1. What were the features of ‘passive resistance’ in the national self-determination movement in Finland, ?

2. FINLAND Separation from Sweden (1807).
“We are no longer Swedes, we cannot become Russians, let us then be Finns”.
Finland ‘enjoyed exceptional economic and cultural florescence and an exceptional degree of internal autonomy’ whilst part of the Russian empire.
Isolated from Russia:
Russian language rarely spoken.
Finnish schools and administration estranged the Russians.
High degree of local self-government.

3. NINETEENTH-CENTURY NATIONALISM
Risto Alapuro – ‘‘a nationalism in which both aspects - nationalism as protest of underdeveloped peoples and as civic religion - seem to have intertwined exceptionally closely’.
Focused on cultural and linguistic issues.
Finnish Swedish-speaking elite:
Dominant class, not the Russians.
Differed culturally to the metropolitan state .
Comparatively weak to those seen throughout Europe
Not only the middle class but also the upper class had strong incentives for nationalist mobilization.

4. NINETEENTH-CENTURY NATIONALISM - Fennomania
1840s and 1850s.
Temperance Movement.
Aimed to create an upper-class culturally united with the majority of the people, stressing the need for linguistic reform, with liberation from Swedish cultural dominance and national self assertion.
Helped to create a comparatively united nationalistic culture among the upper classes and middle-class groups.
Prepared the intellectual terrain for struggle for national self determination movement once ‘Russification’ began.

5. ‘RUSSIFICATION’
Various measures were passed by the tsar between 1899 and 1905 in an attempt to create a uniform administration.
Directly motivated the national self determination movement.
N.I. Bobrikov – governor general.
February Manifesto (1899)
gave the tsar ‘the right to determine the final form of all legislation in Finland in matters of “general Imperial concern”, while the Finnish Diet only had the right to give its opinion.
Viewed as a ‘Coup d’Etat’.
Other Russification measures:
Language Manifesto (1900).
Conscription laws (1901).
Increased surveillance of Finnish educational institutions.
Abolition of Finland’s separate customs and monetary institutions and greater control of the Finnish press.

6. CONSTITUTIONALIST THEORY
Themes of ‘passive resistance’ theory:
Practical rather than moral reasons.
Importance of rank and file support stressed.
‘Russification’ explained as unjust. Infringed on Finnish laws .
Compliants – saw themselves as advocating ‘political realism’.
Lutheran tradition of obedience had to be over-come.

7. AVID VERNER NEOVIUS What is ‘passive resistance’?
not action as ordinarily conceived,
Systematic “refusal to act”, refusal to submit to, or cooperate in any manner with, violence.
For Neovius and his contemporaries the concept of violence was not confined to direct damage or harm caused to persons or things, but emphatically included injustice as well.
To merely protest against injustice while at the same time submitting to the aggressor’s will is not, Neovius held, passive resistance, it is at best compliancy and, not rarely, treachery

8. METHODS OF PASSIVE RESISTANCE
Some calls for violence:
The Finnish Active Resistant Party advanced all-out violence against the Russian regime.
Petitions:
Great National Address – 523,000 signatures.
Failed.
Appeal for European support:
Articles in defence of Finland.
‘Pro Finlandia’ - 1,000 signatures of renowned Europeans.

9. OTHER METHODS OF PASSIVE RESISTANCE
Resistance Press:
Fria Ord (Free Words).
Vapaita Lehtisia (Free Leaflets).
The ‘medium through which the conceptual or theoretical work on passive resistance was carried out’.
Helped organise protest.

11. DEAKEAN PARLIAMENTARY DEFIANCE
Low point in resistance ( ).
‘Shift of emphasis from the struggle for justice...to the popular struggle for freedom’.
Democratic reform.
Borbikov’s assassination in June 1904.
Finnish Diet was allowed to reconvene and exiles return.
Elections provided the Constitutionalist front a chance to shift the struggle into a legitimate institutional framework.
Diet was now in Constitutional hands and actions against ‘Russification’ could forge on.

12. GENERAL STRIKE Empire-wide strike.
Involvement of Social Democrats and workers.
Emperor reacts:
authorized the transformation of the political system on 4 November 1905.
Suspension of the February Manifesto.
Suspension of the conscription law, and other integration measures.
Constitutionalists took over the domestic government.
Diet of Four Estates abolished.

13. WIDER CONTEXT
Resistance aided by empire-wide strike of 1905 and Russo-Japanese war of
Steven Duncan Huxley - ‘Up until its end, the Finnish resistance movement remained primarily a separate and particularistic affair; it was a separate part of an Empire-wide revolutionary process and the resistance leaders aimed to keep it that way. This is one of the main reasons why the Finnish Constitutional front stuck to its strategy of passive resistance’.
Hungarian movement for national self determination influenced the Finnish.
Arguably even influenced Gandhi’s struggle in India.