Historian unohtamat. Suomalaiset vapaaehtoiset Venäjän armeijassa I. maailmansodassa 1914-1918 by Tuomas Hoppu (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 167 crimes and criminals, and many scholars will now want to know more about their etymology: maravikhery, domushniki, golubiatnikiand tsiperito name but a few. Tales ofOld Odessa is a valuable contribution to our knowledge about the middle of Russian society at the end of the tsarist period. It shows how important that segmentwhich identifiedneither with the nobility nor with the peasantry and theworkers had become, and it replays many of the defini tional and terminological imperfections that bedevil students of emergent social groups. Sylvester is rightwhen she occasionally emphasizes the fluidity of distinctions between intelligentnyi and meshchanskii. They had greater potency as adjectival descriptors rather than nounal classifications: one man's intelligent was another man's meshchanin. Not enough ismade, however, of the unity that existed between the constituent parts ofOdessa's middling sorts,which appear in Sylvester's analysis to be only ever at one another's throats. More often than not, the visceral anti-petty-bourgeois outbursts of intelligenty against meshchane were actually proof of the anxiety one group feltabout its similarity to the other. London Timothy Phillips Hoppu, Tuomas. Historian unohtamat. Suomalaiset vapaaehtoiset Ven?j?n armeijassa i. maailmansodassa igi4~igi8. Bibliotheca Hist?rica, ioo. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, 2005. 361 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Appendixes. Indexes. 32.00 (paperback). During World War I Finns were not compelled to serve in theRussian army although Finland formed part of theRussian Empire. The policy of russifica tion in Finland had put an end to the Finnish army and military servicewas replaced by a tax. However, some Finns continued to serve as regular officers in theRussian army and navy and duringWorld War One Finns volunteered to serve in both the Russian and German armies. The clandestine movement of volunteers to Germany was prompted by opposition to russification mea sures inFinland and the desire to obtain military training in order to fight for Finland's independence. These volunteers, who were formed into the 27th Royal Prussian J?ger Battalion, returned to Finland after its declaration of independence inDecember 1917.The J?gers fought on the victorious White or government side in the Finnish Civil War of 1918.The course of history thus changed theJ?gers from traitors in law into national heroes. On the other hand the volunteers who had joined theRussian army, and fought for their lawful sovereign, became stigmatized as near traitors to Finland. Much has been written about the J?gers but until the publication of Tuomas Hoppu's thesis the volunteers inRussia have remained, in thewords of his title, 'The Forgotten ofHistory'. Hoppu's aim is to describe the background of the volunteers and their activity in theRussian army. They fell into two groups: thosewho served in the ranks and those who entered military schools to train as officers. In all some 1,100 Finns expressed interest in volunteering but only about 600 actu ally served in the Russian army, some 500 in the ranks and 130 who attended i68 SEER, 86, I, 2008 military schools. The private soldiers mostly joined up in September 1914 when therewas inFinland a passing feeling of sympathy towardsRussia. They were predominantly young urban labourers with a low level of education. Their enlistmentwas often a reaction to a decline in employment opportuni ties at the start of the war. Few Finns volunteered to serve in the ranks in 1915 and practically none after that.On the other hand the better educated young men who sought to become officers joined throughout the war, albeit in diminishing numbers. Hoppu claims that rather than joining the army out of loyalty toRussia theywere seeking a career, even for the ultimate benefit of Finland. This isplausible. The wartime training courses of around fourmonths for infantryand cavalry officershad the advantage of being significantly short er than the two-year peacetime courses. The numbers at military schools would have been higher had Finns possessed a better knowledge ofRussian. The Finnish private soldiers also had problems with theRussian language. They mostly undertook their brief training (between one and threemonths) in and around Petrograd and a significantnumber served in thePreobrazhen skiiGuards Regiment. Infantry service, poor training, lack of Russian and participation in heavy fighting caused high casualties. Nearly...