UC-NRLF

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GIFT OF

THE REVOLUTION IN FINLAND

UNDER PRINCE JOHN OBOLENSKY.

BY

VSEVOLOD VLADIMIROV.

(From the Russian).

[Translator: Victor E. Marsden, M.A., St. Petersburg.}

LONDON :

WYMAN & SONS LTD., 1911

Price Four pence.

THE REVOLUTION IN FINLAND

UNDER PRINCE JOHN OBOLENSKV.

BY

VSEVOLOD VLADIMIROV.

(From the Russian).

[Translator: Victor E. Marsden, M.A., St. Petersburg.}

LONDON :

WYMAN & SONS LTD., 1911

Price Four pence.

The Revolution in Finland under Prince John Obolensky.

THE unparalleled success of the October revolt in Finland owed less to the organising capacities of the Finlander revolutionaries or their admirable preparations for the " great deed" they had in mind, than to the inactivity and utter incapacity of the representatives of the Russian authority, and of these first and foremost to him of sorry memory who succeeded to the post of Governor-General of Finland vacated by the assassination of the never- to-be-forgotten N. Bobrikov, namely, to Prince John Obolensky.

The Finlander party of " active resistance " which played the leading part in this revolution, was formed as early as 1902 at the time when the measures of N. Bobrikov and V. Plehwe had broken the back of the so-called " passive resistance," whose manifestations principally appeared in the matter of opposition to the regulations of military service. It was then that certain of the leaders of sedition recognised the impossibility of continuing the struggle by these means alone and decided to take more decisive measures. Their first act was to get in touch with and then to enter into a close alliance with the Russian revolutionaries, and from that time forwards

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representatives from Finland have taken part regularly in all the revolutionary congresses held abroad. In the general plan of action of the revolutionaries Finland was given a very substantial part, the part of that binding material which makes all the separate units a coherent whole, for Finland was acknowledged to be the best pre- pared for action, owing to its higher level of culture. The following passage contains the views of the Finlander revolutionaries themselves on the role of Finland in the general Russian revolutionary movement. It is quoted from their organ, the Stockholm Fria Ord. of Novem- ber n, 1902.

;< We have no longer any grounds for refraining from throwing in our lot with the Russian opposition, with those Russians who are officially called revolutionaries. Poles, Little Russians, Baltic Provinces peoples, Jews, the people of the Caucasus — all these nationalities are in an equal degree with the liberal elements among the Great Russians convinced that only the abolition of the Autocracy can secure the culture and civilisation of Russia, and conse- quently also their sights. . . . Not one of these groups possesses the ability to rally around it all the rest. In view of this fact our co-operation may become, and without doubt will become, of very great value to the Russian opposition. . . . We shall know how to make ourselves the nucleus round which all the remaining opposition elements will assemble, we can facilitate the organisation of forces, the drafting of a practicable programme and the general plan of political work. , . . We are not minded to suffer patiently the

introduction of arbitrary Autocracy, and therefore we ourselves are taking our places in the ranks of the opposi- tion which desires its destruction. The time has come for this for the peoples of Russia : the days of the Auto- cracy are numbered, though we do not yet know its term of life. But to assist in shortening that term, this we both can and ought to do that we may have the right to a voice when the time comes to divide up the heritage of the Czars."

The active revolutionaries made their entrance on the scene with the assassination of the Governor-General of Finland, N. Bobrikov. That this was a political murder and that those concerned in Stockholm were perfectly aware of what was to be done and who was to do it, is proved by the publication on the very next day in the Stockholm paper, Aftonbladet,oi the portrait of the assassin, Schaumann, and his full biography. These particulars could not by any possibility, on a calculation of time and space, have reached Stockholm from Helsingfors by any steamer whatsoever. In just the same way, five days before the bomb of Sazonov which cut short the life of Plehwe, there appeared in the Paris paper, L'Europeen, of July 10/23, an " °Pen letter " by Konni Zilliacus * to the Minister State-Secretary for Finland, which ended with the following threat : " Mais vous ne pourrez probablement plus mentir longtemps. Qui seme le vent recolte la tempete. Vous avez largement seme, un avenir prochain verra la recolte. A vous alors la responsabilite',

* The most energetic member of the " Finnish Party of Active Resistance " and one of the editors of the Fria Ord.

a vous les maledictions des peuples pousses au desespoir, sur votre tete retombera tout le sang qui sera verse." It is self-evident that the Finlander revolutionaries, if they did not actually take part in the assassination of July 15/28, already knew for certain of the contemplated crime. In the interval that elapsed between the death of N. Bobrikov and the arrival in Finland of the new Governor- General Prince John Obolensky there came to the light of day the well-remembered case of ex-Senator Schaumann. A domiciliary perquisition at his house (after the assassina- tion of Bobrikov committed by his son) resulted in the discovery of a pencilled note in the ex-Senator's own hand, which revealed a plan of organisation throughout the country of a secret system of instruction in rifle practice for the population against the day of " the overturn of the Autocracy."

At the same time, in connection with the detective work on the assassination of Adjutant-General Bobrikov, were arrested Hermann Gummerus, a university graduate, and Albert Kollan, a mechanic. The former turned out to be one of the organisers of the revolutionary network in the Province of Vasa and the latter confessed that he belonged to a criminal society which had set before it as its immedi- ate object the assassination of the Governor-General. A thorough all round investigation by the Russian authori- ties into all these cases, connected with the assassination of Adjutant-General Bobrikov might, if it had been taken out of the hands of the Finnish authorities by Imperial order, have led, and probably would have led, to the full

revelation of the Finlander organisation and the seizure of its principal leaders. But this was not the view taken of the matter by the new Governor-General.

On the death-day of the murdered Governor-General the educated classes of Finland everywhere rejoiced : ' The chambers were ablaze in splendour, The choirs their thunderous praises render/' champagne flowed in rivers, all the members of the Schaumann family were honoured with an ovation, while the true servant of the Czar and of Russia, as he lay on his bed of an agonising death, was treated with every kind of contumely and mockery. . . . Then came the voice of the common people of Finland, who condemned the assassination as a shameful crime that had smirched the history of Finland with blood. . . . And the first outbursts of rejoicing among the revolution- aries turned to a shuddering fear of some terrible retribu- tion. All Finland lay still as death in anticipation of that just penalty which it was prepared to accept with humility, as well-deserved, as inevitable. . . . Numbers of village communities sent in addresses to the Emperor expressing indignation at the assassination ; and the same feelings found expression also in the Finnish Senate in its appeal to the people of June 9/22.

The feeling of the country at this moment may be characterised by the following quotation from a correspon- dent's letter to the Norwegian newspaper, Morgenbladet : " After the assassination of Bobrikov the torment of the situation has deepened terribly and it needs the resolution of a martyr not to yield utterly to despair."

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But at this juncture there appeared the Imperial Rescript of June 17/30 to the newly appointed Governor-General. The contents of this Rescript, in which the abominable crime of June 3 was qualified as " the work of the hands of a madman and some few of his accomplices," while the Finnish people had no part in this crime, should have •calmed the fears of the Finlanders, the more so that the Rescript expressed a firm belief in the possibility of main- taining " also for the future " the special structure of Finnish administration and legislation on internal affairs. But, on the other hand, the Rescript made mention of "" the closest unity of Finland with the Empire," as form- ing the "unfaltering aim of the Sovereign Power," con- firmed it as an aim that " must remain the same also henceforth " ; in the Rescript the sovereign duly ex- pressed appreciation of the murdered Governor-General .as one who " had won a place of honour in the annals of the strengthening of Russian State-rights in the northern borderland," thereby, it seemed, recommending the new liead of the country to follow in the same path. But there was more than this. To the " special care " of the new Governor-General was entrusted the task not only of inspiring the population of the country with the necessity of " restoring the peaceful course of life in the country for the securing of the further progress of Finland under the shadow of the Russian State, but also, and above all, to •strengthen in the Finnish people the conviction that its historic destinies were bound up inseparably with the destinies of Russia."

This Rescript was received with a feeling of satisfac- tion, both by the Finlanders and by the Russians. The former recognised in it " a breath of healthy fresh air '* and the " possibility of breathing freely " (v. the news-- paper Uusi Suometar). The Russian press accepted the Rescript as a symptom of unchanging stability in the direction of Russian policy and saw a special guarantee thereof in the appointment, as successsor of N. Bobrikov,^ of Prince Obolensky.

Time was to prove how mistaken were the estimates of both sides.

At this time over all Russia, notwithstanding the presence of a louring autumn, there suddenly burst into bloom a glorious spring, planted by Prince Svjatopolk- Mirsky. " Princes are not free as maidens are," and this no doubt explains why another Prince, Prince Obolensky, also made haste to imbibe the spirit of " trusting the people " which had been so very foreign to his thoughts up to this date. On his arrival in Finland the first thing he did was to- receive the Russian officials, but without finding anything better to say to them than that there " were too many of them " ; the Finlanders on the other hand he lost no time in charming by that poetic picture of the " two vessels." " The relations of Finland to Russia," said Prince John Obolensky, " may be likened to the relations of a small, if beautiful, river boat to a great ocean-going ship. Acting together with the ship, the river boat may do much that is great and useful, but'if the river boat has the audacity to venture alone into the open

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sea it may very easily come to shipwreck," " Two separate vessels," a big one and a little one, it was plain to see, symbolised the " union " : and what more could Finlanders desire ?

But the advice to the little river boat to attain that " great and useful " together with the sea-going ship was understood and taken note of : the alliance of Finlander and Russian revolutionaries was drawn yet tighter as the events of January of this year (1905) showed. At the same time the lessons of the Russian Terrorists did not fall on stony ground, and the list of victims of their devotion to Russia swelled in Finland. Jonson, Mjasoedov, Kramarenko, Deitrich, Papkov, policemen, gendarmes- some wounded, some killed, some saved by an inexpli- cable stroke of good luck. But the anti-Government activity contined to spread and was considerably facili- tated by the amnesty to political exiles. . . .

Prince Obolensky was duly and fully informed by the qualified officials in ample time and with complete definite- ness of the very serious events that were being prepared for the immediate future in Finland. The last reports of this kind in point of time were presented last September by the administrator of the Province of Niwland, during the time Prince Obolensky was at Transund and Biorke on the occasion of the visit of His Majesty the Emperor to these places. The reports indicated the existence of a complete plan for suddenly attacking officials, disarming police and gendarmes, seizing the railways, telegraphs and telephone. This intelligence even caused special precautions to be

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taken in Helsingfors and the province of Niwland, which were carried out, in the absence of the Governor-General without any instructions whatever on his part. The military and naval authorities, being forewarned, also made their preparations ; the police force of the town was reinforced ; the battleship " Slava " (" Glory ") was sent to Helsingfors from Kronstadt immediately after the Imperial inspection of certain vessels of the Baltic Fleet, and the commander of the battleship received definite instructions in case the disorders in Helsingfors should already have begun.

Prince Obolenksy knew nothing of the despatch of the battleship.

Regarding all these alarming pieces of intelligence, according to his custom, as nothing more than newspaper sensations, Prince Obolensky notwithstanding the practi- cal confirmation which these reports of the systematic import of arms into the country received by the discovery of a whole shipment* on board the "John Grafton," which went ashore at Jacobstadt, continued boldly to assure His Majesty of the loyalty to him not only of the Finnish peasantry but of all other classes of the popula- tion.

