The Representation of Violence in Finnish (Press-) Photography of the Finnish Civil War. (Maarten Patteeuw)

 

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Preface

 

The research of this masters thesis was a very time consuming and demanding project which was further complicated by the use of at least three languages for consulting sources, correspondation and writing the final version. A lot of people contributed to the final version of this thesis in varying degrees.

 

First of all I would like to thank my promotor Professor De Wever for the advice and support he gave me, not only in choosing a topic but also for supporting the “new media” part in this thesis.

 

In Helsinki I would like to thank all lecturers at the History Department, Marita for giving me small but important hints throughout these two years and especially the archivists at the Kansan and Työvaen Arkisto for providing most of the crucial photographs.

 

A big thank you goes to my fellow students Kim and Nathalie for sharing information and supporting me throughout these not always easy years of studying at the History Department. Also Tuomo and Dirk for the necessary help in creating the cd-rom  "Finnish Civil War Photography"for this thesis.

 

Finally, but very specially, I thank my parents and Riikka. My parents for not only making it possible for me to study during all these years but also for sharpening my critical sense and providing me with a lot of usefull background information. Without Riikka this thesis would simply not have been possible. Not only did she translate all necessary information from Finnish into English and proofread the final draft, she also kept up my writting spirit during difficult moments.

 

 

Introduction

 

I arrived to the University of Helsinki as an exchange student in October 2000 with a very basic knowledge of Finnish history. What I remembered from my courses in contemporary history during my bachelor studies was the ‘heroic battle’ of the Finns during the Winter War in 1939 against the Soviet Union, and the independence of the country gained after the Brest-Litovsk treaty in 1917. The only Finn I had heard of, except for some sporters and athletes, was the very charismatic bold-headed politician Urho Kekkonen. I did not really see a link between these three political subjects but this would gradually change during my courses in Finnish history.

 

During these courses I was told that there had been an “internal war” in 1917 with many different names: Civil War, Independence War and even Class War. From that moment it became clear to me that not only the matter was rather complicated (as all “historical events”) but there was a certain uneasyness and vagueness surrounding the events. After bringing up the topic with different Finns with varying succes I found out that there had been a rather bloody Civil War with a number of casualties varying betweeen 20 000  and 30 000. The difference in numbers, 10 000 people on a population of 3 000 000 during a conflict that lasted for three and a half months, astonished me.

 

Then people recommended me to read the trilogy “Under the Northern Star” by Väiniö Linna first published in 1959. In three volumes, only recently translated into English, he describes the family history of the Koskela family from the last quarter of the 19th century until the Winter War. Linna draws a portrait of the changes in Finnish society through the everyday life of the different generations living in a smal village near Tampere. By doing so he describes the perception of political events, social relations and the changing economical situation from a grass-root perspective. Although fictional the work gives us an accurate idea of the situation of the Grand Duchy of Finland under Russian rule and the frictions between the Swedish speaking upper class and the Finnish speaking farmers living in harsh conditions. In short: he describes the circumstances leading to the Civil War, the Civil War itself and the years leading up to the final event the Winter War. Linna provided background information and a global image of the Civil War that was better than most fragmented historical writings I was able to find.

 

The next question then was: Which aspect of the war would I focus on and which sources would I use? As I have an interest in photography the field of photography as a “historical source” on this exact period seemed interesting. Furthermore within historiography the validation of photography since the 1960’s has been increasing but a lot of questions remain. No publications on photography of the Civil War were to be found and the (same) photographs used in writings on the events had a mere “illustrating” function. Was this all of the existing photographic material that existed on the events? I decided ‘to see’ for myself how much victims were represented at the time and more precisely how they were represented.

 

 

Bibliografie

 

Sources

 

Archives

 

Journals

 

Literature

 

General

 

Finnish History

Press History

 

History of Photography

 

Violence

 

New Media

 

Methodology

 

 

1. Defining the field of study

 

1. From Grand Duchy over civil war to an independent state: Finnish society in the beginning of the 20th century.

 

1.1 Finland Before 1917

 

1.1.1 The structure of Finnish society before 1917

 

When we look at the situation of Finland in at the beginning of the 20th century, we should take in account that there was no such “state” of Finland as we know it today but a Grand Duchy, since 1809, under the rule of the Russian Tsar. This meant that the internal policy was directed by St-Petersburg and, depending on the successive Tsars, with little or no possibility of political involvement for the Finns untill after the general strike in 1905 (after the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese war) and the reform of the parliamentary system in 1906. After the first democratic parliamentary elections in 1907 the Social Democrats (SDP)[1] emerged as the biggest party[2], and would maintain this position untill 1917. However these electoral victories were offset by the failure to achieve any concrete improvements for the working class through parliamentary action.

In 1914 Finnish society was still based on agriculture and forestry in which 2/3 of the population was active. Society was organised in another way at the countryside: the Finnish rural commune was run by freeholders in collaboration with the rural police official and supported by the parish priest. The freeholders ran the commune through their monopoly of giving employment, and through their control of the commune meeting, at which they alone had votes and which controlled such matters as poor relief. The cottagers and labourers did not have a right to strike and as the socialists only made some progress in organizing the so-called ‘torppari’[3] the bulk of the rural proletariat remained unorganised and unaroused. In a rural society, out of sheer necessity, the SDP partly built its rural power base around the grievances of the torppari. The socialists adopted a policy of emancipation of tenants without compensation, whereas the various bourgeois groups expected the tenants to purchase their freehold. On this basis the SDP won substantial torppari support. In 1911, the party adopted the more reasonable agrarian policy of nationalization of all land, though they prudently added that until the revolution, the policy above mentioned would be retained. Most of these people (125 000 families) were undercapitalised and basically uneconomic and thus vulnerable to exploitation by bankers, dealers and lawyers. Hence they had common enemies with the workers and were potential allies, but they were fanatically attached to their property owner status, which the SDP seemed to be threatening. Also religious motives played a role as the Social Democrats were atheists and the torppari devoted pietists.

