Scandinavian Political Studies, Bind 11 (1976)

On the Political Mobilization of the Agrarian Population in Finland: Problems and Hypotheses

RISTO ALAPURO

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University of Helsinki

1. The Perspective

Three phases or waves of collective action can be distinguished in the political mobilization of the agrarian population in Finland up to World War 11. The first phase, culminating with the introduction of universal suffrage in 1907, resulted in a turnout of 70 per cent in the countryside. The second was the Civil War in 1918 - the agrarian population had an important role in the conflict. Thirdly, about a decade later, there broke out a strong fascist-type movement which during its most active period (1929-32) had a marked rural color.

The first mobilization period displayed characteristics essential for any attempt to put the cleavages of the whole period into a coherent perspective. If one hopes to be able to analyze all phases of political mobilization over a quarter of a century from a unified perspective,1 one has to start with the problems of the first period. It is the task of this article to make some suggestions and present hypotheses on factors affecting the political mobilization of the agrarian population in Finland at the beginning of the century.

The cleavages and patterns of collective action revealed at the beginning of century can be viewed from the perspective of the specific Finnish linkage to the international capitalist market from the 1870s onwards - especially through the forest industry. Of course it is not the only key but it still had a central role in the process both in its direct and indirect consequences. The impact of lumbering on the agrarian population varied depending on the social structure through which it was mediated in different parts of the country. It made a strong impact in certain areas (regardless of the qualitative aspect of the impact) but it affected other areas only secondarily or not at all. Given the fact that the overall impact of the forest industry was so immense, the mode and orientation of political mobilization in other areas can be analyzed from the perspective that they remained outside the lumbering boom. This does not mean that the characteristic linkage to

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the market in these areas should be neglected. In this paper, however, it will receive
only minor attention.

2. Support for Political Parties among the Agrarian Population, 1907—1930

One can portray the first period of mobilization by sketching the support for different parties among agrarian groups. The results in the countryside presented in Table I do not of course reflect political reactions only among the agrarian population but do give an approximation; in 1920, 89 per cent of the economically active population in the countryside worked in the agrarian sector.2


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Table I. Percentage Party Support, Rural and Urban, in Selected Finnish General Elections, 1907-1930

The main parties in the countryside were the Social Democrats, the Finnish Party (later the National Coalition Party, or the Conservatives), and the Agrarian Union. The Swedish People's Party had strong support among the Swedishspeaking population in the coastal areas but it will be left out in this context because of its special character.

Table I shows that in the first general election (1907) the Social Democratic

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Party, by gaining more than one third of the votes, became in one stroke the largest socialist party in Europe. Its proportion of votes was even larger in the countryside than in the cities. In 1916 the Social Democrats gained an absolute majority in the parliament, and in 1918 they attempted a revolution. The Agrarian Union presents a very different picture. From a modest beginning it grew rapidly, especially after the Civil War, to become one of the two largest parties in the country in the 19205. This growth occurred simultaneously with the waning of support for the Liberals, or the Young Finnish Party (later the National Progress Party), in the countryside.3 Up to 1916 the Conservatives lost voters in the countryside but then consolidated their support at a medium level.

3. Regional Differences in the Mobilization Process

Party divisions in the countryside varied in different parts of the country in 1907
- and the basic differences manifested then have largely remained since that
time.4 Regional support for the three largest parties is presented in Maps 1-3.


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Map 1. The areas of support for the Social Democratic Party in 1907. The communes in which the Social Democrats gained more than their average support in the countryside - over 37.6 per cent.

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Map 2. The areas of support for the Agrarian Union in 1907 and 1922. The communes in which the Agrarian Union gained more than its average support in the countryside - over 6.7 per cent and 24.6 per cent, respectively.

