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Title: Finland: A Rising Nationality Author: Pëtr Kropotkin Language: en Topics: history, national liberation Source: Retrieved on February 27th, 2009 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/Finland.html][dwardmac.pitzer.edu]]. Proofread version retrieved on October 3rd, 2019, from [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=145. Notes: From The Nineteenth Century. March, pp. 527–46
National questions are not in vogue now in Europe. After having so much
exercised the generation of ’48, they seem to be now in neglect. The
poor results of a movement which caused so many illusions; the new
problems that are coming to the front — the social problem taking the
precedence of all; the prominence recently given to the ideas of
unification and centralisation above those of territorial independence
and federalism, by the sudden growth of a powerful military State in
middle Europe, — all these have helped to repel into the background
those questions of national independence which seemed to constitute the
very essence of the history of Europe during the first half of our
century. Faith in national programmes, formerly so firm, has been much
shaken by the events of the last few years. Italian unity has not
improved the lot of the lower classes of the Peninsula, and they have
now to bear the burden of a State endeavouring to conquer a place among
tile great Powers. The formerly oppressed Hungary is oppressing in her
turn the Selavonic populations order her rule. The last Polish
insurrection was crushed rather by the agrarian measures of the Russian
Government than by its armics and scaffolds; and the heroic uprisings of
the small nationalities of the Balkan Peninsula have merely made them
tools in the hands of the diplomacy of their powerful neighbors.
Moreover, the nationalist movements which are still in progress in
Europe, are mostly confined to the remoter borders of the Continent, to
populations which are almost unknown to old Europe call which cannot be
realised by the general public otherwise than in the shape of loose
agglomerations of shepherds, or robbers, unused to political
organisation. They cannot therefore excite the same interest nor awake
tile, same sympathies as the former uprisings of Greece, of Italy, of
Hungary.
Notwithstanding all this, national questions are as real in Europe as
ever, and it would be as unwise to shut our eyes to them as to deny
their importance. Of course we know now that I national problems are not
identical with the ‘people’s problems’; that the acquisition of
political independence still leaves unachieved the economical
independence of the labouring and wealth-producing classes. We can even
say that a national movement, which does not include in its platform the
demand for an economical change advantageous tothe masses bag no chance
of success unless supported by foreign aid. But both these problems are
so closely connected with one another that we are bound to recognise
that no serious economical progress can be won, nor is any progressive
development possible, until the awakened aspirations for autonomy have
been satisfied. Though relegated now from the centre to the periphery,
Europe has still to reckon with national movements. Irish ‘Home Rule,’
the Schleswig ‘difficulty,’ and Norwegian ‘separatism’ are problems
which must be resolved; as also the national agitation that is steadily
undermining Eastern Europe. There is no doubt that (to use the words of
a recent English writer) I not only a thorough discontent, but a chronic
insurrectionary agitation’ is going on among the Serbo-Croats, who are
endeavouring to shake off the yoke of Hungary. The Czechs, the Slovaks,
the Poles of Austria are struggling, too, for self-goverment; as also,
to some extent, the Slowens, or Wends, and the Little Russians of
Eastern Galicia; while neither peace nor regular development is possible
on the Balkan Peninsula until the Bosnians, the Herzegovinians, the
Serbs, the Bulgarians, and others, have freed themselves from Turkish
rule, Russian ‘protection,’ and Austrian ‘occupation,’ and have
succeeded in constituting a free South-Slavonian Federation. The Russian
Empire, too, has to reckon with the autonomist tendencies of several of
its parts. However feeble now, the Ukrainian autonomist movement cannot
but take a further development. As to Poland, she cannot much longer
submit to the denationalising policy of her Russian masters; the old
Poland of the szlachta is broken down; but a new Poland — that of the
peasants and working men — is growing up, with all the strength it has
drawn from the abolition of serfdom. It will resume the struggle, and in
the interests of her own progressive development Russia will be
compelled, one day or the other, to abandon the reputedly rather than
really strong ‘defensive line of the Vistula.’ Finally, in the
North-east we have Finland, where, one of the most interesting
autonomist movements of our time has been steadily going on for more
than sixty years.
One hardly bears of it in Western Europe. With the perseverance,
however, that characterises the men of the North, and particularly those
of Finland, this small yet rising nationality has within a short time
achieved results so remarkable that it has ceased to be a Swedish or a
Russian province more or less differing from its neighbours: it is a
nation. Discussing once this question, ‘What is a nation?’ Ernest Renan
get forth in his vivid and graphic style that a nation is not an
agglomeration of people speaking the same language — a language may
disappear; not even an aggregation with distinct anthropological
features, all nations being products of heterogeneous assimilations;
still less a union of economical interests which may he a Zollverein.
National unity, he said, is the common inheritance of traditions, of
hopes and regrets, of common aspirations and common conceptions, which
make of a nation a true organism instead of a loose aggregation. The
naturalist would add to these essential features of a nation the
necessary differentiation from other surrounding organisms, and the
geographer, a kind of union between the people and the territory it
occupies, from which territory it receives its national character and on
which it impresses its own stamp, so as to make an indivisible whole
both of men and territory.
None of these features is missing in Finland. Its people have their own
language, their own anthropological features, their own economical
interests; they are strongly differentiated from their neighbours; men
and territory cannot be separated one from another. And for the last
sixty years the best men of Finland have been working with great success
in spreading that precious inheritance of common hopes and regrets, of
common aspirations and conceptions, of which Renan spoke. ‘Yksi kieli,
yksi mieli ’ (’One language, one spirit’): — such is precisely the
watchword of the ‘Fennomanes.’ Comparative philology and anthropology
may tell us that the Finns have but lately occupied the country they
inhabit, and that during their long migrations from the Altaic Steppes
they have undergone much admixture with other races. None the less do
the present inhabitants of Finland appear as a quite separate world,
having their own sharply defined anthropological and ethnical
characters, which distinguish them from the populations by whom they are
surrounded. Their nearest kinsfolk are found only on the other shore of
the Gulf of Finland, among the Esthonians, on whom they already exercise
a kind of attraction. Their southern brethren, the Magyars, are too
distant, too separated, and too distinct ever to exercise any influence
on Finland. As to the other members of the same family scattered through
Eastern Russia, the Voguls, the Permians, the Mordovians, and so on,
science may prove their common origin; but their national characters are
being obliterated every day by contact with Russians, and nearly all of
them have already lost any chance they may ever have had of constituting
separate nationalities. Finland has thus no need to care about these
scattered members of her family. It is true that even the ordinary
traveller soon discovers in Finland two different types — the Tawastes
in the west, and the Karelians in the east; the square face of the
former, their pale eyes and yellow hair, their heavy gait, strongly
contrasting with the taller and more slender Karelians, with their
elongated faces and darker hair, their animated and darker eyes. But the
inhabitants of Central Finland, the Sawos, partaking of the physical
features of both neighbours, are an intermediate link between the two;
and all three — Karelians, Sawos, and Tawastes — speaking the same
language, living the same manner of life, and having so much in common
as to their national characteristics — melt together into one ethnical
type — the Finnish. Even religion does not separate them, the nearly
50,000 Orthodox Karelians being as good ‘Finnish’ as their Protestant
kinsfolk.
