Haapalan puhe Suomalais-virolaisessa historiaseminaarissa

[Tapio Onnela]

Professori Pertti Haapala antoi julkaistavaksi pyynnöstäni hänen suomalais-virolaisessa historiaseminaarissa pitämänsä puheen:

Suomalais-virolainen historiaseminaari. History in the 21st Century. Rewriting the Difficult Past. A seminar between Estonian and Finnish historians. Tuesday, September 30th 2008. National Archives Service, Rauhankatu 17, Helsinki

The Legacy of the Civil War 1918 in Finnish Historiography
(or in Finnish Historical Imagination)

This speech is not about real history, i.e. what actually happened in 1918 in Finland. Instead I speak about understanding or percieving the historical past.

This year we are celebrating the 90th anniversary of Estonian independence – and in Finland we are commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Civil War. Last year we had the anniversary of independence and next year will be the 90th anniversary of our repuclican constitution. And above all: next year will be 200 years from the annexation of Finland into the Russian Empire!

If we look at the public discussion, the number of conferences, exhibitions, books, films, news, etc. , which of these anniversaries is the most important for Finns? It is the Civil War, which still gets much attention and rises emotions, which tells about the need to remember the difficult past. The Civil War is an integral part of Finnish historical identity together with Christianity, the Swedish and Russian rule, nationalismin and WWII. And it is not only that we are repeating and arguing about old truths, but also new research and new interpretations are published.

I look at the memory of 1918 (here) as an example of a ”difficult past”, and more precisely as an example of divided historical identity. Finland is not an exeption, of course. We can find similar examples everywhere, perhaps the best known are the ”long histories” of the American and Spanish Civil Wars.

Why and how has the Civil War become such an important element of our national history? It was a significant episode, of course, and it is still rather close, but I am not satisfied with those explanations, because they are not sufficient. All history is not important, much is forgotten, and history can be denied or silenced, too. Only selected pieces of the past become important history.

I think that the reason is the very nature of a Civil War. In the case of Finland there were, in a way, no winners and no peace. I mean that the Reds, the labour movement, was defeated by arms, but they never really accepted that they lost, that they had been wrong. After the war the new leaders of the labour party condemned the armed revolution, of course, but the party and its people remained basicly the same. It is a wrong simplification to say that the revolutionaries were only those who escaped to Russia and founded the Finnish Communist Party there.

After a short cruel war and the experiences of prison camps, people had to live together and make compromises. The Finnish compromise in 1919 was, in fact, surprising. Those who lost the war, received political rights which were larger than before the war, socialists remained the largest party in the parliament and soon they politically dominated 160 municipalities including large cities. Well-known vital social reforms and land reform were introduced in Finland immediately after the war.

Life continued, but divided experiences remained. These experiences had to be reflected and explained and thus two opposite traditions of telling about the past emerged. Both traditions or narratives, white and red, had wide support, they were felt to be legitimate, they were reproduced and became publicly acknowledged historical identities.

This is not the whole picture, but in broad terms we may say, that Finland became a land of two historical thruts. That is the case still today. Even though people have no more as strong emotions as before, they at least realise that there are two different stories and they accept it.

But can historical identity be divided? It is normal to think that nations, and ethnic and other groups, especially minorities have identities of their own. But should a small and homogeneous society like Finland have only one history?

My answer is no. As long as there are distinctive experiences (personal or inherited) there are (or can be) distinctive histories. A historian cannot go and tell people that your history is wrong.

Adopting, accepting or allowing two histories is one solution to deal with the difficult past. But it is not necessarily easy and we should also pose the question of ethics: does it mean compromising with the historical truth. Besides in the case of Finland, American and Spanish experience show that bad experiences are not forgotten – and even falsified history is accepted for political reasons. Especially in Spain the consensus seems yet to be reached.

In Finland, too, the Civil War has a rather complicated and difficult historiography. I shall not go to details, but give a short outline, how it has been difficult, and what we may learn from it.

There are four factors, which have made the history of the civil war difficult in Finland.


1. Traumatic experiences
2. The question of guilt
3. The legacy
4. Politics


1. The civil war is not only a story, it is reality: 37.000 persons were killed, less than 10.000 of them in the battle, the rest were murdered, executed or died in the prison camps. Almost all were killed by their countrymen, many were personally known to each other. In southern Finland the war affected almost everybody and tens of thousands of families lost members or close relatives. This kind of experiences are not forgotten for decades and they require explanation – and better explanations than talking about a bolshevist disease or the punishment of God. We should also remember that the Civil War was an abnormal and confusing experience to all. People were not prepared for it, the winter 1918 was chaotic, and above all it was very difficult to justify the violence afterwords, when people had to face what they had done. I believe that all parries suffered from a bad conscience.