The very thinly populated northern Finland, where landownership was not yet widely established, will be omitted in this paper because there was only partial political mobilization in this region. For example, in 1907 the turnout was only 54 per cent. Northern Finland was not to play a role in the Civil War or in agrarian fascism either. The border is based on a conventional socio-historical division between the northern region and other regions of the country at the beginning of the century.5

The areas of strong support for the Social Democrats make up a zone from the southwestern to the northeastern regions of the area under study. The Agrarian Union was only emerging in 1907 and, therefore, the strong areas of support for the Agrarian Union one and a half decades later have also been indicated in Map 2. The party had its strongholds in the province of Viipuri, in Ostrobothnia (see Map 4), and in the eastern region; the Agrarian Union areas make up a zone

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Map 3. The areas of support for the Finnish Party in 1907. The communes in which the Fin nish Party gained more than its average support in the countryside - over 28.5 per cent.

from the southeast to the northwest. The Finnish party had its strongest support
in the southwestern and central regions and in Ostrobothnia. It did well also in
some large thinly populated eastern communes.6

In accounts dealing with the agrarian population in the last century and at the beginning of this century it is usual to divide south and central Finland into four regions of study. This basic division will be utilized in this paper; it is presented in broad outline in Map 4. The two most important areas are the southwestern and the eastern regions. Only minor attention will be given to the other two areas, the province of Viipuri in the southeast, and the region of Ostrobothnia.7

In short, the zones of the parties crossed each other producing different combinations of support in the four regions: the Social Democrats and the Finnish Party in the southwest; the Social Democrats and the Agrarian Union (a decade later) in the east; the Finnish Party and the Agrarian Union in Ostrobothnia; and the Agrarian Union in the southeast.

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a. The southwestern region


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f*-^r Map 4. The regions under study.

The southwestern region, consisting mainly of the three southwestern provinces, was the most developed area in the country. The provinces were more industrialized than the other areas, they were centers of administration and cultural life, and they were the most densely populated areas of the country. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Social Democrats found strong support here; many industrial centers were situated in the countryside.

However, even here the role of the agrarian population was decisive.8 Although the nature of the relationship between rural industry and the agrarian population certainly needs more investigation, the agrarian social structure seems to be a very central starting point for interpretation. Hannu Soikkanen has explained the strength of the Social Democratic support by relating it to the proportion of the 'proletariat' - i.e. crofters, industrial and agricultural workers, and people without permanent occupations - in an area. In these three provinces, as well as in the

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provinces of Kuopio and Mikkeli that make up the eastern region, there was a
larger proletariat than in other regions. These were also the areas of greatest Social
Democratic support.

The significance of the structure of the agrarian population can be seen in Soikkanen's ecological analysis correlating the proportion of households owning land and support for the Social Democrats. There is a marked correlation between these variables in these three provinces and in certain bordering regions. In this region, the proportion of landowning households was the smallest in the country - i.e., large farms were more common than elsewhere and the proportion of crofters was very large. The agrarian proletariat and the crofters presumably voted for the Social Democrats.9

An analysis based on ecological correlations leaves many questions unanswered. One problem is the different roles played by crofters and the other agrarian proletarian groups in supporting the Social Democrats. Viljo Rasila in his studies on crofters has emphasized their 'passivity' in the crisis which was to come a decade later. They do not seem to have taken an active part in the attempt at revolution led by the Social Democrats in 1918. Rasila links his observations to their middle-position between landowners and agrarian workers; they wanted to consolidate control of the land they cultivated, but at the same time they had to work for the landowning peasants. In any case, both Soikkanen and Rasila state that the mobilization of the landless groups including crofters happened in the southwestern areas more through the Social Democratic party than any other.10

Not surprisingly, the support for Conservatives in the countryside of southwestern Finland has been linked to the same structural factors. Goran von Bonsdorff has pointed out that in all Nordic countries there was support for Conservatives in regions with large landowners. In Finland, this observation especially applies to the southwestern region.11 This interpretation links the Conservative vote to wealthy peasants.

A concise formulation of the argument given for these political party divisions
is found in Soikkanen's characterization of factors producing conditions favorable
for the Social Democrats in the countryside at the turn of century:

The conditions of the crofters were deteriorating at the end of the century. Restrictions of rights to use the forests, increased rents, shortened leases, evictions, etc., had contributed to the situation. Simultaneously, the purchases of crown lands for inheritable farms and the elimination of restrictions on the peasant's right to own land had strengthened the position of the landowning peasants. The growth of industry had raised land prices, especially for forests, and landowners had additional incomes from the rise in agricultural production, the increased leases paid by crofters, and the actual decrease in land taxes. This produced, by the end of the century, the situation characterized by Jutikkala: 'The gap separating the landowning peasants from the landless groups widened to a previously unknown

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extent. All factors brought the one group up and forced the
other group down.'12

These conditions were most marked in the southwestern region. A clear polarization
had developed resulting in support for both the Social Democrats and Conservatives.

b. The eastern region

Here the conditions among peasants and other agrarian groups were different.
As in the southwestern region, the Social Democrats were heavily supported but
so also were the Agrarians (and before them, the Liberals).

