Vol 5 2001 - Article

Russian Troops and Navy in Finland and population of
the Grand Duchy during World War I (1914 – 1918)

One of the main tasks of this paper is to study the influence of the social aspects of the war time on the civil population of the Grand Duchy of Finland and on self-consciousness of soldiers, sea-men and officers, the change in their attitude to war, and the increase of tension in relations between the Russian troops and the local population. Interethnical relations reflected in the sources as well as existed in different cultures notions of neighbour nations are to be considered as important objects of investigation. The research is aimed at revealing both common and special features in cultures of ethnoses which came in contact, at study of various factors, influenced on ethnical and religious (or quasi-religious) peculiarities in mentality of servicemen in Finland.

History of the revolutionary movement in Russian Army and Fleet in the final stage of World War I attracted the attention of all the generations of specialists in history of Russia. Still the every-day life has not yet become the special object of research. The typical attitude to the Russian troops in Finland in 1917 for a long time was restricted with the following characteristics: "ready for action reserve of revolutionary Petrograd"(1). By all means, it could not contribute to better understanding of the problem of human every-day life in extraordinary circumstances of war and revolution.

Meanwhile the works by I. Bobovich, V. Buldakov, M. von Hagen, D. Longly, P. Luntinen, O. Manninen, E. Mawdsley, I. Novikova, N. Saul, I. Solomeshch, A. Tanskanen, L. Westerlund, A. Wildman, V. Chernjaev discuss some aspects of the problem mentioned (2). O. Karemaa, the author of monograph entitled "Foes, Fiends and Vermin. Ethnic Hatred of Russians in Finland 1917 – 1923" provided the most sufficient information on servicemen’s social and moral norms and values, showed the vivid details of their way of life and other aspects of every-day life, including images, contacts and contradictions with the local population of the Grand Duchy (3).

The investigation of the problems mentioned combines the research of the character of the World War I as a prologue of the 20th century and Russia’s historical place in this crucial event, the influence of the war situation, hostilities and the existence of the military institutions on all the sides of human life on the borderlands as well as the issue of Russia’s way out of the war which affected the country’s following participation in the forthcoming global civilization process .

Special attention is supposed to be paid to the poorly studied question of social mentality at the turning point of Russia’s history, of interests, behaviour, outlooks, ideas and beliefs common to the participants and the eyewitnesses of the events, the elements of the continuity and change in Russian mentality as the impact of the war. The research of every-day life concept allows us to take into account such structures of human being existence as living conditions, labor activity, needs and requirements (food, dwelling, clothes, medical service) and means of gratification of one’s desires. It is urgent to study not only the human being at war itself, but the whole spectrum of corresponding relations, actions, ideas, customs and traditions, rules and principles, which have regulated the individual and collective practice, forms of communication and so on (4).

Unique archive materials shows the common-days, relations with the local population, mutual influences, contradictions and images, way of life of soldiers, sea-men and officers not only from garrisons of the Finland’s capital Helsinki and the fortress of Sveaborg situated near-by, but from those located in rare periphery as Turku, Vaasa, Oulu, Tornio, Lappeenranta and so on.

An extremely wide source basis exists both in Russia and in Finland (Russia’s State Military Historical Archives in Moscow, Russia’s State Navy Archives in S. Petersburg (RGA VMF), a vast amount of materials stored in National Archives of Finland, especially the "Russian Military Papers" collection, documents dated back to 1918 from Military Archives of Finland and Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland in Helsinki.) The Karelian Research Centre’s Archives disposes a rare collection of memories by the participants of the Civil War 1918 in Finland, it includes papers by former servicemen of the Imperial Army who were involved into the struggle of the White and the Red Guards there.

The spectrum of issues arising is connected with study of the problem " Revolution and Human Being", conducted lately in Russia on the creative initiative of the researchers from Moscow and S. Petersburg It enables the use of new approaches while dealing with such non-official sources as unpublished Letters by the Army and Fleet servicemen in Finland to the editors of Russian newspapers at the final stage of the World War I. These materials not only narrate the way of internal life organization in garrisons and navy bases of the Baltic Fleet but show peculiarities of psychology common to men under arms during the upheaval revolution period and give evidence on the "cost of revolution".

