Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

79THE TSAR AGAINST THE FINNISH PEOPLEThe Black-Hundred bandits of the Winter Palace 46 andthe Octobrist tricksters of the Third Duma have begun anew campaign against Finland. To do away with the constitutionthat protects the rights of the Finns against the tyrannyof the Russian autocrats, to put Finland on a parwith the rest of Russia deprived of rights by the exceptionallaws—such is the purpose of this crusade which has beeninaugurated by the tsar’s ukase deciding the question ofmilitary service over the head of the Finnish Diet and by theappointment of new senators from Russian officialdom. Itwould be a waste of time to dwell on the arguments withwhich these bandits and tricksters are trying to prove thelegality and justice of the demands which are presented toFinland under the threat of a million bayonets. The essenceof the matter is not in these arguments but in the aim thatis being pursued. In the person of free and democratic Finlandthe tsarist government and its associates want to effacethe last trace of the popular gains of 1905. Hence the causeof the whole Russian people is at stake in these days when theCossack regiments and artillery batteries are hastily occupyingthe urban centres of Finland.The Russian revolution, supported by the Finns, compelledthe tsar to relax the stranglehold which he had kepton the Finnish people for a number of years. The tsar, whowanted to extend his despotic power over Finland, to whoseconstitution his ancestors and he himself had taken the oath,was compelled to sanction not only the expulsion of Bobrikov’s47 executioners from Finnish soil and the repeal ofhis own unlawful ukases, but also the introduction of universaland equal suffrage in Finland. After crushing the Russianrevolution the tsar is harking back to the past, but with