Prince Obolensky did his best to convince the Imperial pair of this loyalty by presenting to them deputations of simple-minded Viborg peasants with milk, eggs, and other

* As many as 12,000 rifles of the system "Vetterley" (of Swiss make) with bayonets ground sharp and a quantity of cartridges, revolvers and dynamite. .. . ._

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farm produce, at the same time most carefully concealing the fact that in the rest of Finland a powerful agitation , was unceasingly spreading, that arms were being brought in and distributed, that stormy meetings were being held,, that there had even been cases of military drilling and jrifle-practice.* It is curious that all these honeyed speeches about the " placid, calm Finnish waters/' as the only suitable spot for repose from the labours of State, were uttered by that same Prince Obolensky, who no further back than the previous December had reported to his sovereign f that the Finlanders hated Russia, and that in the whole people there was not to be found any genuine loyalty to the Russian State and to the throne of the Autocrat.

The arrival of the squadron { at Helsingfors was a complete surprise for the Finlanders. Whether it was for this reason, or in consequence of a change in their own plans is uncertain, but at any rate the revolutionaries, calmed down this time and the expected outburst did not take place. This fact at once gave occasion to the local press§ to openly accuse the administrator of the Province of Finland of having, by his reports of an insurrection in

* The Russian military organ, Russky Invalid, in No. 138,. for 1905, has shown the character and aims of these contemporary rifle clubs in Finland.

•f In the Memorandum to the Emperor which the Prince himself took very great pains to spread about in the highest spheres of St. Petersburg.

J The other ships came up and joined on the day after the arrival of the " Slava."

§ For example, see the ltd Hdmi of October n, etc.

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preparation, caused false information to be given to His Majesty.

In point of fact, as is now clear, the Finlander revolu- tionaries had decided to await the general political strike in Petersburg.

Soon after this Prince Obolensky, visiting Petersburg, .graciously put himself at the disposal of a correspondent of the Novoe Vremja, and to him, among other things, very freely and off-handedly attempted to prove to him something to the effect that a revolution in Finland with the object of splitting it off from Russia would never come about, and that if rifles really had been delivered, they would have to be distributed and even when distri- buted they would not fire of themselves,* that the squadron had visited Finland merely as a " military promenade," and that, in general, the Finlanders could not do anything fraught with any danger to Russia.

In full accord with the views of his chief, the Governor of Vasa, a local-born official of Russian extraction, named Knipovich, explained to representatives of the Nikolaistadt papers that he could categorically assure them that the arms captured on board the " John Graf ton " were intended not at all for the Finlanders but for the Russian revolutionaries.

Prince Obolensky, not being in a position to deny the fact that the arms had been found, nevertheless remained

••' See No. 10618 of the Novoe Vremja. It is to be regretted that this respectable newspaper did not print those replies which were sent to it in refutation of Prince Obolensky.

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true to himself and entrusted the investigation into the affair solely to the local officials, the consequence of which was a systematic series of escapes from custody of those who had been arrested in connection with this matter, under the very eyes of the gendarmes whose instructions bound them to refrain from exceeding the part they were ordered to play as mere spectators.

Events very quickly showed how much truth there was in the assurances of Prince Obolensky, whether about the " tranquil waters " of Transund and Biorke or in his remarks in the columns of the Novoe Vremja.

Taking advantage of the fact that in the Empire itself ( the outbreak of sedition was assuming a more and more serious aspect, engrossing the attentions of the highest ruling spheres, the Finlanders, in alliance with the Russian revolutionaries decided to put into execution a long- matured plan for an upheaval which should result in a nominal, if nothing more, independence of Russian authority.

At the general conference, held April 2-9, 1905, of the united revolutionary parties : the Social-Revolutionary "Russian, Sociafistr^Polish, Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Finnish Party of Active Resistance, Georgian Federalist-Revolutionary Socialist Party, Lettish Social- Democratic Union, and the White Russian Socialist Assembly, it was resolved to " close the last accounts with the expiring forces of Autocracy," taking advantage of the two merciless wars — abroad and at home — which were rending Russia's vitals, and then, after gaining

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the one common end by their united action, to follow there- after each its own private objects. In the proclamations issued by the conference, signed by all the above-mentioned revolutionary parties, was announced the unavoidable necessity of gaining, by means of a general armed insur- rection, the overthrow of the dynasty and of seizing the power into the hands of constituent assemblies " of the nationalities who denned themselves," hitherto bound by the Autocracy, like convicts, on one chain. The structure of each separate nation should be re-erected independently on democratic-republican foundations : Finland, Poland and the Caucasus take no part in the constituent assembly of representatives of the State of all the Russias, and, in relation to Finland all parties have unanimously resolved to demand : (i) The abrogation of all measures " insulting " to its constitutional rights ; (2) the introduction of a democratic regime based on the universal right to vote ; and (3) the prohibition of any manner of interference of the Russian Government in its

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national development.*

It is highly significant that Finland did not proceed to strike simultaneously with the events of the same char- acter in the Empire, but only after the Finlanders became aware of the intention having been formed to issue an Imperial Manifesto giving to the inhabitants of all Russia liberty of conscience, speech, press, meetings and unions, and extending the powers of the State Duma to include

* See Proclamation No. 6 of the " Finnish Party of Active Resistance."

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the right of control over all officials and organs of the Government, and the principle that no law could be issued without its consent, The Finlanders had been diametri- cally opposed to the movement in Russia for the summoning of a State Duma from its inception, and had manifested a positive aversion to taking part in a general Russian representative assembly. They considered their Diet fully sufficient for themselves, even indeed for the legislative settlement of general State questions. When the Finlanders read in the Statutes of the State Duma an indication of the obligation to send representatives of Finland also in the settlement of general State questions concerning Finland, they immediately took alarm, and as soon as they learned that the Manifesto of October 17/30 contained no special clause safeguarding the relations of Finland they at once resolved to seize the opportunity and produce pressure on the Russian Government,, calculating thereby to obtain the concessions they desired.

Thus the events which happened in Finland from October 17 to 25, although to some extent they resembled those that had occurred somewhat earlier in the home provinces of the Empire and also entered into the general plan of the revolution, yet were evoked by altogether different and local causes of excitement.

At six o'clock in the evening of October 16, by which time Petersburg already knew the contents of the Imperial Manifesto, officially published on the following; day, the Petersburg station of the Finland Railway*

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•struck;* during the night the strike spread to Viborg and on the next day, the lyth, after workmen's meetings had been held everywhere, the whole network of railways in Finland struck work, with all the factories, works, places of trade, stores and shops, with the exception of those dealing in comestibles. On the following day, notwith- standing the publication in all newspapers f of the Imperial Manifesto of October 17J30 the strikes extended, not only to all the educational establishments, with the Imperial Helsingfors Alexander University at the head of them, but also to the majority of the Government institutions, not excepting also the Finnish Senate. From ten o'clock in the morning of this day the electric tramways ceased to run in the town, the telephone was closed, as also the electric lighting and gas lighting, and all carting business was stopped. The Helsingfors municipal representatives assembled in extraordinary session and resolved to express their sympathy with the strikers and to give them their support. The students and lyceum-boys went round all the schools in a body, stopping work in them all. This crowd even made its appearance in the Russian boys and girls schools, and here they put forward as the pretext for striking, the feeling of joy at the issue of the Imperial Manifesto ! Neverthe- less, though some newspapers in the country, on the

* The employees of this station who the day before had de- clined to join the Russian strikers now did so on the demand of -^special ^emissaries sent from Helsingfors.

f Which appeared on this day for the last time before the .strike of compositors began.

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ground of the granting of liberty of the press in this Manifesto, made their appearance without the customary preliminary censure, there were no signs to be found any- where else that the Finlanders recognised this act of State as having any obligatory force for Finland. And a strike of this kind took place over the whole country, everywhere at once.

At eleven o'clock in the morning of the nth, the Com- mander of the 22nd Army Corps was summoned to the Governor-General, who had warned Lieutenant-General Baron Salz already of the general strike, but now expressed doubts of the possibility of there being any serious disorders. His Excellency then indicated the necessity of bringing up the customary guard for the Governor- General's official residence with as much secrecy as pos- sible, in order to avoid exciting the people prematurely.

Being faced with such a situation, the possibility of which he had constantly denied, Prince Obolensky most ingeniously evolved a way out, which would enable him on the one hand to secure his own person from violence, and on the other to justify his acts before his sovereign and before Russia. Not finding in the Manifesto of October 17/30 any direct indication of its being extended also to- Finland he seized upon this and began to declare openly to all that this " omission " appeared to be an " error " of those who had drafted the Manifesto, wherefore he^ in order to avoid undesirable complications, intended immediately to discuss in concert with the Senate as to what measures ought to be taken in relation to Finland.

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According to the interpretation of Prince Obolensky, it thus came out that a Manifesto addressed to all true sub- jects of His Majesty had no relation to the inhabitants of Finland, which formed an inseparable part of the Empire, and that for the Finlanders it was essential that a special act of State should be issued. So in order to decide in what this special act of State should consist — and not at all for the purpose of carrying out the law and promul* gating in the order appointed in Finland, this Manifesto of October 17/30, Prince Obolensky invited to his own house * for 3 p.m. on the i8th the whole Finnish Senate in corpore. The Senators assembled in the official residence of the Governor-General because the Senate house was closed owing to the strike of the servants, and Prince Obolensky, besides, remembering the fatal date June 3, 1904^ was never particularly fond of visiting this building and used frequently to summon the Senators, quite illegally, to his private quarters to arrange private meetings.

When the Senators were assembled the Prince appeared before them in full gala uniform, read the Manifesto and then left them to discuss as to what should be done next.

Some time had elapsed after the opening of this sitting, when, at about half -past three o'clock, an enormous crowd

* During the whole tenure of his office as Governor-General, Prince Obolensky was never in the Senate more than four or five times, whereas his predecessor, Governor-General Bobrikov, had attended regularly every week on Thursdays.

t The date of the assassination of N. Bobrikov in the Senate House.

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of people all at once flooded the space before the Governor- General's residence, blocked up the esplanade and the streets debouching on it, and stopped all approach to the house. This crowd had just come from the meeting on the railway square,* and taking advantage of the almost total absence of police, who had been compelled all over the town to give up their arms, strip off their uniforms and go on strikef, succeeded in carrying out their inten- tions almost without hindrance.

At this moment, namely at 3.40 p.m., by order of the Governor of Finland, an official attached to the Governor- General despatched to the Commander of the 22nd Army Corps the following note : " A great crowd is assembling at the residence of the Governor-General, but so far is behaving in an orderly fashion. The attitude of the crowd does not promise anything good. Troops may be required at any moment. I report this in case to your Excellency. ' '

* Of which the Governor had been duly apprised.

t At about noon special groups were making the rounds of all the police, urging them to strike at and after 2 p.m. This proposition was made also to the police on point duty opposite the Governor- General's house, but these men refused. The Governor of Niwland Province, who was in the house, was immediately informed of this, but nevertheless took no pre- cautionary measures whatever (see letter in the Novoe Vremja, No. 10657). As, subsequently came to light, at the appointed time for the police strike, every policeman was surrounded by a group, removed from his post, disarmed, and reclothed. The majority were enrolled on the spot as members of the " muni- cipal police " then being formed ; some eighty (men who remained true to their service (almost exclusively Russians and Esthonian) could not even make their way to the Governor as they were nowhere allowed to pass through by the new volunteer police who were all provided with photographs of these incorruptible policemen.

