When we talk of the means requisite for assimilating Finland we can not
help reckoning, first and foremost, with this fact, that by the will of
Russian emperors that country has lived its own particular life for
nearly a century and governed itself in quite a special manner. Another
consideration that should be taken to heart is this: the administration
of the conquered country on lines which differed from the organization
of other territories forming part of the empire, and which gave to
Finland the semblance of a separate state, was shaped by serious
causes, and did good service in the political history of the Russian
Empire. One is hardly justified, therefore, in blaming this work of
Alexander I., as is now so often done.... The annexation of Finland,
poor by nature and at that time utterly ruined by protracted wars, was
of moment to Russia, not so much from an economic or financial as from
a strategical point of view. And what in those days was important was
not its Russification, but solely the military position which it
afforded. Besides, the incorporation of Finland took place at a
calamitous juncture--for Russia. On the political horizon of Europe the
clouds were growing denser and blacker, and there was a general
foreboding of the coming events of the year 1812. If, at that time,
Czar Alexander I. had applied to Finland the methods of administration
which are wont to be employed in conquered countries, Finland would
have become a millstone round Russia's neck during the critical period
of her struggle with Napoleon, which demanded the utmost tension of our
national forces. Fear of insurrections and risings would have compelled
Russia to maintain a large army there and to spend considerable sums in
administering the country. But Alexander I. struck out a different
course. His Majesty recognized the necessity of "bestowing upon the
people, by means of internal organization, incomparably more advantages
than it had had under the sway of Sweden." And the Emperor held that an
effective means of achieving this would be to give the nation such a
status "that it should be accounted not enthralled by Russia, but
attached to her in virtue of its own manifest interests." "This valiant
and trusty people," said Czar Alexander I., when winding up the Diet of
Borgo, "will bless Providence for establishing the present order of
things. And I shall garner in the best fruits of my solicitude when I
shall see this people tranquil from without, free within, devoting
itself to agriculture and industry under the protection of the laws and
their own good conduct, and by its very prosperity rendering justice in
my intentions and blessing its destiny."
Subsequent history justified the rosiest hopes of the Emperor. The
immediate consequence of the policy he adopted toward Finland was that
the country quickly became calmed and settled after the fierce war that
had been waged there, and that in this way Russia was enabled to
concentrate all her forces upon the contest with Napoleon. According to
the words of Alexander I. himself, the annexation of Finland "was of
the greatest advantage to Russia; without it, in 1812, we might not,
perhaps, have won success, because Napoleon had in Bernadotte his
steward, who, being within five days' march of our capital, would have
been inevitably compelled to join his forces with those of Napoleon.
Bernadotte himself told me so several times, and added that he had
Napoleon's order to declare war against Russia." And afterward, during
almost a century, Finland never occasioned any worries, political or
economic, to the Russian Government, and did not require special
sacrifices or special solicitude on its part.
If we may judge, not by the speeches and articles of particular
Separatists, but by overt acts, during that long period of time the
Finnish people never failed in their duty as loyal subjects of their
monarch or citizens of the common fatherland, Russia. The successors of
the conqueror of Finland spoke many times from the height of the throne
"of the numerous proofs of unalterable attachment and gratitude which
the citizens of this country have given their monarchs." And in effect,
neither general insurrections against Russia's dominions, nor political
plots, nor the tumults of an ignorant rabble--such as our cholera
riots, workmen's outbreaks, Jewish pogroms, and other like
disturbances--have ever occurred in Finland; and when disorders of that
kind broke out in other parts of the empire or alarming tidings from
abroad came in they never evoked the slightest dangerous echo there. It
is a most remarkable fact that during the trying time the Russian
Government had when the Polish insurrection was going on, and later, in
the equally difficult period through which we passed at the close of
the seventies, Finland remained perfectly calm; and in the long list of
political criminals sprung from the various nationalities of Russia, we
do not find a single Finlander.
In like manner fear of Finland's aspirations toward independence, of
her inordinate demands in the matter of military legislation, of her
turning her population into an armed nation; in a word, all the
apprehensions felt that Finland may break loose from Russia are, down
to the present moment, devoid of foundation in fact.