As in the southwestern region, there was a large proportion of agrarian workers and a large number of crofters. Still, the relationship between the landowners and the landless was different from that prevailing in the southwest. There were few large landowners and fewer crofters under one landowner here. In southwest Finland, arable cultivation dominated, and crofters, cultivating their fields, mainly worked for the landowners. In the poorer eastern regions slash and burn cultivation had prevailed along with a sharecropping system; usually the crofters paid the landowners by giving them a share of the harvest. The crofters were more loosely tied to the landowning peasants and were more mobile than in the southwest. By the end of the century, slash and burn techniques had fallen into disuse, and both the crofters and agrarian workers were needed less than before. The attempt by the landowning peasants to change over to stockraising resulted in a decreased demand for additional labor, although the population was rapidly increasing 13

One commentator notes: 'It seemed as if the economic life in the countryside had come to a standstill.'14 The gap separating the landowning peasants from the landless did not widen in this region as it did in the southwest, at least not in a comparable way.

Soikkanen explains the heavy support for the Social Democrats in the eastern area, especially in the province of Kuopio, by the large proportion of the proletariat in this region. But unlike the southwestern region, he finds a zero-correlation between the proportion of households owning land and support for the Social Democrats within the province.15 Therefore, the proportion of proletarians per se in a region does not seem a sufficient explanation.

The fact that the Agrarian Union, and before it the Liberals, received support
clearly above the national average has been explained by referring to the large
number of middle-sized and small farms in comparison to the southwest.16

c. The other regions

The other two regions are the province of Viipuri, and Ostrobothnia. Small
farms dominated the countryside of southeastern Finland - no less than 69 per

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cent of agrarian households in the province of Viipuri owned land in 1901. It is
natural that explanations of the very strong Agrarian Union support here are
based on this fact.17

A large number of independent peasant farms characterized Ostrobothnia at the beginning of this century. Crofters were few in number. Although the landless population increased in number here as it did elsewhere, the gap between landed and landless interest was not as marked. Widespread emigration absorbed part of the population growth, many migrated to the south, and also the dividing of farms was common.18

The strength of both the Conservatives and the Agrarian Union in Ostrobothnia has been explained respectively by the relatively greater number of large farms than in the southeastern and eastern regions of the country; and by the large number of rather small independent farms in the area.19 The arguments on political affiliation for this region are based often on cultural factors; Ostrobothnia has for a long time been known for its religious revivalism, and strong rural or populist-type opposition against the national center.

4. A Perspective: Penetration of the Market into the Countryside

A useful perspective can be obtained from studies which relate the political
reactions of peasants and other agrarian groups to the penetration of capitalism
into the countryside.

This idea can be found at a general level in Immanuel Wallerstein's study on the origins of the capitalist world-system. Wallerstein's thesis is that the different parts of Europe - and their countrysides - developed differently depending on their role in the emerging capitalist system. In the periphery of capitalism the rural upper classes were in a key position because capitalism came into the countryside through them. In Poland, for example, the rural nobility was in a position to export grain to the expanding grain market in the core areas of capitalism in the northwestern parts of Europe by squeezing more surplus from peasants through traditional mechanisms, i.e. by forcing them into so-called second serfdom. In this case, capitalist influences contributed to the strengthening of manorial ties.20 In a word, the consequences of capitalism were mediated to the countryside differently depending on the position of the respective society in the capitalist system.

In more concrete terms this idea may be seen in Barrington Moore's study Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.21 It is one of the most fundamental conclusions of this study that the impact of the market was mediated to the countryside in different ways depending on the mode of the linkage of the rural upper classes to capitalism. It is implicitly clear that the linkage was not similar in the core areas and in the periphery of capitalism. This idea may be illustrated with three examples.

