Treaty between Red Finland and Soviet Russia

On 1 March 1918 in Petrograd representatives of the Council of People’s Commissars and of the Finnish revolutionary government signed a “treaty for the consolidation of friendship and brotherhood” between the Russian Federative Soviet Republic and the Finnish Socialist Workers’ Republic. It was signed for the Russian side by Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin and the Left Socialist Revolutionary Prosh Proshian, and for the Finnish side by Edvard Gylling and Oskari Tokoi of the People’s Delegation of Finland, the Red government headed by Kullervo Manner. Soviet publications later called it the first treaty in history between two socialist republics. It was concluded, however, by two governments that were themselves fighting for survival.

The name Finnish Socialist Workers’ Republic in fact appeared only in this document. Since the start of the civil war the People’s Delegation had spoken simply of the Republic of Finland. The adjectives “socialist workers’” were proposed by Lenin during the talks, and the Finnish delegates agreed, for which they were later criticised by their comrades in Helsinki, since the name of the state was for the Finns themselves to decide. The draft treaty was drawn up by a Russo-Finnish conciliation commission, and the Council of People’s Commissars discussed it on 25, 27 and 28 February. Lenin corrected the text himself. Among other things he insisted that political rights of Russians in Finland and of Finns in Russia should belong only to workers and peasants who did not employ the labour of others. He explained that some 200,000 Petrograd bourgeois lived in Finland, but only about 30,000 Finnish workers in Petrograd, so formal equality would mean a privilege for the Russian bourgeoisie.

The treaty had 20 articles. Russia handed over to Finland all the property of the Russian state on the territory of the former Grand Duchy: land, buildings, factories, railways, telegraphs, fortresses and lighthouses, as well as ships confiscated during the war. Finland handed over to Russia Finnish property in Russia. Both sides guaranteed each other freedom of navigation, direct railway connections and talks on a trade treaty. The Finnish Reds undertook not to hinder the withdrawal of the Russian army and fleet from the country. Russia kept for 50 years the cable lines linking Petrograd with Stockholm and Western Europe. Disputes were to be settled by an arbitration court whose chairman was to be named by the executive of the Swedish Left Social Democratic Party.

The frontier aroused the strongest feelings. Russia ceded to Finland, “if such is the will of the inhabitants”, the Petsamo area on the Arctic Ocean, which the Finns had long sought. In return the People’s Delegation gave up Fort Ino on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, important for the defence of Petrograd. Some of the Finnish Reds wanted more, including Russian Karelia, but this question was left for later. According to Finnish historians, Gylling hoped that the treaty would limit Russian influence in Finland and make future talks with the Whites easier.

For the Bolsheviks the agreement mattered little compared with the negotiations with Germany, and the fate of Red Finland was in fact decided by Berlin and Petrograd. Only two days later, in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia undertook to withdraw its troops from Finland and to stop agitation against its government, which deprived the Reds of hope of Russian help in the civil war. The Whites in Vaasa, recognised by Germany and part of Europe as the legitimate government, concluded their own treaty with Berlin a few days later. The treaty of 1 March never came into force. In the spring of 1918 the Reds lost the war, and the Finnish Socialist Workers’ Republic ceased to exist.