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Warfare and Terror in 1918

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Warfare and Terror in 1918 90 Tikka Chapter 3 Warfare and Terror in 1918 Marko Tikka On Monday, 22 January 1918, the police chief of Lappeenranta, a small town in Eastern Finland, reported to the county governor that a shooting incident had taken place the previous night in the nearby country parish of Luumäki; two people had been killed and several wounded. A few days later, the governor of Vyborg County was sent detailed information about the “Lappeenranta Red Guards’ weapons search, during which they threatened and arrested peaceful people at gunpoint, and about a manslaughter near the Taavetti railway station.”1 During the last week of January 1918, isolated and confusing skirmish- es like this fused into a power struggle between the Reds and the Whites. Offi- cial documents describe well the confusion and uncertainty into which the weak administration of the newly independent country drifted as a result of skirmishes between armed political groups, soon to escalate into one of Eu- rope’s bloodiest civil wars in the 20th century. The beginning of the war has been dated to the last days of January, when the White Civil Guards began to disarm Russian military units in several municipalities in southern Ostroboth- nia and Karelia and the Red Guards occupied Helsinki and seized the power in southern Finland.2 1 The Leningrad Oblast State Archive in Vyborg (LOGAV), rural police chief Vladimir Kiiveri to Vyborg county governor 22 January 1918, Delo 8, Opis 10, Fond 1, and bailiff Oscar Cajander to the governor 24 January 1918, Delo 9, Opis 10, Fond 1. 2 On the Finnish Civil War in English: Risto Alapuro, State and Revolution in Finland (Berkley: University of California Press, 1988); Anthony F. Upton, The Finnish Revolution (1917-1918) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980); Richard Luckett, The White Generals: An Account of the White Movement and the Russian Civil War (London: Longman, 1971), pp. 131–53; C. Jay Smith Jr., Finland and The Russian Revolution 1917–1922 (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 1958); Tuomas Hoppu et al., eds, Tampere 1918: A Town in the Civil War (Tampere: Tampere Museum, 2010). The most important general presentations of the warfare include Sampo Ahto, “Sotaretkellä,” in Ohto Manninen, ed., Itsenäistymisen vuodet 1917–1920, vol. II: Taistelu vallasta (Helsinki: Painatuskeskus, 1993), pp. 180–445; Jussi T. Lappalainen, Punakaartin sota, vols I–II (Helsinki: Valtion painatuskeskus, 1981); and Tuomas Hoppu, “Sisällissota,” in Pertti Haapala and Tuomas Hoppu, eds, Sisällissodan pikkujättiläinen (Helsinki: WSOY, 2009), pp. 92–223. The Finnish Civil War has also been analyzed within a European context: Risto Marjomaa, Maailmanvallankumouksen liepeillä: Vertaileva tutkimus Suomen sisällissodan kansainvälisistä © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004280717_005 Warfare And Terror In 1918 91 The Nature of the War The Finnish Civil War was essentially a domestic war, as the principal parties were the Finnish Red Guards and the White Army. Both the Reds and the Whites were able to gather armies of untrained, mostly civilian combatants. These armies by the end of the war reached almost 100,000 soldiers respec- tively, although the active forces were significantly smaller, with a maximum of 80,000 Reds and 60,000 Whites.3 In various stages of the war, the Red Guards received support from some 2000–3700 revolutionary soldiers of the former army of Imperial Russia; it has been noted that for the Reds, material and edu- cational aid from the Russian revolutionaries was more significant than any military support as such.4 The Whites received support especially from Swe- den, with a maximum of 1100 voluntary fighters.5 In the final stages of the war, 14,500 men of Imperial Germany’s Baltic Sea Division supported the Whites. Neither side suffered from a lack of arms, since both the Red and the White armies made use of weapons received, bought, or stolen from the 52,000 Rus- sian troops still deployed in the Grand Duchy of Finland in the fall of 1917 as a consequence of World War I.6 In the fall of 1917 the demoralization of the Rus- sian troops stationed in Finland evidenced itself in the form of weapons trade: individual soldiers of the disintegrating Russian army troops and local soldier committees sold weapons to the Reds and the Whites alike. Later, in January 1918, Russian Bolsheviks supported Finland’s revolutionaries with arms, mainly infantry rifles and machine guns. The Germans, for their part, supported the Whites by delivering arms and trained soldiers. Since 1915, Germany ulottuvuuksista, with an English summary: A Comparative Analysis of the Finnish Civil War in 1918 (Helsinki: VNK, 2004). 3 Tuomas Hoppu, “Taistelevat osapuolet ja johtajat,” in Sisällissodan pikkujättiläinen, pp. 128–29, 136–38. The 80,000 Reds represent the total number of men and women in arms during the entire war period, not the actual fighting force at any given time; see Aapo Roselius, Amatöörien sota: Rintamataistelujen henkilötappiot Suomen sisällissodassa 1918, with an English summary: An Amateurs’ War (Helsinki: VNK, 2006), pp. 151–60. 4 Aatos Tanskanen, Venäläiset Suomen sisällissodassa vuonna 1918 (Tampere, Tampereen ylio- pisto, 1978), pp. 205–09; Anthony F. Upton, The Finnish Revolution, 1917–1918 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980) pp. 296–97; Ohto Manninen, “Taistelevat osapuolet,” in Itsenäistymisen vuodet, vol. II, pp. 141–42. 5 Tuomas Hoppu, “Ruotsi ja Suomen sisällissota,” in Sisällissodan pikkujättiläinen, p. 130. 6 Pertti Luntinen, The Imperial Russian Army and Navy in Finland 1808–1918 (Helsinki: SHS, 1997), pp. 324–29, 343–57; see also Turo Manninen, “Venäläinen sotaväki ja suomalaiset vuonna 1917,” in Ohto Manninen, ed. Itsenäistymisen vuodet 1917–1920, vol. I: Irti Venäjästä (Helsinki: Painatuskeskus, 1993)..
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