Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/92

72

paralysed all recent progress. The large measures of domestic re form passed by the Diet, and generally accepted by the Senate, were laid before the Tsar and never heard of afterwards. Such was the fate of the bill for the total prohibition of alcohol, as of measures relating to the care of children, insurance, old-age pensions, education public health and the betterment of the condition of the " torpare ' (landless worker upon the soil). Civil marriages, however, were instituted, illegitimate children placed upon a better basis, and the principle of " equal pay for equal work " was applied in teaching in the printing trade and, in 1913, in the State service.

As early as June 2 (May 20) 1908 an imperial instruction had dealt with the regulation of Finnish affairs which affected the interests ol the Russian Empire as a whole. It provided that the measures passed by the Diet and sanctioned by the Senate were no longer to be conveyed to the Tsar through the Secretary for Finland, but in order to obtain the imperial assent had to come before the Council of Ministers. To stifle opposition, the imperial ukase of March 27 (i4th) 1910 laid down that the question as to whether Finnish affairs affected the interests of the Russian Empire or not rested not with the Finnish Diet, but with the imperial Duma. The new law came into force on June 30 (i7th) 1910 after having been passed by the Duma amid triumphant shouts of " Finis Finlandiae.

This, " The Imperial Legislation Act," taken as a whole, never came into working since in the last resort it meant the complete unification of the grand duchy of Finland with Russia in language, education, finance, customs, laws, monetary system, press restric- tion, rights of assembly, etc. But inconsequently applied though it was, it roused great indignation not only in Finland, but throughout Europe. The claim of this bill, which was that the assurances given by the Tsars depended upon their autocratic rule and became null when they delegated some of their governing power to the Duma, called forth protests from members of the British, German, French, Italian, Dutch and Belgian Parliaments.

Directly the " Imperial Legislation Act " had come into force, two imperial laws were laid before the Diet which, however, refused them both and was promptly dissolved. The bills thereupon came before the imperial Duma, which passed them rapidly. One of these was the law of Jan. 23 (loth) 1912, already referred to above, in which the Duma affirmed the principle of an annual Finnish indem- nity in lieu of military service, while the other, of Jan. 20 (7th) 1912, accorded full citizen rights to temporary Russian residents in Finland. This last-named measure, apart from its manifest injus- tice, led to great confusion in the overlapping of two fundamentally different codes of law, but the judges who resigned, rather than be a party to it, were deprived of their pension rights. Every single provisional governor was forced to leave the service or did so volun- tarily; many high officials suffered imprisonment or exile. The government of the country was carried on by a packed Senate, in which after 1912 sat not only pliable Finns but Russian-born mem- bers; the Diet was capriciously summoned and dismissed, the press censored. Thus the conflict with the Duma in the years 1910-4 led to sufferings analogous to those in the struggle against the high- handedness of the Tsar in 1899-1906.

In addition, it should be mentioned that Finnish propaganda abroad met with less success on this occasion, for one thing because it was a twice-told tale, for another because England had, by the logic of European events, been drawn towards Russia politically.

Effects of the World War, 1014-8. In these circumstances supervened the World War of 1914, and it was left to Lt.-Gen. F. Seyn, the governor-general, to supervise the stringent censor- ship and the harassing restrictions of personal liberty which an unprecedented situation called for in all the countries of Europe. Though Finland escaped the horrors of foreign war upon its own soil, a descent of the German armies upon the coast was a military eventuality which had to be taken into account. Accordingly two lines of trench covering the chief railway lines were con- structed across Finland, one system of fortified lines running from Tornea to Helsingfors, the other from Kajana to Kotka. Besides, the long sea border of the grand duchy was exposed to enemy action from the sea; and some 40,000 tons of the Finnish mercantile marine, which sailed under the Russian flag, exposed to destruction in the open waters of the Baltic Sea, remained locked in the harbours of the Bothnian gulf. This heavy loss to seaborne commerce was balanced by the extraordinary advan- tages which Finnish industries derived from the war partly by reason of the low tariff prevailing, partly through the influx of Russian labour. Industries connected directly with military supply, as also the iron, leather, glass, drugs and polishes trades and paper-manufacturing concerns, attained unexampled pros- perity. The Russians, who were well aware that the Finnish people at the end of a 15 years' constitutional struggle did not love them, strongly garrisoned the country, but, the discipline in the Tsarist armies being maintained at a high standard,

collisions between the military and the civil population were few. The Russian authorities, impulsive as was their wont and in- consequent in their application of the law, suffered from divided councils, and were alternately bent on reconciliation and re- pression. There being no means as in Sweden and Denmark to take advantage of leaks in the Allied blockade, the price of living gradually rose, railway fares and telephone costs being raised by 25%. But the country was relieved of the burden of the annual military indemnity, and the Russians, in their sporadic anxiety to please, were strangely negligent of such essential pre- cautions as the surveillance of telephonic communications. There was, however, a special 5% tax on property and mortgage.

