relocated to Kuopio, while the last Right-wing nationalists boarded North-Westward Bound trains to Vaasa, where Svinhufvud was assembling his “Committee for National Salvation” and gathering nationalist former military officers and mobilizing Suojeluskunta units throughout Ostrobothnia.
On the same day the German Kriegsmarine landed on the
Åland isles and took control of them, encountering almost no resistance.
On April 28th, Leon Trotsky presided over a triumphant gathering of soldiers and revolutionary workers in Helsinki, in which the establishment of soviet power in Finland was declared. As its leaders with far-reaching powers for the duration of militant revolutionary struggle, Trotsky and Eero Haapalainen were elected. One day earlier, the first German war ships anchored at the Ostrobothnian coast, bringing the first of more than 2,000 Finnish “Jäger” volunteers equipped and trained by the German army to Finland in order to intervene on the side of Svinhufvud’s Committee for National Salvation, which on the 29th, after hearing of Helsinki’s fall, restyled itself as the Senate of the Grand Duchy of Finland (Regency), as they declared that the Russian revolutionaries had annulled the Compact with their actions and that the Finnish Federative Republic had thus ceased to exist.
The Finnish Federative Republic’s Senate in Kuopio did not agree, of course. As news of the arrival of Germans and the Jääkäri reached Eastern Finland, Tokoi and his government bitterly accused the Right of betraying the national cause of Finland by calling in foreigners to turn Finns against one another. Conscription in the territorially largest, but less densely populated, Northern and Eastern regions of Finland still controlled by Tokoi’s Senate was in full swing, but compared to the other two parties in this fratricidal conflict, the Kuopio Senate had comparatively few weapons and ammunition at its disposal.
Throughout May, Finland is split three-way. In the first weeks, each side consolidates control over their strongholds: Vaasa and Ostrobothnia for Svinhufvud’s Senate, which bases its power on the Suojeluskunta, the Jääkäri and German assistance; everything east of Jyväskylä and north of a line from Mäntyharju to Raivola as well as Oulu, Kemi, Tornio, Kajaani, Lappland, and Karelia North of Sortavala is the territory in which Tokoi’s SDP-Maalaisliitto Coalition and its meagerly equipped conscript army built around the Järjestyskunta maintains control. The majority of Finland’s population lives in the much more industrialised South, though, where “soviet rule” is established in Tampere, Turku, Hanko, Helsinki, Lahti, Kouvola, Vyborg and on the Karelian isthmus. Its backbone is Russian soldiers and militiamen.
The first major movement in the civil war, with which Trotsky attempted to break out of the South and gain control over the railroad line up to Tornio, is the Battle of Haapamäki on May 11th, in which Vaasa units manage to encircle initially successful Red attackers, massacring hundreds and capturing more, thereby fending off the first Red attack on the territories controlled by Svinhufvud’s faction.
This failure was not the first crack which appeared in the image of a triumphant Trotsky and his irresistible radical revolution. The attempt to gain control over the railroad line had been induced by the horrible provisioning situation in which the South found itself – Trotsky had hoped to bring the country’s life-line under his control, thereby connecting the starving cities of the South with Sweden and access to American grain imports. With every week in which the conflict continued, the military nature of his socialism became more and more evident. Factory committees were brought in line with open brutality against dissenters. Resistance against Trotsky’s rule began to form in the South, too – almost none of it being of bourgeois nature, even though Trotsky and Haapalainen continued to blame and lambast the nationalist bourgeoisie for everything which went wrong. In the factories as well as among the soldiers, clandestine anarchist networks began to grow, waiting for the opportunity to rid their socialist experiment of the iron fist of Trotsky’s military regime. But more importantly, the Southern Finnish countryside began to consolidate into a solid block of stubborn resistance. Formerly landless torppari, most of them supporting the socialists or Santeri Alkio’s left wing of the Maalaisliitto, had gained their own tracts of land in last year’s agrarian reform, and their loyalty to Oskari Tokoi’s Kuopio Senate as well as their hatred of the foreign and urban regime of Trotsky, whose troops ruthlessly combed the countryside for supplies, was unbroken. On May 19th, the first raid against a Red detachment in Karkku, followed by a raid on a train, was conducted by peasant insurgents loyal to the Tokoi Senate, who escaped with their loot – food and weapons – on horseback.
In the last ten days of May fighting intensified, with all sides having completed their build-up. An offensive led by the forces of the Vaasa Senate Southwards against the Reds, aiming at Tampere, was rebuffed. For all its internal threats, the Finnish soviet state would not buckle quite so easily. Vaasa and Kuopio forces skirmished over control of the Northern portion of the railroad line to Tornio. Moscow urged the revolutionaries in the South and the democratically elected Senate of Oskari Tokoi in Kuopio to unite against the Vaasa Senate and their German allies – but while there was no major offensive taking place between the Kuopio forces and Trotsky’s, anyone who lived through these times in Finland was absolutely certain that such cooperation would never occur. And while the rest of the former Russian Empire – well, most of it – was casting their votes for or against the new democratic constitution, Finland remained in the grip of civil war and widespread hunger, which proved a fertile ground for yet another catastrophe: a disease which was beginning to spread across the globe…
[1] Karelian’s comment: “And since many of these people will be Ingrian Finns who speak a different dialect with a Russian accent, the horror images of right-wing nationalists of 'rampaging horders of lawless rabble' turn to reality.”
[2] Thanks to Karelian for pointing out this one – you must check YouTube etc. for OTL’s Finnish anti-Kerensky song, it was a hilarious experience for me.
And once again thanks to
@Betelgeuse for editing this text!
Upon his suggestion, here is an attempt at visualising where the front lines ran in May 1918:
South of the Red line is where Trotsky's soviets rule. West of the Blue line is the Vaasa Senate, East of it the Kuopio Senate.