Exceedingly laborious they are all throughout the country: they could
not lie otherwise in their Suomenman — the country of marshes — where
the arable soil must be won from the forests, moors, and even likes,
which stretch over nine-tenths of the land. The perseverance and
tenacity that characterise all Northern Finnish stems are the natural
outcome of these conditions, together with a gravity and a kind of
melancholy which are so striking in the features of the people and form
one of the most marked peculiarities of their folklore. The disasters,
the wars, the bad crops, the famines, from which the Finnish peasant has
so often had to suffer, have created his capacity of grave and
uncomplaining submission to fate; but the relative liberty be has always
enjoyed has prevented him from developing that sad spirit of
resignation, that deep sorrow which too often characterises his Russian
brother. Never having been a personal serf, he is not servile; he always
maintains his personal dignity and speaks with the same grave intonation
and self-respect to a Russian Tsar as to his neighbour. A lymphatic
temperament, slowness of movement and of thought, and sullen
indifference have often been imputed to him. In fact, when I have
entered on a Sunday a peasanthouse in Eastern Finland, and found several
men sitting on the beaches rental the wall, dropping only a few words at
long intervals, plunged in a mute reverie as they enjoyed their
inseparable pipes, I could not help remembering, this reproach addressed
to the Finnish peasant. But I soon perceived that though the Finn is
always very deliberate in his movement, slowness of thought and
indifference are peculiar only to those, unhappily too numerous, village
paupers whom long-continued want and the struggle for life without hope
of improvement have rendered callous. Still, a Finnish peasant family
must be reduced to very great destitution before the wife loses her
habits of cleanliness, which are not devoid of a certain aesthetical
tint. The thrift of the Finn is striking; not only among those who have
no choice, for they are compelled to live upon rye-bread, baked four
times a year and containing an admixture ‘of the bark of our black
Pines,’ as Runeberg says. Simplicity of life is the rule in all classes
of society; the unhealthy luxury of the European cities is yet unknown
to the Finns; and the Russian tchinovnik cannot but wonder how the
Finnish official lives, without stealing, on the scanty allowance
granted him by the State.
Contemplativeness — if I am permitted to use this ugly word — is another
distinctive feature of the Finns: Tawastes, Samos, and Karelians ire
alike prone to it. Contemplation of nature, a meditative mute
contemplation, which finds its expression rather in a sang than in
words, or incites to the reflection about natures mysteries rather than
about the facts, is characteristic as well of the peasant as of the
savant. It may be akin to, without being identical with, mystical
reverie. It may, in certain circumstances, give rise to mysticism, as it
did at the beginning of our century; it produced that tendency towards
sorcery and witchcraft toy which the Finns were, and are still, renowned
among and tested by their Russian neighbours; but actually it gives rise
among the instructed classes to a tendency towards a philosophic and
pantheistic conception of nature, instead of the childish wonder with
which others are satisfied. It also orients the Finnish folk-lore with
an idealism which makes it so strongly contrast with the sensualism of
the folk-lore of so many other nationalities. In science it causes
savants to devote themselves rather to abstract mathematics, to
astronomy, to the great problems of the physics of the earth, than to
the merely descriptive sciences, these last being, as it seems, rather
inherited from the science of Sweden.
Everybody loves his own country: with the Finns this love becomes a
passion, as powerful as the passion of the Scottish Highlander for his
‘land of mountain and of flood;’ and it has the same source. We can
easily understand the nostalgy of the Highlander who yearns for a
glimpse of the rocks ‘where the snowflake reposes,’ for the ‘dark
frowning beauties’ of his native mountains, which, in their
ever-changing aspects, reflect the moods and phases of the human mind of
life itself. The same is trite of dwellers by the sea; it is true again
of the inhabitant of lake regions like Finland, where water and soil are
inextricably interwoven each with the other; they live for him, and are
ever and always assuming new moods and expressions. Finland is a poor
country, but it is a fine country, and has a stamp of originality. Its
like may be sought for in vain even in the lake district of England or
among the inland seas of Canada. Where else, indeed, can the Finns find
this network of land and water, this tangled skein of lake, and sea, and
shore, so fall of contrasts, and yet forming an inseparable and
enchanting whole? Where find these millions of islands of lovely rocks
giving footing to a few pines and birches which seem to grow from
beneath the water; these thousands and thousands of ever-varying tints
spreading over the lakes as the sun slowly moves almost in the horizon,
unwilling to go down, or leaving behind it the shining twilight which
meets in the north with the aurora of the morning? Nowhere else will the
Finn find a country which breathes the same mild and sweet harmony,
grave and melancholy, which matches so well with the dreamy pensiveness
of his character.
Finland has not, it is true, an exclusively Finnish population.[1] The
coasts of file two gulfs which entangle it are peopled with nearly
300,000 Swedes: thus one-seventh of its population belongs to the once
dominant race. In Osterbotten, on the islands of Aland, the Swedes make
90 per cent. of the population, and the labouring classes consist of
both nationalities. On the coast of the Gulf of Finland the Swedes
number from 50 per cent, of the population in the west to 5 per cent, in
the east. But elsewhere, in the interior of the country, they constitute
only the population of the towns, the land-owning class, and the
personnel of the Administration. The inconveniences, however, which
arise from this double character of the population are much less
ethnographic than political. The fishermen of Osterbotten are not on bad
terms with their Finnish countrymen, and are as much attached to their
country as these last; so also are the inhabitants of the south-western
corner of Finland. As to those Swedish farmers who are scattered in the
interior, and even on the south coast, they really are more Finnish than
Swede: one must be born in the country itself to distinguish them from
the Finns, with whom they might be confounded by a stranger. They speak
Swedish of course, but nevertheless you soon find them to be passionate
‘Finland patriots,’ who scorn your attempts to distinguish between
Swedes and Finns in their little country. It is not so with the Swedish
nobility, Swedish tradesmen and Swedish officials, until now they have
constituted the dominant element in Finland’s political and economical
life; they are still landholders in a larger proportion than the Finns;
and, by maintaining Swedish as the official language in the
Administration, they have systematically eliminated from it the Finnish
element, which they still regard with contempt.
