How the Reds LOST the Finnish Civil War (1918)

The Finnish Civil War (Suomen sisällissota) was a conflict that took place in Finland from January to May 1918, after the country declared its independence from Russia in December 1917. The war was fought between the "Whites," who were a coalition of conservative and pro-independence groups supported by Germany, and the "Reds," who were a coalition of socialists and communists supported by Russia.
The origins of the conflict can be traced back to the political and social tensions that had been simmering in Finland for several years prior to the outbreak of war. The country had been under Russian rule for over a century, and during this time, there were growing calls for greater autonomy and independence from the Russian Empire.
In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Finland declared its independence and formed a new government. However, the country was deeply divided between those who wanted to align with Germany and those who wanted to align with Russia.
The conflict began in January 1918 when the Finnish Senate, which was controlled by the Whites, declared a state of war against the Reds. The fighting was brutal, with both sides committing atrocities against each other. The Whites eventually emerged victorious, and their leader, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, became the de facto leader of Finland.
After the war, the Reds were subjected to harsh repression, with thousands being imprisoned, executed, or sent to labor camps. The legacy of the Civil War continued to shape Finnish politics for decades, with tensions between left and right continuing to simmer beneath the surface.
Overall, the Finnish Civil War was a tragic and violent episode in the country's history, which saw thousands of lives lost and deepened political and social divisions that continued to haunt the country for years to come.
History Hustle presents: Why the Reds LOST the Finnish Civil War.

SOURCES
– The Splintered Empires, The Eastern Front 1917-21 (Prit Buttar).
– Russia in Flames. War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914 – 1921 (Laura Engelstein).
– The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 (Robert Gerwarth).
– Russia in Revolution. An Empire in Crisis (Stephen Anthony Smith).
– The Finnish Civil War 1918. History, Memory, Legacy (Tuomas Tepora, Aapo Roselius).

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1918 OLD RARE DOCUMENTARY | HELSINKI FINLAND | WORLD WAR ONE SOLDIERS
Victory parade of the White Finnish forces in Helsinki 1918
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[HistoryHustle]

Tumbnail photo colorized by Julius Jääskeläinen. 
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[sampohonkala]

At 6:19 I would say the beginning of the White Guards was totally different. The Finnish Jaegers were not in Germany by accident; they were a group of men that had joined the illegal Jaeger movement in Finland, the goal of which was to free Finland from the Russian rule. They had fled to Germany to get military training and experience in order to return to Finland and drive the Russian forces out by force. This was originally meant against the Tsar and Russian troops, but ended up being against the Finnish reds.

[Alexandros.Mograine]

Very rare for people to make a Finnish civil war video, its so much more interesting than people give credit for. thanks and cheers!

[eerokutale]

My mother's grandfather left his family and fled to Russia after the Finnish Civil War and was never heard of again, I presume he was killed in Stalin's purges.

[sampohonkala]

1:39 Swedish speaking landowners did exist, but in 1917 only 11% of the population were Swedish speakers. Land ownership differed greatly of what it was in Central Europe, because since the land reform 'storskiftet' in the late 1700's all farming land was owned by individual farms, by the farmers themselves. As Swedish was the language for the academic and people living in towns, it is safe to say that way over 90% of the landowners were Finnish speakers. These Finnish landowners had gone through an astonishing developement by the end of the 1800's. It can be described as a grandfather that could not write, father that had been in elementary school and all the children, girls included, studying in the University. This was the result of the nationalist ideology that wanted Finland to be free and develop as a nation. Universal right to vote was one of the big early accomplishments.

[scanpolar]

My grand father was a member of Suojeluskunta. He was a proud farmer and had studied in Evo forestry school. In his life there were no reds, only communists. The civil war was more or less a bad thing to be forget.

[jokemon]

I had family on both sides of the conflict. My maternal grandmother's father was only 15/16 years old during the civil war and had the role of a runner within the Red Guards. According to my grandmother, he never spoke of 1918. He later in 1939/1940 supported the war effort in the form of supplying troops on the front, but he never saw combat there. Lost one of his horses to a landmine according to one story I've heard. Another more distant family member I know operated as a White Guard spy in Helsinki, smuggling information and weapons in and out of the city with his young daughter. Shortly after the war, he was shot and murdered in his apartment building stairway. The murderer was never caught, but it's suspected that it was a former Red Guard member.

[Toolmanify]

My grandfathers grandfather was a commander in the Russian Tsarist Army and in charge of Suomenlinna and the Russian garrison there during this time. He was first imprisoned by the reds during the beginning of the war and held at Suomenlinna as a prisoner(as many people would). He remained a captive when the Germans/whites took over and was pardoned/released later on the orders of Mannerheim. Sadly he died soon after as the result of the horrible conditions in the prison camps. He went from being a rich officer to a penniless man without a home in just a few years. His family stayed in Finland after the war as they could not return to a red Russia.

