Hello, everyone. For those who don’t know me, and for those who are wondering why I’m posting here, it’s perhaps best to start with some details. [No pix of you with a dangling cigarette and sunglasses? —ed.]
Who am I? My full name is Jussi Olavi Jalonen. I’m a single man on my thirties, and after a long residence in the city of Tampere, I now live on the Western Seaboard of Finland. Why am I posting here? Well, because Noel suggested it. I’ve done all sorts of things for living, but these days I’m basically a free-lance researcher and writer. Guest posts on a high-quality weblog are just as good a way to kill time as anything else. [We’re high quality! —ed.]
I write about history. As said, I’m single, but Clio is a very demanding mistress. [My wife is very understanding of that, and it's one of the many reasons I love her. —ed.] As for my field of study, you could probably say that I’m more interested in Power than Money. [One often begats the other. —ed.] I specialize in military history, in a very broad sense. Two months ago, an article that I wrote on the interned Polish soldiers in Finland in 1940-41 appeared in a publication of the Finnish National Archives, and just recently, Studia Historica Septentrionalia published another article that I wrote on the theme of comradeship-in-arms. In particular, however, I’m interested in soldiers who have, for one reason or another, ended up serving in the military establishments of foreign powers — usually, in the service of their Imperial master, occasionally in the service of its enemy, or sometimes even in conflicts where there appears to be no vested national or ideological interest whatsoever. I’ve written articles on the Finnish volunteers in the Boer War, Finnish volunteers in the Waffen-SS, and also a biography of jäger colonel Eino Polón, Knight of the Mannerheim Cross. For those who don’t know, the term “jäger” refers to the Finnish independence activists and volunteers who served in the Imperial German Army against Tsarist Russia in 1915-17.
One particular thing that I find fascinating is the historical contrast between Finland and Poland in their relations towards Russia; as the most recent example, you may remember that during the South Ossetian war last August, Poland sided openly with Georgia, while Finland, as the head of the OSCE, attempted to mediate the conflict and maintain communications with Russia. These contrasts between Finland and Poland have very deep roots. Consider the Finnish Guard’s participation in the 1831 Polish campaign. (Last year, I wrote an article on this topic for the Polish weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.)
But what was this so-called “Finnish Guard?” What exactly happened in Poland in 1831? And how did it create such long-standing differences between the two border countries?
To start from the basics, as some of you may already know, both Finland and the central parts of Poland were attached to the Russian Empire in 1808-09 and 1815, respectively. Moreover, both countries were allowed to enjoy a degree of self-government within the Empire, Finland as a “Grand-Duchy” and Poland as a “Congress Kingdom.”
On balance, Poland enjoyed rather more autonomy than Finland. The Congress Kingdom had its very own written constitution, drafted by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski; the gold-based złoty remained the Polish national currency; a bicameral legislature, the Sejm, convened regularly in 1818 and 1820; and the status of the Kingdom was nominally guaranteed by the international Congress of Vienna.
Finland, in contrast, was at the time of the Russian takeover simply an impoverished borderland with no history of independent statehood, and its autonomy was something of an ad hoc arrangement. Consequently, the administration of the Grand-Duchy was based on the old Gustavian constitutions inherited from the Swedish reign; the country lacked its own currency, using th Swedish riksdaler and the Russian ruble as mediums of exchange; the four-estate Finnish Diet that had assembled at Borgå in 1809 was not convened again until 1863; and the only safeguard of the separate status of Finland was the word of the Russian Emperor.
[These facts, which I did not know, make the later events sufficiently ironic to cure anemia. —ed.]
Autonomy meant that both Finland and Poland possessed their own military establishments. The Congress Kingdom spent one-third, occasionally two-fifths of its revenue to maintain a professional army of 30,000 soldiers, commanded by Grand-Duke Konstantin Pavlovich. A majority of the high-ranking Polish officers consisted of the old Napoleonic veterans who had earned their ranks fighting against Russia in the Grande Armée, and who subsequently opted for reconciliation with the Tsarist régime.
The first small Finnish military units were reassembled at the outbreak of war between France and Russia in 1812, and included five enlisted jäger battalions and one drill battalion, subordinated to the governor-general in Helsinki and the General Staff in St. Petersburg. After 1819, the Finnish units were rearranged into two line infantry and one jäger regiments, each with two battalions, with the drill battalion in Helsinki remaining as a separate detachment. Four years after the Decembrist uprising, the drill battalion was elevated to the rank of a Guard’s unit, and a year later, the battalion was left as the only Finnish national military unit as the old infantry and jäger regiments were disbanded. The Battalion was given a new name, Лeйб-Гвардии Стрeлковый Финский Батальон, Leib-Gvardii Strelkovyi Finskij Batalion, “Imperial Life-Guard’s Finnish Sharp-Shooter Battalion,” commonly known simply as the “Finnish Guard.”