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Soon after appeared at the residence of the Governor- General the Helsingfors Policemaster, a Swede named Av-Enegelm.* He was in very excited state, and reported to the Governor of Finland that the crowd desired that the Governor-General would immediately receive a depu- tation of five men, and that the attitude of the crowd was such that in his opinion this demand must absolutely be satisfied, or else he, the policemaster, would not be responsible for anything that followed. The Governor then ordered the policemaster to go in person out to the crowd and warn them that the Governor-General was occupied at that moment and could not receive the deputation. The policemaster very unwillingly fulfilled this mission, but when the door was opened to let him out the crowd forced their way in and held it open, while the deputation, under the leadership of the university graduate, Gummerus,t insisted upon forcing its way into the ante- room of the Governor-General. Gummerus, with an air of extreme insolence, marched right up to the Governor and asked him : " Who are you ? " and then, on receiving a reply, declared in the name of " the people " that he demanded to be immediately received by the Governor- General. To the proposal to wait a little in the reception

* Who had replaced the Russianised Finn Karlstedt when the latter was dismissed by Prince Obolensky.

f See above. Besides this graduate there were in the deputa- tion the poet, Arwid Merne, M. Stenberg, the teacher Gabriel Biode (brother of the ex-officer, a Finn, who was concerned in the assassination of the Minister of the Interior Sipjagin), and the student Jutseniemi.

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room until the termination of the sitting, until which time it was impossible to announce the deputation to the Governor-General, Gummerus repeatedly taking out his watch answered that " the people cannot be kept waiting," and went out at last to communicate what the Governor had said to the crowd, with the words : " we are going out now, but we shall return immediately." Speaking to the crowd from the porch of the Governor-General's residence Gummerus repeated to them the statement of the Gov- ernor, beginning with these words : " the unlawful Governor says."

The crowd insisted on their original demand being complied with " even if violence follow," and this was communicated to the Governor by the deputation who came back into the house. The Governor gave Way, and went to announce the deputation to the Governor-General on the second floor of the house. The Prince, who was in the drawing-room next door to the hall of portraits in which the Senators were in session, received the deputa- tion and it was admitted to the drawing-room. Gum- merus, in the name of the people, laid before the Prince in a very insolent form and in a loud, rude voice the demand that he with his Senators should submit their resignations on the spot. But when the Governor-General expressed his readiness to do so, and added : " You are aware that this amounts to a declaration of war ?" Gummerus replied : " Yes, it is war, but a war without weapons only." Then pointing to the door of the hall of portraits he asked : " Is that where the Senators are ? " and without waiting for

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any reply kicked the door open with his foot and the deputation after him burst in upon the session of the Senate. Here they repeated their demand that the Senators should resign. The latter lost their heads entirely, all but one, Senator Lang, a man of some energy, who rose and declared that having been appointed by the will of the Emperor, he could be replaced only by the same imperial will and therefore was unable to submit to the demand. The rest of the Senators held their peace and the youngest of them, Neovius ("Minister" of Finance *) in token of his entire contempt for the delegates of the " mob " turned his back upon them.

In the meantime there appeared below another deputa- tion in the name of the united meeting of constitutionalists and workmen, which had just come on from the fire brigade depot where they had been assembled. This deputation, notwithstanding that it comprised no less a personage than a former adjutant of Governor-General Count Heyden, a Baron von Kohten,-f behaved itself in the reception room, which was alongside the drawing-room

* Neovius, besides, was one of only two Senators (the other was Chilman), who declined to take a pension.

f Its other members were : (i) Inspector of town school, A von Blomerius (dismissed under Bobrikov from the post of director of the Lyceum for his anti-Government agitation) ;

(2) Assessor of the Hofgericht Swinhufvud (who defended Khokhenthal and had been a great agitator in the last Diet) ;

(3) Dr. H. Revel ; (4) lawyer Jonas Kastren, a member of the fighting organisation exiled under Bobrikov ; (5) bank director Lavonius ; (6) Magister Philosophise E. (?) Schaumann (brother

f the assassin of Bobrikov) ; and (7) the writer Tekla Khultin.

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in which the whole family of Prince Obolensky was assembled, with such easy familiarity and made so much noise that Senator Neovius was compelled to re- monstrate with them.

This second deputation the Governor-General received in the same drawing-room and invited them to take seats. They demanded the immediate abolition of the " dictator- ship " and other " illegal " ordinances, named in the " grand petition," the dismissal of all Russian officials who were to be replaced by persons " invested with the confidence of the people," the immediate resignation of the Minister State Secretary, the Governor-General and the Senators : the handing over of Prokope, the assassin of the Colonel of Gendarmes Kramarenko, who had been condemned by a military court, to the local court : the recall of the exiles Westlin and Ericson, who had at- tempted to assassinate the policemaster of Nikolaistadt, and, finally, the immediate summoning of an extraordinary Diet for the settlement of two questions, namely: (a) universal and equal voting power with the reconstruction of the administration of the country on modern democratic principles with a Government responsible to the Diet, and (b) the regulation of the question of the Budget. If all these demands, declared the delegates, be not satisfied we wash our hands of all responsibility for further conse- quences, and the strike will continue and grow like an avalanche on the move. The Governor-General replied that the issue of the Manifesto of October 17/30 in the Empire of itself implied the necessity of granting privileges

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of the same kind * also to Finland, and that an appeal to the Emperor to that effect would be made by the Senate,f and declared his readiness to petition for the summoning of the Diet ; as regarded his own dismissal from office, he declared that he would leave his post himself with pleasure if His Imperial Majesty would give him leave to do so. The deputation insisted upon his immediately leaving for Petersburg to petition the Emperor to grant all their demands, and one of them (Jonas Kastren) said : ' You have the ' Eleken ' under steam J ; you can start at once." All the demands of the deputation were expressed in Swedish by Bonsdorf, very calmly, but in a firm tone that admitted of no reply, and in the most precise form, emphasising every time the fact that this was not a " petition " but a " demand ; " he dictated every point in a voice of authority to the official attached to the person of the Governor-General (Count Eric Berg, grandson of a former Governor-General and enjoying the honour of a " Finlander " title), who humbly translated and carried out the frequent corrections impatiently made by Bonsdorf.

While all this was going on inside the house the great

* In the result a Manifesto was issued, that of October 22nd, but it had nothing whatever in common with the Manifesto of October i/th, and did not contain even the slightest reference to it.

t As we shall see later the Senate never had any idea of asking anything of the kind, but they did ask — something very different !

J The yacht of the lighthouse department, on which, no one knows by whose orders, steam had actually been got up with great forethought.

c 2

26

crowd outside waited with considerable restraint, and only the declaration of the first deputation which issued with Gummerus at the head to the effect that " Prince Obolensky is going to resign/' roused the crowd to loud shouts of joy.

During the time that the deputations were inside the house of the Governor-General the Russian national flag flying on all the Government buildings of the town, on the Senate, the railway station, the " Athenaeum," etc., were replaced by the newly invented Finlander colours, red with a yellow Finlander lion.

An attempt was also made to tear down the flag flying over the Governor-General's house, but when the bold spirits had climbed the balcony and were already getting up on the roof, some one in the crowd shouted " the Cossacks." A panic followed ; the mob rushed back from before the house, and a dozen or so persons suffered serious injuries in the rush while two were crushed to death.

The deputation of constitutionalists and the workmen who had joined with them, after being received by the Governor-General were admitted to the hall of portraits where the Senators were in session, and here, in the pres- ence of the portraits of all the Russian sovereigns, they made their demand that the Senate should resign in a body. Individual members of the deputation then held a conference with individuals among the Senators. The result of all this was the unanimous decision of the Senate to resign, and minute drawn up and signed by the Senators

27

was handed to the deputation. It ran as follows : " The members of both departments of the Senate here present declare publicly that they have resolved to resign." But even this was not enough. To intensify the humiliation of the Senators, Kastren compelled three of them who were more obnoxious than the rest, namely, Streng, Solman and Vuorenkheimo, to go out on the balcony of the Governor- General's house and announce to the crowd the resignation of the whole Senate, which was unhesitatingly performed, the faces of the three Senators being lighted up by cande- labra taken from the apartments of the Governor-General. This announcement was greeted by the mob with loud shouts of approval ; the crowd sang right through " Wort Land " and to the strains of the Bjerneborg March grad- ually dispersed towards seven o'clock in the evening.

During the whole time of this four hours' " siege " of the Governor-General's house, troops were never summoned to put an end to it although communications with them never ceased,* as was proved by the sending, a second time, at about five o'clock in the evening, the following letter of the Governor of Niwland Province to the Chief of the Staff of the 22nd Army Corps, received by the latter at 5.50 : "In consequence of the extremely tense attitude of the population which may require at any moment the

* Generally speaking communication with the outer world during the " siege " of the Governor-General's house was main- tained without interruption ; a whole series of messengers despatched from the house to different destinations duly arrived, and many persons, among them even officers, succeeded in making their way into the house.

28

intervention of armed forces I request Your Excellency to arrange that orders be given to the troops of the gar- rison to be in perfect readiness, so that at the first call they may march out of barracks and reach, with the utmost possible speed, such places as may be indicated, of which information follows." The receipt of such a letter con- fined the action of the Commander of the Army Corps nolens volens to putting the troops in their barracks in full marching order, appointing a detachment to the Governor- General's house from the companies hard by in the Guards' barracks, and transferring to the same barracks all the rest of the Cossacks of the Orenburg sotnia (squadron), that they might be at hand in case of a call from the Governor to utilise them for dispersing the crowd by force. It was the movement of these Cossacks at the end of the Esplanade Street farthest removed, and a very long way off the Governor-General's house, that caused the panic in the crowd referred to above. This episode goes to prove, among other things, how easy it would have been at that time to disperse the crowd without even having recourse to arms, and that, at any rate, there was no very pressing necessity to submit so humbly to such insolent demands. It is a significant feature of the whole affair that after this a deputation from the inhabitants came to the ex-commander of the 3rd Finnish Rifle Battalion — who continued to occupy his old quarters in the Guards' barracks — to beg him, as a fellow countryman, to use his influence to have the Cossacks, as the cause of the accidents that had happened, immediately ordered off !

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The evening of the i8th and the succeeding night passed in Helsingfors in outward tranquility ; there were no gatherings of crowds, and the town, plunged in darkness, in the midst of which here and there flitted the electric pocket lamps of the newly appeared " volunteer watch," seemed dead and deserted.

This " watch," or " self-enrolled police/' had been organised by orders of the town magistracy by an ex- Policemaster (dismissed under Bobrikov) before the appointment of Karlstedt, and entered upon its duties immediately after the overthrow of the Government police. The distinguishing mark of these " police " was a white arm-band. Among them were not a few students and afterwards also a good many Finns and Swedes of the former police force, amounting to a total of about a thou- sand ; they took possession of the buildings of the central police office and the sectional stations, and disarmed the police reserve whom they compelled in the presence of the crowd to lay down their arms on the Senate Square. The new " police " * immediately instituted the strictest obser- vation over the Governor-General's house, and afterwards, of all Russian houses, as well as over the telegraph, noting all who entered or left these places, and even asked persons unknown to them, or stopping them and ascertaining their identity at the police office, whither they were taken in custody. This continued right up to October 21 (the day on which the Governor-General transferred himself to the battleship " Slava "), and at one time all access to * Afterwards replaced by the " National Guard."