 

The industrial labour force increased from 28 600 in 1885 to 110 000 (3% of the total population) in 1914 but society was clearly still predominantly agrarian and rural. The main industries were lumbering and wood milling (34 000 employees), textiles (15 000), paper industry (12 000) and industry machine shops (12 000). The legal status of the workers (legal discrimination was still the same in 1917 as in 1914) made it possible for landowners and industry employers, who often neglected the workers’ unions, to abuse their power. Another important aspect was the language barrier between the Swedish speaking owners and Finnish speaking workers. It seems realistic to suppose that Finnish workers embraced the class war dogma, as portrayed by the SDP, with enthusiasm not because they were convinced of the strength of Marxist arguments, but because it corresponded with the workers’ own perception of the realities of their lives.

So we can say that in 1914 Finland was a stable society with the Russian presence, though an irritant in some ways, as the ultimate guarantee of stability and prosperity. At the outbreak of the First World War the economic situation decreased slightly. Since Finland was not involved directly in the war, and there was no full compulsory military service for all Finnish men in the Russian army, the economic situation was stable for a while. However there were negative changes in the amounts of import and export by the end of the year. One of the most drastic was the import of fertilizers falling to about one half of the total of 1913.

 

1.1.2 The impact of the March Revolution of 1917

 

The situation started to change in March 1917 with the abdication of the Tsar (in Russia) and his replacement by the Kerenski government. The March Revolution had overthrown the monarchy, but not the political system of prime ministerial government and the elected parliament that emerged in 1905-06. The Revolution and the abdication of the Tsar meant that there no longer was a Grand Duke of Finland but the country was governed by the Duma and the provisional government it had elected, headed by the Prime Minister. The Finns would have to come to terms with them. At this time the split within the democratic forces of the parliament became clear in their way of approaching the new Russian government. The Finns surprised the Russians with presenting two manifestos: one from the Social Democrats, containing social reform commitments, and another from the non-socialist groups. The Russians urged the Finns to agree among themselves and a compromise, which inclined heavily towards the non-socialist draft, was reached. The revolution reached Helsinki on March 13 and from that day on things started to move.

It directly became clear that there was a growing division between the SDP politicians and the workers who wanted immediate action in the socialist camp. Some socialist groups saw the farmers as supporting the bourgeois and violent incidents multiplied while mobs of strikers attempted to stop farmers and their families from working. The government tried to alleviate the situation, first by emphasizing the seriousness of the food crisis, in which anything that might reduce production was suicidal. Due to climatological circumstances, the 1917 harvest would in anyway be worse than in previous years. This is shown by the figures of the consumption of basic goods on the graraph below[4]:

 

Crowds invaded open-air markets and forced stallholders to lower their prices which had raised due to an decreasing offer of products and the inflation of the Finnish Mark[5] (graph 2). For the ordinary wage earner food was not only outrageously expensive, but by 1917 it was not available in adequate quantities except on the black market, where only the upper class could afford to buy their supplies. In this way the black market would play an important role in the social agitation to come. The fact that in most local authorities’ councils the workers had few or no representatives was a constant source of trouble. The official socialist policy was to wait for a reform of local government, but some more militant local parties were not prepared to wait. The situation was the same as everywhere in Europe during wartime and no evidence existed then for the kind of deliberate activity of holding back food described to the farmers, distributors and officials. 

 

 

Until August 1917 the situation in Finland was still recognizably normal, in spite of the revolution and the disorders it had caused. A legitimate Finnish government and parliament governed the country, however unsatisfactorily, within the bounds of the constitution and the law. From August onward, this was no longer the case. After the riots of August 17 in Helsinki the question of the government raising a Home Guard came up again for two reasons. First the desire of the property owners to defend themselves against “hooligans” and “anarchists” by raising volunteer forces that would co-operate with the public authorities in maintaining order; and secondly, the plans of the activists to raise an underground army to work with the Germans and fight the Russians. Here it has to be pointed out that although the Russians increased the power of the legitimate government they still had different garrisons in different areas of Finland. In the meanwhile a small part of the Jägers, Finnish soldiers trained in Germany, returned as civilians to Finland, and Germany started providing arms for the Home Guard[6].