The course of the war, which during the first two years carried the Austro-German invading hosts through Poland and Lithuania to the confines of Great Russia proper by the marshes of the Pripet, was followed by the Finns with the anxiety of a people whose hope lay in a Russia which, weakened by a colossal military effort, would again be willing to respect the legal rights of the grand duchy. The Polish manifesto of the Grand Duke Nicholas was held to leave the Russian Government with a programme aiming at the final destruction of Finnish autonomy and nationality. Under the circumstances sympathy for the sufferings of Belgium was obscured by the consideration that France and England were the allies of that Russia which, if she emerged victorious, would again turn oppressor. In 1915 aFinnset fire to the Allied stores at Archangel in service, as he considered, to his Finland, where, as is now known on the authority of M. Sario who became Foreign Secretary of the White Government in 1918, persons were not wanting who referred to Ger- man victories as " our victories." Only some 2,000 Finns volun- teered for the Russian army, where, however, they fought with tradi- tional valour under their own officers. About the same number enlisted in the German army, though ostensibly only for service on the eastern front, and did not return until the coup d'etat.

Towards the close of 1916 the magnitude of the industrial effort in neglect of agricultural development was fast bringing its own punishment. Finland had changed as far as her size, climate and scanty population allowed from an agricultural to an industrial country in two and a half years. The ruin of her dairy trade drew workers into the factories, and, an ever more considerable part of Russian war material manufacture passing into Finnish hands, labour streamed in from the country and from across the Russian border. Wages rose with the increasing cost of food, and great fortunes were made while there was yet considerable unemploy- ment. This happened in a country which even normally produced but five-sixths of her needful foodstuffs, at a time of world shortage and under pressure of an ever more effective blockade; in one, too, which, while the old order survived in Russia, was debarred from any sort of political expression. True, elections were still held in 1916, and resulted in the return of a Social Democratic majority, but the Diet was not allowed to function.

The Russian Revolution, March-Nov. 1(117. Then came the Russian Revolution. The Tsar Nicholas II. Alexandrovich abdicated on March 15 1917 and the new Provisional Government of Russia almost with its first breath restored representative government in Finland. The Russianized Senate was dissolved and a temporary body of twelve, half of whom were Social Democrats and the remain- der members of the bourgeois parties, took up the executive power. ppv.-Gen. Seyn was replaced by Stakovich, while Rodichev, a tried Viend, became Secretary of State for Finland. Kerensky, visiting Helsingfors at the end of the month, placed a wreath at the foot of the statue of Runeberg, the national poet, and uncovered his head when the Finnish national anthem was intoned. The former Socialist speaker of the Diet, M. Tokoi, was nominated president of the Senate; Kullervo Manner, a young Finnish Social Democrat, was made speaker of the Diet ; Vaino Jokinen, his former collaborator on the workman's journal " Tyomies," and Lauri Ingman, a clergyman and a Swede of the Swedish party, became vice-speakers. It was then quite clear that ever since 1907 the one constant factor n Finnish political life had been the growth of the Social Demo- cratic vote. But now that anarchy corroded the body politic of the disintegrating Russian Empire, the possessing classes of Finland quailed before the rising power of a party which was morally satur- . ted with Marxist doctrines and politically orientated towards Russia. The economic conditions justified the worst fears of the bourgeoisie, or not only had the vehement industrial development of the last hree years strengthened the " hooligan element, but the Imperial ^egislation Act of 1910 and the conditions of the war had brought a arge number of Russians into the country as settlers and even as efugees from famine and nascent revolutionary disorders. Beside he Swedo^Finns (about one-tenth of the population) and the Fin- nish-speaking Finns there was now this large fluctuating industrial lement reinforced by some 40,000 Russian civilians. Apart from hese, there were the Russian soldiers who, ever more irregularly laid, bade fair to become a danger to the State.

The Swedish party represented the most conservative elements in "inland, the nucleus of the largest property owners. There was, it