My own grandfather married to a Swedish speaking Finn from Hanko(my late grandmother) and considers himself a Swedish speaking Finn, even though he was raised by two Russian parents. He is 95 years old and still has the Tsarist Sabres of his grandfather/father(also a cadett in the russian army), on his wall.

[gabmandoo]

I feel like Finnish civil war was a tabu for decades and it wasn't really discussed until quite recently. At least during the 90's and early 2000's civil war was just a side note in schools history classes and it was quickly moved on to more clamorous parts of the Finnish history. Even though my home town was a battleground for some heavy fighting, it was basically never talked about. Only once I met one man who was born a few years before the civil war and he told me how that war destroyed the way of living in his home village. How that community turned against one another and how plague alcoholism swept through it after the war as men tried to cope with killing their neighbors. Civil war left its marks on generations, it was a wound left open and it took at least one full generation to open the wound and be open about it.

[williamsmeds]

Thanks for bringing attention to this. I love how you make videos about less known historical topics.
Greetings from a Swedish speaking Finn 🇫🇮

[JukkaAhmala]

My relatives fought on both sides. One was a jaeger, one was in the reds and was executed in Viipuri. In the inter war period, people mostly tried to forget the nightmare, apart from the elements who fled to Russia. Especially the Winter war did much to unify the country. After the second world war there was bona fide discussion to understand what had happened. In the 70s there were political movements whose political agenda controversy around the issue suited and who therefore kept returning to the issue. I would say that in 2023 the Civil war is mostly history although most people still remember on whose side their grandfathers fought.
I appreciate your videos very much. Keep up the good work!
By the way, the map in the background is not correct, if it purports to show Finland during the Civil war. The "hand" extending to the Barents Sea was only annexed to Finland in the Tartu Peace Treaty in 1920.

[ValleyPooch]

I moved away from Finland as a boy in the 1950's. I believe that my relatives came both from both the red and white sides. I never heard the civil war discussed by any of my relatives (a few of whom had lived through it). I think that was the typical reaction to the war by Finns. They wanted to forget it. The later hostilities by the Soviets had united the reds and whites. I believe that some given names gave clue to which side their parents were on, eg, Voitto.

[keimok]

Step three:
3. Growing civilian unrest because of the circumstances of the war
A little bit earlier during the summer, the coalition government broke up, when the social democratic ministers jumped off mostly because of the alimentary question, which was growing worse. The provisional government was using grain exports as a weapon to keep the Finnish government on a leash. They kept on promising the trainloads of food, but those promises were never fulfilled for some reason or other. Not that there was actual famine, but many things were still under rationing: sugar, butter, meat, milk, bread, and so on, and everybody was trying to make ends meet, and at the same time suspecting, that someone was hoarding something. This increased the tension between low-income families and middle-class families, but especially the population in cities (consumers) and landscape (producers), as the producers could cut off their share before handing over the rest for the consumption rations, and therefore could be far more secure that they have at least some foods on the table. The problem really was the uncertainty, will the food last until the next crop or not. This tension might have created the need for protective guards in the countryside, in case the population in the cities should try to come and confiscate their crops by force. At least this story was told in the cities among the worker associations, which started to create their own guards to protect themselves. At the same time, the provisional government was out of money and had to stop making orders in Finnish factories and cease the fortification works, which increased unemployment. Also, inflation run out of control, so even if somebody had saved something for a rainy day, those savings lost their value. The outrage was showing in spontaneous demonstrations, strikes, and sieges of municipalities. All the civilian troubles also meant, that people wanted to search for protection among the labor organizations, which grew in numbers very rapidly.

[jattikuukunen]

I remember a school exercise where we were supposed to ask our grandparents about the civil war. Mine just didn't answer at all.

Other topics I remember from our history classes are the discussion of choice of word about the conflict and how that reveals the agenda of the speaker. Also, it was made clear that it was a war where neighbours were killing each other. I remember that the advances of the Whites and the German landings were discussed. The terror by both sides and the prisoner camps after the war were also discussed in school. It was also highlighted how the divided nation was finally unified in talvisota.