The workers’ Red Guard, established for the first time in 1906 after the general strike of 1905 and later dissolved again in 1908, was re-established. They met for the first time on May 12 in Kaisaniemi (Helsinki) and increased their number during the months to come. On September 3 the Helsinki Red Guard announced its existence and asked the Council for recognition saying that the workers needed “a powerful armed body” because “the bourgeoisie has already organised its armed butcher guard”.[7]

 

It has often been asserted that the emergent Red Guard represented the intrusion of new and alien elements into the workers’ movement, and recruited heavily from the unemployed, the fortification workers, and even criminal elements. Most early units were recruited by trade unions on a selective basis, and membership was restricted to members in good standing, not least because these were clandestine organizations at first. Statistical analyses prove this fact[8]. The Guard was not run or dominated by hooligan or anarchist elements, despite widespread contemporary beliefs of socialists and others redundant.  Phenomena such as hooliganism, drunkenness, gambling, etc. did not increase during this period, although conservatives tried to make it look that way. What seems to have happened in 1917 was that unemployed migrant labourers, many discharged from Russian war work, who had never been members of a trade union or of the SDP, drifted into the suburbs of the larger towns where prospects of relief were better. A degree of unruliness and petty criminality had probably been part of their life style, and they hung around mass meetings, shouted down or intimidated moderate speakers, and included an element of violent men ready for any kind of direct action, if only to relieve the tedium. The hooligan elements made a marginal contribution to intensifying the unrest that the fear of hunger and unemployment stirred up among workers who would normally have repudiated violence and illegality.

 

1.1.3 The Finnish October elections and it’s consequences

 

It looks as if the emergence of two mutually hostile paramilitary organizations seems to be the most important development in Finland during September and October but the interest and attention of the people was concentrated on the general elections and its results. The non-socialist parties entered the election divided about tactics on the supposed central issue of autonomy, but united in their determination to overturn the socialist majority. On the other hand these alliance parties were continually exasperated by what they saw as the priggish and frivolous way in which the Agrarians and the Activists put independence above law and order, and occasionally lashed out at them as splitters and procreators to their class. The bourgeois said that the socialists, far from being champions of independence, were the self-proclaimed comrades of the Russian soldiers whose presence was at the root of trouble. Helsingin Sanomat[9] said outright that the SDP only pretended to deplore anarchy, that in reality “it directly defends hooligans and murderers” and that the real election issue was “for or against the rule of the hooligans.”

The socialist leaders were confident of victory: it seemed unlikely that their unbroken run of electoral success would be broken this time. They feared that if they could not satisfy the masses through parliament, there would be a spontaneous revolutionary uprising that would be beyond their power to control. Otto Ville Kuusinen[10] did not see the revolution as an opportunity to be embraced, but as a catastrophe to be avoided, and almost all his colleagues agreed with him. Although in general till that time the workers found that a policy of taking over the local authorities was less effective than leaving them in office and exerting pressure from outside by direct action.

 

In the meanwhile, there were troubles with food delivery and an advance payment to Russia for delivering grain was never fulfilled by the Russians. This made certain that Finland would be desperately short of bread for the coming winter. If the socialist leaders were to avoid the disaster they feared, they should have tried to avoid stirring up emotive reactions over the food crisis, but the temptation to play politics was too much for them and they denied all responsibility by stating that the bourgeois were in power and “he who has the power, also has the responsibility.” In this atmosphere every move by either side was seen almost exclusively in terms of electoral politics. The voting took place on October 1 and 2 while in Tampere, Turku and Pori the bread supply was nearly exhausted. The results were known on October 11 and the biggest winner was the Agrarian party winning 7 seats and helping to create an anti-socialist bloc of 108 against 92. The leaders of the SDP had convinced themselves that the masses were “on the move” and soon events suggested they were. In Turku food riots broke out and there were calls for a general strike. Everyone agreed that unless the government could be compelled to take action over food, the workers could not be held back.

At the same time the power of the Finnish Bolsheviks increased (Lenin himself was staying in Helsinki at that time) and when they held their congress from 11 to 13 of October they claimed having over 9 000 party members in Finland. They also adopted Lenin’s line that the class struggle had reached the point were civil war was inevitable, and the sole task for the party was to prepare for this.

On November 1 the Social Democrats presented the “Me Vaadimme” (We Demand) program in which they answered to the electoral defeat. It asserted that the dissolution had been the product of conspiracy between the bourgeoisie and Russian reactionaries, and that the election had been distorted by a mixture of lavish expenditure and fraud by bourgeois election officials. The program required immediate action on food an unemployment, the implementation of the reforms carried in the old parliament, further reforming legislation on a social security system, emancipation of tenant farmers, a purge of the judiciary and the civil service and the drafting of a new, democratic constitution.

 

1.1.4 The Russian October Revolution

 

The next event influencing the existing conflict was the Russian October revolution overthrowing the provisional government on November 7 splitting Finnish political forces in two.  After the October Revolution the goal of the Social Democrats was to realise Finnish independence by means of a manifesto for the new Russian government, which clashed with the German-oriented independence policy of the of the bourgeois groups.[11]

“The question of organising the supreme executive power in Finland needed to be finally resolved. A proposal by the bourgeois parties to transfer that power to a three-member state board was carried by 127 votes to 69, but the decision was not implemented because of opposition from the Agrarian Union and the Social Democrats. As their counter-proposal in the Eduskunta[12] the Social-Democrats put forward a manifesto which the Social Democratic party council had approved a week earlier. Besides a wide social reform programme, this included a demand that Finland’s freedom be safeguarded by an agreement with Russia recognising the law on supreme power passed by the Eduskunta in July 1917. However, the manifesto was not even discussed in the Eduskunta because, in the Speaker’s opinion, ‘it did not meet the formal requirements of a proposal for legislation.’[13]