Hence, all Finland is divided into two great parties, the Svekomanes and
the Fennomanes, continually struggling against one another in the
national representation, in all questions of legislation, and in
literature. The Fennomanes struggle for the recognition of their
language as the equal of Swedish, and strive to introduce it into the
Administration of all Finnish-speaking Finland, and that the higher and
secondary instruction be given in Finnish; the Svekomanes, in their
turn, strive to maintain Swedish as the official language of the
country, of the university, and of the secondary school, foreseeing that
they will be eliminated from the Administration, which is now in their
hands, so soon as Finnish shall be rendered obligatory for the
officials, and Finnish youths have the possibility of receiving higher
instruction in their own language. Thus the struggle is not one between
two races, it is for the maintenance of class privileges inherited from
the Swedish domination. Its issue cannot be doubtful. The Fennomanes
obtained last year the recognition by law of the equality of both
languages; and they will not fail to expel the Swedes from the
Administration so soon as the Constitution is modified in a democratic
sense.[2] It is also most significant that the majority of young men,
even many of those who are born of Swedish parents, associate themselves
rather with the Fennomanic than the Svekomanic party. They speak only
Finnish, and take an active part in the crusade of the Finnish against
the Swedish tongue. Of course there are still plenty of Swedish noblemen
who sigh after the past military grandeur of Sweden; plenty of tradesmen
who look across the Baltic for better business; and enough Swedish
officials who are wroth at the idea of ‘those Finnish peasants’
performing the functions once performed by their forefathers. But those
Swedes who do not care for retaining a privileged position — and they
are numerous — fully recognise the rights of the Firms. They join the
Finnish national movement, and all the Swedes of whose names Finland is
proud have been, and are, ardent Finnish patriots.
As to the nearly 11,200 Russians who live in the country, the 7,000
military of course need not lie taken into account; if their stay in
Finland is short — and it mostly is, for only Finnish citizens are
permitted to occupy official positions in the country — they remain
Russians. But the tradesmen, or farmers, or peasants, who are staying in
Finland for a longer time, are quickly ‘Fennicized.’ In a few years they
conform to Finnish customs; and as you see one of them slowly smoking a
pipe and rocking in the rocking-chair (an inevitable piece of furniture
in a Finnish household), you would hardly guess that he is a Russian
immigrant. He speaks little, he has become reserved and contemplative.
Under the regime of a liberty be never knew at home, he feels interested
in Finland and her prosperity. Nay, even his face has changed. As to big
children, their fair heads can hardly be distinguished from the
yellow-haired heads of the same Tchoukhnys whom their father formerly
regarded with so great contempt. His most interesting that, according to
a remark of Herr Max Buch, even the Germans, who so seldom lose their
national features, are rapidly ‘Swedicized’ when they stay for some time
in Finland.
Finland has thus the ethnographic cohesion which is the first condition
for constituting a nation. Its inhabitants possess also the historic
inheritance of common struggles, common glory, and common misfortunes,
and they have a common board of folk-lore and literature. Moreover, they
have so marked an individuality that they can neither be assimilated by
their Scandinavian neighbours on the one hand, nor by the Russian Empire
on the other. Even at the time when Finland was under Swedish dominion,
and Sweden regarded the ‘Ostlande’ as a mere stronghold against Russia,
she always looked upon the Firms as a separate ‘Finnish nation.’ And
during the nearly seventy years which have elapsed since their
separation, Finland has done so much for the development of her own
national individuality that she can never again be a mere Swedish
province. Besides, Swedish rule has left such a heritage of unpleasant
memories, especially among the peasants, that a union of both States has
been rendered most improbable. Those who suppose otherwise ought to read
Mr. Yrio Koskinen’s History of Finland. They will then learn the dislike
entertained by the lower classes of Finland for Swedish rule, and how
that rule is regarded by the best men of Finland. There is no doubt
that, united with the Sweden of our times, Finland would enjoy much more
liberty and probably would be happier than under Russian rule. But
historical sympathies and dislike are not easily dealt with, and Finland
now cherishes the hope of becoming an independent Slate herself.
Of course, in the circumstances under which Finland had to develop at
the dawn of her history, Swedish domination brought it several
advantages. Assailed as they were on one side by the Germans, and on the
other by the Russians, the Finnish stems could not remain free, and
would have had to share the fate either of the Esthonians conquered by
Germans, or of the Karelians conquered by Novgorod, and later on by
Moscow. It was under Swedish rule that the Suomis formed themselves into
a political body. Swedish rule again saved Finland from serfdom — at
least from the disgrace of personal servitude, and it accustomed the
peasant to the sound of his own voice in the State’s representation.
Finally, the Reformation, by translating the Bible into Finnish, saved
the language of the country from oblivion.
These were great advantages; but they do not set off the inconvenience
and ruin which resulted from the domination of the aristocracy. Finland
was not only, as Soren Norby said, ‘the best part of the land for
levying taxes,’ it became the province most coveted by the Swedish
aristocracy. When there were not enough rich estates in Sweden to
satisfy all the Swedish and Finnish nobles who gathered at Court, they
were sent to Finland. Free peasants were assigned in thousands to
Swedish noblemen, who treated them as a lower conquered race. Two-thirds
of the country, one-third of the taxes, became the property of noblemen
who exacted from the ruined peasantry such sums, enormous for that time,
as 20,000 thalers in annual revenue raised by Count Brahe, or 18,000
thalers raised by Wasaborg. Finland was becoming a possession of the
Swedish aristocracy, and Finnish trade a monopoly of the Stockholm
trading companies. The great ‘reduction’ which began about the end of
the seventeenth century certainly put a stop to the further depredations
of the aristocracy. It created that class of discontented nobles whom we
bee later intriguing for Russia against Sweden. But the peasant gained
little thereby, if anything. The State appropriated the incomes of the
nobles and inaugurated the long series of wars which reduced Finland to
starvation; while the establishment of autocratic power in Sweden
introduced the tendency to centralisation caused the Finns to be
considered ‘like serfs, not partners as before,’ and manifested itself
in the absurd attempt ‘to abolish the Finnish language.’ Famines,
formerly unknown, and a complete ruin of the population — such were the
natural consequences of this policy.
