On this day in 1918, the Finnish People’s Delegation declared a socialist workers’ republic (known “Red Finland”), at the start of the Finnish Civil War. The burgeoning working class movement was crushed by imperialist German forces.

Prior to 1917, Finland had been ruled as a Grand Duchy, an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. With the collapse of the Tsarist state in the wake of February Revolution and a long-term increase in nationalist sentiment, Finland declared independence on December 4th, 1917, formally recognized by the Russian Bolsheviks on December 31st.

Due to industrialized Finland having a strong revolutionary labor movement, conservative and proletarian forces were immediately thrown into conflict.

Red Guard paramilitary units representing the labor movement found themselves in a cycle of escalation with loyalist “White” Guards, culminating in a mass uprising of Reds in Helsinki on January 27th, 1918, marking the start of revolution. The following day, the Finnish People’s Delegation was formed by members of the Social Democratic Party. Bourgeois forces fled to Vaasa, where they set up their own “White Senate”.

The war saw the Whites, under the leadership of General Mannerheim, receive support from the German Empire, which was more well-established than the Reds’ primary ally, the newly-created Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Following an imperialist intervention by Germany on the side of the Whites in March 1918, the war ended in defeat for the Reds in May. Over 12,000 people perished from starvation and hunger while imprisoned in White-operated POW camps, and reparations were not paid to former victims of the White Terror until 1973.

Lessons of the Finnish Revolution of 1917–1918 garcia-cock-shotty

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  • ghosts [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    17·
    5 months ago

    I fucking cant with reddit-logo lmfao

    Part of the problem is the usage of the word genocide to describe anything people don’t like. There’s no genocide in Ukraine. There’s an aggressive and illegal war, but no genocide. A genocide requires an intent to wipe out a population. Ukraine has been so far a (mostly) conventional conflict. Both sides wear uniforms, both sides mostly target the other’s military, and the vast majority of deaths were military and not civilian. I’m not saying the war in Ukraine isn’t unacceptable, but it’s not a genocide. Places where there is an active genocide happening are China with the Uyghur genocide. Calling something genocide falsely just weakens the term even further.