The bourgeois feared for their position or as Hultin said: “the wave of victorious Bolshevism will give our socialists water under their mill, and they are certainly able to start it turning.”[14] On November 12 the delegations of SDP, SAJ[15] and the Bolsheviks met and the socialist position rested on the belief that history now demanded that in Finland power be transferred to the workers, or else they would surely seize it themselves. At the end, the socialists pursued the offer of independence on which they all agreed and postponed the problem of taking power, over which they were divided. Or as Manner would repeat until the 12 of January 1918: “We Social Democrats do not want to oppose the maintenance of order, on the contrary we desire to take part in it. But it has been said many times that there must be established a democratic order, and it must be preserved democratically. That is the task we support.”[16] The Finnish Trade Union Organisation declared a general strike which began during the night of November 14. In the five days of its duration, there were several skirmishes and violent clashes, further inflaming the atmosphere. On November 15, the Eduskunta declared itself the repository of supreme power.

 

The Eduskunta appointed Pehr Evind Svinhufvud’s so-called “Independence Senate” on November 27 comprising representatives from only the bourgeois party. A declaration of independence was constituted and first had to be signed, insisted by all western countries, by the new Russian Bolshevik government. While the socialists had already assured themselves of the support by the Bolsheviks by meeting Lenin on the December 27 the official government only met Lenin on the 28th and he let them know that as soon there was an official demand he would get it approved by the Council of People’s Commissars in St-Petersburg. Which they did on January 4. The “freedom to break away” was designed by Lenin to lay a foundation for small sister-nations later “freely to join” the Russian Socialist Federation. Lenin also believed that the Finns would be among the first to join when the revolution spread from Russia to the West.

The bourgeois side was glued to its image of the Red Guard as either criminal in itself, or consisting of honest Finnish workers inflamed by a criminal leadership, in collusion with the Russians. The socialists could see the bourgeois only as brutal exploiters, food hoarders, and war profiteers, on whom the acts of violence were a wholly proper, if regrettable retribution.

 

On the 12th of January 1918 the senate was empowered by the Eduskunta to take action and create a “strong police authority” for the country. To head this undertaking Svinhufvud summoned Lieutenant-General C.G. Mannerheim, who had left the Russian army after the October revolution and returned to his native Finland. On January 25 the senate declared the Civil Guards to be government troops and war broke out almost simultaneously. In Viipuri battles broke out between Civil Guards and Red Guards of January 27 and the next morning a red lantern was raised on the tower of the Workers’ Hall in Helsinki marking the start of the revolution. On the 28th Mannerheim disarmed with his Civil Guards 5000 Russians in Ostrobothnia.

 

1.2. The Civil War: Red and White Finland

 

1.2.1 Red Finland

 

After fights broke out the frontline was stabilizing after a few days some 50 kilometres north of the cities of Pori, Tampere, Lahti and Viipuri and Finland was divided into two parts each with their own government. On the one hand there was the White Svinhufvud-government[17] in Vaasa[18], and on the other ‘The People’s Council’ with Kullervo Manner[19] as the chairman and Otto Ville Kuusinen, Yrjö Sirola and Oskari Tokoi as the people’s representatives in Helsinki. Due to the strong workers Red Guard divisions in the towns mentioned above almost all Finnish industrial complexes were in hands of the revolutionaries. The capital of White Finland at that time, Vaasa, was only 200 km away from Pori and Tampere.

By the end of February Kuusinen introduced his ‘socialist-program’ based on the Swiss system and the French and American Declaration of Independence. The leaders of the revolution were aiming at a parliamentary democracy rather than a proletarian dictatorship and in this way were ideologically seen as being far away from the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and, in 1919, the Berlin Spartacist Revolt. They got forced into the war by a minority of radicals who used the social-economic situation of December 1917 as the decisive argument to call for a ‘class struggle’.

 

‘The People’s Council’ taking power on January 27 faced many organisational problems. In all public services almost all former employees were on strike or sympathizing with the Whites and had to be replaced by workers who were not always qualified for the job. In the field of financing and banking there was a clear sabotage by the bourgeois bankers which the Red Government did not handle in a proper way. The Red Government was headed for financial disaster from its very first days, but it did not survive quite long enough for this to have a decisive effect on the outcome.

 

A formal decree on local government was issued on the February 14 1918: the old local authorities were abolished and would be replaced by collective institutions at each level. The system was to be a highly decentralized and democratic form of government, though insofar as it rested on the organized workers only, it had elements of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was intended that the new authorities should become financially independent and raise their own revenues locally.[20]

Four main categories of expenditure had to be met: the military costs of the war; the costs of central government, including public services like the railways; the costs of local government, which were mainly the expense of providing social service payments for the poor and unemployed; and the costs of maintaining and reviving economic activity[21].

 

The Red Guards, like any other mass army, contained a proportion of antisocial elements, with the difference that it did not have the usual brutal military discipline to keep them in check. It was certainly not true that, as alleged in White propaganda, it was dominated by professional criminals, not even true that criminal elements were significantly involved in the various acts of violence perpetrated by Guard members. The discipline was undermined by the ‘democratic’ approach within the Red Guard groups: officers were often elected by the battalion and consequently not always competent as military commanders. Another unprofessional habit was the ‘9 to 5 fighting’, soldiers often went home in the evening and returned in the morning to continue the fight.