Though brought thus to a state which rendered successful resistance to
Russian conquest quite impossible, Finland did not throw herself into
the arms of her powerful Eastern neighbour. She straggled desperately
against the invasion, and thus conquered the right of imposing
conditions on her conqueror. Decimated by famine and pestilence, the
Finnish peasants fought like lions in 1721 against the Russian Empire.
And later on, in 1799–90, when the discontented Finnish nobles of the
Anjala Convention surrendered Southern Finland to Russia, the peasants
of Sawolaks fought the desperate battles of Porassalmi And Uttis. Even
in 1808, when the struggle had become hopeless, when the Finnish troops,
badly commanded, were melting away like snow, when Sveaborg, with a
flotilla of 110 boats, surrendered without discharging one of its 2,000
guns, even then the Sawolaks peasants raised the banner of the national
and popular war, and thus saved their country from political slavery.
Alexander I., whose generals had already began to treat Finland as a
conquered province, was compelled to grant several liberties, to
proclaim the ‘union’ of Finland with Russia, instead of merely requiring
unconditional submission.
Much bloodshed was prevented and many disturbances avoided by the happy
circumstance of Finland falling under the Russian dominion at a time
when Alexander I. had not yet abandoned the Liberal principles of his
youth. Neglecting the counsels of his courtiers, he followed the advice
of Speransky, who understood that ‘Finland was a State and not a Russian
province which might be administered in common with other provinces.’
While uniting the formerly conquered Eastern Provinces with the newly
annexed Western Finland, he granted at least a limited autonomy to the
young State. He abolished the dreadful recruiting for twenty-five years’
military service, already introduced in the province of Viborg by Paul
I., and granted to Finland bey own separate army and system of finances.
He granted that only Finnish citizens should be permitted to occupy
official positions in the Administration of the country; and he did
still better in putting an end to the so-called ‘donations’ of estates
in Eastern Finland to Russian officials — a practice which had endured
since the first conquest, and was especially rife during the reign of
Catherine II.; the enforcement of serfdom on Finland was thus hindered.
And yet Russian rule did not become popular in Finland. Alexander I. was
then, as throughout his life, full of contradictions and
tergiversations; thus, while the representatives or the so-called
representatives of the country were elaborating the Constitution at
Borga, no discussion of it was permitted outside; the single paper of
the time, M. Koskinen says, though free to fill its columns with news
about the Indians of America and ‘the Island of Sirenes,’ was not
allowed to publish one word of the debates on the Seim of Borga: they
have not been published even yet. Besides, though Alexander I. did much
to win over the nobility and tradesmen, the people were quite forgotten.
It is even doubtful whether he, or even Speransky, remembered that
behind the nobles who gathered round him at St. Petersburg, loudly
protesting their loyalty, there was a starving multitude of ruined
peasants on the moors and in the woods. Nothing was done for the
revision of the land laws or the lightening of the taxes that oppressed
the labourer; the people were forgotten amidst the balls and soirees,
and of this oblivion the cost is now being paid. While the nobility two
really loyal to the Crown — far more than might be expected from men who
have some feeling of self-respect — the people retain the hatred for the
Russian Empire which their forefathers learnt on the field of battle.
Moreover, the liberties granted to Finland were considered as a more
expression of the good-will of the ruler, which, together with all his
liberal ideas, vanished with increasing age. The Seim was not again
convoked after it elaborated the Constitution of 1810, and for
fifty-three years the country was governed from St. Petersburg by a
‘Finnish Committee.’ The Finnish Senate, nominated by the Emperor had
but little power under Alexander I., and still less under Nicholas I. It
could not oppose the fancies of the military autocrat; and every attempt
at self-government or even at national revival denounced by the
gendarmes was ruthlessly repressed. To speak of Finnish nationality was
considered a crime. Only in 1843 was it permitted to reach Finnish in
schools; but some years a later an Imperial decree prohibited the
publication in Finnish language of anything but prayer-books and
economical works. The circulating libraries were shut up; men like A. E.
Nordenskjold were compelled to seek a refuge in Sweden. Even so
inoffensive a chair as that of comparative philology at the University
of Helsingfors was abolished. The cost, of fortifying Bomarsund
compelled the young State to contract its first national debt; and
though the conversion of corvees into money-rents in 1840 was, in
principle, a benefit to the peasant, it was so made as to become a new
burden to him; while in the formerly Russian Finland, (Viborg) the
peasants were expelled from their homes if they could not prove that
they had built them before 1706 — measure whose evil effects may be seen
still, as well in the impoverishment of the peasantry as in their
discontent with Russian rule.
Since 1863 the Finnish representatives have been regularly called
together every four or five years, and the rights received under the
Constitution of 1910 have not since been violated, They were even
somewhat increased in 1882, and on the whole Alexander II’s Government
did not meddle over much with the affairs of Finland. All the laws voted
by the Senate were sanctioned by the Emperor, and Finland acquired the
fall right of administering her own finances and of coining her own
money, thereby escaping the disorder that reigns in the fiscal affairs
of Russia. She was to maintain her own army, and was allowed freely to
build her own railways, to spread instruction, to open seminaries for
teachers, to adopt the Finnish language for official purposes, and to
develop a popular literature without being greatly troubled by the
Russian censorship — as long as the writers speak in high terms of the
‘innumerable benefits of the union with Russia.” But what guarantee is
there for the continuance of these liberties, in reality, so limited? —
such is the question which the Finnish patriots are asking themselves.
The most insignificant event — a fiery speech pronounced by somebody —
may any day change everything for the worse. Where is the force, moral
and material, to oppose the attempt to reduce Finland to the rank of a
Russian province, which is quite possible, and which a certain party of
Russian Chauvinists never cease to advocate? The force necessary to
resist such an enterprise could be derived only from a spirit of
national independence pervading all classes of the people, from the
mansion to the hovel, and penetrating into the minds of all those whose
affections and inclinations were still turned in the direction either of
Sweden or of Russia. It was necessary to prove to the indifferent that
the watchword, ‘Finland for the Finns,’ is not an empty dream, but may
become yet a reality. Such was the immense task undertaken first by a
few men, so soon as they saw into what an abyss they had nearly been
drawn by the dream of making the Finland of the first years of our
century an independent State under a Russian protectorate.