"Finland under the egis of the Russian realm," our present Emperor has
said, "and strong in virtue of Russia's protection through the lapse of
almost a whole century, has advanced along the way of peaceful progress
unswervingly, and in the hearts of the Finnish people lived the
consciousness of their attachment to the Russian monarchs and to
Russia." In moments of stress and of Russia's danger, the Finnish
troops have always come forward as the fellow soldiers of our armies,
and Finland has shared with us unhesitatingly our military triumphs and
also the irksome consequences and tribulations of war-time. Thus, in
the year 1812 and in the Crimean campaign, her armies grew in number
considerably; in that eastern war almost her entire mercantile marine
was destroyed--a possession which was one of the principal sources of
the revenue of the country. During the Polish insurrection and the war
for the emancipation of Bulgaria Finnish troops took part in the
expeditions, and when in 1885 the Diet was opened, the Emperor
Alexander III., in his speech from the throne, bore witness to "the
unimpeachable way in which the population of the country had discharged
its military obligations," and he gave utterance to his conviction that
the Finnish troops would attain the object for which they existed.
By way of proving Finland's striving to cut herself apart from Russia,
people point to the doctrine disseminated about the Finnish State, to
its unwillingness to establish military conscription on the same lines
as the empire, and to the speeches of the Deputies of the Diets of
1877-1878 and 1879. But none of these arguments carries conviction.
The theory about the independence of Finland, as a separate realm,
which was worked out for the purpose of devising "the means of
safeguarding its idiosyncrasies," is far from proving that "Finland
aims at separation from Russia." Down to the present moment separation
has not been in her interests. She was never an independent State; her
historical traditions do not move her to play a political part in
Europe. Besides, her population is mixed. The Swedish element
constitutes only the topmost layer, and is not powerful enough to move
toward an independent existence or toward union with the Power which
belongs to the same race as that layer, while the mass of Finns,
dreading the oppression of the Swedish party, is drawn more to Russia
by the simple instinct of self-preservation. That is why the Finnish
patriot may well be a true and devoted citizen of the Russian Empire,
and being, as Alexander III. termed it, "a good Finlander," can also
"bear in mind that he is a member of the Russian family, at the head of
which stands the Russian Emperor."
The unfavorable attitude of the Finns toward the proposal of the War
Ministry for extending to them the general regulations that deal with
the obligation to serve in the army is also intelligible. That
obligation of military service is exceedingly irksome; and it is not
only the Finns who desire to fight shy of it, nor can one discover any
specially dangerous symptom in their wish to preserve the privileged
position which they have hitherto enjoyed as to the way of discharging
their military duties. They seek to perpetuate the privileges conferred
upon them in the form of fundamental laws, and they strive to avoid
being incorporated in the Russian Army, because service there would be
very much more onerous for them than in their own Finnish regiments...
If we now turn from the political to the economic aspect of the matter,
to the question how far the order of things as at present established
in Finland has proved advantageous to Russia from the financial point
of view, we shall search in vain for data capable of bearing out the
War Minister's opinion that, for the period of a century the Budget of
Finland has been sedulously husbanded at the cost of the Russian
people.
Ever since Finland has had an independent State Budget, she has never
required any sacrifices on the part of Russia for her economic
development. Ill-used by nature and ruined by wars, the country, by
dint of its own efforts, has advanced toward cultural and material
prosperity. Without subsidies or guaranties from the Imperial Treasury,
the land became furrowed with a network of carriage roads and railways;
industries were created; a mercantile fleet was built, and the work of
educating the nation was so successfully organized that one can hardly
find an illiterate person throughout the length and breadth of the
principality. It is also an interesting fact worth recording that,
whereas the Russian Government has almost every year to feed a starving
population, now in one district of the empire, now in another, and is
obliged from time to time to spend enormous sums of money for the
purpose, Finland, in spite of its frequent bad harvests, has generally
dispensed with such help on the part of the State Treasury...
