Steven Duncan Huxley CONSTITUTIONALIST INSURGENCY IN FINLAND

296 Pages·2017·19.76 MB·English

Steven Duncan Huxley
CONSTITUTIONALIST
INSURGENCY IN FINLAND
Societas Historica Finlandiae
Suomen Historiallinen Seura
Finnish Historical Society
Studia Historica 38
Steven Duncan Huxley
CONSTITUTIONALIST
INSURGENCY
IN FINLAND.-
Finnish "Passive Resistance"
against Russification
as a Case of Nonmilitary Struggle
in the European Resistance Tradition
SHS/Helsinki/1990
Cover design by Juha Mustanoja.
The Finnish Historical Society has published this study with the permission, granted on
22 May 1990, of Helsinki University, Faculty of Arts.
ISSN 0081-6493
ISBN 951-8915-40-7
Raamattutalo
Pieksämäki 1990
Contents
PREFACE vii
I. PERSPECTIVES ON RESISTANCE 1
1. Studying the Finnish Resistance Tradition I
2. The "Nonviolent Action" Perspective: A Critique 16
3. The Authoritarian Organization or Liberation of Opin-
ion? 23
II. PASSIVE RESISTANCE IN THE EUROPEAN RESIST-
ANCE TRADITION 37
1. Civil Disobedience and Passive Resistance 37
2. Towards a History of Passive Resistance 47
3. Passive Resistance and European Constitutionalist Re-
sistance 61
III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF FINNISH RESISTANCE
THOUGHT AND ACTION 78
1. Ideology and the Lineage of a Concept 78
2. The Ambiguity of Nationhood 82
3. Constitutional Confrontation, 1861 91
4. The Strategy of National Survival and Development: J.V.
Snellman on Passive Resistance, Power and Cultural
Defense 98
5. The Finns look to Hungary: Diffusion of Resistance
Culture 106
6. The Political Culture of Constitutionalist Resistance 120
IV. CONSTITUTIONALIST INSURGENCY, 1898-1905 143
1. The Russification Program and Resistance Mobilization 143
2. The Struggle for Justice 156
3. "A New Way of Waging Warfare" 162
4. Tolstoyan Resistance in Finland 177
v
5. Resistance or Submission? The Finnish Existential
Dilemma 186
6. Is Compliancy the Will of God? 193
7. The Enigmatic Rank and File 202
8. Resistance and Revolution: The Scope of Constitution-
alist Insurgency 209
9. Failure in Success: The Outcome of Resistance 231
V. PASSIVE RESISTANCE AND NONMILITARY
STRUGGLE 253
BIBLIOGRAPHY 267
1. Primary Sources 267
2. Secondary Sources 272
INDEX 281
vi
Preface
In the early years of the twentieth century the Russian Empire was in
revolutionary turmoil. In Russia itself groups such as the Socialist
Revolutionaries, the Social Democrats and the constitutionalist Union
of Liberation, on the background of continual diverse and intense
popular unrest, accelerated their struggle for the transformation and
overthrow of the tsarist regime. Throughout the Empire as well, from
Poland and the Baltic provinces to Asia, sundry minority, nationalist
and socialist opposition and revolutionary movements helped under-
mine imperial power and create the conditions for the Revolution of
1905. On the western border of the Empire, in the Grand Duchy of
Finland, the regime's efforts to defend and bolster imperial integrity
through the destruction of local autonomy and constitutionalist
assertion was met with a distinct and sophisticated form of primarily
nonmilitary struggle and warfare.
To call the Finnish Constitutionalists' struggle against the imperial
Russian regime a type of warfare may seem unusual, or even
exaggerated. Yet "warfare," when used to designate a form of action
functionally differing from conventional warfare, is an appropriately
inclusive term for designating the scope of the Finnish fight ranging
from the constitutionalist mobilization and so-called Legal Battle,
which accelerated in the later half of the nineteenth century, to the
insurgent noncooperation movement and the schemes for violent
rebellion within the context of the Russian Revolution in the period
leading up to 1905. Besides, Finnish resistance thinkers themselves
explicitly came to understand their struggle as having escalated into a
type of war, with both sides employing special means for waging
nonmilitary warfare. There exist, moreover, within the body of post-
Clausewitzean conflict research a whole variety of ways of distin-
guishing a spectrum of non-routine conflict or warfare between
conventional warfare and peaceful politics. For one apt example, in
1985 the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff defined low-intensity
warfare as
vii
1
limited politico-military struggle to achieve political, social, economic,
or psychological objectives. It is often protracted and ranges from
diplomatic, economic and psycho-social pressures through terrorism
and insurgency. Low-intensity conflict is generally confined to a
geographic area and is often characterized by constraints on the
weaponry, tactics, and the level of violence.'
The Finns' particular way of low-intensity, constitutionalist and
deliberately violence-avoiding conflict was called "passive resistance."
This study is the result of reciprocally examining passive resistance as
a unique form of struggle, at a given place and limited time in Finland,
and as a case of a more general type of European conflict. Thus it was
interest in nonmilitary struggle in general which led to the study of
the Finnish case. In turn, familiarity with the Finnish case gave rise to
new questions concerning passive resistance and constitutionalist
insurgency in general in western history. Accordingly, focus on passive
resistance provides a vehicle for contributing to the critical conceptual
and historical examination of ideologies and methodologies of violence-
avoiding contention and warfare. Likewise, it provides a tool for
understanding Finnish Constitutionalist insurgency within the political
culture of which it was an expression.