30

the telegraph* was absolutely prohibited. Among those taken in custody and brought to the police office for examination were many officials of the Chancellery of the Governor-General (except such as wore a military uniform, who were merely recognised by the light of the electric pocket lamps which had been given out to every " policeman ") ; the special messenger of His Imperial Majesty to the President of the French Republic, Kammer- herr Stojanovsky, who was on his way back to Russia and got to Finland owing to the strike of the St. Petersburg- Warsaw Railway, was conducted from the Governor- General's house through a chain of the " National Guard " only thanks to the intervention of the director of the Pilot and Lighthouse Department, Major-General Sheman, of the Admiralty, who proffered his services to the unlucky Imperial messenger.

Following on the disarming and removal of the police, the members of the corps of gendarmes who were quar- tered in Helsingfors were, by orders of the Governor- General, and in order to save them from persecution, partly disguised in civil clothes and partly transferred to Sveaborg. Orders were also issued to those of the police who remained faithful and became part of the guard of the Governor-General and continued to carry on their detective duties to disguise themselves likewise in civil clothes. As to the Policemaster who was the whole day

I* As will be seen below, the telegraph as well as the telephone and the railways did not cease to operate ; but they were utilised only by the seditious exclusively for revolutionary purposes.

31

of the i8th in the house of the Governor-General, he was missing on the next and following days, having concealed himself so successfully that no one even knew where to find him.

One of the first things done by the new Municipal police when they entered on their duties was to destroy every- where the portraits of the Emperor (some of them were found in very unbefitting places),* portraits of the assas- sinated Governor-General Bobrikov and also the Holy Eikons. There were cases of the most outrageous blas- phemy, and they occurred in all quarters. Some of the details of the conditions under which the activity of the lawful police was put an end to in Helsingfors found ex- pression in a letter to the Novoe Vremja (No. 10657) from some of the members of the force who had gone through it. This letter brings out very clearly the dubious part played by the Policemaster and the "Russian" Governor, Lvovsky,^ who were both of them guilty, not merely of want of energy but of absolute negligence of duty.

By the morning of the igth information had been re- ceived that all the railways, with the railway telegraphs and telephones, were in the hands of the revolutionaries, who were making use of them ; communication by the

* In one case the tearing down of portraits of the Emperor and Empress was done solemnly before an immense concourse of people, who shouted with joy in applause of the deed.

f Who had just been appointed by Prince Obolensky and was to be, as the Prince himself put it, a " drawing-room police- master."

32

State telegraph was interrupted in places and the head telegraph office in Helsingfors itself was subjected to the closest observation by the " watch," who did not allow anyone in without examining into the contents and des- tination of their telegrams,* and later closed the office entirely to private telegrams from Russian residents and at one time even refused to pass Service telegrams.

From all sides information was coming in of the enrolling of militia, the cadres of which were found in the former Finnish troops and their officers. The distribution of the orders for what they called their " mobilisation," was effected at first by sending messengers on horseback round the villages, but afterwards the telephone got to work and railway trains were also sent to bring up rein- forcements to Helsingfors. This was arranged by a committee of five formed by the rebels for the administra- tion of the railways, and special posters were pasted up all about the town, informing the people that the railways were in the hands of the " National Guard." This " National Guard " was formed principally out of workmen and common people, and by the third day of the disorders (October 20) had almost entirely displaced the Municipal police. At its head, in Helsingfors, was one of the leading Social Democrats, an ex-captain of the Finnish troops named Koch, who also for nearly a week playecl the part of the prefect of Helsingfors. The new " labour " police

* From information in our possession it appears that a number of private telegrams accepted at Helsingfors for transmission and received at Helsingfors from other places, were never delivered to their destinations.

33

donned red armbands, and the vast body of organised workmen who formed a sort of reserve for the force began gradually to evince a more and more hostile feeling toward the Swedomans.

From the morning of the igth there began to present themselves to the Governor-General a long list of new deputations from all kinds of political groups. Each of these groups endeavoured to produce a conviction that the deputations of the previous evening had been repre- sentatives merely of the " street," and that not one of the political parties had ever empowered them to demand the resignation of the Governor-General. Instead of this they demanded the summoning, with all possible speed, of an extraordinary Diet, and the satisfaction of all the demands contained in the Grand Petition ; besides this they sought to secure the further development of a " State " organisation in Finland, without any kind of connection with the new principles on which the recon- struction of the Empire itself was maturing.

In addition to this the Old Finn and the Constitutional Parties formed separate groups of authoritative persons, in accordance with the invitation of Prince Obolensky himself, given the evening before to Baron Wrede * and

* A professor, an ardent separatist, and bosom friend of Baron Born, of Mechelin and of Anteli ; he had been exiled from Finland to Reval in June, 1904, after the assassination of N. Bobrikov, on the demand of the Adjunct Minister State Secretary, E. Erstrem, who was then acting Chancellor of the Imperial Alex- ander Helsingfors University, and in 1905, on his return from exile, was appointed, by the influence of the same Erstrem, Rector of the University.

34

Danielson (Vice-Chancellor of the University and head of the Old Finn Party) whom he summoned to him for the purpose. To these persons the Prince proposed to work jointly under the supreme guidance of Leo Mechelin on the drafting of legislative bills rendered necessary by the existing situation. These drafts the Prince wished to compare with that drawn up the night before by the Senators, their " swan's song," for presentation to the Emperor, and to lay all together before the sovereign for his consideration. The Old Finns, however, were not long before they slipped away from the ferule of Mechelin and the latter assumed thenceforward entire command. To the waving of his baton even the Governor-General himself, a Russian prince of the ancient house of Rurik, yielded implicit obedience. This is plain, if only from the fact that he, who had so often and at such length dilated on the necessity of having representatives of Fin- land in the State Duma and the share which Finland should take in the decision of general State questions, now, suddenly, as it were, ceased to notice that the objects aimed at by the Constitutionalists who were enjoying his support were not merely the overthrow of the " Bob- rikov Regime " but also the equalising of the rights of local representative assembly with the rights of the general Imperial Duma, thereby effecting the double object of rendering it superfluous to send representatives to the State Duma,, and guaranteeing themselves beforehand from any inter- ference by the State Duma in the affairs of Finland. One of the Labour parties alone (to which later adhered also

35

in part the Old Finns) sharply differentiated itself from these demands. This party desired that the universal right to vote should be introduced, not by means of the Diet, but that it should be directly granted by Imperial Order, after which the local legislative elected on these new principles should proceed to elaborate the necessary reforms for the country in the direction of perfecting its internal legislation. The representatives of this party, in contradistinction to all the rest, did not look askance at the State Duma and were willing for representatives of Finland to take part in it for the decision of general State questions ; in the local Diet, on the other hand, which under the existing suffrage system was the repre- sentative solely of the " masters " (i.e., of one-tenth of the population) they had not a jot of confidence, and the very idea of the possibility of the suffrage question being entrusted to that body for settlement aroused tremendous excitement. The mutual dislike between the Constitu- tional and the Labour parties grew to such a height that the Swedish population of the town of Helsingfors began hurriedly to get away in the night, and many of the peace- ful inhabitants made interested inquiries as to when at last the troops would exercise some proper pressure on the workmen, to make them go back to work and restore the normal course of life.

While all this was going on the " National Guard " had been got in readiness everywhere ; on the squares and other open spaces of the town, company drills were regularly in progress, and the arrayed battalions of the

36

" Guard " not infrequently marched demonstratively past the windows of the barracks occupied by the Russian troops. At the same time every kind of slander was spread, and even appeared in the newspapers, about the supposed disaffection among the Russian troops ; and at this time the revolutionaries were particularly active in flooding the barracks with " proclamations " addressed to the soldiers in which it was solemnly declared that the soldiers all over Russia had laid down their arms, that the Government had been overthrown in St. Petersburg, and that the people had taken the reins of power into their own hands. These " proclamations " in point of fact still further intensified the indignation of the Russian troops who had seen committed before their very eyes, openly and with impunity, the most insolent acts of contempt and violence upon Russians and the Russian power. Officers relate that the privates many a time begged per- sistently to be served with ball-cartridge and be led out against the rebels. All were eager to serve their " Little Father, the Czar " and their beloved fatherland with honour, and they did not spare the author of all the shames they had witnessed ; he got in all its fulness the feelings of the Russian heart expressed through all the wide limits of the rich lexicon of Russian abuse ! The sailors, too, were highly excited, especially aboard the battleship " Slava," where Prince Obolensky afterwards took up his residence. In Helsingfors there was a persistent rumour kept up to the effect that the officers, in order to quiet their men and to prevent any sudden outbursts, found it necessary to

37

assure them that the Czar himself would judge the doings of Prince Obolensky.

The night before October 20 passed tranquilly. Out- wardly, the situation had undergone no change this day, though the increasing tension was betrayed by the more frequent assemblages, in a more regular organisation of the task of drilling the mob in military formations, in the arranging for rifle practice in the Kaisaniemi park and the opening all about the town of field-hospital points marked by red crosses on the lamps, the main hospital point being in the Hotel Kemp. Persistent reports were in circulation of the arrival of a large quantity of arms in the town, partly by steamer and party by the Abo- Kari Railway. The distribution of arms was carried on in secret ; those who obtained them carried them home through the streets wrapped up in newspapers. A cred- ible witness saw two maxims brought through the town by night on two- wheeled carriages. The head-quarters of the " fighting organisation " of the Constitutionalists was in the building of the students' society of the Province of Niwland. Towards evening was prepared at last the draft of the Imperial Manifesto, and Mechelin, who re- peatedly consulted the Prince, was all the time trying to hasten its despatch to its destination, urging the extreme tension of all men's minds and the momentary possibility of an outbreak of bloodshed. Mechelin himself drew up the Manifesto and brought the result of his labours to receive the approval of Prince Obolensky. The latter, it is said, made only a few insignificant changes in forms

38

of expression of no consequence and then Mechelin took the Manifesto away with him again to settle finally its contents together with his colleagues on the revolutionary committee. Thence he despatched a holograph MS. in his own handwriting entitled " the draft of an authorita- tive group of persons led by M. Mechelin," and this, by order of the Governor-General was copied out fair, with all the matter appended to it, in his own Chancellery under the personal direction of the Director of the Chancellery, Colonel Sein. For Mechelin's approval was presented also the covering despatch, so that, in point of fact, Mechelin inspected and passed the entire contents of the packet sent to St. Petersburg. At eight o'clock in the evening the petition of the Governor-General concerning the issue of the Manifesto with the drafts of the Senate and of Mechelin, but without any personal suggestions of any kind from Prince Olobensky himself, was despatched from Finland on the pilot service boat " Eleken," with the Director of the Pilot Service, Sheman. General Vatatsi ex-Governor of St. Michael's, who had just been appointed Governor of Kiev, and was hastening to Petersburg on the duties of his service, begged to be taken aboard, but Sheman found various pretexts for evading this request.