Both governments were untill a large extent dependent on military force to uphold their authority while both had to deal with hostile populations within their territory. In the last resort, the Deputation was always dependent on the Red Guard, and had to pay careful regard to the wishes of its members. They could control the Red Guard up to a point, but their control always fell short of the level that a normally constituted government can exercise over it’s armed forces.[22]

 

The army did not have a clear structure and local commanders developed plans that not always coincided with the strategy determined in Helsinki. There was a constant shortage of officers, battlefield tactics had to be kept basic and regularly there were food shortages at the front. The only clear advantage that the Red troops had was their industrial knowledge which made it possible to construct efficient armed trains, at that time the most useful means of transportation.

The Red Guards tried to recover as much as possible military material from the withdrawing Russian divisions[23] in Finland. Some Russian garrisons fought short battles over their equipment, others voluntarily handed over their weapons and a few hundred soldiers[24] and some officers even joined the Red Guards. This Russian input is the reason why the Whites claimed to fight a ‘War of Independence’. In fact, three quarters of the Russians simply wanted to flee the country and return home; and that only some of the Bolshevik sympathizers remained in Red Finland to fight side by side with their revolutionary comrades.[25]

 

1.2.2 White Finland

 

The White territory was predominantly rural while most of the urban centers and main parts of the country’s industry were in the area of Red Finland. This implied that Svinhufvud could continue working with local authorities and did not have to replace the already existing (under Russian rule) bureaucracy. White Finland had a food surplus; The socialists were correct in their suspicions that the farmers had had large stocks that they had been concealing. Moreover, since the cities did not have to be supplied, White Finland in general experienced no food shortage and the army was always fed adequately. Hence the ‘government’ troops (the former Civil Guards) were concentrated in the Ostrobothnia province, a region with a lot of farmers sympathetic to the White cause.

 

But the most important part of the army was still to arrive. By the end of February an elite group of a 1000 light infantry ‘Jägers’[26] arrived in Vaasa. These were men, 2000 in total, who had received a military training in Germany and had gained front-experience against the Russians in Kurland. As officers and instructors they formed the backbone of Mannerheim’s army. Part of these troops, 400 in total, remained in Germany not wanting to fight the Reds because of their own working-class background or ideological convictions.[27]

The structure of this White army was rather complicated: the soldiers were mainly Finnish peasants, the lower ranking officers were Finns trained in Germany and the staff was composed of Swedish and Russian officers lead by a Swedish[28] speaking Finnish general. This resulted in internal tensions and Mannerheim could only stay in control by intelligent manoeuvring between all parties.

 

It was much easier for the White government to sell itself abroad while all bourgeois European governments were strongly opposed to an expansion of Bolshevism in Northern Europe. While Red Finland (naively) put all its hopes on the support of the Russian Bolsheviks the Vaasa government asked for military and financial support from Sweden and Germany[29]. As Frey[30] stated it to the Swedish government in early February 1918: “The struggle which is now in progress in Finland is not a class war… but is a collision between, on the one side a legal social order… and on the other side plain terrorist activity”[31]. Despite the the diplomat’s efforts, Sweden officially stayed neutral in the conflict[32] but the Swedish government did grant holiday permits to a number of army officers. These officers then joined Mannerheim’s staff in Vaasa and were in command of large parts of the army.

 

In Berlin another White government diplomat, Edvard Hjelt, played a similar role in persuading foreign powers for, preferably military, support to the white cause. His mediation would eventually result in a proposition to put prince Friedrich Karl of Hesse on the trone of a Finnish kingdom.[33] Mannerheim was heavily opposed to a German intervention because this would not guarantee the complete independence of Finland once the Reds were defeated, and he turned out to be right. After the war, this would lead to a split between Svinhufvud’s government and the Commander in Chief of the Finnish army. In the end the Germans invited themselves to Finland on disadvantageous terms for the Finns[34]. The German troops arrived on April 3 in Hankoniemi when most of the war was already fought. The Vaasa Senate arrived in Helsinki[35] on May 4 and Mannerheim organised his victory parade on the May 16. The nation was even more severely divided after the war of 1918 than before it.

 

1.2.3 The origins of the deeps scars of Finnish society: The Atrocities of the Civil War[36]

 

“The civil war was short but bloody. The actual fighting lasted only three months, but the terror meted out by both sides and the subsequent settling of scores resulted in more than 30 000 deaths; of these 25 000 were Reds. The atrocities of the spring of 1918 left deep scars in people's minds who did not heal for decades to come. The People’s Council categorically condemned the atrocities and attempted, particularly in the early stages of the war, to bring those responsible to account. The press in Red Finland abounded with blood‑curdling stories of atrocities by the White ‘butchers’, and similarly exaggerated descriptions of the ‘Red Ruskies’ appeared in the newspapers of White Finland[37]. Rumours flowed unchecked back and forth across the front line, arousing terror and a thirst for vengeance on both sides.

 

Red Terror

The first wave of Red Terror occurred in the early stages of the war, and claimed some 1600 victims, half of them by the end of February. Many were unarmed men caught by the Red Guards on their way north attempting to reach White territory across the front. At the beginning of the war the Reds killed seventeen captured Whites at Suinula railway station outside Tampere. The White side was horrified by such an act against unarmed civilians. The victims in each area were usually farmers, teachers, clergy and other public servants, and the motive was often personal vendetta. The notorious Red 'flying squads' took part in the atrocities as they searched houses for arms.On February 25 the People's Council appealed for an end to such atrocities, and threatened those guilty of violence with severe punishment.

