None dare call it treason

“1808: Gerillakriget i Finland” is a book by a Swedish author named Anders Persson. The name is extremely common, and I admit that I don´t know exactly who this Anders Persson might be, except that he has written several books on modern European history. His main interest seems to be the fate of small nations squeezed between the great powers: interwar Austria and Czechoslovakia, and Finland pretty much all the time. Persson´s main thesis is that it´s frequently the common people who take up arms to defend their nations (or at least their homesteads) in times of war, while the political and economic elite waffle and even collaborate with the enemy. His book gives a somewhat peculiar impression, “leftist” and yet somehow conservative at the same time.

In 1808, Russia attacked Sweden and eventually occupied Finland, which had been under the Swedish crown for centuries, thereby effectively depriving Sweden of almost half of its territory. The war of 1808-1809 was a national disaster for Sweden, and King Gustav IV Adolf was actually overthrown as a result. Sweden had refused to join Napoleon´s continental blockade against Britain, while Gustav Adolf apparently quite un-ironically believed the French emperor to be the Beast of Revelation mentioned in the Bible. Perhaps not the best grounds for a realistic foreign policy of a small nation during the turbulent Napoleonic Wars! When France and Russia temporarily united against the British, Napoleon gave Czar Alexander the green lights to attack Sweden and dismember it best he could. The Swedish troops at Sveaborg in southern Finland, one of Sweden´s best fortifications, surrendered to the Russians already at an early stage of the war. This was a huge national scandal, and many suspect to this day that the commanders at Sveaborg were conscious traitors.

Indeed, it seems that most “lords” in Finland were more than willing to collaborate with the advancing Russian troops. Landlords, priests and bailiffs remained at their posts and started taking orders from the Czar and the Russian military brass, thereby easing the way for the enemy. In the Lutheran Churches, the priests often preached non-resistance. Of course, this was before the era of nationalism and the modern nation-state, but it´s difficult not to see the actions of the officials in charge as downright treasonous. After all, they were supposed to be loyal to the King in Stockholm! There was also an active Swedish exile milieu in the Russian imperial capital of St Petersburg, which lobbied the Czar with requests to take military action against Sweden. These aristocratic exiles had their roots in the “Anjala League” directed against King Gustav III, Gustav IV Adolf´s father, and his war against Russia in 1788-1790.

When the petty and not-so-petty officials decided to side with the Russians (for “practical” reasons, of course – what else?), the peasants took up the resistance instead, sometimes with the aid of Swedish military, sometimes on their own. A large portion of the book deals with the struggle at Åland, which has a Swedish population. That the peasants at Åland fought back, while the commanders at Sveaborg surrendered, wasn´t lost on the Swedish press. King Gustav IV Adolf eventually awarded the leaders of the Åland guerillas medals of valor at a special ceremony in Stockholm. The book also describes the resistance in Österbotten, Birkaland and Norra Karelen. It was a curious alliance in a way, between the conservative anti-Napoleonic autocrat Gustav IV Adolf and angry armed peasants with little respect for the local officials and priests. Persson compares it to the anti-French resistance in Spain, led by priests and monks, or the ditto peasant war in Tyrol under Andreas Hofer. The author believes that Romanticism rather than Enlightenment thinking heralds nationalism, a phenomenon he seems to regard as historically progressive. Overall, however, the book is descriptive rather than analytical.

Russia´s victory in the War of 1808-1809 was probably a foregone conclusion. Russia had more manpower, while the Finnish population suffered from failed harvests, famine, and pestilence. It´s amazing the peasants managed to resist at all! Clearly, the Swedish military suffered from bad leadership (including from the King´s side), while traitors abound everywhere. Finland was finally declared an autonomous Grand Duchy under the Czar. Persson believes that the popular resistance against the advancing Russian army made the Czar rethink any plans he might have had to make the Finnish peasants serfs. Somehow, I doubt this – my guess would rather be that it would have taken a considerable mobilization of resources to reduce the free Finnish peasantry into serfdom. Rather than undertaking such an operation, the Czar already from the start planned to keep the social relations in Finland pretty much as they were within the context of an autonomous “Grand Duchy”. That, of course, is why the officialdom in Finland (including the Lutheran clergy) so easily made the transition from Swedish to Russian dominion – it wasn´t much of a transition to begin with. The peasants, by contrast, feared enserfement or at the very least large-scale plunder at the hands of “Cossacks and Kalmyks”. Also, their deep-seated class suspicions against the officialdom were amply confirmed when the local “lords” put their own safety above loyalty to king and country (which the peasants supported).

In the end, both camps were vindicated – Finland did enjoy autonomy without serfdom under the Czar for generations…until Russia decided that the time had come to Russify Finland (but still without serfdom, alas), triggering a series of events which eventually led to Finnish independence in 1917.