In England, the rural upper classes were linked to capitalism by becoming to
a large extent capitalists themselves. Consequently, the impact of the market was

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mediated directly into the countryside resulting in capitalists on the one hand, and
in wage workers, on the other. The peasantry was destroyed in this process.22

In France, the landed upper classes did not become capitalists by adapting themselves to the market. True, the adaptation to the gradual intrusion of capitalism made them put greater pressure on the peasants, but, in squeezing more surplus for their increased needs, the nobles used the prevailing social and political framework. The peasants were, however, left in a situation approaching de facto ownership of the land they cultivated, and they contributed to the French Revolution which mortally wounded the landed nobility with its privileges. As a result an independent peasantry was created, and the peasants adapted to capitalism - often not too successfully - as commercial farmers.23

The third variant of the intrusion of capitalism into the countryside has already been exemplified in Wallerstein's example of Poland. In becoming big grain exporters, the nobles were able to squeeze the needed surplus by reintroducing serfdom 24

These examples throw light on the role of the mediator in the study of the intrusion of capitalism into the countryside, and of its political consequences. From the perspective of the peasant, this problem has been analyzed in a very illuminating way by Eric R. Wolf in his book on peasant wars in the twentieth century. The situation and problems of the peasant become clear in Wolf's delineation of factors distinguishing peasant from farmer:

The major aim of the peasant is subsistence and social status gained within a narrow range of social relationships. Peasants are thus unlike cultivators, who participate fully in the market and who commit themselves to a status game set within a wide social network. To ensure continuity upon the land and sustenance for his household, the peasant most often keeps the market at arm's length, for unlimited involvement in the market threatens his hold on his source of livelihood. He thus cleaves to traditional arrangements which guarantee his access to land and to the labor of kin and neighbors. Moreover, he favors production for sale only within the context of an assured production for subsistence. Put in another way, it may be said that the peasant operates in a restricted factor and product market. The factors of production - land, labor, equipment - are rendered relatively immobile by prior liens and expectations; products are sold in the market to produce the extra margin of returns with which to buy goods one does not produce on the homestead. In contrast, the farmer enters the market fully, subjects his land and labor to open competition, explores alternative uses for the factors of production in the search for maximal returns, and favors the more profitable product over the one entailing the smaller risk. The change-over from peasant to farmer, however, is not merely a change in psychological orientation; it involves a major

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shift in the institutional context within which men make their choices. Perhaps it is precisely when the peasant can no longer rely on his accustomed institutional context to reduce his risks, but when alternative institutions are either too chaotic or too restrictive to guarantee a viable commitment to new ways, that the psychological, economic, social, and political tensions all mount toward peasant rebellion and involvement in revolution.25

In other words, analyzing the ways and mode of the change-over from peasant to farmer is essential: how rapidly did it happen, which alternatives were at hand during the process, etc. It is here that the role of the mediator has importance. Mediation may guarantee a viable commitment to new ways, but the economic mediator - who in the process may have been interposed between the landowner and the dependent peasantry - may also be the agent of social dissolution. His obedience to the market demands that he maximizes returns, regardless of the immediate consequences of his actions. By rendering the process of commodityformation bureaucratic and impersonal, he removes himself physically from these consequences; at the same time he loses his ability to respond to social cues from the affected population.26

The nature of the process of mediation depends on the nature of the linkage to capitalism of the society or area in question - on its position in a larger system. But it also depends, naturally enough, on the arrangements in the peasant community, on the character of its prior involvement in the market, on its resources, products, etc. Charles Tilly in his The Vendee has described and analyzed carefully the mediation process from the standpoint of the rural community. In doing this, he presents a picture where the economic mediators in the Vendee at the end of the 18th century are related to other mediators. According to Tilly, the holders of elite roles - such individuals as the merchant, the cure, the political official - gain much of their significance from the fact that they are mediators, actively and simultaneously participating in both the national and the local structures. The problems mount when the outside system rapidly affects the life of the community, and the problems concentrate around the elite roles which mediate the outside influences. The process results in the fragmentation of roles within the community: religious behavior becomes separate from political behavior, political from market behavior. The mediating activity becomes specialized. For example, it can happen that, whereas the large landowner has been the intermediary between community and society for a wide range of problems, the merchant takes over a part of his mediating functions as the community becomes more absorbed into the national market. In the case of the Vendee, Tilly distinguished three important national structures affecting rural life: the market, the state, and the church.27

Briefly, the intrusion of capitalism into the countryside may be viewed from both a national and a community level. How was Finland linked to the international market, and how did the change-over from peasant to farmer happen (or did it happen at all) in different parts of the Finnish countryside at the turn of century?

