[HN Gopher] Finland Divided: The Finnish Civil War 1918
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Finland Divided: The Finnish Civil War 1918
Author : rsj_hn
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-11-11 01:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (finlanddivided.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (finlanddivided.wordpress.com)
| thirteenfingers wrote:
| One question that I, as a non-Finn who has had more than a
| passing interest in Finnish history, have never seen a compelling
| answer to is _how_ reconciliation was ultimately achieved after
| the civil war. The accounts I 've read refer in very general
| terms to both sides making compromises after having been simply
| exhausted by it all.
|
| Can any of you provide some details? Multiple viewpoints if
| possible?
| Jensson wrote:
| All the red supporters were dead, in prison or fled to Soviet,
| they just lost. Reconciliation is very easy then, the whites
| just did what they wanted to do.
|
| Or do you wonder why there was no more resistance afterwards? I
| think that the people were happy that they weren't under
| foreign rule for once, they didn't rebel against Russia so why
| rebel against a Finn ruler now? They were used to living under
| much worse conditions without complaining.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Cool story bootlicker
| nabla9 wrote:
| Reconciliation never fully came. People lived and died with
| their grudges and hate. I remember the bitterness of old people
| around the issue from the time when I was young.
|
| Soon after the civil war Social Democratic party was the
| government and Finns had a president that was social democrat.
| It made it possible for reds and whites to live together
| without killing each other.
|
| Then Winter War came (1939) and Finns united to defend the
| country against common enemy. That created aseveliakseli
| (comrade-in-arms axis) where both whites (captialists) and red
| (socialists) fought together against common enemy (Soviet
| Union)
| pasiaj wrote:
| Finns were segregated to different sports leagues, different
| youth groups, different stores etc. based on families
| political leanings for decades after the war.
|
| If you go to any small town in Finland, you'll still find an
| "S Market" and a "K Market" that have their roots in this
| left-right segregation going back all the way to the civil
| war.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Kinda sad because that is definitely happening in the US.
| If you look at measures of political polarization over the
| past couple decades based on where people live, it has
| gotten much more extreme. You are much less likely to come
| into contact with people in your neighborhood who are of
| the opposite political side than a generation ago.
| vkou wrote:
| You're not radically less likely to come in contact with
| people of other political views, you are just more likely
| to be surrounded by people who keep their political views
| quiet, because they know what's good for them.
|
| Most of the US is purple, the difference is whether it's
| a blue-ish purple or a red-dish purple.
| pasiaj wrote:
| Here are my two cents:
|
| Lots of international pressure was put on Finland due to
| malnutrition and poor treatment of prisoners in the fall of
| 1918 that led to mass pardons in October of 1918.
|
| My ancestors who fought amongst the "reds" and were convicted
| to prison camps emmigrated a hundred kilometers north after the
| war after being pardoned, as things got quite heated where they
| were from. They seemed to have regretted their actions in the
| war and expressed gratitude for being welcomed to the their new
| surroundings. My grandfather remained a communist, and was
| actually killed by a "white" veteran in 1958 after a municipal
| government meeting (got hit with a big log).
|
| A new Finnish identity was built in 1920s as a unifying
| narrative. Sports were an important part part of it. Finland
| had been under the rule of other countries before, but now it
| started to develop an identity if its own. Paavo Nurmi, the
| original Flying Finn won 9 olympic gold metals in 1920, 1924
| and 1928. Ville Ritola won 6 medals in 1924 olympics. Hannes
| Kolehmainen won the olympic marathon in 1920. (He was treated
| as a class traitor by the left.)
|
| In 1930 there were significant anti-communist / anti-socialist
| / far right movements in Finland. "Meetings held by leftist and
| labour groups were also interrupted, often violently. A common
| tactic was "muilutus", which started with kidnapping and
| beating. After that the subject was thrown into a car and
| driven to the border with the Soviet Union."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapua_Movement
|
| Politically the left and the right were united in 1937 in the
| selection of Kyosti Kallio as president. A coalition government
| was formed, largely based on the deep anger and resentment by
| the left against Stalin's empty promises.
