On this day in 1918, the Finnish People's Delegation declared a socialist workers' republic (known "Red Finland"), at the start of the Finnish Civil War. The burgeoning working class movement was crushed by imperialist German forces.

Prior to 1917, Finland had been ruled as a Grand Duchy, an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. With the collapse of the Tsarist state in the wake of February Revolution and a long-term increase in nationalist sentiment, Finland declared independence on December 4th, 1917, formally recognized by the Russian Bolsheviks on December 31st.

Due to industrialized Finland having a strong revolutionary labor movement, conservative and proletarian forces were immediately thrown into conflict.

Red Guard paramilitary units representing the labor movement found themselves in a cycle of escalation with loyalist "White" Guards, culminating in a mass uprising of Reds in Helsinki on January 27th, 1918, marking the start of revolution. The following day, the Finnish People's Delegation was formed by members of the Social Democratic Party. Bourgeois forces fled to Vaasa, where they set up their own "White Senate".

The war saw the Whites, under the leadership of General Mannerheim, receive support from the German Empire, which was more well-established than the Reds' primary ally, the newly-created Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Following an imperialist intervention by Germany on the side of the Whites in March 1918, the war ended in defeat for the Reds in May. Over 12,000 people perished from starvation and hunger while imprisoned in White-operated POW camps, and reparations were not paid to former victims of the White Terror until 1973.

Lessons of the Finnish Revolution of 1917–1918 garcia-cock-shotty

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  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    I’m working through the chapters in Capital vol 2 where Marx spends like 40 pages just ripping on Adam Smith and David Ricardo for not having as good of a grasp on fixed and circulating capital as he does… and jfc it’s hard to get through. This is the first time and I’ve gotten to a section in vol 1 or 2 that I really just don’t enjoy reading. Is there a payoff here? Cause right now I’m not actually getting where this is relevant, I already understood pretty well what’s fixed and what’s circulating capital from the last chapter, it’s not really complicated.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      relevant

      Marx was a messy bitch who loved drama. It's very important you know that he was smarter while he dabs on those fucking losers.

      • star_wraith [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        I feel like I would really not enjoy The Poverty of Philosophy, that’s the one Marx text I’ll probably never read.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          8 months ago

          To maintain your grounding and stave off the ill effects of hero worship one must at all times remember that if the five heads were alive today they would all post on Hexbear.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          8 months ago

          Also way way way way back when Bagdahd was the center of the West there was this dude hwo hated philosophy so he wrote "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" and some dude who loved philsoophers clapped back with "The Incoherence of the Incoherence" and I think that is beautiful.