inHuciK'od on the fiirurc do\xMopincnr of I'innish socictw Both short and lonjj;- rorni ct't'ccrs of the war rangine to the present day ean he traced. Before penetrating to these effects, some essential charaeteristics of the mentioned conflict should he presented. Without this outlook, it is diffietdt or impossible to understand main' characteristics of the jiost-war developments in l-'inland. In this connection it is not necessarv to go into the (still) heated dehate on the causes of the war in a detailed manner. 1 lowever it is certainlv worthwhile pointing out that there were e\ identlv both longterm structural factors (general inecjualitv, “land-v]uestion”; the miserahle position of landless crofters and rural workers) and short- term situational factors (starv ation jiroduced hv the first world war; a kind of a jvower v acuum created hv the collapse of tsarist imperial power in march lyr) in the background.'' I'he first mentioned factors had crearetl generalisetl discontent among the working class peojile. I'his discontent developed to frustration concerning possibilities to influence hv democratic means when the Parliamentarv reformof iyo6 was nvillified in practise during the second periotl of op]iression (iyo(S-iyi~). .\ democratic and reform-minded Parliament were social democrats had won 40‘M) of the seats in the first elections and ev en a majoritv in the elections of iyi6, cotdd not function under autocratic rule.' 'fhe civ il war - is spite of the fact that regional v ariations were huge - was essentiallv a class conflict in a sense that urban and rural workers, social democrats (reds) and independent peasants and bourgeois part of the population (whites) were on the opposite sides, 'fo crystalli/.e the outlnirst of the war in a concrete manner, the rural aiul urban 4 About the different background factors of the war see for example risto alapuro: State and Revolution in Finland. University of California Press 1988; iuhani paasivirta: Suomi vuonna 1918. WSOY 1957. See also jukka kekkonen, Uustulkintoja Suomen sisällissodasta. Flelsingin Sanomat 5.4.1998. 5 In practise the Parliament was dissolved by Russian officials several times, because something that offended the Tsarist regime was said or decided. Once this happened during the first minutes of the opening sessions, when the Russian interpreted that the opening speech, held by the chairnan of the parliament "offended the Russian authorities.” 44.>“
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