Cumulative frustrations and the erosion of social trust before the Finnish Civil War

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Finnish Civil War of 1918 has been described as a revolution of expectations in the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Russian Empire. More recently, it has been described as an attempted Bolshevik revolution in a democracy. From the perspective of the Finnish Social Democrats, the re-establishment of the Red Guards and seeking support from the Bolsheviks were aimed at preventing a bourgeois counter-revolution. They saw a clear threat of that in the repeal of the act granting parliamentary sovereignty and the dissolution of the socialist-majority Parliament. This article tracks the origins of the socialists’ mistrust of the bourgeoisie through industrial relations, land-reform debates and war-time food regulation. Unlike in Sweden, collective agreements were not recognized in Finland. In the mentalities, the divide between landowning individuals and their dependent servants continued. Due to rural overpopulation, there had been little social mobility in the 19th century. Social positions had become essentialized, and initiatives to redistribute land had been postponed by the landowning classes. As in Russia, landless people and industrial workers came to share a class consciousness. They began to direct their frustrations at the state, which they saw as representing private interests.