The Finnish Guard was commanded by colonel Anders Edvard Ramsay, a scion of an old Scottish family that first arrived in Finland in 1577 and become part of the local Swedish-speaking aristocracy. [Have I mentioned that my wife's maiden name comes directly from Scotland? So, I must ask: how did Ramsay pull that off? —ed.] Colonel Ramsay helped suppress of the Decembrist riots and supervised the security of the Tsarevich while serving in the Preobrazhenskoye Guard in St. Petersburg in 1825.
The Decembrist uprising can be regarded as the first event which illustrated the contrast between Poland and Finland. While disgruntled Polish military officers such as colonel Seweryn Krzyżanowski had been ready and willing to conspire together with the Russian Decembrist leaders, their Finnish colleagues remained steadfastly loyal to the Tsar. In addition to Ramsay’s distinguished service, another Finnish officer, captain Johan Reinhold Munck, supervised the executions of the five sentenced Decembrist leaders in the fortress of Peter and Paul.
These events set politically turbulent Poland headed towards collision with Moscow, while simultaneously creating the basis for the “Imperial Silence” of the Grand-Duchy of Finland: an unquestioned loyalty towards the Russian sovereign.
[Why did so many Polish officers stand ready to join their Russian comrades in the 1825 revolt? —ed.]
Still with me? All right, as you probably also remember, the year 1830 marked the first serious blow to the European security system established in the Congress of Vienna. [Right, yes, absolutely, sure, of course, you betcha, sip, sin duda. —ed.]
In July, a revolution broke out in Paris, and by August, the revolutionary tide reached the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. [Which, at the time, included Belgium. —ed.] The events caused an extreme shock in St. Petersburg, where the memory of the Decembrist uprising was still fresh. Nicholas I regarded the revolutions as concrete manifestations of a vast revolutionary conspiracy stretching all across the continent, posing an immediate danger to the peace and security of Russia and Europe.
As a result of the crisis, the Russian government stepped up its surveillance of the borderlands. On August 11th, the Tsar left for an official visit to Finland, ordering Governor-General Arseni Andreyevich Zakrevski to tighten Finnish border controls in order to “prevent the spread of revolutionary agitation.” During his stay in Helsinki, the Tsar also wrote an official letter to Grand-Duke Konstantin in Warsaw, inquiring into the possibility of using the Polish military in the expected intervention against the French and Belgian revolutionaries. The mobilization orders to the Army of the Congress Kingdom were issued on November 18th.
The orders turned out to be counterproductive. Eleven days later, on November 29th, a military revolt broke out in Warsaw, organized by a conspiracy of radicalized Polish officers and cadets. Within a month, the conflict escalated into a full-blown national uprising, and the Tsar began to assemble a punitive expedition to restore order in the rebellious borderland. Among the military units summoned to the task was — you guessed it — the Finnish Guard’s Battalion, which the Tsar had inspected in Helsinki back in August. According to the letter written by staff colonel Ivan Alekseyevich Chepurnov to governor-general Zakrevski on December 14th, the Guard answered to the call to arms with “thunderous joy.”
The contrast was clear. The end result was that at the moment of danger, the Grand-Duchy of Finland stood ready to protect its autonomy by proving its loyalty towards the Russian Empire, even if that meant resorting to the force of arms. The Polish officers, in contrast, initiated an open mutiny and launched an uprising rather than fight against French and Belgian revolutionaries.
The story of the campaign and its political repercussions on Finland, Poland and Russia probably requires a few more posts, but before proceeding further, I should perhaps pause for a moment and ask if there’s further interest in this story?
Yes. No comments, but interest.
Posted by: Ikram | March 18, 2009 at 11:54 AM
Noel, assuming that the question was about how the Ramsay family actually managed to assimilate in Sweden and Finland, it was really nothing special. Back in the 16th century, there were Scottish mercenaries all over Europe, and most of them were quite willing to settle down in their new homelands, especially in exchange for a patch of land and a noble title.
About why some Polish officers were so willing to become at least indirectly involved in the Decembrist Rising of 1825... well, it's a long story. The Polish political turbulence dated back to the Second Sejm in 1820, when Alexander I had responded to the prolonged debates on the constitutional reform simply by angrily dissolving the whole assembly. The result was the formation of a new underground extraparliamentary opposition in Congress Poland, based on radical conspiratorial societies on the Continental European model.