|
| The biggest unifiers in the end were the Winter War and the
| Continuation War against Russia in 1939. It forced ex-enemies
| to fight side by side against the Russians. Finland was at war
| from 1939 to 1944. Next, the nation united to take care of war
| reparations worth 5.52 billion in 2020 dollars. It took until
| 1952 to to pay off the debt, and I think Finland still claims
| to be the only country to have paid war reparations in full.
| drcongo wrote:
| This is a fantastic answer, thank you. It does however raise
| two other questions... 1. Why was Hannes Kolehmainen treated
| as a class traitor? And 2. What on earth happened with that
| big log?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Here's a good answer to #1:
|
| > The working-class athletic clubs in which the Kolehmainen
| brothers first trained for victory opposed the
| participation of newly independent Finland in the 1920
| Olympics, claiming the Olympic movement served the
| interests of the global bourgeois. William Kolehmainen,
| however, convinced his brother to abandon any working-class
| loyalties and to run at the Antwerp games, understanding
| the immense fame and fortune that another gold medal could
| bring the family. Finland's bourgeoisie embraced
| Kolehmainen's crossings of class lines, while his old
| working-class comrades denounced him as a traitor.
|
| https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/A_Berg_Flying_2012.pdf
| doikor wrote:
| 1. To the white/nationalist press he became a hero (a
| Finnish speaking Finn winning). That alone is enough to
| make him an enemy of the communists and thus obviously a
| class traitor as he used to be member of the
| red/socialist/communist sporting club Helsingin Jyry.
|
| At that time there was 2 sporting unions Jyry was part of
| the red one. There was a very hard political split along
| this line for a while (Kolehmainen got fired from his job
| due to joining Jyry for example).
|
| 2. Obviously got bludgeoned to death.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| >Paavo Nurmi, the original Flying Finn
|
| Is Mika Hakkinen the new Flying Finn?
| foobarian wrote:
| As a child of the 80s to me Matti Nykanen is The Flying
| Finn.
| throwaway2077 wrote:
| >Many of the Finns deported by the Lapua Movement were later
| caught up in Stalin's Great Purge and executed; while
| persecuted in Finland as communists, Stalin accused them of
| being "Nationalists".[9]
|
| heh
| mannerheim wrote:
| This happened in Estonia as well. Communists attempted to
| overthrow the Estonian government in a coup in 1924, a
| couple of those involved were executed, many were
| imprisoned in the Patarei Prison in Tallinn (later gained
| notoriety under Soviet occupation for holding political
| prisoners), and some fled to the USSR. Ironically, those
| who were imprisoned fared slightly better than those who
| fled to the USSR, since many of the latter were purged by
| Stalin, while the former were given amnesty in '38, on the
| 20th anniversary of the founding of Estonia.
| rat87 wrote:
| Also similarly
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Murdered_Poets
| (killing prominent members of the Jewish Anti-Facist
| Committee after they were no longer needed to appeal to
| the west during WW2 and started to write about Jewish
| topics the USSR was wary of like Israel and the
| Holocaust) and the turn against the Jewish Autonomous
| Oblast (and Yiddish both of which had previously been
| promoted) https://www.npr.org/2016/09/07/492962278/sad-
| and-absurd-the-... as part of the
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
| cosmopolitan_campaign
| panick21_ wrote:
| The new Stalin book by Kotkin goes into this episode. A
| totally crazy coup Stalin basically cooked up with some
| people and he didn't even inform the Politburo.
| nabla9 wrote:
| The white-threat was not what scared to Lenin and Stalin.
|
| It was every other type of socialism and communism. Social
| democrats, Democratic socialists, Anarchists, Syndicalists,
| Trotskyists, ... When Soviet Union took over, they hunted
| and killed other socialists first. Or tried to assassinate
| them beforehand.
|
| People, especially those who live in North America have no
| idea how big and irreconcilable the differences within the
| left were. Saying that someone is a socialist don't really
| convey that much information.
| exdsq wrote:
| It happened the other way around too. My wife's related
| to one-such example
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Schauman of someone
| who assassinated a communist
| nabla9 wrote:
| Eugen Schauman didn't assassinate a communist.