The forming of various symbols and traditions of urban political culture composes a significant part of servicemen’s new psychology in 1917 – 1918. The issue on the symbols of Russian Revolution frequently adopted either by rank-and-files or by officers is closely connected with the question, in which way the people reacted to the official "patriotic", later "socialist" norms, in which way the servicemen realized such concepts as "modernity", "culture", "science" and "progress".

Some remarks should be made on the essence of symbols and myths of wartime. The forming of heroic symbols as a phenomenon of mass consciousness become one of the key instruments which influenced both the Russian army and navy and the society of the Grand Duchy as well. In spring 1917 the previous symbols of autocratic Russia were transformed or made way for new revolutionary emblems and symbols. The changes having taken place in all the spheres of life could not stay far from such displays of social consciousness as symbols and mass rituals (5).

Letters by servicemen to the editors of Russian newspapers in Finland give the examples in changes in the contents of heroic symbols and those new symbols of revolution either created by the authorities on purpose or arose in the rank personnel’s mentality spontaneously. The source mentioned enables to follow the way of forming of reader’s notions on the local population and to see the fate of those ideas.

Frequently the certain symbols have got such a contents which on the level of mass consciousness differed greatly from the meaning obvious to the representatives of various political parties. For example, indoctrination organized by socialist parties as bolsheviks, mensheviks, socialist-revolutionaries was aimed against the bourgeois (6). In Finland it created among rank-and-files images of the rich Swede – the main enemy, opposing the poorest Finnish part of society in the former Grand Duchy. To confirm the last statement we can refer to the letter by sea-man S. Maltchikov to the editor of the "Proceedings of the Council of Deputies of Army, Fleet and Workers in Abo-Oland" published in Abo (Turku) in June 1917 (7). Besides, the search of enemy transfer from outside into the country and cultivated the psychology of civil war. Thus, the image of enemy in Finland turned out to be combined with ethnic images of the German, the Swede, the Finn as the course of all the troubles.

The concept of "we" and "others " had lost its initial clarity and soon everyone could be considered as an enemy. This led to total suspiciousness which took roots in former spy-mania of the war-time. Strengthening of patriotism and xenophobia in the spiritual make-up of the society were remarkable results of World War I . Typical rank-and-file images of enemies often got somewhat zoomorphic and infernal features. According to the principle of dichotomy ("we" opposing "others") representatives of former authorities, bourgeois, officers were named "leopards", "panthers", "crocodiles", "snakes" and even "vamps" (8).

In a word, these images personified the world of exotic animals from Africa and some other distantly located territories or even the world of the dead. At the same time the image of fighting Russia as well as the auto-stereotype of the Russians in the mentality of servicemen correlated with such a familiar beast as the bear: kind, naive and patient, who can become dangerous and awfully terrible only being wounded, insulted and constantly provoked (9). The rank-and-file soldiers and seamen often described themselves as harmless lambs whereas officers were depicted as wolves hunting their victims (10).

Among the symbols of Revolution the authors of the letters mentioned mostly used the images of Freedom and of "Dear Motherland – Free Revolutionary Russia" (11). Freedom as a symbol of European revolution become one of the favorite images due to expressive employment of the slogan "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" created by the Great French Revolution. The images of Freedom and Unity were accepted by the enlisted sea-men, soldiers and officers from books, magazines, newspapers, poster-publications, banners and self-made slogans (12).

The images of Freedom and Democracy, for instance, were used in the text of the resolution adopted on the 6 of August 1917 by the Plenary meeting of the Ukrainian Council (or Rada) in Helsingfors (Helsinki). Rada included all the Ukrainian soldiers and sea-men who served in the garrison of Sveaborg (about 700 enlisted men) (13). The strength of the Ukrainians occupied the second place after the Russians in the Army and Fleet located in Finland. According to the statistic data obtained the ethnical composition of the 421st Tsarskoselsky Infantry Regiment the total strength of enlisted men in its 24 companies and services in November 1917 was 3 205 men. The Russians were superior in number -2 721 men or 85%, the Ukrainians - 250 men (7.5%). The size of the Estonians can be considered as equal to the size of the Polls – 65 men each or about 2%, the other ethnic groups as the Letts, the Jews, the Tatars formed about 1 per cent of the Regiment’s total strength (1- 6 servicemen in every company). The Lithuanians, the natives of Finland (volunteers, for the residents of the Grand Duchy were released from the call-up to the active military service), the Ingrians and Armenians hardly numbered a couple of their representatives in a whole regiment (14). (See the Table):