In March the Red terror subsided, but it flared up again in April after the decisive battles had begun and the hold of the Red leadership over their troops slackened. The terror of April was an outburst of rage and revenge by retreating Reds, embittered in defeat.

 

White Terror

The White terror, beginning somewhat later than the Red, reached its peak in the final stages of the war in April ‑ May and claimed about 8300 victims[38]. The first mass slaughter of the Reds took place in February as a result of the invasion of the Red areas blockaded by White Finland.

About 3200 Whites and 3500 Reds were killed in the fighting; in addition, about 1000 people, mostly civilians, died as the result of it, and about 2000 were declared missing in action. Whether these figures include those captured at the front and shot after the fighting remains uncertain. What is certain is that attitudes and methods became more brutal on both sides as the war progressed.

 

For the historical writing of the victorious side until the 1960’s the phenomenon of White Terror never existed. The first and still the only comprehensive study, Professor Jaakko Paavilainen’s Valkoinen terrori (White Terror) was published in 1967. Only during the 1990’s some local, neutral and accurate accounts of those events were written.

Red terror was well known even while it occurred. After the white victory became a certainty, each incident of Red terror was discussed in detail in the white press. Already the contemporaries, e.g. author Juhani Aho, commented on the way these stories were actually used to justify the ongoing White terror.

The orders of the White leadership concerning the treatment of adversaries, including some of Mannerheim's orders of the day, were more equivocal, and provided an implicite approval for acts of vengeance[39]. End of March he told a German journalist “ there can be talk only of punishment” and when asked what kind of punishment, Mannerheim replied “this will be determined by law. The revolutionaries have made themselves guilty of high treason and insurrection and the punishment for that is death…” [40]

The mass slaughter of Red captives reached a climax after the capture of Tampere, there the Whites captured some 11 000 men, most of them belonging to the Red Guards of the neighbouring parishes of the Häme province. Some of the Red captives were shot on the spot, others were transported to their home regions and sentenced there.

 

The activities of the courts‑martial hurriedly set up by the Whites are well illustrated by the example of Tampere: leaders of the White Guards in the nearby areas went there to pick up Reds from their own areas to be sentenced. 28 000 Reds who had fled east gathered at the end of April in Lahti, where they were rounded up and herded into a prison camp set up in a large field outside the city. More than 500 of them were shot. The Whites also turned their hatred on the Russians[41] of whom several hundred were shot after the capture of Tampere and Viipuri[42].

At the close of hostilities the number of Red captives was some 80 000, and they were taken to prison camps around the country. Because of the difficulties in the production and distribution of provisions and the defective health care as many as 12 000 Reds died in the camps from hunger and disease. The indecisiveness of the government and civil service in deciding how to deal with these prisoners contributed to this high mortality.

 

In mid‑May 1918 a special 'Tribunal of High Treason', consisting of 145 courts, was set up to deal with the Red prisoners. These courts sentenced 67 788 Reds, and 555 received death sentences of which half were carried out. More than 60 000 received various terms of imprisonment, two‑thirds of which were for less than three years, and lost their rights of citizenship. In June 1918 a change in the criminal law came into force, allowing probationary sentences. On this basis 40 000 prisoners were placed on probation and in the autumn more were pardoned. However, at the end of 1918 there were still 6100 Reds in captivity.”

 

The example of Lappeenranta: From Red Rule to White Purges[43]

During the civil war, the Lappeenranta Red Guard had held Lappeenranta and the surrounding areas for almost three months. The members of the White volunteers forces had fled the city but their families and almost all the White-minded population of the city stayed behind under Red occupation.

Those three months had been a time of desperate waiting for the Whites. They did not know the fates of their family members, and there were rumours about considerable arrests made by the Reds. People read the descriptions of Red cruelties in the White press and feared that they would relate blood acts from Lappeenranta. During that time, the Reds killed 25 Whites in Lappeenranta, 4 in Lappee and 6 in Joutseno. However, almost all the killings took place in the end of April when the Reds retreated from the Taipalsaari and Joutseno fronts towards Viipuri. They were mostly revenge killings committed by individual members of the Red Guard in the phase of retreat.

 

When the White troops reached Lappeenranta, they threatened to kill ten Reds for each White body found. They even exceeded the given number. During the three weeks following 26 April 1918, when the Whites took over Lappeenranta, in the city and the surrounding county of Lappee, possibly even 540 known and suspected Reds where killed.

While they advanced to Lappeenranta and took over Lappee, the soldiers of the White Army killed approximately 100 Reds. It was common for the platoon commanders and individual soldiers to hand out death penalties. It was also a common practise to pre-purge the counties by gathering up “known Reddies” or “worst agitators” almost arbitrarily to be killed. In Lappee’s case, this happened at least in Pontus, the Laihia village, Simola and Hanhijärvi. In 1918 this was no exception, but rather an unwritten rule formed while the war advanced. In the civil war, the aftermath of the battles tended to turn out bloodier than the battles themselves. The enemy soldiers who fell prisoners were killed. The Whites used this tactic also in the end of April, although the Red Guard did not offer much resistance.