|
| Schauman assassinated Nikolay Bobrikov, Governor-General
| of Finland, general of Russian Imperial Army, servant of
| Russian Empire.
|
| Schauman was Finnish Nationalist fighting Russian Empire
| before Russian revolution and Soviet union.
| pavlov wrote:
| People in USA can get some idea if they think of how the
| Trumpist/QAnon bloc hates Mitt Romney despite both being
| technically conservatives.
|
| That's the scale of the gulf between Soviet bolsheviks
| and Nordic social democrats a hundred years ago.
| vidarh wrote:
| A key thing to remind people of is that the October
| "revolution" did not depose the Czar, but the socialist-
| dominated provisional government.
|
| So many people seems to believe the Bolsheviks overthrew
| the Czar, but he and his family had been in house arrest
| for months by then.
|
| And of course the Bolshevik purges didn't stop at the
| other groups, but also other factions within their own
| party.
| tehjoker wrote:
| True, but that socialist dominated government was filled
| with a lot of people that believed in an extremely
| orthodox theory of history that said that the capitalists
| should get a chance to develop society after the feudal
| era ended. There was also tension between "defensivists"
| and "defeatists" on the subject of whether WW1 was worth
| fighting. Notably, it was the bolsheviks that called for
| an immediate end to the fighting. That said, the final
| days of revolution were the bolsheviks trying to create
| facts on the ground to present to the national congress
| of deputies, packed with bolsheviks, as a fiat accompli
| as they thought it was possible to skip the capitalist
| phase of historical development (they were obviously
| right in retrospect though later mistakes doomed the
| experiment).
|
| My understanding of the purges is less comprehensive
| (though I am taken to understand that while the program
| went overboard, they weren't paranoid, there were people
| infiltrating the party to interfere or assassinate
| members that later bragged about it in books) and my
| soviet history on what happened post 1917 is not very
| good. One book at a time...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Vicious sectarianism is pretty frequent in history and it
| can infect secular movements too.
|
| Being a "Trotskyist" or a "Titoist" was a _de facto_
| capital offence at various points of the Stalinist era. Or
| being labeled as such, regardless of your true status.
| foobarian wrote:
| Heh Titoist was bad in USSR? But Tito was the best!
| nabla9 wrote:
| Stalin attempted to assassinate Tito.
|
| Tito and Stalin didn't see eye-to-eye. There was complete
| split after the WWII. Soviets blockaded Yugoslavia and
| Yugoslavia was included in Truman's Mutual Defense
| Assistance Program and received military aid.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| The reply letter from Tito following an assassination
| attempt from Stalin is one of the great political
| correspondences of the era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Tito%E2%80%93Stalin_split?wpro...
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| That link seems to not reference what you referenced?
|
| Is the quote in this section?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito#Tito%E2%80%
| 93S...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I think he meant this quote:
|
| "Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured
| five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a
| rifle. [...] If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send
| one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| which is a very awesome quote and resolve at the same
| time
| smcl wrote:
| Stalin _very_ publicly turned against Tito when it became
| obvious he couldn 't be pushed around easily (wouldn't
| agree to extremely unfavourable trade deals, wasn't happy
| with the idea of joint-investments in Yugoslav industry
| that would've effectively turned them over to the USSR,
| and more). This ultimately lead to Stalin and the USSR-
| aligned countries denouncing him, despite originally
| being very close with newly socialist Yugoslavia. I think
| this was a really tough one for Tito - he'd spent time in
| Russia after the revolution, sought out Soviet help
| during war (without really receiving any) but for a while
| truly believed the USSR could've spearheaded a global
| socialist movement.
| vkou wrote:
| Tito and Stalin split in a big way. When Europe split
| NATO-Warsaw, Yugoslavia headed off in its own direction -
| non-aligned.
| aqsalose wrote:
| It is difficult to give a comprehensive answer in a fly-by HN
| comment.
|
| Very brief answer: It was complicated. It _is_ complicated.