It is at the end of the last century that the first germs of the
nationalist movement, in Finland must be sought. The awakening of the
labouring classes in Western Europe found an echo in the North, and
manifested itself by a fermentation both in the lower and upper classes
of society. It was generally understood that something ought be done to
ameliorate the lot of the masses; and while Communistic ideas spread
among the peasants, finding later on (1804–1808) an expression in the
propaganda of Elias Hanninen, the upper classes endeavoured to raise the
economical condition of Finland by the extension of agricultural
knowledge, the increase of industry, by the study of their own country,
kind by the development at national conscience Porthan, Professor of
Roman Antiquities at the Academy of Abo, was the man who did the most to
promote this actual yet vague, uncertain national revival. By big vast
erudition, and still more by big large-minded teaching and paternal
relations with his students, he exercised a potent influence over his
pupils and friends. He created a whole school of young men who devoted
themselves to the study of Finnish geography, Finnish history, Finnish
antiquities and language.
War, more than Porthan’s death, which occurred in 1804, checked the
further development of this movement. But when the impossibility of
constituting a free State under Russia’s protection was duly
demonstrated even to the few who cherished this dream; when the national
feeling was raised by the last wars, undoubtedly glorious for so small a
nationality as Finland, and it became obvious that even the few vestiges
of autonomy obtained from the Russian Emperor were due to the resistance
opposed to the conquest by the lower classes of the Finnish peasantry;
when, finally, both parts of Finland, Western and Eastern, separated by
former wars, were again united together, the national movement took a
new life. The, desire to build up a Finnish nation, in the true meaning
of this word, spread widely over the land; and it was in a pamphlet
published in 1810 that the word ‘Fennomany,’ already popular with the
Abo students, made its first appearance. To have its own language — that
of the great mass of the inhabitants of Finland — was obviously the
first step towards success.
It was doubted, however, at that time whether the Finnish language — ’a
language of labourers and fishermen ’ — would be sufficient for the
expression of all the complex conceptions developed by the variety of
social relations of European life; and surely much boldness was
necessary in the son of a Finnish peasant, Jacob Juden (who died in
1856), to champion the literary rights of ‘the language of the
plebeians’ by making it a vehicle for poetry. His attempts proved so
successful that a series of Finnish poets (those of the earlier epoch)
followed in his footsteps. A stranger, the Danish philologue Rasmus
Rask, took up the defence of the popular tongue and showed how readily
it lent itself to scientific elaboration, The first Finnish grammar and
the great dictionary of Renvall soon followed (in 1824 and 1826); while
Sjogren, also a peasant’s son, undertook the immense task, the
accomplishment of which is one of the glories of our century, the
comparative philology of the Altaic languages, so magnificently crowned
a few years ago by the great work of M. Donner, which sums up the long
labours of Sjogren, Lonnrot, Schlott, Budenz, Ahlqvist, Ujfalvi, and so
many others.
The discovery of the Kalevala — the great Finnish epic poem was a mighty
aid in the further development of the nationalist movement: it gave to
it a solid basis. When Doctor Lonnrot (whose loss Finland so sincerely
deplored last year) discovered during his journeys in Karelia the
fragments of a great epic poem in the runes that are sung in the
villages on Lake Ladoga; when he published them together, and thus
reconstituted one of the finest epic poems known, a general cry of
admiration went up from literary Europe. Any literature, however rich,
might well be proud of a poem so grand in its cosmogonic conception,
inspired with so pure an ideal (the word, the sung word, dominating
throughout the poem over brutal force), so deeply penetrated with best
human feelings, so beautiful in its simplicity. For Finland it was a
revelation. Dr. Lonnrot had opened new and bright horizons, and a pleiad
of young men made it their work to hunt up the hoards of poetry
concealed for so many centuries in the memory of the Finnish people.
Afore and more treasures were discovered. The Kalevala was followed by
the Kanteletar — the epic poetry by the more accessible lyric songs, so
fine that many of them would be a gem in the greatest poet’s crown.
Indeed, one cannot read these Kauteletar without being struck by the
always ideal purity of the conception, the fine poetic rendering of even
the plain circumstances of life, the artistic finish of the image, the
deep insight into the salient emotions of the soul and the workings of
nature. A language which proved to be so admirably appropriate to the
finest analysis of human feelings and so aesthetic a representation of
nature — the language of the Kalevala and thet Kanteletar — who would
dare to say that it was fit only to express the rough feelings of the
lowest beings? It was unanimously admitted to be a literary language.
The discovery of the Kalevala had another advantage: it awakened the
national spirit of the Esthonians. On the other side of the Gulf of
Finland like treasures of popular poetry were brought to light, sung
also by the runoiat in a language most akin to that of the Kalevala, and
so suggestive of the common origin of both stems, now separated by
politics, but once united by their common civilisation. In fact, since
Dr. Kreuzwald (son of an Esthonian peasant, of a serf) had discovered
the Kalevi-poeg, an epic poem celebrating the exploits of Kaleva’s son,
the first germs of ‘Pan-Fennism’ were brought to life; while Castren’s
scientific researches into Finnish mythology extended still more widely
the limits of the Finnish fatherland and showed the Finns and Esthonians
that they are members of a race which played an important part in in
remote times and may play it again — not by warfare, but by lending to
Aryan civilisation their own ideals and philosophical tendencies.
