Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/95



In the preceding pages a summary has been given of the events before the outbreak of the insurrection. This was necessary in order to show the causes of the Red revolution. With all brevity they may be summarised as follows:—

As a background, the twenty years of Russian oppression from which the community had suffered, as well as the Russian revolutionary movement, with the fanatical and Utopian views of which the Finnish Labour Movement had been inoculated.

That is to say: Russian infection.

As chief cause, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, which turned the heads of the Labour Party, who lusted after power, and so tempted them to follow the example.

That is to say: Russian infection again.

As a largely contributing cause that the movement was not even stopped on the verge of the abyss of civil war, the Russian Bolshevik Government's combined plans of a reconquest of liberated provinces, and a social conquest of the world.

That is to say: Russian infection once more.

The programme of, and part played by, the Labour Party was much more simple; they fought solely for the power or rather to actually get to show and feel their power. The majority in parliament in the spring and summer of 1917 was not enough for them. Strikes without number were organised. When later they lost