[JanHellqvist]

As a Finn and a casual observer of our history, I find it interesting that in the name of openness and understanding Finnish research, articles, TV programs and documentaries appear to focus on the treatment of the reds by the whites. Topics include confusion as to cause and justification of conflict, debate whether it was a civil war or a proxy war, workers conditions, women among the reds, summary executions by the whites, prison conditions the reds suffered, questioning if marshal Mannerheim was in reality a war criminal instead of a valued leader, to name a few. Considering that there were forces in Finnish society that felt favorably towards closer ties with the Soviet Union/Russian federation and opposed joining the EEC, EFTA, the EU and vehemently opposing western military alliance, I feel that many of cases for understanding our past is a means to halt western leaning sentiments and to redefine past events.

[velisvideos]

Many thanks for this excellent documentary. A couple of comments: Finland had been gradually incorporated by Sweden from the 12th century onwards. Understandably, this eastern province was dominated by a Swedish speaking aristocracy and intelligentsia. However, the Reformation in the 16th century provided a basis for Finnish language in the church. Also, even though Southern Finland gradually became dominated by large estates of noble Swedish speaking landholders with the actual tilling increasingly done by landless tenant farmers (who, by the way, became a primary force behind the Red rebellion). Further north the land was still owned or at least used by Finnish speaking farmers. After the Russian annexation in 1809 Finland experienced, amazingly, a great period of national growth and development, mutating from a Swedish province to a nation. This was due to many fortunate factors, e.g. Finland's exceptional legal status within Russia, the need for the Swedish speaking elite to differentiate from both Sweden and Russia etc etc. At the same time both the economy and population grew rapidly. This was of course helped immensely by the proximity of the Russian capital. But, the Russians being Russians and seeing a good thing, started rapidly undermining it towards the end of the 19th century with a policy of Russification and systematic destruction of Finland's constitutional position. In the process they managed to turn a peaceful and faithful part of their tottering empire into a seething hotbed of resentment in just a generation. One should realize that Finns were, and still are, solidly for fair play by the rules. The most effective way to provoke them (=us) is to flaunt the rules. Thus the clandestine emigration of hundreds of our finest young men to Germany for military training during WW1. So, the two big driving forces for our civil war were: illegal actions by the Russian government (Whites), the abject position of the tenant farmers on the great estates of southern Finland (Reds) and the collapse of the Russian empire in 1917 (both). And what about the result? I think the vast majority of Finns, with the benefit of hindsight, are happy that the Whites won. The alternative would probably have meant eventual Soviet occupation and unending calamity and decay. A bit like Ukraine. Also, most think that the White victory was marred by the unnecessary atrocities after the war. The White leaders should have kept a check on their forces, they were fighting for legality after all. I myself come from central eastern Finland, which was solidly White, and the civil war is not a big issue there. However, from friends in the South whose forebears fought on the losing side I know that they still have family memories of women trying to throw food packages to their starving husbands in the prisoner camps. I am sure that also people from families whose members were murdered by the Red guards still bear that memory. However, one of Finnish culture's good aspects is that hatreds are not carried over from generation to generation even if memories are. And one should also remember the aftermath of the war: our parliament quickly legislated an effective land reform, which removed the justified resentments of the tenant farmers. Thus the Russians, once again, totally overestimated their ability to destabilize Finnish society by invading in 1939. They achieved the exact opposite. Those guys never learn, at least not the correct lessons.

[wonzer]

As a Finn, Civil War is not remembered much these days. If asked, may people would say that the good guys won the Civil War as the red victory would have most likely made Finland just another Soviet Republic and just 20 years later, former whites and reds fought side by side in the Winter War to prevent that. Now there are some deep red families in which the story goes other way around and they still see whites as the bad guys and believe red victory would have made an independent Finland that would have been a much better place. I say families as per my experience these are usually people from families who had been politically far left from generation to generation. They are small minority, but probably usually the people who remembers the Civil War most.

Now the White Terror is universally condemned. Even if people see whites being the good guys in the war itself, terror is seen being evil. White leadership (Mannerheim, Svinhufvud) are somewhat seen not as guilty of the terror as they moved to stop it relatively quickly after the war.

And of course vats majority of the population knows next to nothing about the Civil War :P

[Hillbilly]

Excellent video again Stefan. Thanks for the post. Cheers from Tennessee

[dcdrc]

The last veteran of the conflict was Aarne Arvonen of the Red Guard. He was captured during the war and even survived a year in the Tammisaari Prison Camp. Arvonen passed away in 2009, aged 111.

[sfjuhispst]

Couple of things:
1. Finnish identity started forming far before the 1905 reforms. The later half of the 19th century had largely been the time of that process, with the grand duchy receiving its own currency and finnish being made into an official language.
2. The revolution did not only see support from factory workers and the city-dwelling part of the population. The tenant farmers and a growing population of jobless poor in the countryside supported it as well. This a part of why the civil war can be a touchy subject in Finland; every community had to face it.