|
| Slightly less brief answer: Define reconciliation. I doubt any
| kind of perfect, ideal reconciliation was ever reached. It is
| not like there were two sides who agreed to something: there
| were many political actors, with different opinions. It was a
| mess, and it still is a mess. Many people who had first-hand
| experience of the war or the terror or its consequences
| remained bitter. The distinction between the Red and the White
| social sphere continued for a long time (Anecdote: there were
| Red and White country-wide sports unions SVUL and TUL until
| 1993.)
|
| Some people remain bitter. The kind of people who like to have
| arguments about history and historical figures continue to
| debate the matter and legacy of Mannerheim and which was worse,
| the White terror or the hypothetical Red terror if the Reds had
| won.
|
| Another anecdote. A couple of years ago a student chapter at
| one university put a portrait of Mannerheim on the wall of
| their club room. One professor made a very angry public
| complaint. I don't know what happened afterwards, but there
| were lots opinions in newspapers and social media, for a
| moment.
|
| If we define "reconciliation" as "why there was no further
| violence, at least not much", one reason was that some of the
| political leaders on White pushed through torpparilaki (a land
| reform). SDP could participate in the elections, and due to
| efforts of some centrist politicians on White side, could once
| enter a government. Economy was good, the Great Depression
| wasn't as bad as in many other places. When Winter War
| happened, many regular people on the Red side felt their lives
| were improving and were distrustful of Stalin's clumsy
| propaganda moves (it helped that many Reds who "escaped" to the
| USSR during 1920s-1930s were shot or imprisoned with other
| ethnic Karelians and Finns in Stalin's purges; the word
| eventually got back that the USSR was not a paradise). The Reds
| were divided: non-communist socialists like SDP leader Vaino
| Tanner enjoyed electoral support among the working class, but
| were also quite hated by the pro-Soviet left. Maybe the White-
| aligned political police simply was very efficient at
| suppressing the would-be revolutionary left (some true
| believers on the Red side attempted to continue underground
| pro-Soviet / revolutionary efforts, not very successfully.)
|
| Other part of the answer is that there was a lot of ...not-
| exactly-reconciliation for several decades.
|
| Remember, some on the Red side continued with not necessarily
| reconciliatory political efforts? Some on the White side were
| actively not pleased about this at all, and some objected to
| any leftists being allowed to participate in politics at all.
| Feeling the legacy of their Independence War Victory was being
| squandered. In the 1920s/30s, for several years, some white
| extremists burned leftists printing presses, kidnapped and
| roughhoused lots of perceived communists, killed some, and the
| state apparatus turned a blind eye. Eventually they proceeded
| to kidnap bourgeois politicians not deemed anti-communist
| enough, including the ex-president Stahlberg. At some point the
| danger of a genuine coup / intra-white civil war was real.
| (Google for Mantsalan kapina.) In the end, after the parties
| and politics to the left of SDP were effectively banned, the
| extreme right lost its steam.
|
| After the WW2, many outright communists and other on the Red
| side of left who had spent 1920s-1930s out of politics or in
| prison were able to enter the politics (thanks Finland mostly
| losing the WW2 to the Soviets) in force. In some respects, they
| got some amounts of revenge, when the most bourgeois party,
| Kokoomus, could not enter the government for decades because of
| Soviet objections. Google for Kekkonen and Finlandization.
| jabl wrote:
| > Some people remain bitter. The kind of people who like to
| have arguments about history and historical figures continue
| to debate the matter
|
| It's a really strange human quirk to get so worked up about
| historical events. Finland has these, yes, as excellently
| explained by the parent and parent's sibling comments. In the
| US you find people who get really really angry if somebody
| suggests that a civil war 150 years ago wasn't about slavery.
|
| Heck, you'll even find people who somehow identify with
| ancient Sparta, apparently based on watching that really
| terrible movie (or even more terrible successor movies), and
| thinking that Spartans were uniquely badass and honorable and
| whatnot.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > In the US you find people who get really really angry if
| somebody suggests that a civil war 150 years ago wasn't
| about slavery.
|
| Yes, and denying the holocaust happened gets people upset
| for some reason too. Something about telling bare-faced
| lies, about easily confirmed historical facts, as a way to
| flaunt a political affiliation to a group that openly
| considers some people sub-human is strangely political for
| reasons no one can figure out.