On the next day, the 2ist, the accession day ol the Emperor, the usual service was appointed in the Cathedral of the Assumption. The Governor-General left his resi- dence in his carriage, without the Cossack escort, which he left behind him at home. The bazaar square was lined

39

with the " National Guard," which had roped off the foot- walks as was usually done by the police, and the Governor- General passed from the house to the cathedral under the exclusive escort of this " Guard." It was said that on the preceding evening " Captain " Koch, who had assumed the rank of commander of the " National Guard " was sent for to the Governor-General's and received from the Governor of Niwland, Colonel Lvovsky, and Burgo- master Gartman the necessary instructions for the follow- ing day. The story is even told that Prince Obolensky at first requested the military authorities to march the troops who were to take part in the parade past the Governor-General's house in such order, that he might, by stepping in between their ranks, reach the cathedral under their protection. Such a use of troops was however considered as somewhat inconvenient by the command- ing officer, and the Prince nolens volens had to entrust the protection of his person to the " National Guard."

At the conclusion of the parade which was taken by the Corps Commander an unwonted surprise awaited the Russian residents of Helsingfors. The Governor-General, with his family, after leaving the cathedral in their car- riage, simply disappeared. At any rate he did not return home, and up to five o'clock in the afternoon no one in the town knew where he was. Even the servants left in the house knew nothing, and the Governor of Kiev, who was the guest of the Governor-General and had been invited to lunch with him on that day waited with his wife in vain

40

for his host and hostess until half-past three, and only then learned that they would not return.

The disappearance of the Governor-General gave rise to some alarming reports in the town, as well as others little redounding to the honour of the Russian authorities. Some said the Prince had been seized and was kept in custody by the rebels, who were holding him as a hostage, others that he had been put under arrest as a traitor by the Russian officers, others again that he had delivered himself up to the revolutionaries, that he had fled to the squadron and was making his way thence by Sveaborg to Reval, that in fine, he had died a violent death at the hands of the sailors of the " Slava " enraged at his conduct, etc., etc. Under the effect of these stories the foreign Consuls all took the excitement, the more so that some unknown persons had already announced to them the overthrow of the Russian power in Finland and the sub- stitution for it of some sort of " temporary government," which had no use whatever for them. The alarmed Consular body rushed to make inquiries, of course, first of all to the Governor-General. And highly delighted and relieved they were to find the Russian flag still flying over the official residence ! All must, of course, be well ! But on making inquiry for the Governor-General of the porter their fears were aroused once more : the Governor- General was " not at home, and it was not known where he was," answered the lackey. So the poor foreigners went running about in all directions making inquiries ,^until some good soul took pity on them and told them that

both the Governor and the Governor-General and all their staff were on the island of Skatudden, under the administration of the port of Sveaborg, spending most of their time aboard the squadron which had arrived in the roads about three o'clock in the afternoon of that day. Thither the Consuls hied them on the very next day, the 22nd, to explain their situation to the Governor, and were tranquillised by having appointed to each one of them a guard of three armed soldiers, who were to serve as a token that the Russian authority still existed in the country. The German Consul alone must be excepted from this account, for he, without troubling to make any inquiries anywhere and even without going outside his house, wired off to his Government to send him a German ship of war.

About four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Obolensky transferred himself from the port to the battleship " Slava " on which he continued to live up to the end of October, but without ever hoisting the special flag appro- priate to his rank as Governor-General of Finland. All this time the Prince almost every day, about noon, would visit the administration of the port, where he received deputa- tions, reports and visitors, and returned to dinner to his family on board the battleship, where he mostly spent his hours of leisure at the green table so strictly prohibited aboard our ships of war.

It is related that Prince Obolensky used to explain his departure from his official residence and his transference to the squadron as caused by the necessity of escaping

42

from a state of captivity and securing " freedom of action ; " it is said that he even proposed to the troops of the garrison to abandon their barracks with all the stores and property therein and pass over to the island of Skatudden, so as not to risk being surrounded in their barracks by the rebels and be deprived of their water- supply. At the same time the Prince promised to arrange for the whole of the Russian population of the town to be taken off, partly to the fortress of Sveaborg and partly to Russia,* and that he actually issued the necessary orders for this move. This plan, however, it appears was not accepted, probably because the military authori- ties could not bring themselves to imagine that troops perfectly ready to take the field and more than filled with the spirit of military daring ought to think only of their own proper safety !

In view of the alarming intelligence that reached the Corps Commander on the evening of the 2ist the suc- ceeding night was passed by the troops under arms. The search-lights of the squadrons and the fortress lighted up the town as if it was day ; the troops punctually performed patrol duty and kept up constant communi- cations with one another ; the Skatudden bridge throughout the night was entirely closed to all traffic, and the island itself was cleared by the patrols of the self-styled police and private persons. The night passed, however, quietly.

* In point of fact they were not taken off anywhere, but those whose hearts failed them made the best of their way them- selves to the fortress or anywhere else as seemed them best.

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On the morning of the 22nd posters were everywhere displayed, by order of the strikers, announcing that the command of the town had been handed over to Lieutenant- General Baron Salza. From this day forth the "Com- mander of the National Guard " Johann Koch began to present himself every day to the Corps Commander with a report in the Russian language * to the effect that all was well in the town. To the Corps Commander there came, besides, many representatives of the local popula- tion, who were obviously strongly impressed by the arrival of the squadron and the measures taken in the evening before and throughout the night by the troops of the garri- son. Baron Salza replied to all in the same form, that the troops would not take the initiative, but if, which Heaven forfend, any violence were offered to any of the Russian residents retribution would be swift and heavy. The result of this was that Koch issued a printed notice dated November 3, N.S., addressed to the Russian residents of the town of Helsingfors in which he assured, them that the "National Guard was under the obligation to preserve strict order and in particular to take all care that no one of the Russians should run any risks of danger or rude treatment," and requested that any complaints on this head might be addressed to the central police

* This shows amongst other things that the Finnish Social Democrats' attitude to the Russian language is more respectful than that of the Constitutionalists, who, when they received full powers under Governor-General Gerardt, began first of all by banishing the Russian language altogether from the Senate, in defiance of the Manifesto of October 22nd.

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office. Another identical lithographed appeal was cir- culated in the name of the " Stud en Strike Committee." Considerably later, that is to say, on November 5 or 6, N.S. notifications were issued by the Governor of Finland * without date, but they did not actually reach anybody except a few Russian servants and travellers living in the hotels. The majority of the Russian residents of the town, merchants, traders, workmen, time-expired soldiers and others, never had a chance of seeing these notifica- tions at all. Yet it was principally among these classes of the Russian population that the greatest panic prevailed, increased by the absolute ignorance as to their fate and the prevalent rumours which were of the most threatening character.

To sum up the situation, from the moment when Prince Obolensky transferred himself to the battleship " Slava," the state of affairs stood as follows : The highest repre- sentatives of the Imperial authority in the country had taken up for himself a position which enabled him, accord- ing as things might turn out, at any moment to wash his hands quite easily of all responsibility for anything that might happen. The military authorities, 'on the other

* The following is the text (translation) :

NOTIFICATION OF THE GOVERNOR OF NIWLAND. " In view of the reports circulating in the town I consider it my duty to bring to the public knowledge of the Russian residents, with the object of tranquilising their minds, the fact that their fate is equally dear alike to the civil and to the military authorities, who will use every effort to prevent any injury or loss being inflicted upon any Russians. (No date.)

Governor-Colonel A. LVOVSKY

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hand, remaining all the time at their posts were actually deprived of any sort of initiative, since they had not been definitely given the necessary freedom of action. Even in these circumstances of such extraordinary importance the Prince, in obedience to the evasive character of his nature, always inclined to avoid definite decisions, remained true to himself.

About five o'clock in the evening of the 22nd General Sheman returned from St. Petersburg on the " Eleken." His arrival was already awaited and a large crowd of people had assembled on the square near the landing stage. As soon as the general, in the character of the messenger of peace, had disembarked, the crowd demanded that he should communicate the contents of the Manifesto, and he had great difficulty in extricating himself. The Manifesto was handed to the Governor, who carried it off with him aboard the " Slava." In the evening, at the summons of the Governor-General, certain of the former Senators were conveyed to the battleship, and also a number of the " authoritative persons " of the Mechelin group and members of other parties. But among them was neither " Captain" Koch nor Matti Kurikka, i.e. the representatives of the Labour Democratic Party, owing to a " misunderstanding " which caused them to arrive too late.* The Governor-General received the invited persons (many of whom turned up in lounge suits) in full gala

* The invitations were sent out by General Sheman who did not, it may be supposed, find it particularly convenient to have the representatives of the above-mentioned democrats present.

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uniform, and solemnly read aloud to them the Imperial Manifesto, which was translated into Swedish on the spot by Count Berg. When the question came up of the publication of the Manifesto one of those present proposed that the Senate be summoned in a private house, in view of the continuance of the strike. The Governor-General did not give his consent to this, but declared that the publication of the Manifesto must be made in the regular order ; that is to say in the Senate house and on condition of the cessation of the strike and restoration of perfect order in the town. Nevertheless, copies of the Manifesto were given by him on the spot to be circulated generally among the public.

Burgomaster Gartman, who was among those present * could not answer for the restoration of order immediately, and only hoped that it might be attained a day later. In point of fact it turned out to be impossible to arrange the assembling of the Senators on the 23rd. The workmen

who were not satisfied with the contents of the Manifesto

•i . i »

continued to murmur and were unwilling to go back to work.

A workmen's deputation f presented itself to Prince

* Whom the " red guard " had no idea of ever obeying as the previous " white guard " had done.

f Hufvudstadsbladet, Thursday, November 9th, No. 299. This deputation consisted of the six persons elected by the workmen to form a " temporary government " which they wished to put in power in place of the Senate over the adminis- tration of the country, and proposed, as their own list of candi- dates for the post of Senators. It is curious that in the number of these twenty-four candidates were to be found representatives

47

Obolensky consisting of six persons, who pointed out that the workmen had been trying for some decades already to secure the general suffrage, and as they had so often been deceived by the Constitutionalists they did not intend to believe them any more and demanded, in place of the Diet, the summoning of a national assembly on the principles of universal suffrage, which should be, as a preliminary, granted from the height of the throne. When Prince Obolensky referred to the Manifesto of October 22, which laid upon the Senate the duty of drafting new Statutes for the Diet precisely on the lines of universal and equal suffrage, they replied that they had indeed seen in the burgomaster's hands some piece of paper or other, but as it was unsigned they could not put any trust in its contents. They added that their strike would continue until the demands of the workmen were satisfied. In reply to this Prince Obolensky said that " The Grand Duke of Finland, as a constitutional monarch, could not commit a violation of the fundamental law of the Diet by summoning a national assembly," and that the drafting of the new

of the most diverse parties and professions ; here were the heads of the old Finns (Danielson), the Young Finns (Ero Erikko), the Swedomans (Leo Mechelin, third from the end of the list) • at the head of the list stood a number of people known to nobody' unless the workmen knew them, perhaps rather too well, teachers, doctors, carpenters, road-makers, etc. In a word the workmen had prepared a regular " salad," adding by way of a mitigating oil even the superannuated old General Ramsay ! But their proposals were not accepted, just as the project of Linder also was not accepted for a mixed Swedoman-Fennoman Senate ; what the Finlanders had to take was a set of pure-blooded Constitutionalists of the most veritable "made in Stockholm" type.

