When Neighbours Fight:

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 224, 10 December 1927, Page 26 (Supplement)

When Neighbours Fight:

Former Grand Duchy’s

New Nationhood

It is the fixed belief of the rulers of Soviet Russia that sjJies of various nationalities are constantly 'pouring over their forntiers from Finland. It is certain, at any rate, that Russians and Finns dislike each other. The reasons for their mutual animosities are set forth in the following article by Francis Gribble in “T.P.’s Weekly.”

aHE area of Finland is equal in extent to that of Great Britain, Holland and Belgium; but its population is rather less than three and a-half

millions. The Finns are not of Ayran, but of Turanian origin—imigrants who reached their present home some time in the ninth century of the Christian era. Their language —agglutinative and akin to the Magyar—is by no means one of the languages that you can learn in three months without a teacher. Its inflections are as extensive and peculiar as Sam Weller’s knowledge of London. Its substantives have 15 cases, which seems excessive.

First the Swedes ruled the country. Then the Russians conquered it from them —the Finns themselves, who

A street scene in H elsingfors, the capit< of Finland.

were on the best of terms with the Swedes, and were represented in the Swedish Diet, assisting stubbornly in the defence. They were excellent soldiers—the finest soldiers in the armies of Gustavus Adolphus which overran Germany during the Thirty Years’ j War. The valiant fight which they put up before they were finally overcome ! by Alexander I. in touched the heart of the victor. “Your armies, sire,” Sprengtporten said, “have conquered the country of the Finlanders, and you will now conquer their hearts.” The Tsar replied with the as- : surance that “the ancient laws of the ; country should be inviolably main--4

tained”; and he repeated his pledges in a speech when he received homage as Grand Duke of Finland, saying; “This brave and loyal people will be grateful to that Providence which has brought about the present state of affairs. Placed from this time forward in the rank of nations, governed by its own laws, it will only call to mind its former rulers in order to cultivate friendly relations when these shall have been re-established by peace. And I shall have reaped the best result for my solicitude, when I see this nation, externally tranquil, internally free, devoting itself to agriculture and industry under the protection of its laws and its good customs and manners, and thus, by the very fact of its prosperity, doing justice to my intentions, and blessing its lot.’ Finnish history, in so far as it concerns the rest of Europe, may reasonably be dated from that speech. Alexander was faithful to his oath, which he repeated in 1816, adding that his promise was to hold good “for our reign and the reigns of our successors in all perpetuity”; and his successors did, for more than half a century, fulfil the obligations laid upon them. The Finns, throughout that period, were the spoiled children of the Russian Empire; and they justified the favour which they enjoyed by developing a civilisation widely different from that of Russia.

Russification Begins

A Press campaign for the Russification of Finland, begun by the famous journalist Katkoff in the eighteen-six-ties, was renewed by other writers in the eighteen-eighties. “The argument ran,” writes Mr. Arthur Reade in “Finland and the Finns” (Methuen), “that Finland’s rights were purely illusory and based on misrepresentation and even forgery; that Alexander I. had not understood what he was doing, or had not meant what he had said; and his successors were urged in the name of Russia’s interests to make an end of Finland’s special position and extend to her the principles of autocracy existing in the rest of the Empire.”

Ministers began to act in these hints in the eighteen-nineties. Nicholas 11., who came to the throne in 1594, either sympathised with them, or was too weak to oppose them. He was persuaded that the existence of a flourishing constitutional monarchy on the borders of Russia was, to quote Mr. Reade again, “a positive danger inasmuch as it afforded to the discontented masses in Russia a working model of democracy.” So General Bobrikoff was made Governor-General of Finland, and the first period of Russification began. The Finns were furious. At a meeting of citizens in Helsingfors, it was decided to collect signatures for a national address to the Tsar, begging him to revoke the manifesto in which it had been announced that the Finnish Constitution would no longer he