A court martial was established in Lappeenranta, following the orders of the 25-year-old jäger captain Uno Sarlin, the commander of the 3rd regiment of the Karelian Army, who where the first to advance into the city. The court martial began on 29 April 1918, and on the grounds of its sentences, 117 members of the Red Guard and leading Reds were shot. In addition to this, 300 Reds were shot without specific inquiries in the days following the conquest. The purging was systematic and largely run by the White Army. The purging of Lappeenranta and surrounding areas had been planned in the local head quarters of the 3rd regiment in Imatra already in March. Then the officers of the Lappeenranta White volunteer forces had drawn out a list of the Reds in Lappeenranta who should after the conquest be “isolated, inspected and sentenced” as fast as possible. Similar lists were made for the rural communes around the city.

The purging lasted till mid-May, after which the Whites started interrogating the almost 3 000 Reds arrested in the days after the conquest. Before autumn 1918, ca 400-500 Reds more died of hunger, fevers and executions in the prison camp of Lappeenranta.

 

Those who have studied the history of Lappeenranta concluded that the estimate presented above of the number of victims of the purging organised by the White army is more than 2,5 times higher than the commonly used figure (206). The number of victims 206 is based on Professor Jaakko Paavolainen’s research of White Terror.[44] In his research, Paavolainen for the first time found out the nation-wide number of the victims of White terror by examining the parish registers side by side with the local numbers of executed gathered by the Social Democratic Party in the early 1920s. Paavolainen himself noticed while not having all the source material at his disposal that there were clear gaps in the information about the province of Viipuri. The number of casualties in Lappeenranta and Lappee, 206, had thus to be considered as the “certain minimum”. However, victims who were residents of other places or none were excluded from this number.

In the light shed by newly emerged documents, like the records of the court martial of Lappeenranta, one can conclude that 540 is the very likely total number of victims. At least for considerable probability it is the maximum number. It is known that already in the beginning of May, the Whites gathered Reds at least from Lappee, Joutseno and Nuijamaa to Lappeenranta. In early May they also brought Reds there from other prison camps such as Viipuri and Lahti. When the officers of the volunteer forces or prison camp who sent the prisoners to Lappeenranta had found out their offences, it gave orders to shoot them. In the chaotic early days of May there were possibly dozens of prisoners brought from somewhere else in Lappeenranta.

 

It is natural that actions this shocking were not unknown. The people of the city knew many of the Whites taking part in the purging as many of them were locals. The grudge and bitterness caused by the events consequently stayed with the people for a long time. After the liberation seeing the bodies taken from the fortress to the grave yard was certainly a shock to many, both White and Red-minded. The relations between the Whites of the city and the army became so strained that the military commandant of the city, Edvard Astola, forbid any criticism of the military’s actions in newspaper articles.

 

 

2. Status Questiones

 

The introduction makes it clear that this research project consists out of a specific approach to a complex historical event. The project’s main line of investigation is the representation of violence in (press-) photography. As the title indicates, the notions that will be enlarged and linked to one another are violence, photography and the (illustrated) media. 

The notion of violence was studied using Norbert Elias’ Theory of Civilization and specifically enlarged by the study of this theory by Jonathan Fletcher.[45] Fletcher specifically investigates the monopoly of violence or ‘legal violence’ by a state apparatus. He differentiates three criteria of decivilisation resulting in an increase of violence within societies. The link to violence in Finnish history is provided by Heikki Ylikangas who criticizes, with varying success, the Theory of civilization by Elias, using his own research on crimes in Finland as a practical example. At the start of the research, a crucial part was be formed by the theory of George L. Mosse developed in De la Grande Guerre au Totalitarisme on the evolution of the presentation of violence within the media. Tendencies in visual presentations of violence would after a process of trivialisation eventually lead to the stimulation of more violence and thus brutalisation.

The second notion of the research is photography. A methodology of photography for historical research linked to its relation with the media will be composed. The interaction between text and image in the media as opposed to the ‘mute’ images of the archives will be discussed. An initial methodology was developed by D. D. Perlmutter in Historical Methods but most of the research methodology was provided by articles in Fotogeschichte. The specific notion of violence within (media-) photography, although mainly focused on the decades after the Second World War, is defined by John Taylor in his Body Horror. An example of the specific link between violence and photography in a civil war context is the work of Caroline Brothers on the Spanish Civil War.

 

 

3. Research Questions

 

The key questions asked to the source material for this thesis, divided over the second an third part are the following. How was the violence of the Finnish Civil War represented in photography reproduced in the (mass-)media? How was the violence of the Finnish Civil War represented in the photographic documents found in the archives? What are the differences between these two ‘groups’ of photographs? What are the differences between these two groups of photographs and representations of other similar armed conflicts before, during and after 1918? Can we speak of a ‘brutalisation’ within the photographic material of Suomen Kuvalehti?

 

 

4. Definition of the chronological boundaries

 

The original idea of this research was to focus on the continuity of the representation of violence in Finnish press photography which would then eventually lead to describing a (possible) process of brutalisation as mentioned above. Due to the limited availability of the complete annual series before 1918, which disabled a reliable and representative sample survey, and the relatively small interest within the magazine for photography representing any sort of violence the focus of the research shifted. Consequently, I concentrated on the difference between the published and unpublished photographs of the 1918 events and the representation of other conflicts in SK in 1917 and 1919 to enable a wider and more accurate placing of the material. Next to this specific time span I also considered other civil wars dating from a few decades before and after 1918 as they might enable me to determine a ‘longer term’ perspective on the representation of Finnish Civil War in photography.

