Eighty years after the Finnish civil war, the conflict remains divisive. Heikki Ylikangas assesses its causes, its propaganda warfare and its lasting legacy for today's Finland The civil war of 1918 was, for Finland, a terrible ordeal. It began less than two months after Finland had attained its independence on 6 December 1917, and ended in mid May 1918. According to present-day estimates, it demanded the lives of more than 30,000 people – more than the total Finnish casualties in the Winter War of 1939–40. This loss, of more than one per cent of the population, was achieved in a war that lasted about three and a half months and its aftermath.       A comparison with the Spanish civil war of 1936–39 reveals the bitterness of the Finnish struggle. The difference between the two civil wars is that in Spain the 'Whites' rebelled against the country's government, whereas in Finland the rebels were the 'Reds'.The Spaniards, too, lost about one per cent of their population, but they lost it over a period of three years, not three months. The nature of the Finnish civil war is illustrated by the fact that less than 7,000 of the victims were killed in battle (3,100 Whites and 3,600 Reds). The rest went in executions (1,600 perpetrated by the Reds, 8,300 by the Whites) or died in the prison camps set up by the victors (13,000). Thousands disappeared.       What caused such a bloody conflict? First, civil wars are not uncommon in newly independent countries, because it must be decided by whom and how the state is to be governed, and with the support of which external powers. In Finland, however, the traditional interpretation is that the rebellion was sparked by agitation on the part of the Russian Bolsheviks and Finnish social leaders who were linked with them in what is known as 'the sowing of hatred'. It is true that the radical wing of the Red guard (the left-wing civil guard) had links with the Bolsheviks, and it is equally obvious that the Bolsheviks – the leadership of Soviet Russia and the forces supporting it – did indeed urge the Finnish workers' civil guard to take power in their own country.       One essential factor, however, speaks out against both the agitation thesis and the explanatory value of a power vacuum: the location of the battle-front between Reds and Whites. This crossed Finland immediately above Pori in the south-west, with the Reds to the south and the Whites to the north. If agitation was the main factor, why was it not equally effective to the north of that border where, just as to the south, almost half of the population had voted socialist and where – particularly in Ostrobothnia – there were large contingents of Russian forces to engage in the supposed agitation. Northern Finland had its own representatives in Helsinki, newspapers were distributed in both the north and the south, law and order collapsed throughout the country, not just in southern Finland. Why were there only a few local rebellions in the north, while revolution as such appeared only in the south?       An answer can be in a closer analysis of the course and significance of the above-mentioned battlefront. It divided Finland, in principle, into two different parts. South of the border was almost all of the country's industry, particularly the larger-scale and more modern part. Furthermore, all of the larger mansions and more sizeable family estates were located south of the border, as were, naturally, most of the industrial working population and the landless agricultural labourers. The educated classes of the time were recruited principally from among the more prosperous population of southern Finland. Differences in wealth were particularly marked in southern Finland. In short, the real opposing forces of the war showed themselves in southern Finland.       Societal differences were to a large extent different to the north of the border. With small local exceptions such as the town of Oulu, it was made up, essentially, of peasant, agrarian Finland. There was little in the way of mansions or industry, or an impoverished proletariat, in agrarian Finland; Ostrobothnia had exported much of its relative excess population across the ocean as emigrants. For this reason, southern Ostrobothnia became the Whites' most important stronghold. Here, power shifted locally into the hands of the right-wing civil guards. Savo, central Finland and north Karelia wavered, in structure, between these two Finlands – agrarian Finland and mansion-house Finland. In agrarian Finland, however, the urge to revolution nevertheless smaller than in southern Finland.       All rebellions have immediate as well as deep-rooted causes. Finland was no exception. After the October revolution in Russia in 1917, a large proportion of the working classes considered the chance of success in an armed insurrection at least reasonable. In parliament, which had not been able to carry out reforms, they placed no trust. They trusted in the aid of the Russian army and in supply of Russian arms, and also believed that their policies of reform would win over those who at first remained outside Red Finland.       Reality brought a sharp disappointment. The reforms did not bring all of Finland into Red hands, and Russian aid – an average of about one thousand volunteers on the battlefield – remained insignificant in view of the fact that as late as January 1918 there were still at least 40,000 Russian soldiers on Finnish soil. This number was constantly being reduced; only material aid from Russia remained considerable.       What, then, explains the Red defeat and the White victory? On the one hand, Germany's considerable aid to the Whites (war material and an aid expeditionary force of around 15,000 men), and on the other the high number of officers and trained soldiers among the Whites. The Whites recruited soldiers who had served in the Russian army, Jaegers trained in Germany (around 1,200 men) and a number of Swedish volunteers. The Reds had only a few Russian volunteers and soldiers and non-commissioned officers from the old Russian army. There was just a handful of officers. The Reds were, in practice, led by ordinary civilians, often trade-union activists. For example, the defence of Tampere, the most important northern Red stronghold, was led by the sawmill worker and amateur actor Hugo Salmela. The Red guard army was incapable of attack and mobile warfare in general. It could defend itself most effectively in urban conditions. For this reason, there were only two major battles in the war: those of Tampere and Viipuri.       The war was very clearly a civil war. Nevertheless, it was for decades known as the liberation war (in other words, a war against a foreign enemy, the Russians). This was associated with the untrue claim that Finland and Soviet Russia were at war in 1918. The term liberation war was adopted by the Whites during the course of the war. The Whites' problem, in fact, was recruitment, which encountered difficulties at first. It was only after the White commander-in-chief, General C.G.E. Mannerheim, began from his stronghold in Vaasa on the Ostrobothnian coast systematically to disseminate an interpretation according to which the principal enemies were the Russians and not the rebellious Reds that volunteers began to come forward in greater numbers. It was thus the war was named the liberation war. It did not, however, prove possible to wage it using volunteer forces. The White leadership instituted general conscription in the areas it controlled, and thus finally rallied sufficient numbers of men to its flag.       The Finnish constitution was not shaped to correspond with the result of the war. The defeat of Germany in the First World War led to the abandonment of monarchy in Finland. Instead, a republic was created to conform with the wishes of the western powers. The strong presidential powers were intended as a guarantee that democracy would not lead to fresh unrest. Finland's constitutional structure is thus in large part a result of the war of 1918. Top of page