2. An easy and inevitable way to rationalise and justify the violence was to condemn the other side as quilty. The reds were punished more or less accordign to law (nearly 100.000 persons were either killed or imprisoned). The white executors were liberated from legal response, but they could not escape the moral quilt. At least they were regarded as guilty by the red families. In the 1920’s and 1930’s there was true hatred and discrimination between the red and white population. The war experience was not shared. The white truth dominated at schools and in public, but it was also opposed more or less openly. The reds and their families did not accept their quilt, but felt that they were victims who had only been demanding social justice.

3. The experiences and justification were strongly inherited on both sides and the white and red tradition emerged already in the 1920s and stayed strong until the 1970’s. There were certainly human or psychological factors for this, but it is also self-evident that the social and political structure of the Finnish society supported this division. The legacy of the Civil War was an important factor for the cohesion and identity of the labour movement, both social democratic and communist – and it was evenly important for the bourgeois political thinking, too.

4. Politics and political forces cannot be separated from the story of the Finnish Civil War. The labour movement was in a decisive role in organising support for the red families after the war, and above all, in configuring the memory of the war experience. By organising the remembering, the legacy of the civil became a positive element in the identity of the labour movement - including stories of suffering and heroism. Those who were killed in the war became victims. The same process happened on the other side, too. The heroes and victims of the white side were named as national heroes, which again was felt unfair by the other side, especially after WWII.

As the legacy of the Civil War was politicised, it became an ideological and political instrument, too. The experience and history of the Civil War was openly used and misused for political and ideological purposes; also in cases which have nothing to do with the actual history of the Civil War. Historical propaganda can be found from both sides, even today, but its credibility is not very high in the eyes of the citizens anymore. In that respect the Civil War has lost much of its political usability, though it is still important for Finns as a historical and ethical issue. I believe that the Balkan Wars in the 1990’s opened the eyes of many to see that civil wars are outcomes of social and political crises and the case of Finland is not that special. Today most Finns, I guess, are surprised of the violence of that time.

In the end I shall discuss the role of professional historians. Several popular books on the Civil War were published already in the 1920’s and 30’s. Professional historians were not active in the field, but did not hide that their sympathy was on the white side. They accepted the official truth that it was a war of liberation against Soviet-Russia. The nation needed a history and in that situation there was not many choices. The dominant historical interpretation or master narrative was to see the Civil War in the long chain in the fight for national independence. The roots of the development were found in the distant past and the result of the war in 1918 was a kind of culmination of the long term development or desire for freedom. This kind of historical narration is a very selective approach, of course, and in the case of Finland it was one-sided, too, because it neglected much of national experience and was not accepted by all. There were some academics, especially social scientists, who saw the roots of the civl war in social injustice. They had even some influence when defending the importance of compromise after the war, but their balanced views could not be read in history books.

After WWII the nationalist paradigm was challanged by some historians of the labour movement, who saw the Civil War as an outcome of capitalist development, but a real breakthrough in the research came only in the 1960’s and after that, i.e. 50 years after the actual event. It is well-known that the most influental criticism of the ”white history” was presented by a author, Väinö Linna. But in the same time – and not only following Linna – academic historians adopted new paradigms. The Civil War, or the period, was studied in the perspectives or context of international politics, WWI, Russian Revolution, modernisation, political organisation, mentalities and violent crises in general. The variety of explaining factors was multipled. As the context was widened, the past began to look different. When Väinö Linna still told a story that was based on experience and remembering, academic research did not take it anymore as the starting point.

During the past 40 years a strong academic tradition in the field has developed. In these works historians have not taken political stand, but have avoided it. The research is not stemming from the justification of the red or the white tradition. It has been claimed that the latest research has been mostly ”redish”. I think it is that only in the eyes of those who do not want to know everything. In today’s researh the image of the Civil War is less heroic than before, simply because historians are not trying to justify the war or condemn somebody. It is that simple, but it took a long time, almost a century.

In the public discourse the role of academic historians has increased, but they are not usually initiating the discussion. The openings come more often from elsewhere and historians join the debate if they are asked to do so. This year the Church of Finland has been active in rethinking its role in the war.

As I said before, historians have no right to say that you have done wrong. They have no objective truth. Historian’s only claim is to try to explain the variation of experiences and the variation of historical understanding. Only after that´s done, he/she may be in a position to see and say loud that some history books have it wrong, or politicians are lying, or history is being falsified by somebody. That belongs to the role of a historian; to take part in public discussion among other voices, those of academics, artists, teachers and so called ordinary people.

There is much to learn from our "difficult past". I guess we all know how things should be done. The difficulty is to do it.

The lessons of the aftermath of the Finnish Civil War may be listed as follows:

- experiences cannot be denied;
- memories must be respected;
- contradictory truths can be accepted;
- research must be supported;
- politicians must be criticized when they falsify history.

It seems to be vital that individual experiences and memories become an issue in the public discussion. Openness and research have to be encoureged. Otherwise they are too weak against political manipulation. I agree with Paul Valery, who concluded after WWI that "history is the most dangerous product of human brains".

Pertti Haapala 30.9.2008

[Emma-Liisa]

Kiitos! Olisikohan muitakin puheita mahdollisuus saada tänne?