| jabl wrote:
| Well, I agree with that angle. I was more wondering about
| the opposing viewpoint, why do people get attached to a
| monstrous ideology and claim people under said banner did
| none of the things they historically did.
| rat87 wrote:
| > > Some people remain bitter. The kind of people who like
| to have arguments about history and historical figures
| continue to debate the matter
|
| > It's a really strange human quirk to get so worked up
| about historical events. Finland has these, yes, as
| excellently explained by the parent and parent's sibling
| comments. In the US you find people who get really really
| angry if somebody suggests that a civil war 150 years ago
| wasn't about slavery.
|
| Because
|
| 1. It was totally because of slavery
|
| 2. Claiming it wasn't because of slavery tends to downplay
| historical racism and tends to be associated with modern
| day racism
| johnyzee wrote:
| Weird. It was verifiably not about slavery - at least not
| from the beginning. It was not an issue until well into
| the war.
|
| Also, I completely disagree with your interpretation.
| Recognizing that people at that time, on both sides, did
| not actually care all that much about the plight of the
| slaves, does not 'downplay historical racism', quite the
| contrary. It goes a long way to explain why blacks, even
| after emancipation, never really got a fair chance in
| America, to this day.
|
| I am not an American and have no dog in the fight, for
| what it's worth.
| pasabagi wrote:
| You're misinformed. Read any current, mainstream work of
| scholarship on the issue.
|
| EDIT: this is a bit short, but honestly, without any
| rancor, mainstream scholarship is pretty unanimous on
| this topic. Popular discourse is more divided.
| pchristensen wrote:
| I was a little startled by your statement, so I
| charitably tried to figure out where it was coming from.
| Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_
| the_Confederat...) said that the South seceded to protect
| slavery, but the North attacked the South to put down the
| rebellion, not necessarily to free slaves.
|
| So I would say that you were technically right that the
| Civil War was not declared to end slavery, but the
| overall conflict (and 30+ years leading up to it) was
| unquestionably about slavery.
| krapp wrote:
| > Weird. It was verifiably not about slavery - at least
| not from the beginning. It was not an issue until well
| into the war.
|
| The civil war was verifiably _about_ slavery from the
| beginning[0]. South Carolina explicitly mentioned slavery
| as part of its rationale for secession[1], as did
| numerous other states[2]. Alexander Stephens, Vice
| President of the Confederate States of America, declared
| slavery to be its very cornerstone[3]:
| "our new government['s] foundations are laid, its
| cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is
| not equal to the white man; that slavery--subordination
| to the superior race--is his natural and normal
| condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the
| history of the world, based upon this great physical,
| philosophical, and moral truth."
|
| Even the "states rights'" arguments around the Civil War
| boil down to specifically the Southern states defending
| their right to continue slavery without interference from
| the North. That's what they were seceding over.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_
| Civil_...
|
| [1]https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.a
| sp
|
| [2]https://www.historynet.com/which-states-referred-to-
| slavery-...
|
| [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech
| jabl wrote:
| Er, right, yes, I agree with you. It seems I got tangled
| up in my own explanations, sorry about that. That's what
| you get for writing a comment in a hurry. What I meant to
| say there seems to be a fraction of the population in the
| US who really think the US civil war was about "states
| rights" or whatever, and not slavery, and they get really
| angry if anybody suggests otherwise.
| doikor wrote:
| > one reason was that some of the political leaders on White
| pushed through torpparilaki (a land reform)
|
| This is a often overlooked but very important part of making
| the post civil war much more peaceful. A large portion of the
| reds were tenant farmers (torppari) and giving them their own
| land basically made them "whites" (basically all the landed
| farmers were on the whites side) and thus fixing one of the
| biggest issues a very large portion of the reds actually had
| with the situation before the civil war.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| some of the resolution was the new territory boundaries,
| securing Vyborg as a Russian city ?
|
| edit- incorrect, mixed the conflicts, reading more now
| eMSF wrote:
| Vyborg was annexed by the Soviet Union in WW2. That had
| nothing to do with the Finnish Civil War.
