Finland Between the Two World Wars
From the Civil War (1918) to the Winter War (1939)
Independence did not bring peace in Finland. Two opposing sides began fighting for power. On one side, the Whites – the landowners and the bourgeois Government – wanted to consolidate their power. On the other, the Reds – the landless and the urban proletariat – believed that the election of October 1917, in which the Socialist Democratic Party had lost the absolute majority, had been a move by the Russian Provisional Government to strip them of their power. They were encouraged to fight by the revolutionary developments in Russia.
In January 1918 the Red Guards intensified the collection of weapons from Soviet Russia. The Government appointed General Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim, a former general of Imperial Russia, commander of the White Guards and renamed them Finnish White Army.
The Civil War began on 27 January when the Red Guards seized the power in Helsinki and the White Army began disarming the Russian Army in Vaasa. Finland was divided in two: the Reds controlled the south, the Whites the north and the centre. The forces amounted to approximately 80,000 men on each side, but the Reds didn’t have efficient military leadership. They received ammunitions but little aid in military operations from the Russian Army that still had about 40,000 men in Finland. The Whites, however, could rely on the skilled strategist Mannerheim, some tsarist-trained Finnish officers and about 2,000 officers trained in Germany and therefore called Jägers (light infantrymen).
The decisive victory of the Whites in the battle of Tampere was followed by the defeat of the Reds in Helsinki by a German expeditionary force of about 14,000 men, negotiated with Germany by the Finnish Government reconstituted in Vaasa.
The war ended on 15 May and was extremely bloody. Out of 3 million Finns more than 30,000 people died during the Red and White Terror, on the battlefield and, after the war, in prison camps from malnutrition and disease.
The Civil War deepened the division in Finnish society and caused a split in the labour movement. The radical socialist leaders fled to Russia, where they founded the Finnish Communist Party, banned in Finland. The moderate wing renounced communism and continued to operate in the ranks of the Socialist Democratic Party.
After a failed attempt to establish a Finnish monarchy, the Republican Constitution was enacted on 17 July 1919. It granted extensive powers to the President, who could determine foreign policy and exercise the legislative power jointly with the Parliament.
The Treaty of Tartu on 14 October 1920 confirmed the eastern borders of Finland. Finland also received an outlet on the Arctic Ocean through the corridor of Petsamo. In 1921, the ÅIand Islands, disputed by Sweden, were attributed to Finland by the League of Nations, on condition of their broad autonomy and demilitarisation.
After the war, the Finnish Government launched a drastic land reform to eliminate a major source of social conflict. In 1918, the tenants could redeem their farms on favourable terms, and in 1922 the landless were allowed to buy small holdings with the government’s support.
Between the World Wars the Finnish economy grew at a rate among the highest in Europe. The main export goods to the Western countries were still wood, paper and cellulose. This export helped Finland recover faster than other countries from the Great Depression of the early '30s.
The improved economic conditions allowed the Government to launch a vast programme of social reforms in the education and labour legislation. In 1937, a pension system was introduced and the maternity package was set up in 1938. It is still a unique feature of the Finnish identity.
The social safety and the general improved living standards helped to mitigate the climate of mistrust generated by the Civil War. Even on the issue of language, Finnish society gradually accepted the principle of ‘one nation, two languages’.
Up to World War II, Finnish culture was granted important international recognitions. In addition to those to music (Jean Sibelius, 1865-1957), art (Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1865-1931), architecture (Alvar Aalto, 1898-1976), sport (Paavo Nurmi, 1897-1973), literature especially stands out. In 1939, Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1888-1964) was awarded the Nobel Prize for his mastery in portraying his country’s peasantry realistically.
When the so-called Lapua Movement, a far-right movement with fascist connotations, was banned in 1932, Finland could be considered a mature democracy. In 1937 the centre-left coalition between the Agrarian League and the SDP strengthened political stability and social unity. This unity was desperately needed at a time when Finland became a pawn in the ruthless power politics of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and when the Finnish diplomacy failed to find a satisfactory system of security in Europe.
Written by Modestino Carbone, 'Finland between the two World Wars: From the Civil War (1918) to the Winter War (1939)’, Finn-Guild Links, Autumn 2016, pp. 18-19.