The ground was thus prepared for the development of poetry and fine arts
in Finland. Swedes born in Finland and Finns joined together in their
work of raising the national feeling and of developing the national
literature. When Nicholas I. prohibited writing in Finnish, the conquest
of nationality was continued in Swedish. It was in Swedish that
Runeberg, Nervander, Topelius, Cygnaeus, sang the beauties of their
country, the exploits of her children, and preached the love of Finland
and its people. All Swedish-speaking Finland knows by heart the
beautiful patriotic hymn of Runeberg, Vart Land and would tell you the
effect it produced when it was first sung at the ‘May-gathering’ of
1848. Thousands of men and women shed tears of happiness; people who had
never met before, overcome by patriotic emtion, fell into each other’s
arms as the conception of a fatherland awakened in their hearts. Though
writing in Sedish, this great connoisseur of the human heart and lover
of beauty has pictured the Finnish people in their forests, their homes,
and their struggles, as vividly as if he were a true Finn. And his
ballad, The Brother of the Cloud, whose hero understood ‘more than
life-love, and more than love, for he knew how to die’ for his country,
is surely one of the best patriotic pieces ever written in Finland. So
also with the verses of J. J. Wecksell, who used to write also in
Swedish even such pieces as Swedish and Finnish, where the young, strong
Finn provokes his former ruler in these words: —
Young I am, and I am proud of that; always young, wandering through
forsts and fields, I sand my dreams and the wonders of past times,
waiting till my hour would come. It is come now, and I defy thee! And
see, not withstanding all thy fury, thou blanchest under thy visor....I
stand in the heart of the country; as a young pine I was once forgotten
amidst the snow, still full of growth on the barren tract. It is spring
now! The hearts of my people feel full of love, hope, and light. Thou
sinkest thy crown, mine will not bend.
Common love for the mother-country concludes this line piece, which
expresses in poetry the feelings of at least the best Swedes in Finland.
None of these poets dared, however, to rise the Finnish language, so
sonorous and so supple, for writing in verse. But they opened the way,
and soon a young poet, who concealed under the pseudonym of Oksanen a
name which later became widely known for philological research. Ahlqvist
tried to sing in his own tongue. He did so with a very great success,
and his poetry faithfully reflects the feelings of his countrymen. Other
poets, all peasants — Olaf Kymalainen, Peter Makkonen, Andreas Pulahka —
followed M. Ahlqvist, and now Finland possesses some of the finest
modern poetry written in the language of its people.[3]
Finnish art is still very young, but it is going in the right direction.
It will not wander among distastefully modernised Greek or Roman
antiquities: it seeks its inspiration in Finnish folk-lore, in Finnish
nature; and thus Europe will find in it a new and fruitfull source of
inspiration — austere but not ascetic, severe yet highly idealistic, and
sometimes good — naturedly witty. The pictures of Eckman and Magnus
Wright (both recently dead) are in good style, as also those of
Ferdinand Wright, who continues the work of his brother. But it is
especially in music that Finnish art promises to be rich in new
elements. The Russian composer Glinka has already shown in Ruslan, and
Ludmila what an inspiration may be drawn frona Finnish songs, and of
what a rich musical elaboration they are susceptible. Glinka did not,
however, knew the finest songs of the interior parts of Finland. To
really appreciate them you must have heard them occasionally during a
walk in the forests, or on the shores of a sylvan lake, sung by some
peasant as lie contemplates the wide scene before him. He begins, then,
in a high and full tenor, one of those vigorous and beloved adagios
which lift the hearer higher and higher up to some unknown sphere, like
one of the best musical phrases of Richard Wagner. We have recently
learnt from M. Melgounoff what a richness of quite new and beautiful
harmonisation (in Sebastian Bach’s style) is to be learned from Russian
popular music; the same also from the Finnish, especially with regard to
melody.
As to Finnish science, each time I peruse its scientific collections I
admire the amount of work performed, and this the more as I know the
modest means the Finnish savants leave at their disposal. I have already
mentioned the work done in philology, which has so wide a repute: the
same is true of natural science. Finland is undoubtedly one of the best
explored countries of Eastern Europe. Not that there are no blanks to be
filled: large tracts remain still unexplored; but all explorations have
been performed in the true spirit of modern science, and are imbued with
a fervent love of the mother-country. In scientific research Finland has
much profited, of course, by the experience of Sweden, and imitated it,
and nearly all Finnish scientific works have been written in Sweden. But
already Lonnrot had begun to cultivate Finnish so as to render it
suitable for the philosophical and scientific needs of our time, he
translated works of law and science, and discovered that his language
offers remarkable facilities for creating new scientific and technical
terms. His bulky Swedish and Finnish dictionary became a powerful aid in
the further development of scientific terminology; and the tendency is
now towards writing scientific works in Finnish. Of course, the savants
of Western Europe will object, but the resulting inconvenience will be
easily obviated by the growing custom in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, of
giving French or German resumes of the most important papers; while the
growth of a Finnish scientific literature will undoubtedly Le an immense
gain for the people. European science must recognise once for all that
every decade will bring within it, cycle more and more important works,
written in an ever increasing variety of languages. The true scientific
man can no more ignore Scandinavian, Russian, Polish, Czechian,
Hungarian, and Finnish scientific literature; and we must devise the
means; of systematically bringing all works of importance, written in
any language, to the knowledge, of the whole of the scientific world. Be
this as it may, Finnish scientific literature is growing every day, so
also Finnish historic science. Thus, after the preparatory works of J.
J. Tengstrom, W. G. Lagus, F. W. Pipping, Gabriel Rein, and M, Akiander,
who all wrote in Swedish, and after a first attempt, made in 1846 by J.
F. Kajan, to write Finnish history for the Finnish, we had to greet a
few years ago the appearance of the remarkable History of Finland, by
Yrio Koskinen, which is a serious attempt to write a history of the
nation, and not alone of its rulers. It was immediately translated into
Swedish and German.
The periodical press does not lag behind, and offers a warm support to
the national movement. The first paper published in Finnish in the last
century failed for political reasons. So also several ulterior attempts,
all killed in the bud by Nicholas I’s censorship. It was only in 1863
that the Finnish Press took a new start, the Russian Government Ending
it useful to favour Fennomanes against Svekomanes. It has rapidly
developed since, and now supplies the most remote pitaya (farm) in the
woods with plain and useful reading in Finnish at a very low price.[4]
But even yet the Russian Government pursues with regard to Me Finnish
Press its unwise traditional policy. It is tolerated on the condition of
never criticising the proceedings of the Government; and when, last
year, some young Fennomanes, whose aim is closer union of the Finnish
people with the Russian, proposed to start a paper in both languages,
the Censorship refused permission. It could not allow a discussion of
constitutional rights to be printed in the Russian language.