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law could only be done through the Diet, and if this Diet did not carry through the amendments in the fundamental law in the desired sense a new Diet would be immediately summoned for that purpose. Further, the Prince pointed out that the draft of the Manifesto had been based on a compilation made by him of the views of all parties,* and that he was therefore surprised to find that the workmen were dissatisfied with it and wished to continue the strike, a course of action that could only be understood as a protest against the Manifesto.

Thanks to the influence of the more moderate elements, urged thereto by the Governor-General, the workmen at length softened down and decided to stop the strike for the time being, but all the same to request the Governor- General once more to satisfy their demands. This decision was confirmed the same evening by a mixed deputation of workmen and Old Finns, among whose members were to be found several former Senators. While expressing to the Governor-General their acknowledgments for all that he had done for Finland, this deputation nevertheless requested him to bring to the notice of His Majesty the fact that there existed in the country a considerable group of local residents, " amounting to several tens of thousands of men/' who " stood on one side and apart without taking any share in the general rejoicings." It is curious that in the address to the Emperor from the

* We have seen above that this draft was drawn up almost solely by Mechelin who took into his counsels only his own party, the Constitutionalists.

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Old Finn Party — the text of which was published by the Russian telegraphic agency — only the expressions of loyal feeling and the thanks to Prince Obolensky were included, but all mention of the group of the population standing apart was omitted. As to the party of Constitutionalists who alone, flinging themselves head foremost into the movement, had got out of it all they wanted, they were precisely the party which presented no loyal addresses to the sovereign nor uttered any expression of thanks to the Governor-General.

But later on they did not omit to thank him in their special organ, Hufvudstadsbladet, on the day of the final departure of the Prince from Finland, with the words : " The period of this Governor-General's administration has been distinguished by unintermittent vacillation, indecision, and postponements of the most important questions for settlement " and this period was for the history of the country " a featureless epoch," " a period of postponements and half -measures." The one service of the Prince, in the opinion of this paper, was that he " had understood the requirements of the age and had got away in time."*

On the 24th at eleven o'clock in the morning the Mani- festo was read in full session of the Senate, held in the Senate House. A crowd of people assembled on the square before the Senate eagerly caught the printed copies of the Manifesto flung them from the balcony of the Senate. The shops gradually opened, the cabs, trams, etc., were * No 309, November iQth, N.S.

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moving once more, the telephone, etc., again at work. The railways finally got going again only on the 25th. From this date onwards the first news also began to come in that could be relied on of what had taken place in the rest of the country. At night Helsingfors, for the first time since the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the poet Runeberg, was illuminated. Candles burned in all the windows. Everywhere could be seen the symbols of the " union " (crossed flags, the Russian with the " red-yellow " arrangement) ; the magistracy engaged a band to play on the Senate square. This band, by secret instructions it was said, performed once only the Russian Hymn* " God guard the Emperor," which was listened to indifferently, and then immediately passed on to the beloved patriotic repertoire with the notorious " Bjerneborg March " and " Wortland " to lead off with, and these were sung enthusiastically by a crowd of thousands, with shouts of "Eleken"fin honour of the " fatherland."

On the next day at two o'clock on the same square assembled the strikers, and under the shadow of their red emblems solemnly resolved to suspend the strike until the Diet began its labours, the course of which would then indicate whether it would be necessary to resume it.

Prince Obolensky spent yet another week after this aboard the battleship " Slava." Rumours flew in the town, at first obscure but gradually taking a more and more

* Which in Russia is always played through thrice. (Trans.) j- Finnish for " Long live."

definite form, that the Prince no longer came ashore, that he was going under convoy of the squadron to St. Peters- burg to report to the Emperor, that the Prince had sent in his resignation and that it had been accepted, finally, that his resignation was not altogether voluntary. All doubts were finally dispersed when on the morning of Friday, November 4, newspapers' " specials " flew about the town of Helsingfors announcing that the office of Governor-General had been temporarily entrusted to the Commander of the 22nd Army Corps, Lieut .-General Salza. Some four days before this the Prince had unex- pectedly left the battleship " Slava " and repaired to his official residence where he managed to receive several service reports ; still earlier he had been visited by the Adjunct Minister, State Secretary Erstrem, who, it was said, had taken away with him to St. Petersburg all the necessary materials for drawing up a report to the sovereign on all that had occurred. Thus, it had been decided beforehand that the story of the course of the revolution in Finland should be composed not on the spot where the events happened but at St. Petersburg, and withal under the supervision of Erstrem of whose devotion to himself as well as his affection for the Finlanders the Prince could have no possible doubts. At the same time this method had the advantage of excluding from any hand in the report to the throne those who were eye- witnesses of the events, who alone, of course, were in a position to give trustworthy information and throw a true light on the whole story. There was also an intention,

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it was said, to draw up an official Government com- munique on the events in Finland, on the pretext of refut- ing the false and garbled accounts given by the newspapers and the telegraph ; this statement also was to be got up under the guidance of the same Erstrem, but it has not yet seen the light of day ! It thus fell out that while innumerable Government communiques have been ap- pearing of late, not infrequently upon matters of insignifi- cant importance, an event of such capital importance as the revolution in Finland has remained officially unre- corded in any form for the public eye. Possibly the reason for this may be found in the fact that any statement in the Press of the events which so agitated the Russian public if told on the basis of strictly accurate documents and the evidence of eye-witnesses, would have thrown such a full and clear light upon the conduct of Prince Obolensky and certain of the Governors that any further attempts to justify this conduct would only have done more harm than good.*

The last days of his tenure of office the Prince devoted, strictly speaking, to two matters : the disbandment and remuneration of the " National Guard " and the drawing up of telegrams to Peterhof describing the choral singing

* A brilliant example of this unsuccessful attempt at justifica- tion is to be found in the letter of the Prince's brother, Prince A. Obolensky, to the Novoe Vremja, in which he sets out to prove, to the intense amusement of readers acquainted with the biography of the Prince, that the Naval School gives the highest grade of education and that the experience gained by a Marshal of Nobility in the provinces admirably fits him to hold the highest posts in the administration of the Empire.

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of thousands of grateful Finns who performed the Russian hymn, the laying of wreaths and flowers at the foot of the Throne, statements of the thanks expressed by the foreign Consuls for their " protection " and a number of equally interesting idyls.

Receiving for the last time the commander of the " National Guard," Captain Koch, the Prince thanked him for the good order in the town and even embraced and kissed him. Koch, encouraged beyond all bounds, in disbanding his corps of five or six thousand men, made an inflammatory speech in which he referred to the " swiftness in attack " which his " guards " had shown in joining his standard. If they had even at the first attempt at a levy so admirably responded to the call, they had fully proved their readiness for the " great affair," and this was a promising guarantee for the future.*

As if this were not enough, the ex-Senate, on the advice of the Prince, set about an appeal to the Emperor to sanc- tion the distribution of a largess to the " guards " for their labours to the amount of 160,000 marks, which called forth protests, even in the Press, of the strikers themselves. Side by side with this all the Russian police- men, when they applied to the authorities for succour, were told that they were traitors, and that it was intended that a thorough investigation be made into the case of

* And his words were in fact well verified not long after in the organisation of the " national watch." See telegram in the Novoe Vremja, November 24th.

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each of them, after which alone could any thought of considering their petitions be entertained.*

It was during this time, i.e., between October 25 and November 6, that information came gradually trickling in as to what had been occurring in other localities of Finland. This intelligence filled in the general back- ground of a dark picture made up of the universal neglect of duty of those in authority and the helplessness of individuals who were true to their service but utterly unable to accomplish anything owing to the entire absence of any kind of support from without.

In all the places throughout Finland where there were no troops the gendarme officers and men, who every- where remained true to their duty, were treacherously imprisoned and disarmed, while some had to endure cruel insults, mockery and violence ; many had their uniforms or their outward marks of rank, shoulder-straps, buttons, etc., rudely torn off them; f men were stripped naked and thrust out of their houses ; one sergeant of gendarmes was killed under the most revolting circum- stances. The armed rebels, who had taken into custody the gendarmes from Kemi and Torneo, came in the night when the poor fellows were morally and physically worn out, and opened dn them a fire from their revolvers but only succeeded in mortally wounding one unarmed man. In

* See Novoe Vremja, No. 10657. The letter of the Russian police of the town of Helsingfors and the " dementi " of M. Diderichs.

t As, for example, with the gendarmes expelled from Torneo and Kemi.

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general the details of the violence done to the gendarmerie are so cruelly revolting as to be impossible of description, and it is not to be wondered at that not a few of these hapless victims to their devotion to their duty afterwards went out of their minds from the nervous horrors they had undergone. We recommend amateur defenders of the high level of culture of Finland to make themselves a little better acquainted with some of these abominable deeds.* " Almost everywhere the police was displaced and volunteers obedient to the local officials substituted for them. At Tammerfors and Kotka where the police- masters had been appointed from Russia, and the former was even a native-born Russian, they were required to take their departure immediately, and they sought refuge with the nearest garrisons. The Russian Land- Secretary of the Province of Abo-Bjerneborg, M. Kho- zainov, succeeded only with the aid of a military escort

* At loensuu, a gendarme sergeant named Beljaev hid himself, half naked, but keeping his arms in the wood, where he remained for over nine hours and got his feet frozen. From Uleaborg a dozen gendarmes were taken in the hold of a steamer belonging to the pilot service, confined within a space of not more than a couple of cubic sazhenes, a great part of which was already filled up with cargo. The air was so vitiated that the men lost their senses. In this cage they were kept for more than fifty- two hours. At loensuu, after disarming a gendarme, the rebels put him to the torture, pressing his fingers to the back of the hand, one of them shouting meanwhile, " that's how the Finns deal with the Russians ! " From Kaske and Kristinestad the gendarme sergeants were expelled by armed bands under the command of Finnish officers, and the last of them at the very moment when his wife was giving birth to a child ! Little wonder that there were gendarmes who went out of their minds 1

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in getting safely to the barracks, and so escaping the enraged mob who were ready to tear him in pieces. The rebels wreaked their vengeance on his quarters, where they ruined and scattered the greater part of all his possessions. The Governor of Vasa, Knipovich, likewise found it safer to take refuge with the troops ; so also did the Land- Secretary of St. Michael's, the Finn Vuorinen. As to the acting Governor of Uleaborg M. Botstrem, he simply disappeared. The Governor of Kuopio, the Finlander Berg, was ordered immediately to quit, but neither horses nor train were provided for the purpose, and he fled the town in a small boat.

At the head of the movement in the Province of Abo was Count Armfeld, the friend of Governor Borgenstrem, who had been with him the evening before. All the efforts of this Governor were confined exclusively to isolating the military authorities and keeping the troops in barracks that they might not interfere with the course of the revolution. The detachment for the protection of the prison * was sent by order of the Governor, by a round- about way some six or seven miles long ; other detach- ments were sent off without rifles, in the presence of the Governor the mob went through the performance of bringing out from the Hofgericht (Court of Justice) the Town Hall, the Police-station, and the schools, all portraits

* Where was confined Reinikka who had attempted to assassin- ate the Governor of Viborg, M. Mjasoedov ; the mob had planned to set him at liberty.

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of the Emperor,* which were slashed and flung in the river then and there ! The same fate attended the portrait of the ex-President of the Hofgericht, Streng, who had presided at the trial of the affairs of Schaumann, while two members of the Court who had given their opinions for the death sentence on Hogenthal were dragged out into the street, and beaten, people spitting in their mouths ! Rumours of all this reached the bar- racks, and the news of the insults done to the portraits of the Emperor caused among the soldiers, and particularly among the Cossacks, extreme indignation and excitement ; it cost their officers a great deal of trouble to keep them from marching out on their own account.