| [deleted]
| DrTung wrote:
| Born i Stockholm, I remember taking the ferry to Finland as a
| young boy for some cheap vodka (and you only had to be 18 years
| old, not 20).
|
| This was in the late 70's and my first visit to Helsinki, I tried
| to order a drink in a bar. But no service until I discovered my
| mistake: I had spoken in Swedish.
|
| Switching to English got me a nice Finnish beer. That was my
| first glimpse of Finland's "complicated" history.
| pqs wrote:
| The opening paragraph, describes very well what I think would
| happen in Catalonia the day after a hypothetical independence, at
| least one achieved in the way the pro-independence movement
| wanted to achieve it (with extreme polarization of the Catalan
| society and antagonization of the different sectors of society
| that did not support the so-called Process).
|
| "On December 6th 1917 the Grand Duchy of Finland declared
| independence, becoming the first nation to independently secede
| from the corpse of the Russian Empire and the embryo that was to
| become the Soviet Union. Just fifty-three days later on the night
| of January 27th 1918, Finland erupted into a brutal civil war.
| Two opposing movements had polarized the Finnish people to the
| breaking point. For the next three and a half months, the Finnish
| people tore their nation apart in a conflict that would claim the
| lives of 36,000 people, out of a total population of just 3
| million"
|
| The pro-independence factions are also very divided, even though
| they always achieve to form a coalition to govern the region.
| Thus, the tension would be fractal.
|
| p.s. I live in Catalonia and lived the 2017 events with more fear
| of the aftermath of the events, than the events themselves.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Finland had a contingent of Russian troops at the time many of
| which refusing to turn over weapons and later fighting for the
| Red side. Are you talking about Catolonia seceding {edit: not
| conceding} without the king of Spain allowing it? Otherwise
| there is no standing army to make a mess.
| pqs wrote:
| We are in 2021, so it would be a very different kind of
| conflict. I definitely see terrorism, house by house arrests,
| some urban guerrillas or self-defense units that protect
| neighborhoods, etc.
|
| I'm not sure if I fully understand "Catolonia conceding
| without the king of Spain allowing it". What do you exactly
| mean?
| drcongo wrote:
| At a guess, I think the parent means seceding rather than
| conceding.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Oh ye wrong word, thank you.
| Swizec wrote:
| > I definitely see terrorism, house by house arrests, some
| urban guerrillas or self-defense units that protect
| neighborhoods, etc.
|
| This is exactly how the Yugoslavian red vs. white civil war
| played out during WW2 while also fighting off the overall
| nazi invasion. The whites (collaborators) literally started
| as The Neighborhood Watch protecting citizens from partisan
| raids (the communists).
|
| For normal people it was a bit like this: You're trying to
| survive the war in occupied territory. A mere civilian
| trying to make ends meet. One day the reds come and beat
| you up for not fighting with them, you're obviously against
| the cause. The next day the whites come beat you up a
| little more because you're not with them, you're obviously
| a communist.
|
| Fun times.
| lixtra wrote:
| Pr it could have gone all peacefully like Czechoslovakia split
| in two.
| spurgu wrote:
| Something I've wondered, how would Catalonia feel about
| independence if it was neighbouring Morocco instead of France?
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Massive sidetrack but there's a performance by a Finnish band
| called Horna, of a song called "Oi kallis kotimaa". I remember
| reading that it's about a famous battle in WWI or WWII involving
| a Hungarian regiment, but I can't find any information about it
| online, except in Finnish, which I regrettably do not speak.
| Could any friendly Finnish person please explain what "Oi kallis
| kotimaa" is about?
|
| Thanks! And many apologies for hijacking the thread, again!
| eMSF wrote:
| If I found the correct lyrics, it's a "cover" version of a folk
| song and the lyrics refer to the 1877 Russo-Turkish war.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Oh, thanks! I thought there was something about a regiment of
| Hungarians dying far from their motherland? But if it was the
| Russo-Turkish war I probably misremember it and it was a
| Finnish regiment dying far from home. I think it all had
| something to do with the fact that Finno-Ugric is one
| language family and I got the feeling it meant that Finnish
| and Hungarian people feel connected through it somehow?