From all that precedes it is easy to see that Europe has only to gain
from the admission of Finland into its family. But to this end liberty
and independence are before all things needful — not the ephemeral
liberty which is bestowed on the people by the rule of the richer
classes, whatever be their nationality, but that fall liberty which
would result from the people being their own rulers. Finland is in a
fair way to accomplish this. Its national movement does not ask a return
to the past, as has been the case with Poland; it aspires after a quite
new, autonomous Finland. It is true that for the present the national
question overshadows all others, and even the extremely important land
question (for Finland has also its agrarian question) is nearly quite
forgotten. The very existence of their nationality being menaced from
St. Petersburg, will the Finnish nationalists repeat the error so often
committed of forgetting that under the actual conditions of landed
property, the peasant being overwhelmed with rents, taxes, and personal
services, no national independence is possible, and if political
autonomy be eventually realised under some exceptional circumstances it
will be but a new burden on the labouring classes? The eminently popular
character of Fennomanism leads to the belief that this mistake will not
be repeated. But it must be acknowledged that until now Fennomanism his
remained a merely literary movement — a movement for a language, and not
a movement for social redemption. No more than the Svekomanes have the
Fennamones a distinct social programme; and if Fennomanism is, on the
whole, more democratic than its Svekomane rival, it comprises at the
same time, together with the peasant’s son who longs after the free
possession of soil, the son of the landowner who holds sacred the rights
acquired by his forefathers under Swedish or Russian rule over the
produce of the peasant’s labour. Both unite for the awakening of a
national feeling end the conquering for the Finnish language of equal
rights with the Swedish; but the day will come when it will be asked
whether the landowner’s rights are really so sacred as they have been
considered, and what will then become of the union?
It is obvious that so long as all administrative procedure is conducted
in a larguage which is foreign to five-sixths of the population, and so
long as Finnish children cannot receive instruction in their
mother-tongue, the language question will be a burning question; and all
the more so, as to take the administration from the bonds of the
Swedish-speaking officials means to take it out of the hands of the
Swedish nobility, landowners, and bankers. This first step was partially
realised lat year, the equality of both languages in the administration
having been recognized by law. As to Finnish schools, they have still to
be created almost entirely. At the University of Helsingfors lectures
are still mostly delivered in Swedish, though the students generally
speak Finnish. So also at the Polytechnic School and in twelve lyceums
out of teenty-two. As to primary instruction, the great mass of the
people are still deprived of permanent schools. Out of 300,000 children
of school age in I881, only 26,900 received instruction in 576 permanent
schools, of which 134 were Swedish. The remainder were taught in
ambulatory schools, a typical feature of the Scandinavian north. When
Nicholas I. forbade Finnish schools, ambulatory schools, like those of
Norway and Sweden, were introduced. Once a year the teacher comes into
the village, stays there for some time, and teaches the children. Such
schools even yet are not the exception, they are the rule; and while
less than 27,000 children were taught in permanent schools, the
remainder received primary instruction either from ambulatory wasters
(116,201 children) or at home (177,925), so that only 6,983 children,
mostly feeble or ill, remained without instruction. (I take these
figures from the well-informed pamphlet, by Max Buch, Finland und seine
Nationaliitatenfrage.) But instruction thus given is obviously quite
insufficient, for only eight per cent. of the Finns can wlite, the
remainder are only able to read.
Finnish schools, Finnish administration — such is the platform of the
Fennomanes. They do not neglect, however, at the same time tofreethe
soilof Finland as much as possible from foreign landholders, and to
develop their industry so as to render their country economically
independent of its neighbours. A few years ago Russiam monasteries had
still large estates and fishing grounds on the western shore of Lake
Ladoga. But arable soil, forests, lakes, all have now been purchased by
Finns, and are sold in small parcels to Finnish peasants, so that the
‘Russianisers’ of tile worsthart of the Russian Press are, loudly crying
out against ‘the prodigiously rapid Fermisation’ of Kexholm, Serdobol,
and even of the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg.
As to the economical development of the country, it has really made a
material progress during the last five-and-twenty years. Notwithstanding
the loss of as much as 180,000 people during the famine of 1872, the
population of Finland has increased by more than one-fifth during the
last quarter of a century, reaching 2,060,800 during the last census of
1881. The population of its towns has doubled during the same period,
and the agricultural produce increased in the ratio of 3 to 2. The
horned cattle have increased by 400,000 head in twenty-five years, and
the making of butter, with more perfect methods, has so extended as to
produce from Russia an annual tribute of 1,200,000 roubles (120,0001.)
The production of iron has trebled at the same time, reaching the figure
of 351,000 cwts. in 1879; and the aggregate produce of manufactures has
decupled: it is estimated at 49,000,000 roubles, against only 5,000,000
in 1854. No less than 550 miles of railway and fifty miles of counts
have been built; and the exports reached in 1880 123,000,000 Finnish
marks, or francs, against 23,000,000; while the imports were 138,000,000
marks, instead of 46,000,000. Navigation has experienced such a
development that the commercial fleet of Finland in the same year
numbered 1,857 ships, 288,300 tons; 9,744 ships, 1,504,200 tons, entered
its parts; and a considerable part of the foreign maritime commerce of
the Russian Empire is conducted under the Finnish flag. As to the roads,
they are mostly in so good a state as to be comparable to those of
Switzerland; and the journeys on post-horses, by roads provided with
plain but clean hotels, are a true pleasure. The lakes are literally
furrowed by steamers, which penetrate into the remotest inlets; and,
thanks to a masterly system of canalisation, in which Finns excel, the
smallest hamlets and saw-mills are within easy reach of the great
lake-basins, which, in their turn, communicate with the Bea by the
monumental Saima canal. All this has been done at surprisingly moderate
expense, each mile of the Finnish railways having cost, on the average,
only one-third of the average cost in Russia. As to finances, though
supporting the heavy burden of obligatory military service recently
imposed on the country, they are in an excellent state. When Russia
finds it impossible to raise money at less than 6 per cent., Finland
easily obtains loans at 4.5 per cent., and its paper money circulates at
par, while the Russian paper rouble is worth no more than sixtenths of
its nominal value.
It is obvious that the more national consciousness is raised in Finland,
and the more education is spread among its people, the more will it feel
the weight of Russian sovereignty; and, while the Russian peasant is
always welcomed by his Finnish brother, every Russian suspected of being
an official finds only coolness, and often hatred, among the people.