The Governor of Viborg, Baron Medem, unhesitatingly performed all that the revolutionaries demanded of him, and even went so far as to start sending, after the Manifesto of September 22, documents to the Chancellery of the Governor-General of Finland written in Finnish. All the leaders of the insurrection in the Viborg Province whom the gendarmes had arrested, the Governor released on their arrival by train from Helsingfors,f and even returned to them the- very important documents that had been

* These portraits it had been made obligatory, under Bobrikov, to display in all public offices and schools precisely as is done in Russia. Before this date it had been customary to display only " patriots," benefactors or pictures of an allegorical and anti-government meaning, such as the " Anfall " — the " Attack," which represents the two-headed Russian eagle falling upon a poor maiden, Finland.

t 'This shows that the railways were working for the benefit of the rebels.

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taken by the gendarmes and proved the preparation of the armed insurrection. It was only with the declaration of the fortress as " in a state of war " (unhappily too late, and then only for a single day) that the authority in the town was wrested from the hands of the revolutionaries, and the Commandant, General Vishnjakov, reinstated the lawful police in their places, reinforcing them with armed soldiers. The military authorities also replaced the Russian flags that had been torn down. This act was carried out at St. Michael's with special solemnity in the presence of all the officials of the Provincial administration and to the strains of the Russian hymn.

Of all the Provincial administrations the only one that continued to perform its duties normally was that of Tavasthus. The Landsman of Ekenas, Zhadvoin, and of Lovisa, Sunneberg, were compelled to go on foot to Helsingfors, abandoning their districts ; the same thing occurred to certain gendarmes and to the secretary of the Borgo police, Uotila. In the Province of Viborg fourteen crown provosts and landsmen, the inspector of common schools, Levedev, the priest Zotikov, several Russian teachers of both sexes and merchants known to be devoted to the Russian - cause, were expelled. At Serdobol the Russian school with 30 pupils was dispersed, the school treasury confiscated, and the president of the school direc- tors, chief of the local military recruiting station, Lieut. - Colonel Iltonov, was driven out with all his men and his family ; he was compelled to go on foot all the way (100 miles) to Viborg, attempts were made to poison him on

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the way, and he suffered several armed attacks, during which his daughter was nearly killed and he lost his horse.*

On November 6, the mail train bore Adjutant-General Prince Obolensky, no longer Governor-General of Finland, away for ever from that country. He was accompanied to the railway station by two or three intimates, the offi- cials of the Chancellery by order of their Director, and one single member of the ex-Senate. The military, as well as both Finnish and Russian society, were conspicuous by their absence. " Think kindly of me when I'm gone ! " were the last words of the Prince as the train moved off.

These parting words sounded almost like an echo of what was passing in the conscience of this magnate of ancient lineage and, after all, of Russian birth. At any rate it seems to us that so it ought to have been in fact.

However, for a Russian born it would be something more than difficult to think kindly of Prince Obolensky as Governor-General of Finland. Having now completed the relation of the facts of the October revolution in Fin- land it seems advisable to enlighten the Russian reader somewhat as to the ground work of the unprecedented success it attained, to cast a passing glance at the general character of the administration of Finland during those fourteen months that Prince Obolensky held the office of Governor-General.

From the very day of his assuming this office the Rus- sian residents in Finland, both the public servants and

> Iltonov's full official report on the matter was printed in the Novoe Vremj'a and reprinted in a number of newspapers.

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others were made to feel that the Prince entertained for them, as it were, a sort of indifference, not to say contempt, highly offensive to the national feelings of a Russian. Everything Russian seemed as if it no longer existed : even the careless and indifferent attitude towards the Russian charitable institutions, which under Bobrikov as well as under his predecessors, Counts Adlerberg and Hey den, had enjoyed the special patronage of the higher authorities, could not but make a most unfavourable impression on all Russians. Charity and the Russian school affairs, also in the hands of the " Russian Charitable Society in Finland," have for this country a very impor- tant significance, not merely from the ethical but also from the political point of view. No less important also is the care taken of the Orthodox Church and a protecting attitude towards its needs. All these aspects of the activity of Governors-General of Finland had been cul- tivated largely by former occupants of the post, while N. Bobrikov and his wife, Elizaveta Ivanovna, may be said to have sacrificed their own ease and comfort to devote every spare minute that could be snatched from the labour of administration to the interests of Russian charities, the Russian Church, and the Russian school. And not in vain ! For how many new churches arose in Finland in those six years, how many nurseries of Russian culture spread their influence abroad during that period ; how much money was collected and utilised to the profit of Russian interests ! Under Prince Obolensky all this was changed ; how far may be asked of those poor wretches

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of Russian birth who applied to him for help. As to the Prince's attitude towards the Russian Church, it will suffice to note that he hardly ever attended the official services of the church on great public holidays, and on the saint's day of the cathedral (August 15) he arrived at church after the service was over in the midst of the parting words of the priest. This attitude lowered the prestige of Russian authority very greatly especially in the eyes of the common people. As to the school question it had to be content with a vast expenditure of verbiage without making a single step in advance. In making his obligatory official tour of all Finland the Prince entirely ignored the Province of Viborg — the concentration point of the Russian ortho- dox populations of Finland, as it is the oldest Russian province in that region — and confined his attention, like a mere tourist, to the beauties of Imatra and observing the effect of the waterfall on a number of wooden dolls thrown into it. The Province of Viborg is the cradle of orthodoxy in Finland ; there is to be found the seat of the Archbishop of Finland, there are the ancient monas- teries and holy places, Valaam and Konevo, there are the towns of Kexholm (anciently Korela) and Serdobol. All this was omitted, left on one side, in the Prince's official tour. Indeed, the Archbishop he never visited at all, and only on his first arrival to take up his post met him and received him in his house, but in general he held aloof from the orthodox clergy. Finally, the important question of the systematic attempts to make Finns of the Karelians who still lean towards Russia and the Russians, and the signi-

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ficance in this connection of the seminary at Serdobol, questions which had been most attentively studied under Bobrikov, Prince Obolensky entirely disregarded, so that not a hair's-breath of progress was made in this direc- tion and not once did he show any kind of interest in it. Side by side with this indifference to everything that is •dear to the heart of the Russian, and, which is of more importance, has enormous significance from the point of view of State interests, Russians could not help noticing a degree of friendliness and exquisite urbanity, hitherto unparalleled and somewhat painful to the national feelings of the Russians, which the Prince showed to all Finlanders and particularly to the Swedes. This mani- festation made its appearance from the first day of his arrival, when the Russian officials were received more than coolly and instead of hearing any expressions of welcome, so dear to them after the loss they had just sustained in the death of N. Bobrikov at the hands of an assassin, were treated to a cursory remark merely to the effect that there were too many of them, and an unfriendly statement that each of them " who proved equal to his post would be left in it." At the same time, while the new Governor-General was extremely careless about the visits to be paid and received of the Russians, he was very punctilious in his visits to the Swedes, always putting them first, and never omitting to return a visit to each one, not excepting even notorious sedition-mongers. Yet he could not find time, later, to visit on his sick bed even the once Governor of Viborg, Mjasoedov, who had been struck

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down at the post of duty by an attempt on his life ; and this notwithstanding that the Prince several times passed through Viborg at the time. On the official tour through Finland, the first and only one, which partook rather of the character of a prolonged picnic than an administrative tour, the Prince took with him, not the Russian officials whose immediate knowledge of affairs might have been of assistance to him, but only a few that were officially unconnected with current events, and, besides a private friend, also some Finnish Senators who enjoyed his con- fidence. He rarely resorted to the services of his Russian subordinates, but principally utilised as his intermed- iary Senator Bergbom, who had acquired, already under Bobrikov, the rank of noble by Imperial grant, and had changed his name to the Finnish Vuorenkheimo. This Senator constantly served as interpreter, and whether it was owing to his inadequate knowledge of Russian or for some other reason, the Governor-General's speeches in his translations never failed to depart very widely from the authentic words, whether of the speeches uttered by or made to the Prince.*

During the first months that the Prince was in Helsingfors the Governor-General's official residence was literally besieged by Swedes " of all kinds and dialects and classes." Probably the consigne had been given by

* It was generally a matter of comment that the speeches of Prince Obolensky to the deputations were subjected to a good deal of amendment and abbreviation in the official Finland Gazette, so that the texts did not correspond to the versions of the local papers.

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some good folks, but at any rate there they all came creep- ing out of the holes they had hidden in : dismissed Senators, Governors deprived of their office by Imperial order, civil servants expelled the public service for sedition, nay, even some well-known members of the revolutionary organisations, who had been destined to exile by the Prince's predecessor and whose fate hung by a hair. The adjutant's list of visitors during this period would reveal some very pretty facts : it was just as if all the archives had been resuscitated at once and all the names unfavour- ably mentioned therein suddenly called forth and scattered about the reception rooms of the Governor-General like peas on a plate. All these gentry frequented the Prince's doorstep both at St. Petersburg and at Helsingfors ; every visitor, provided only it was not a Russian but one of the aborigines, was always received at once and honoured with a prolonged conversation, without any regard for the customary hours of reception or the calls of duty. Of course, this manner of life reflected seriously on the course of the public service, as the reader may easily imagine Under N. Bobrikov the whole day was devoted to the duties of the service, beginning from nine o'clock in the morning till late in the evening, the only exceptions being a walk before dinner and an hour's siesta after, work beginning regularly at eight o'clock once more. With Prince Obolensky the hour appointed for the public service to begin was eleven o'clock, usually it began in fact at half-past, and often at noon. Luncheon occupied from one o'clock till half-past two and sometimes till

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three, after which it was difficult to seize a minute for the public service. Under such conditions it is not surprising that the officials who had to present reports and take the instructions, etc., of the Governor-General, found them- selves in his waiting-room much in the situation of those who " waited for the moving of the waters," and this applied to all persons in the service with or without portfolios.

In November, 1904, on his return from St. Petersburg the Prince brought with him Baron Rausch von Trau- benberg,* a son-in-taw of a former Governor-General of Finland, Count Heyden, who had an extensive acquain- tance among the Swedes of Helsingfors. After going the round of all these friends and receiving their return visits, the Baron arranged in the Prince's official residence for his friends a banquet to which, besides his host and hostess, were also invited some of the Senators of that day with their Vice-President, afterwards Minister State Secretary for Finland, K. Linder. The meeting between the Old Finn Senators and their sworn foes the Swedes, 'many of whom were ardent and energetic members of the " kagal,"f could hardly have been marked by much " cordiality,'*

* Taking advantage of the Prince's hospitality the Baron, among other things, took the opportunity of acquainting himself with the secret report to the Emperor of Governor-General Bobrikov for the years 1898-1902. Some time later this report was printed in Swedish at Stockholm, and extracts from it were published in the Helsingfors newspapers.

f The secret organisation among the Swedes of Finland which practically, up to and after the period of Bobrikov's tenure of the post of Governor-General of Finland, holds the entire country in its hands. (Trans.)

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and must have rather caused on both sides a good deal of deep heart-searching.