In Finland passive resistance was part of a deeply rooted repertoire
or tradition of means of relating to Russia ranging from nonconfronta-
tional national development and constitutionalist assertion with the
intention of creating an inviolable society to radical disobedience and
violent struggle. Only as part of this tradition can passive resistance
be satisfactorily understood. Likewise, only through a comprehension
of this cultural context can more general concepts of nonmilitary
struggle be applied to Finland without distortion. Moreover, this
approach will aid those seeking to grasp the historical conditions of
Finnish national defense in general.
The study begins by introducing the Finnish concept of passive
resistance, the movement of which it was a part and the circumstances
which spawned it in 1899. Then through the description and construc-
tive criticism of the influential Finnish national (historiographical and
political) and "nonviolent action" perspectives on the subject the
work's conceptual framework is established and its scope and limits
are clearly defined. This perspective is elaborated in the final section
of chapter I. outlining a more comprehensive historical model of
resistance and contention. This is done by examining certain central
principles of Finnish political culture of relevance to this study (as
Quoted in Klare 1988, p. 53.
viii
articulated in the nineteenth century by Finland's most influential
political philosopher and active statesman, leader of the Finnish
national movement, J.V. Snellman) in relation to general European
thinking on violence and sociopolitical change. In particular William
Godwin and Snellman are used to represent two distinct approaches
to social power and mass action within the vast field of conflict types
which can be distinguished as making (from the actor's viewpoint) no
use of direct physical violence or the materials and organization
involved with its use. This section also seeks to emphasize the intricate
reciprocal relation between justice and injustice in European (including
Finnish) constitutionalism and that disproportionate focus on
emancipatory "nonviolent" action may tend to underrate, among other
things, the extent of collective or class domination involved in nonmili-
tary struggles.
The purpose of chapter II. is to historically define European passive
resistance and to determine just how unique it is as a distinct form of
struggle requiring the deliberate avoidance of violence. By so doing,
moreover, the culture of constitutionalist resistance to which the Finns
were heir is portrayed. In section 1. this is done through the comparison
and contrast of passive resistance and civil disobedience and by
dispelling some of the influential popular misconceptions of passive
resistance perpetuated by the later M.K. Gandhi and his followers
while determining what insights the earlier Gandhi had into the nature
and history of it. In the second section it is claimed that many defining
statements on passive resistance have failed to account for the actual
history of the term itself and consequently arbitrarily postulate relations
between it and forms of action with which it was not actually associated.
Therefore an effort is made to sketch the history of "passive resist-
ance," leading to the conclusion that what Europeans signified by it
was a secular way of struggle, the principles and techniques of which
became widely known at the time of the Revolution of 1848; and it is
certainly not to be identified with Christian "resist not evil," or pacifist
types of opposition. From 1848 to World War One passive resistance
was employed in constitutionalist, anti-absolutist and other types of
disobedience struggles against authorities. In Finland passive resistance
was the weapon of a highly organized assertive and insurgent elite-led
Constitutionalist movement.
Thus strictly speaking passive resistance does not predate the nine-
teenth century. It is, however, an expression of a culture of resistance
and rebellion having roots in the early modern era of European history.
The Finns were clearly heirs to this constitutionalist tradition and to
the contradictions and ambiguity of resistance and obedience in
ix
Protestant culture. Although the constitutionalist ideology of just
struggle took shape in the early modern period, apparently resisters
from the era of the first revolutionary Protestants until the nineteenth
century had no significant articulated concept of a form of effective
struggle between violent resistance and passive obedience to be used
as an alternative to violence against military warfare.
Chapters III. and IV. form the core of the book. In the former the
task, as introduced in the beginning of the study, of explaining the
origin and development of Finnish passive resistance is carried out.
Following the Finno-Russian constitutional conflict of 1861 a tradition
of associating passive resistance with unnationalistic liberal extremism
was initiated. In various forms this tradition has given rise to misconcep-
tions about Finnish resistance which are presently still perpetuated. In
contrast to these views it is shown here that in the course of the latter
half of the nineteenth century conditions made for the fertile unification
of nationalist, or "Fennomanian," cultural defense and assertive
constitutionalism. Finnish nationalism could never be guided solely
according to the ideals of the most vocal conservative Fenno-
nationalists, and it was the Finnish national mobilization in general
(including the workers' movement) which provided the strong
foundation for the ideology and organization of resistance after 1898.
Although the study focuses on nonmilitary cultural defense and
passive resistance, it is the aim of a subsection in the last part of chapter
III. to provide an insight into the role of armed force in Finnish society.
One of the central tenets of Finnish national thought was that armed
force is not necessary for national survival. Nevertheless, paradoxically
enough, Finnish political leaders agreed that Finland should have its
own autonomous army. Moreover, the military question played an
important role in triggering the Finno-Russian crisis beginning in 1899.
Another special feature of chapter III. is the section dealing with
the Hungarian passive resistance movement. This is an aspect of the
Finnish resistance heritage which has been altogether neglected by
researchers, in spite of the fact that it was the most prominent channel
for the diffusion of resistance culture into Finland and represented for
Finns an outstanding historical model for their own struggle. Moreover,
contrary to the claims of those who see the Hungarian model as
perpetuated by extremist Constitutionalists, it was, beginning in the
1860s, prominent figures in the Fennomanian movement who propa-
gated knowledge of the Hungarian struggle and its relevance for the
Finns.
The aim of chapter IV. is to define the inextricably interlinked
ideology and methodology of passive resistance following 1898, ex-
x