Finnish nobles in Russian service may protest their loyalty as much as
they please; they are not the people. They may refer also to the gallant
behaviour of Finnish troops in the last Balkan way: it proves nothing;
the Finns were ever a gallant race, and it is not their balut to recaoil
before danger, But sorely the last war hav not increased their
attachment to the Russian Empire; they have. seen what Russian
administration is, and the war is costing Finland too dear. True, there
are plenty of men in Finland ready to Bay that their country is already
quite independent, being only ‘united’ with Russia in the person of the
Emperor; butthe masses understand pretty well what a union means of
which the weaker party is unprotected against the caprices of the
stronger. If they should forget it, the Reactionists now in power in
Russia do not fail to remember it in the most brutal way. These people
do not understand how wise Speransky was when he pointed out the dangers
of having a hostile population at the very doors of the Russian capital;
they seem to have set their hearts on rendering it hostile. The small
dose of liberty enjoyed by Finland irritates them. A country where
people travel without passports, and the dvorniks (porters) do not
listen at the doors of lodgers, appears to them a hotbed of revolution.
Even the industrial development of this small country renders them
uneasy. They would like to shut the doors of Russia against the little
merchandise that enters theirin. For it is most remarkable that even
Finland, poor as she is, imports from Russia the food which is taken
from the mouth of the Russian peasant, and exports thither mannufactured
ware; since 1882 it begun even to export more than to import. The
editors of the reactionary St. Petersburg papers would rather double the
price of the paper on which they print their cheap ideas than to have it
from Finland. And the Moscow Protectionists, after having attracted, by
almost prohibitory duties, German capital, German enterprise, German
manufacturers, and German workmen into Poland, demand now the erection
of it Chinese wall against Poland, and even against little Finland. They
have succeeded in preventing the entrance of Finnish cattle into Russia,
thus raising the already high price of meat at St. Petersburg; and they
would like now to impose still more their own dear produce on Finland,
and not their produce alone, but also the disorder of their coin
finances. Returning to Nicholas I’s time, they long to introduce into
Finland the obligatory circulation of Russian paper roubles. They are
not satisfied with imposing on her the burden of a 70,000-men-strong
army in war time; they would like to grasp in their own bonds her poor
revenues, and to conduct them, to pillage them, as they have conducted
and pillaged the finances of the Empire.
‘Is union possible on such conditions?’ Such is the question which the
Russian Reactionists are more and more impressing on the minds of even
the most I loyal’ Finnish subjects; and nobody can tell whither this
blind policy may lead. Only one thing is certain: that the ardour of
Finnish patriots for awakening among their people national feeling and
the longing for a complete independence will be redoubled by the
attempts, recently renewed, against Finland’s autonomy. The map of
Europe has already undergone many changes, and it is not improbable that
the social and political complications which accumulate on Old Europe’s
head may result, among other things, in the restoration of Finland to
the Finns.
P. Kropotkin
[1] Population of Finland on the 31^(st) of December 1880 (Suomenman
Virallinen Tilasto, sixth series, fasc. 9): In towns, 173,401; in the
country, 1,887,381 Of these: Finns, 1,756,381 (100,300 in towns);
294,876 (65,725 in towns); 4,195 (821 in towns); Germans 1,720, mostly
in towns; other nationalities, 3,610 of whom 961 are Laponians. Of the
above population, 14,052 were born in other than Finland; namely, 3,693
in Sweden, 7,947 in Russia, 522 in Germany, and so on. Emigration in
1879, 34,812
[2] The Constitution of Finland, framed in 1810 and slightly modified in
1869 and 1882, is very indefinite, and leaves the Crown a wide field for
interfering with the affairs of the country. The national
representation, consisting of four chambers — nobility, clergy, towns,
and peasants — is convoked by the Emperor every four or five years, but
only for four months. Each chamber discusses all affairs separately.
They can discuss only those schemes of laws which are proposed by the
Emperor, to whom belongs also the right of veto. He has, moreover, the
right of issuing decrees, the limits of which are not well defined. The
chambers consist now of 121 nobles (this number varying with the number
of separate noble families); 35 deputies of the clergy, university, and
primary schools; 44 representatives of towns; and 59 ofr the peasants,
elected in two degrees. The unanimous assent of all four chamberes is
necessary for the ratification of changes in the Consitution and for new
taxes. If unanimity cannot be arrived at for new taxes, a committee of
sixty members elected in equal parts by each chamber decides. If new
taxes cannot be levied thus without the approbation of the Seim, the
expenditure is apportioned by the Emperor — that is to say, by the
Finnish Committee, which sits at St. Petersburg, and consists of the
State’s Secretary and four members nominated by the Crown (two of them
being proposed by the Senate). The Senate is nominated also by the
Crown, and meets under the presidency of the Governor — General, who is
usually a Russian subject. It is the superior administrative power of
Finland, and consists of two departments, Justice and Finance
(Economical), which have under them the administration of medicine,
posts, railways, canals, custom-houses, and the tribunals. Their powers
were slightly increased in 1882, but they are still limited, several
important branches remaining under the contorl of the Emperorl thus, he
decides as to the customs duties and many other questions of great
importance (educational, Church, and so on). The military department is
in the hands of the Russian Minister of War, and the Foreign Affairs in
those of the Russian Chancellor. Military service has been obligatory
since 1879, and Finland has to keep on foot, in time of peace, nine
battalions of infantry, and from 70,000 to 80,000 men in time of war.
The Governor-General is the chief commander of the Finnish army. Happily
the communal and municipal affairs are little interfered with by the
Central Government; and the chief safeguard against Russian interlopers
is, first, that Finnish citizens alone can enter the service of the
State, and that Finland coins its own money and raises its own loans
(with the assent of the Emperor). The higher officials, however, are
nominated by the Crown; it has also the right of dismissing the
remainder, who are nominated by the Crown; it has also the right of
dismissing the remainder, who are nominated by the Senate. It will be
seen from the above that, if Finland has obtained a certain measure of
autonomy, it is more by carefully avoiding any contest witht he Russian
Government, and by steadily working for the enlargement of its rights,
than by virtue of the scanty guarantees of the fundamental law.
[3] I do not venture, of course, to translate into English any of their
poetry, and can only recommend to those who know neither Swedish nor
Finnish the excellent small collection Aus dem Norden, by Hermann Paul,
which contains German translations from M.M. Ahlqvist, Cygnaeus,
Runeberg, Topelius, and Weeksell; and still more, the same author’s
German translations of many Kanteletar, which appeared at Helsingfors in
1882.
[4] In 1881 Finland had sixty-eight papers, out of which forty-two were
Finnish and twenty-six Swedish; of the latter, seventeen appeared at
Helsingfors. Such small towns as Jywaskyla and Uleaborg have six Finnish
papers each; and even Kuopio Tammerfors, and Wasa have each three
papers.