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5. Involvement in the Market in the Finnish Countryside and the Political Mobilization of the Agrarian Population in 1907

a. The linkage of Finland to the international market through timber

Like the other Nordic countries, from the latter half of the 1800s Finland became tied to the international market much more tightly than before. However, as Lennart Jorberg points out, the Finnish situation had some peculiar characteristics. Finland was more agrarian than the other Nordic countries in the 1870s, and, relatively speaking, much more so on the eve of World War I. In Denmark and Sweden, agriculture was more 'commercialized' than in Finland in the 1870s, although indications of commercialization were by no means completely lacking in Finland. Also, in contrast to the other Nordic countries, the Finnish linkage to the international market was overwhelmingly based on the forest industry; in the decade 1900-09, sixty nine per cent of Finnish exports were based on lumbering.28

Agriculture in Finland was comparatively undeveloped and little commercialized during the 1870-1914 period, especially at the beginning of the period. On the other hand, the Finnish export trade was based mainly on a product having a strong and very direct linkage to the countryside. Capitalism penetrated very rapidly and in a very concrete way into the countryside in Finland, where the peasants owned the bulk of the forests. The sudden linking of peripheral Finland into the developed capitalist market system was felt immediately among the agrarian population.

The peasants in Finland were, to quote Eino Jutikkala, in a situation different from the position of 'the peasants in other European countries, where they usually did not own forests and therefore did not experience the immense rise in the value of land, which came about in Finland in the latter half of the nineteenth century.' There was a clear difference compared even to Sweden.29 Up to the 1870s, the forests had a very small role in agriculture; it has been estimated that the income from forestry for agriculture was 25 times more in the 1870s compared to the 1830s.30 In an area in the southwest - where this development has been studied - the rise began in the 1870s, but in the 1890s it was 'getting more and more unchecked: in 1906-10 the prices were more than three times those in the middle of the previous century.' Prices rose less rapidly in the rest of Scandinavia, but in the interior of Finland, which was more thickly forested than the southwestern region, they rose even more rapidly.31

But the boom affected the countryside in many different ways. First, the nature of the consequences of the boom depended on the social structure of the agrarian population affected. Second, certain areas were left outside of the boom, and their specific traits were to become increasingly pronounced at a time when national political mobilization was linking different areas of the country into a single unit in a more fundamental sense than ever before.

b. The southwestern region

In the southwestern region, where the large and wealthy peasants dominated,
the impact of the boom was mediated to the countryside mainly through them.

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They sold timber to the timber companies from the forests they owned. This process had very significant consequences. The development made it easier for wealthy landowning peasants to change the structure of production in agriculture; the traditional arable cultivation had been in severe difficulties by the 1870s and stockraising had been gaining ground as in many other parts of the country. The rise in value of forests greatly facilitated this change, which, as such, may be taken as an indication of increased market orientation.32 The boom changed the character of the peasant economy. Jorberg's characterization applies particularly to the southwestern region: 'The introduction of more modern production methods, new equipment and better buildings all demanded a great deal of capital. If they had relied wholly on agricultural yield Finnish farmers could hardly have come by this capital. Instead they acquired it to a great extent from the sale of forests and timber.'33 '[CJapitalism and the spirit of capitalism [began], consciously or unconsciously, to penetrate also into peasant agriculture,' wrote a contemporary observer. 'The landowning peasant had to produce more for sale than before and had to manage his farm like an enterprise; he was forced to make calculations and to view economic activity from the point of profitability'.34

How did this development affect the relations between the agrarian groups? Capitalism intruded into the southwestern region by making at least some of the big and wealthy peasants into capitalist farmers, and many more of them into farmers closely linked to the forest industry; the market mechanism affected the countryside through them. Economic mediators did not develop separately from landowners, but peasant landowners themselves became mediators whose obedience to the market demands that they maximize returns, regardless of the immediate consequences of their actions.'

