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