Under these circumstances it is hardly fair to assert that Finland has
been living at Russia's expense. On the contrary, Finland is perhaps
the only one of our borderlands which has not required for its economic
or cultural development funds taken from the population of Russia
proper. The Caucasus, the Kingdom of Poland, Turkestan, part of
Siberia, and other portions of our border districts--nay, even the
northern provinces themselves--are sources of loss to us, or, at any
rate, they have cost the Russian Treasury very much, and some of them
still continue to cost it much, but the expenses they involve are
hidden in the totals of the Imperial Budget. A few data will throw
adequate light on this aspect of the situation. It is enough, for
instance, to call to mind what vast, what incalculable sacrifices the
pacification of the Caucasus required from Russia and what worry and
expense it still causes us. No less imposing is the expenditure which
the Kingdom of Poland with its two insurrections necessitated in the
course of last century.... And if we cast a glance at the youngest of
our borderlands--Turkestan--we shall find that here also the outlay
occasioned by the political situation of the country has already become
sharply outlined.... When we set those figures and data side by side we
shall find it hard to speak of "our expenditure on Finland" or of "the
vast privileges" we have conferred on the principality.
It follows, then, that the system of administration established for
Finland by the Emperor Alexander I. has not yet had any harmful
political results for Russia, and that it has dispensed the Russian
Government from incurring heavy expenditure for the administration and
the well-being of the country, and in this way has enabled Russia to
concentrate her forces and her care on other parts of the empire and to
devote her attention to other State problems.
One can not, of course, contend that the system of government adopted
in Finland satisfies, in each and all its parts, the requirements and
the needs of the present time. On the contrary, it is indubitable that
the independent existence of the principality, disconnected as it is
from the general interests of the empire, has led to a certain
estrangement between the Russian and the Finnish populations. That an
estrangement really exists can not be doubted; but the explanation of
it is to be found in the difference of the two cultures which have
their roots in history. To the protracted sway of Sweden and Finland's
continuous relations through her intermediary with Western Europe, the
circumstance is to be ascribed that the thinking spirits among the
Finns gravitate--in matters of culture--not to Russia but to the West,
and in particular to Sweden, with whom Finland is linked by bonds of
language--through her highest social class--and of religion, laws, and
literature. For that reason the views, ideas, and interests of
Western--and in particular of Scandinavian--peoples are more
thoroughly familiar and more intelligible to them than ours. That also
is why, when working out any kind of reforms and innovations, they seek
for models not among us but in Western Europe.
It is, doubtless, impossible to look upon that state of things with
approval. It is highly desirable that a closer union should take place
between the interests, cultural and political, of the principality and
those of the empire: that is postulated by the mutual advantages of
both countries. As I have already remarked, Russians could not
contemplate otherwise than with pleasure the possible union and
assimilation--in principle--of the borderland with the other parts of
our vast fatherland: they will also be unanimous in wishing this task
as successful an issue as is possible.....
But what is not feasible is to demolish at one swoop everything that
has been created and preserved in the course of a whole century. A
change of policy, if it is not to provoke tumults and disorganization,
must be carried out gradually and with extreme circumspection. The
assimilation of Finland can never be efficacious if achieved by
violence and constraint instead of by pacific means. The Finnish people
should be left to appreciate the benefits which would accrue to them
from union with a powerful empire: for an adequate understanding of
their own interests will, in the words of the Imperial rescript of
February 28, 1891, "inspire them with a desire to draw more closely the
bonds that link Finland with Russia." There is no doubt that even at
present a certain tendency is noticeable among the Finns in favor of
closer relations with Russia: the knowledge of the Russian tongue is
spreading more and more widely among them, and business relations
between them and us are growing brisker from year to year. The
desirable abolition of the customs cordon between the two countries is
bound to give a powerful fillip to the growth of commerce, which is the
most trustworthy and most pacific means of bringing about a better
understanding and strengthening the ties that bind Finland to Russia.
Harsh, drastic expedients may easily loosen the threads that have begun
to get tied, foster national hate, arouse mutual distrust and
suspicion, and lead to results the reverse of those aimed at.
Assimilative measures adopted by the Government, therefore, should be
thought out carefully and applied gradually.