Ethnic composition of 421^st Tsarskoselsky Infantry Regiment
( November 1917)
National Archives of Finland, "Russian Military papers", 342 : 1
File 6107 – 106^th Infantry Division, 42 Army Corps

1 Russians,  2 Estonians,  3 Lithuanians,  4 Natives of Finland,  5 Letts,  6 Poles
7 Ukrainiens,  8 Tatars,  9 Jews,  10 Armeniens,  11 Ingrians,  12 Roman Catholics (confession)

The democratic processes led to involving hundreds of servicemen into social and political practice. National organizations in the Russian army and fleet in Finland united the Ukrainians, the Byelorussians, the Estonians, the Letts, the Chuvashs, the Moslems and so on. They contributed to these processes, which took place in the former Grand Duchy as in the whole Russian State in general. Simultaneously it led to violation of discipline and to breaking of fighting efficiency of the Russian troops. By the beginning of 1918 it become obvious. This situation appeared to be a threat not only for army and fleet, but for the civil population, worried servicemen themselves. With the help of appeals published in local newspapers they tried to draw attention to such painful issue as keeping to the rules and saving discipline and order, especially in contacts between enlisted men and civilians.

The samples of so called "naive letters" with their archaic language and illiteracy are remarkable for opposing "Freedom" and "Svoboda" (or "Volja", the Ukrainian variant). The late – in the negative meaning of wild, ungovernable anarchy of the servicemen who have got quite out of hand.

As S. Plaggenborg pointed out, the aspirations showed by the organizers of revolutionary reconstruction of Russia’s real life to create better and just society was aimed at transforming the very concept of "new" into indicating of some other, more perfect quality : economy, institutions, calendar and even Russian spelling were new (15). Thus, former rules of Russian orthography seemed the authors of numerous letters to be the symbol of obsolete past in perspective of forthcoming radical reorganizations of the universe under the slogan of the World Revolution.

One of the workers who wrote to the editor of the newspaper "Proceedings of the Council of Deputies of Army, Fleet and Workers in Helsingfors" proposed to divide a year into 13 months (28 days each), so that "the 13th month would be primary and get the name of Freedom as the most precious name for the working class". According to his project one extraordinary day in a usual year should become the proletarian holiday 1 of May, while one additional day in a leap-year (29 February) as the day of overthrowing of the monarchy could get the name "The Holiday of the Russian Revolution". The idea of abolishing all the church holidays was combined with the suggestion to rename all Sundays into "Internationals" (16).

The numerious garrisons located on the North-West Border of the Russian Empire in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland (about 30 of them were situated on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia only) all at once at the end of 1917 appeared to stay at the territory of the new independent state. Although Finland gained its independence in December 1917 the Russian Army and Navy stayed in Finland up to the end of February 1918, then the troops and the battle-ships were withdrawn to Soviet Russia in conformity with the Peace Treaty of Brest.

The rapid process of creating new revolutionary symbols proves that fast-moving reappraisal of values and norms formed among the servicemen of the Russian troops in Finland during World War I contributed to the replacing of the old, pre-revolution ones and began to determine the attitude and interpretation of the world as well as the behaviour of the enlisted men.

Footnotes

¹ See, e.g., Kiuru М. Boevoi rezerv revoljucionnogo Petrograda v 1917 g. : iz istorii russkih bol’shevitskih organizacii v Finljandii. Petrozavodsk,1965 ; Smirnov V. Iz revoljucionnoi istorii Finljandii v 1905, 1917, 1918 gg.. Leningrad,1933; Sykijainen I. Revoljucionnye sobytija 1917 - 1918 gg.v Finljandii. Petrozavodsk, 1962; Hesin S. Oktjabr’skaja revoljucija i flot. Moscow,1971.