One of the most significant societies was "Towarzystwo Patriotyczne" (the Patriotic Society), led by major Walerian Łukasiński. Łukasiński was arrested in 1822 for "conspiratorial activities", and received a prison sentence. Needless to say, his arrest inflamed the radical tendencies among the Polish officer corps still further.
The remaining Polish conspirators were quick to establish contacts with their equally-disgruntled Russian colleagues. The first meeting between the leaders of the "Southern Society" of revolutionary Russian officers and the Polish "Patriotic Society" took place in Kiev in January 1824. The Russian conspirators hoped that by enlisting the assistance of the Polish Army, they could prevent Grand-Duke Konstantin - the Emperor's brother and the Russian commander-in-chief in the Congress Kingdom - from intervening against the upcoming insurrection in St. Petersburg. In exchange, the Russian negotiators were ready to grant concessions to the Polish conspirators, including the extension of the Polish eastern border eastwards, provided that the Congress Kingdom would still remain otherwise integrated with the future Russian state.
It should be noted, however, that these "Kiev Contracts" actually failed to establish any functioning consensus between the Russian and Polish conspirators. The previously-mentioned lieutenant-colonel Seweryn Krzyżanowski, who represented the Polish side in the talks, was unwilling to compromise the Polish freedom of action, because he - correctly - feared that the Decembrist coup attempt would end in a failure. In addition, the political program of the Russian "Southern Society" turned out to be, surprisingly enough, too radical for Krzyżanowski. In the spirit of colonel Pavel Pestel's declaration "Russkaya Pravda", the Russian negotiators were promoting the idea of a republican constitution for Russia, after the American example. Krzyżanowski feared legitimist hostility from Austria and Prussia, refused to condone the assassination of the monarch and instead suggested constitutional monarchy as the proper future form of government.
The negotiations continued in January 1825, but there wasn't much progress, mostly because neither side was in a hurry to draw up any detailed plans for action. At the time, no one expected that Alexander I was going to die before the end of the year. In the end, only a handful of Polish officers was actually able to participate in the Decembrist Uprising, but that was more than enough to compromise the entire military establishment of the Congress Kingdom in the eyes of Nicholas I.
Some of the Polish officers were imprisoned in Finland. There's actually an English-language reference in the memoirs Elizabeth Mary Leveson-Gower Grosvenor, Marchioness of Westminster. You can find her Diary of a tour in Sweden, Norway, and Russia, in 1827 online. The full reference goes like this:
"We set out again next morning, and got here on Thursday, at noon, having stopped half a day at Helsingfors [Helsinki], to see the wonderfully strong fortress of Sweaborg. Some of the Russian conspirators were found confined in a part of it, but they were suddenly taken away one morning about two months ago, and nobody knows where they are sent to. The Polish conspirators are not yet tried, but no more are to be executed."
Cheers,
J. J.
Posted by: Jussi Jalonen | March 18, 2009 at 05:19 PM
Also interested.
Posted by: George | March 18, 2009 at 05:34 PM
I'm interested.
Posted by: Colin Alberts | March 19, 2009 at 07:43 AM
Also interested. Back in the SHWI era, I recall that several times you mentioned that 19th century Finland was particularly loyal to the Tsar(*). This always astonished me-- being ignorant of Finnish history in that period, I assumed that the Finns wanted to get out of the Russian Empire, like the Poles and some other nationalities. I suppose that this assumption arose from my incorrect presumptions about why the 1940-1940 Soviet-Finnish hostilities started.
(*) I interpreted your essay above as saying that Finns were loyal to the _Tsar_, as distinct from being loyal to the Empire. Am I reading too much into this?
Posted by: Dennis Brennan | March 19, 2009 at 09:42 AM
Dennis, as we shall see in the next installment, the loyalty was also loyalty towards the Empire. Although I suppose that one could also describe it in the context of class differences. The Finnish populace and common people were, as good Lutherans, loyal to the _Emperor_; most of them probably didn't much think of the Empire.
For the upper classes, for whom the Imperial Russian bureaucracy and military sometimes provided very good opportunities, the loyalty was also loyalty to the Empire. As you may remember, Alaska had two Finnish governors during the Russian era.
And, of course, as noted, Finnish officers and soldiers served with distinction pretty much in every single war of the Empire back in the 19th century. The relations with the Imperial master didn't start to turn sour until after 1899.
Cheers,
J. J.
Posted by: Jussi Jalonen | March 19, 2009 at 12:23 PM