Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/113

 Government in Finland by Lenin. The military section of this Committee regarded itself as the supreme Russian military authority in this country. It did not issue any declaration of war, but on the 28th January the section orders the 42nd Army Corps to commence decisive operations against the White Guard.

The leadership of the Red Guard Corps was, as it was inevitable, placed in Russian hands. For expert military knowledge on Finnish side there was none. Already on the 15th January the "Commander-in-Chief of West Finland's Army," Michael Stepanovitsh Svetshnikoff, speaks of the Red Guard Corps as auxiliary troops to the Russian corps, and the Finnish Red are all under the leadership of the Russian district chiefs. Svetshnikoff was later appointed commander-in-chief of the Finnish Red Guard Corps, so that these for all practical purposes were amalgamated with the Russia troops.

The supreme war command thus consisted of Russian officers. It was Russian troops that made war against the Protective Corps. And telegraphic reports of the war operations were regularly dispatched to the Russian Minister for War, the Russian Government, and the commandants of the fortresses of Kronstadt and Reval. From this it was very plainly seen that the Bolshevik Government of Russia intended, by the aid of the Red Guard Corps, to reconquer Finland. And this also compels one to think of this Government when one asks oneself where the real mainspring of the outbreak of the Finnish revolution is to be sought. And for the rest one cannot help comparing this outbreak with the simultaneous great strikes in Austria, and those which broke out some days later in Germany. Elaborate and highly-coloured accounts of them were given in the Finnish Labour Press.

It was, however, impossible for the Russian leaders