Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/17

 In Finland a party was gradually formed which did not realise how great was the difference between the aims of the Russian liberty movement and Finland's struggle for her rights. This was the Labour Party, which has incorrectly described itself as the Social-Democrat Party. This party which, during the rapid growth of the industries, had developed out of some working-men's associations conducted in a friendly spirit by the employers, and which, to begin with, was without all political influence, gained vitality and thrived through the connection with Russian revolutionary circles. It got to look at existing phenomena with Russian eyes, learned to mix up proletariat policy with State emancipation, and to employ revolutionary methods of action for the gaining of its ends; it forgot the huge gulf fixed between Finland's Western social conditions and the Eastern chaos of Russia. This fact, that Finland's Labour Party from the outset struck into Russian paths and made the cause of the Russian revolutionaries its own; this was the original fatal cause that such a thing as the Red Insurrection in 1918 became at all possible.

The first results of the tactics of the Labour Party became evident in the stirring years 1905 and 1906. The Russo-Japanese War ended in the defeat of Russia. The bitter resentment against the chief men in power in Russia became so widespread that a general strike was proclaimed there towards the end of October, 1905. The stir re-echoed in Finland. This was a "passive" measure which nobody objected to, so here too a general strike was proclaimed. All work throughout the country stopped. The strike included the Government offices, all means of communication, the factories, the university, even the police. The Government of the country, the Senate, were compelled to resign; the Russian Governor-General fled to an ironclad lying in the roads of