|
| Edit: thanks to your pointer, I had a look around and I think
| the song refers to the battle of Gorni Dubnik, where the
| Finnish Guard sharpshooters fought (but didn't all die, as I
| remembered).
|
| Thanks and again sorry to the thread for hijacking it!
| juki wrote:
| There was a Hungarian volunteer battalion that came to
| Finland for the Winter War in early 1940, but as far as I
| know, the war ended while they were still in training, so
| they didn't participate in any battles.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Maybe I should email Horna and ask :/
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Like half of the members of Horna have been directly involved
| in NSBM over the years so I don't know how much you want to
| support them
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Feels like we don't see many dedicated single interest web sites
| like this anymore. Glad someone made this.
| timonoko wrote:
| If you read the Swedish-speaking writer Kjell Westo, "Dar vi en
| gang gatt", you realize this was very much a language war. All
| big landowners of arable land in Finland were Swedish and even
| Mannerheim did not know much any Finnish at that time. Westo
| describes how a Swede was killed because he owned fishing rights
| on Baltic sea, and Finns could only fish in "mud and rocks".
|
| This is very much a taboo subject even today, because 25% of the
| financial elite in Finland are Swedes and cultural elite much
| more. So you cannot deal much of this subject before becoming
| Fennomaniac racist nazi, who does not deserve any government
| money.
| fifilura wrote:
| I am a Swede. Kjell Westo is my go to author if I want to read
| good prose in Swedish. Beats all those hundreds of crime novel
| authors we have in Sweden hands down when it comes to care
| about the language.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yes thank you -- by coincidence I was reading a bit about the
| Northern Crusades this week (in English) -- we do not learn
| this in school in the USA !
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades
| 101keyboard wrote:
| And over 20 years later...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9AVu6KupNg
|
| (English subs are very very bad)
| comrh wrote:
| Wow I never knew this existed.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_and_Mannerheim_recordin...
| panick21_ wrote:
| Pretty interesting historical document for the content. And
| interesting to hear Hitler speak normally. He accent is
| little funny but he does not sound significantly Austrian or
| strange to me.
|
| Mannerheims german is excellent. Outside of a few strange
| things he speaks perfect high german.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| "The SS guards demanded the tape be destroyed, but YLE was
| allowed to keep the tape in a sealed container with the
| promise that it never be opened again"
|
| How odd and weirdly naive.
| waihtis wrote:
| Mannerheim was, to put it mildly, a pretty extraordinary
| character. Among other things, he met the 13th Dalai-Lama in
| Tibet while the Dalai-lama was in exile - to whom he gifted a
| pistol and instructed how to operate it.
| imajliv wrote:
| To anyone interested in learning more about the man I
| recommend Jonathan Clements' book Mannerheim: President,
| Soldier, Spy. As a Finn it was very fascinating how there was
| so much more adventure in his life than WWII, presidency or
| any Finland related wars/politics
| miiiiiike wrote:
| "All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland,
| 1917-18" is a great game covering the Finnish Civil War.
| https://www.gmtgames.com/p-675-all-bridges-burning-red-revol...
| 1cvmask wrote:
| This is a decent resource:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War
| hulitu wrote:
| It is a resource. Decent, not so.
| troyvit wrote:
| There's a powerful trilogy called Under the North Star by Vaino
| Linna that covers in part the Finnish Civil War. It put a human
| perspective on all sides of the conflict. Even if you aren't
| interested in Finnish history those three books, which lead up to
| The Unknown Soldier, are incredible.
| mongol wrote:
| I am a Swede who first learned of the Finnish Civil War when I
| read Vainno Linna's novel triology "Under The North Star" (which
| I liked a lot). I was mesmerized and could not understand why I
| never learned about it before. I think in Sweden we have very
| poor knowledge of our eastern brotherly people's history despite
| being one country for over 400 years. This thread has helped me
| learn more about it. Thank you Finns!
| DavidVoid wrote:
| Also a Swede and I don't think we learned much at all about
| pre-WW2 Finland. We mainly learned about the Winter and
| Continuation War and the many Finnish war children that ended
| up in Sweden [1]. I remember one of them visiting our school to
| speak about his childhood.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_war_children
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