Revista Economia n. 13.pmd - Faap

parliament and universal suffrage was introduced. From 1906 on, every Finnish
citizen over 24 years of age had the right to vote in the parliamentary elections
and be eligible to become elected to the eduskunta (Parliament). Thus, Finland
was the first country in the world where women received full political rights.
It is difficult to imagine that without the parliamentary reform, Finland
would have been able to create the groundwork for political independence in
1917. Its declaration was, of course, also spurred by the Bolshevik revolution
that permitted Finland to cede from the Russian empire (to which it was expected
to return after the socialist revolution in Finland). On the other hand, the Russian
events had negative political repercussions in Finland. Political forces were
mobilized to an unprecedented degree and the antagonism between social classes
grew more intense. The unequal pattern in the landownership, especially in
Southern Finland, and a deteriorating food situation, with the progress of the
world war, instigated discontent and rebellion. Both the socialists and bourgeois
forces had established their own militias which armed themselves and developed
into proto-military organizations. The control of the Czarist authorities collapsed
in Finland in 1917 when the country had not been yet able to establish an effective
state machinery of its own. In these circumstances, a power vacuum emerged
and power was growing out of the barrel of gun. The civil war started in January
1918 between the so-called Reds and it lasted until May 1918 when the Whites
defeated, with the help of the German intervention, the socialist opposition.
The Finnish civil war was short by international standards, but its aftermath,
with large-scale executions and disease in the prison camps, led to the deaths of
some 38,000 people, the large majority of them being Reds. The civil war left
deep scars in the Finnish society and their impact is felt even today. In fact,
during the last few years a lot of new research has appeared in Finland to
document the horrors of that war. Politically, the working class movement was
divided between the Social Democrats and the Communists, who had to operate
from the Soviet Union as the party was banned in Finland (and who suffered
grievously in Stalin’s purges of the 1930s).
The key task in the newly independent country was to consolidate its
sovereignty, especially in relation to the Soviet Russia and Sweden (which
demanded the Aaland Islands that were given, however, to Finland by a decision
of the League of Nations). In the 1920s and the 1930s, Finland’s domestic
politics was unstable and the country was ruled mostly by short-lived bourgeoisie
coalitions. There were also right-wing movements which had expansionist designs
towards the Soviet territories where Finnish-related ethnic groups were living.
However, there was at no point in the interwar era any strong Fascist mass
organization as there was in Germany and Italy.
After the Great Depression of the early 1930s was finally over, Finnish
development prospects became brighter. The new coalition between the Social
Democrats and the Agrarian Union brought stability to the political life and
economic growth accelerated significantly. Agriculture remained the mainstay
of the economy, but both the paper and metal industry were growing quickly
and provided new employment in the mills.
Ninety years of Finland’s independence: transition from the periphery..., Raimo Väyrynen, p. 134-146
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