² Bobovich I., Russko-finlyandskie ekonomicheskie otnoshenija nakanune Velikoi Oktjabrskoi sotsialisticheskoi revolucii (Epoha imperialisma). Leningrad,1968; Buldakov V. Krasnaja smuta. Priroda i posledstvija revolucionnogo nasilija. Moscow,1997; Hagen Mark, von. Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship. The Red Army and the Soviet State. 1917 – 1936. Ithaca, London, 1990 ; Longley D.A. Officers and men : a study on the development of political attitudes among the sailors on the Baltic Fleet in 1917 // Soviet Studies. XXV.1973; Luntinen P. The Imperial Russian Army and Navy in Finland 1808 -1918. Helsinki, 1997. P.270 – 412; Manninen O. Kapina, kansalaissota, vapaussota // Itsenäistymisen vuodet 1917-1920. II osa: Taistelu vallasta. Helsinki, 1993; Мawdsley E. The Russian Revolution and the Baltic Fleet. War and Politics : February 1917-April 1918. London,1978 ; Novikova I. Velikoe Knyazhestvo Finlyandskoe v imperskoi politike Rossii // Imperskii stroi Rossii v regional’nom izmerenii (XIX - nachalo ХХ v.) Moscow,1997. P. 5 – 17; Saul N. Sailors in Revolt. Lawrence, Kanzas,1978; Solomeshch I. Finlyandskaya politika carizma v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny 1914 – fevral' 1917 gg.). Petrozavodsk, 1992; Tanskanen A. Venäläiset Suomen sisällissodassa vuonna 1918. Tampere, 1978; Westerlund L. Massakern i Jakobstad. Klubbliv.Jägerprotest. Privatjustis. Helsingfors, 1993. Wildman A .K. The end of the Russian imperial army. Vol.1: the old army and the soldiers’ revolt, March - April 1917; vol.2 : The road to Soviet power and peace. Princeton, N.J.,1980,1988; Chernyaev V. Rossiiskoe dvoevlastie i process samoopredelenya Finlyandii // Anatomiya revolucii. 1917 god v Rossii: massy, partii, vlast’. S. Petersburg, 1994. С.308 – 323.

³ Karemaa O. Vihollisia,vainoojia,syöpäläisiä: venäläisviha Suomessa 1917- 1923. Helsinki,1998.

⁴ Purcell H. The Boy’s Own Stories // BBC History. August 2000. P.15 – 17; Winter J. Representations of War on the Western Front, 1914 – 1918 // 19^th International Congress of Historical Sciences: Proceedings, Actes. Oslo, 2000. P. 414 – 415.

⁵ Kornakov P. Simvolika i ritualy revoljucii 1917g. // Anatomiya revolucii… P. 356; Solnceva S. Voennaja simvolika Fevral’skoi revoljucii // Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal. 1999. № 5. P.68 – 78; Senjavskaja E. Psihologija voiny v XX v. Istopicheskii opyt Rossii. Moscow,1999. P.214 – 215.

6 Kolonitskii B. The Press and the Revolution // Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914 – 1921. Bloomington, Indianapolis. 1997.P.381 – 390.

⁷ Mal’chikov S. // Izvestiya Soveta deputatov armii, flota i rabochih Abo-Olandskoi ukreplennoi pozicii. Abo ( Turku). 1917. 15 June

⁸ Kansallinen Arkisto (KA) - National Archives of Finland, "Russian Military papers," File 11970 .

⁹ Bespartiinyi. Russkie mechty i nemeckaya deistvitel'nost’ // Vyborgskii soldatskii vestnik. Vyborg, 1917. 4 May.

¹⁰ KA. 11970; RGA VMF. File Р-315. Op.1. D.21. L.88.

¹¹ Hellberg-Hirn E. Soil and Soul. The Symbolic World of Russianness. Aldershot, 1998. P. 111- 135.

¹² Il’ina G. Obraz evropeiskih revoljucii i russkaja kul’tura // Anatomiya revoljucii… С.389; Figes O., Kolonitskii B. Interpreting the Russian Revolution. The Language and Symbols of 1917. New Haven, London, 1999. P.1 –8.

¹³ КА. 11970; Dubrovskaya E. Gel’singforsskii Sovet deputatov armii, flota i rabochih ( mart – oktyabr' 1917 g.) Petrozavodsk, 1992. P.45 – 46.

Дубровская Е.Ю. Гельсингфорсский совет депутатов армии, флота и рабочих ( март – октябрь 1917 г.) Петрозаводск, 1992. С.45 – 46.

¹⁴ КА. 342 : 1 , File 6107 – 106^th Infantry Division

¹⁵ Plaggenborg S. Revolutionskultur. Buhlau, 1996. S. 3,345.

¹⁶ KA. 11970.