On December 6, the Namesday of His Majesty the Emperor, at the conclusion of the service in church Adjutant-General Bobrikov was in the habit of inviting all who had been present in the cathedral to a gala luncheon, at which the health of His Majesty was solemnly drunk. Prince Obolensky acted very differently : so far from inviting anybody, he himself accepted an invitation to lunch from the Director of the Pilot Department, N. Sheman, who in the presence of a large gathering of his friends, all Swedes, made a special speech in which he likened the Prince " to the rising sun which had lighted up the Finnish land, driving off the darkness and dis- persing the clouds." In the evening of the same day at the Diet banquet given in the Imperial Palace at Helsingfors in the name of the Emperor there were present among the persons invited by Prince Obolensky, Governors removed by His Majesty from their offices, dismissed Senators and other persons of known anti-government tendencies. On the other hand the number of Russian military and civil officials invited was curtailed, even the holders of independent military commands being omitted, and those that were present had the pleasure of sitting down to table alternately with the sedition-mongers.

All these facts, taken as samples, and by no means exhaustive, explain why the Russians in Finland held such a very poor opinion of the Prince. Their disappoint- ment was the more poignant, inasmuch as the coming of

6;

Prince Obolensky was heralded by a fanfare in the Press, which represented him as a thorough Russian and a man perfectly capable of dealing with Finlander sedition. As such he was welcomed by papers which have always stood firm for a strong policy in Finland, the Novoe Vremja, the Moscow Gazette and the Svet.*

It was thus natural that when the Prince, here following the example of N. Bobrikov, on Easter night arranged a general " breaking of the fast " at his residence, the Russians responded to his invitations with great reluct- ance and it cost no small pains to the intimates of the Prince to secure enough Russians to make his apartments appear decently filled. Even so the majority of those present stayed in the Governor-General's official residence only so long as strict etiquette demanded, and after all the greatest part of the liberally provided viands remained untouched,

By the labours of Bobrikov and the Russian Governors the local police force had been brought to such a state, as regards its composition, that the Russian power was in a position to count securely on it as a faithful weapon upon which to rely. It was very difficult for the Fin- landers to root up this sound foundation, so they began by disorganising and demoralising the police, baiting them in the newspapers and starting in the law courts a series of charges against them of political " provocation."

* The Finlanders, on the other hand, met the announcement of Bobrikov's successor in the foreign press with an universal wail of indignation, accounting it a plain symptom of the intention to continue what they called the " policy of violence."

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Among the matters of this kind that made a great deal of noise over all Finland was that of the assistant police-master of Helsingfors, Androsov, and Commissary Pavlutsky, who were charged with having suborned a lot of boys during the January disorders to go and break the windows of the editorial offices of the Uusi Suometar, and even with themselves taking part in this operation disguised in civil clothes. The main object of the prose- cution was to throw a " shade " on the higher Russian authorities who would appear to have knowingly abetted the police in this " provocative " act. Instead of either entirely cutting off any possibility of making profit out of knowingly false charges against the police made by the Helsingfors town procurator from purely political motives and by order of the revolutionaries, or else transferring the case to Russian officers of the law so as to bring the whole plot to the light of day, Prince Obolensky arranged a very painful little comedy humiliating to the Russian authorities, by facilitating the non-appearance at court of the two police officers above-mentioned, who were both very shortly afterwards transferred to other posts in Russia. Obviously this course of action only confirmed local public opinion in the truth of the charges and the actively spread rumours and suspicions, while it disorganised the Russian police, who lost all confidence in their chiefs and in the security of their own positions in the service.

It must be added also that during the hunt which the town -procurator instituted after the police whom he thought fit to prosecute, it came out that he had at his

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disposal a sort of police, or detective force of his own, the members of which at the time of the October disorders undoubtedly served as the cadre for the self-styled " pro- tective police " which was then formed in the town of Helsingfors.

Without going into the details of the Prince's bearing during the session of the Diet it will be sufficient to note that the principal leaders of sedition whom he and Erstrem had brought back from exile, having got the upper hand in the Diet entirely ignored the presence in Finland of a Russian Governor-General, who apparently seemed quite content with such a state of things. His intervention began and ended with a demand that the talman of the Diet should curtail a speech quite inadmissible in tone which he made at the ceremonial opening of the Diet. Concerning the inactivity of the Diet, which went " on strike " in expectation of the response to the " Grand Petition " the Prince made no report to the Emperor •except as noted in his letters, but he offered no suggestions as to the means to be taken to meet such a situation. So far as is known the Prince had at his disposal a document which gave him the right to dissolve the Diet before the «nd of the session (as laid down in the Statutes of the Diet) ; he is said to have even shown this document to Mechelin, but no doubt the Finlanders had good grounds for their confidence that the Prince, whether from want of courage or for some other reasons, would never make -use of it, for they continued their tactics without troubling themselves about it at all.

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In general it must be said that Mechelin from the moment of his return from exile became not only an intimate of the Adjunct Minister State Secretary Erstrem but also a constant visitor of Prince Obolensky.* He used to sit for whole hours with the Prince especially when the latter was in St. Petersburg, where it was still more con- venient to converse far from the indiscreet eyes of the " people of the Bobrikov regime." What they found to talk about all this time is a matter of conjecture only. Possibly they may have been concocting the clauses of a new " Portsmouth " Treaty to take the place of the Fredrik- shamn Treaty. We must wait for the disclosure of the secret for another half century when some future historian will have access to the records of the jealously guarded archives.

The foregoing sketch of the October events in Finland is convincing in one respect, namely, that in these disorders the great mass of the Finnish people took no part whatso- ever, and that they were not even so much as acquainted with the intentions of the revolutionaries. The latter assured themselves merely of the co-operation of the intelligentia, and a part of the working classes of the towns. The village people almost everywhere remained quiet ; the leaders of the mob were usually Swedes and among them many former officers of the Finnish troops. All the returned exiles played the part of revolutionary delegates each directing operations in his own district.*

* Just before his appointment to the post of Premier of Finland, Mechelin was also frequently a visitor at Count Witte's.

* Many of the members of the new Senate belong to the ranks of these revolutionary agitators.

n

As to the working classes, the movement among them was somewhat distinct from the general movement ; they had for their object certain private ends of their own about which the authorities, if they had taken the trouble to ascertain them, would probably have found it not difficult to come to some arrangement. The organised workmen of Finland are as yet little infected with " anarchism," though they are almost to a man Social Democrats ; the deep mistrust which they feel towards the ruling class of " masters," the Swedes, who are also the most hostile element in the country to the idea of unification with Russia, makes this class rather the allies of the Russian Government, inasmuch as the genuine Finns, the mass of the population, and consequently its strength, will always prefer a peaceable modus vivendi with the Russians to the restoration of the former tyranny of the Swedes.

In any case the surrender of all Russia's interests in Finland which Prince Obolensky made on the demand of representatives of isolated political parties can in no way be justified. The circumstances, given but a crumb of energy and self-sacrificing devotion on the part of the highest representative of the Russian power, were not such as to demand any concessions. The conduct of the Prince is logically inexplicable. If no further back than the preceding December he had reported to the Emperor that any concessions whatsoever to Finland at any time and particularly at a time of crisis such as Russia was then passing through, could only be productive of irreparable harm to the State and would be understood by the

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Finlanders not as the desire of promoting their welfare or as a gracious act, but solely and simply as a proof of the weakness of Russian authority and a pretext for new and still more insolent demands, how could Prince Obolensky bring himself to petition the throne for the issue of the Manifesto of December 22 according to the version con- cocted by Mechelin ? This Manifesto by its whole content and even its form of expression, not excepting its title " on the restoration of order in the country in accordance with law," and its concluding passage concerning the union of the Finnish people only with their Monarch (without any mention of Russia), amounted to an unprecedented concession and a definite break with the policy of the immediate past. Had the Prince been really that heaven born administrator which he loved to fancy himself, he would have long before been compelled to settle in prin- ciple the question of the necessity of yielding to the demands of the " Grand Petition " or the possibility of these concessions. In the event of his deciding on the former, it is impossible to understand how he arrived at the method approved by him of examining the Petition piecemeal and passing on isolated questions in it to the Tagantsev Commission, unless this method was a mere effort to gain time ; in the event of the latter decision, it was impossible to amend it even under pressure of altogether extraordinary circumstances — and the October events by no means came under that category.

As K. Skalkovsky very justly pointed out (v. Novoe Vremja, No. 10668) " Finland is not merely the property

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of the dynasty : it has been bought at the price of Russian blood poured forth like water over its rugged soil ; by the Fredrikshamn Treaty of Peace it became ' the property and sovereign possession of the Russian Empire ' and not merely of the Russian Emperor."

It remains only to hope that the State Duma in virtue of the rights of control conferred upon it will not fail to attend to this matter and will regulate Russo-Finnish relations on principles profitable to the whole State, not merely in the interests of Finlander separatism, as the Finlanders are endeavouring to do, by their efforts to secure all that is to be got out of the fact that the Finnish Diet existed before the State Duma.

The error in statecraft of which Prince Obolensky was guilty was stupendous. At the present moment the only possible hope of retrieving his blunders lies in the State Duma,* for his successor in the post of Governor-General, N. Gerhardt, a protege of Count Witte's, is already well stricken in years, a man who has lost all his energy and confessedly, as he himself declared to a Finlander inter- viewer soon after he took up his post, utterly ignorant of all matters relating to Finland.

N. Skalkovsky, who knew Gerhardt well, expresses the general apprehensions on his appointment (Novoe Vremja, No. 10671) in the following words : " How could anyone have thought it possible to find in him the

* By the law of June 17/30, 1910, these hopes have been realised. Finland retains its local self:government to the full, but is subjected to the legislative Chambers of the State in all matters that concern the whole State, including Finland. (Trans.}

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qualities needed to reconquer, if only by peaceful means, a border-land that had fallen away as Finland did by rebellion," and if he failed to hold more than a few months the very much less exacting post of Director of His Majesty's Privy Chancellery for the Institutions of the Empress Marie, from which he was dismissed, what hopes, says K. Skalkovsky, can be placed in him in his present extremely difficult and responsible post, so all-important from the point of view of the State ? It looks very much as if the appointment had been made to please the " un- crowned king " Leo Mechelin, who will doubtless find no difficulty in ruling Finland through the new Governor- General.*

* Gerhardt held the post of Governor-General but a short time and was succeeded by General Beckman, who gave place to the present holder of the post, General Sein, whose name has been mentioned in a subordinate capacity above. (Trans.)

BERENDTS. The rights of Finland according to Europeai Scholars : a rejoinder. St. Pe'tersbourg 1910.

P. SOOVOROFF. The Finnish question. Equal rights. The position of Russians in Finland and of Finns in the rest of the Russian Empire. St. Pe'tersbourg 1910.

K. VALISZEVSKY. The Finnish question. The Ostrich! and the Sparrow. St. Petersbourg 1910.

N. KOREWO. The Finnish question. A. Lecture read I before the United Nobility of the Russian Empire] St. P6tersbourg 1911.

CHURBERG, W. The Situation of Finland. St. Petersburg! 1911.

FEDOROFF. The Finnish Revolution in Preparation 1899- 1905, as disclosed by secret documents. Trans, by G. Dobson. St. Petersburg 1911.

BORODKIN. Finland, its Place in the Russian State. St. Petersburg 1911.

FINLAND. The question of Autonomy and Fundamental! Laws. By the late N. D. SergSevsky. London 1911.