The unpublished photographic material was selected from all public archives in Helsinki who have a ‘1918’ collection. This was a deliberate selection , as consulting all public archives of only the main cities in the country – not to mention the private archives - would have exceeded the scope of this thesis and would have posed financial problems.

 

 

Part 1: A methodological framework for the critical approach of images within the media and as primary sources for historical research.

 

0. Introduction

In this first part I will try to clearify what the value of photography in historical research can be. In doing so I will argue that slightly different methods should be used when analyzing and interpreting images used within a media context and images found as documents in for example an archived context. First I will describe some of the basic notions used in all, verbal, visual or even musical, methods of communication.

Secondly I will concentrate on what is necessary, in my opinion, for a better understanding and interpretation of photography, and more specificly war photography, as a ‘historical source’. As ‘histories of photography’ have been (re-)written in every decade of the 20th century, and will continuously be rewritten in the decades to come, there is no need for another attempt of writing a ‘conclusive’ history of photography. As the technological evolution of photography is the crucial element in the spreading of massmedia and linked with providing the possibility to ‘document’ wars I will focus on this aspect.

 

 

1. Essential notions for the interpretation of different methods of communication

It is clear that there is a significant difference between the critical approach and interpretation in historical research of written texts and photographical prints. Several methodologies for a valuable use of both have been developped throughout the last decades. Despite the clear differences in the methods used to question these two types of sources the terminology used by both is quit similar. This can be explained by the origin of these theories within the field of linguistics. This also implies that all media, in this case illustrated magazines, require a particular approach while they intend to compose a meaningfull structure using both methods, the verbal and the visual, of expression. Despite this ‘composing’ illustrated magazines use exactly the same basic method of communication as developped in 1958 by Walter Jakobson.[46] The act of communication existing out of six essential parts: the addresser, the adressee, the context, the message, the contact and the code.

To be able to communicate, wheter it is trough a more ‘linear’ approach in written texts or a more global and direct approach in visual messages we need signs. In 1916 Ferdinand de Saussure developped his linguistic theory stating that: each sign is the sum of the signifier, the perception of the sign’s physical form, and the signified, the mental concept we learn to associate with that object. The correct ‘reading’ of both is necessary to come to a meaningfull result: the signification.[47]

 

All signs within a text have an interactive relation with the cultural and personal experience of both addresser and addressee. French structuralist Roland Barthes enlarged de Saussure’s theory and defined two further levels of meaning. The level of denotation; when we perceive something, through any of our senses, the word or words (signs) we attach to the perception, and it’s relation to reality, is the denotation. Then there is also a second-order system of signification: the level of connotation. This level meaning that once we perceive a sign (denotation level), we often have particular associations with that sign that colour our understanding.[48]

Barthes’ crucial contribution to semiotics was his definition and exploration of myths. He was interested in how signs take on the values of the dominant value system – or ideology- of a particular society and make these values seem natural (see further). He showed that de Saussure’s sign can become a signifier to create, not only a connotation, but a myth. This ‘trick’ allows myths, in texts, to structure the meaning of the communication without appearing to do so, they efface their own existence.[49]

 

Two other crucial notions within semiotics, also developped by Jakobson, are metaphor and metonomy. A metaphor being the use of a specific word to describe a proces that shows similarities with another proces that is otherwise not necesseraly linked on the denotation level. Metonomy is the reference to a part of a whole concept while implicitely referring to the whole., mostly based on a close connection in everyday experience. [50]

 

 

2. (Press-) Photography as a historical source

 

2.1 A short technical history of photography

 

2.1.1 From dry plate to Kodak

 

In 1880, the use of gelatin-silver bromide (the so-called ‘dry plate’) brought about a radical change permitting photographers to take ‘snapshots’ of 1/25 second, while before several seconds -sometimes even minutes- were required. The plate was prepared in advance, retained light sensitivity for a considerable time, and could be developed in the darkroom a relatively long time after exposure. This increased sensitivity made it possible to take instant pictures and, maybe even more important, did away with the need for any kind of tripod or other support, so that the camera could be held in the hand.[51]

 

The next step was taken in 1888 by George Eastman and his colleague chemist Henry Reichenbach in developing coated long strips of celluloid with a photographic emulsion. These strips were then rolled onto a spool that would be used in a plain, box-shaped camera (16,5 x 9 x 8,3 cm) developed by Eastman. The camera would become world famous under the name ‘Kodak’[52]. This meant that the idea of taking a photograph and the work of the expert developing the film were separated. In 1890 Eastmann would develop the “Folding Kodak” for professionals, using 16,5 x 21,5 cm plates, and in 1897 the “Folding Pocket Kodak” [53], an improved version of his 1888 prototype, for a popular clientele. This popularisation – or democratisation – of the scientific process of photography would lead to individual ‘snapshotters’ who were displeasing a lot of the ‘professional’ photographers for not respecting the formal code of photography as can be seen below from the Finnish example. These snapshotters enlarged the freedom of photography– and in a certain way gave it more value - as they started challenging the censorship in war time situations and ‘documented’ what many governments did not want them to show to the outside world.

 

As photographic optics and emulsions improved, equipment was miniaturized. Folding cameras would dominate the market up until the end of the 1930’s, after which they were supplanted in their turn by the fashion for 35mm cameras such as the Leica. The basic concept of the Leica would be gradually improved and develop into the (digital) photo camera we know today.

 

2.1.2 The printing of photography and  the printed media