It would be an exaggeration to say that a 'classical' capitalist development was going on in the countryside of the southwestern region, and dividing the agrarian population into capitalists and wage workers. But despite immense historical differences, it is possible to suggest some parallels with the abovementioned developments in England. The point is that this polarization in Finland was exceptional in the Europe of that time. Class conflict was heightening in the countryside, but at a time when the socialist working class movement already existed.35 Elsewhere - but earlier - the penetration of capitalism had divided the countryside into two contrasting parts (England), or the peasants had been forced down into reintroduced serfdom, and they were only slowly, and under different conditions, freeing themselves from its consequences (Eastern Europe). Presumably these tendencies were weaker also in Scandinavia where the peasants had adapted or were adapting to the market by becoming commercial farmers. This idea might provide a starting point for studying factors behind the exceptional strength of the Social Democratic party in the thoroughly agrarian pre War I Finland.

But why suppose that the intrusion of capitalism into the countryside through landowner-mediators divided, to some extent, the agrarian population into capitalist farmers and wage-workers? According to Wolf the activity of the economic mediator may lead - and has often led - to a chaotic situation, where no viable

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commitments are possible: the intrusion of the market dissolves old institutional arrangements without creating new ones. If the suggestion is based on the large support for the Social Democrats in the southwestern region, it has been inferred from the phenomenon it is supposed to explain.

Admittedly, current knowledge of the relationship between the landowning peasants - or farmers - and the agrarian workers is, in many respects, insufficient. For example, there remains much to explore in the development of the position of farm hands and casual farm workers at the turn of century; they made up the majority of the agrarian population in the southwestern and eastern regions.36 To what extent was there a change from wage in kind to monetary wage from the 1870s up to the 19205? How was this tendency related to the fact that the demand for farm labor diminished or remained unchanged due to technical innovations and the transition to stockraising, while simultaneously the population increased rapidly? How important was the felling of timber for the landless laborers?37 How important for their political mobilization was the fact that sawmills and other centers of the forest industry were situated in the countryside?

In any case, from accounts and examples it may be stated that this tendency was basically real - that there was a more or less qualitative change in the relationship between the landless laborers and the landowners conducive to an increasing polarization.38

The situation of the crofters poses a more difficult problem. Vil jo Rasila argues that 'basically the crofter problem in Finland was a population problem.'39 According to Rasila, the number of crofters and the amount of land they cultivated could not possibly increase from the latter half of the 1800s on, for little or no land was available for this purpose any more; this was partly due to the rise in the value of forests. Rasila concludes that because of the steady growth in population new crofters were available in abundance, the result being that the terms of leases could be made more onerous than before. As additional factors contributing to the strains between landowners and crofters, he mentions restrictions of the rights to use forests (for collecting firewood and building materials, etc.) and difficulties in assessing the monetary value of work realized by the rise of the money economy.40

Rasila explains proletarianization essentially by population growth. Put in this way the problem appears as a special case of a more general one: what was, in different parts of Europe moving from feudalism to capitalism, the relation between proletarianization and population growth?41 Here one may ask, for example, to what extent the increase in population in the eastern region was a consequence of prior proletarianization. There the traditional arrangements had been breaking down already in the middle of the 1800s - leading to pauperization - and the migration to the south was stronger than anywhere else.42 The point is that the most adequate perspective would be one providing an explanation for both the population growth and the so-called crofter problem.

Also the approach of Wolf and Moore suggests a different perspective from
Rasila's on the crofter's situation. First, it can be hypothesized that because the

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crofter system came from a feudal or, in any case, from a pre-capitalist period, the crofter's work had a new social meaning as a result of the peasant landowner becoming an economic mediator - what was produced by the crofter was now something to be utilized in the market situation. Obedience to the market may have demanded a tightening of the lease terms regardless of the immediate consequences of the action. The farmer squeezed a surplus from the crofter for the market by utilizing the traditional mechanism. The new relation to the land appears a more appropriate cause for the aggravated situation than the growth in population as such. The landowner could also invest in new cultivation methods, and so manage his farm like an enterprise, whereas to a larger extent the crofter had to adhere to established technical arrangements.43 Secondly, in some cases the traditional mechanism working for the landowner, was rejected; it was replaced by monetary rents. The crofters demanded this right, and some landowners also suggested it. This arrangement meant that the crofter had to sell his products in order to be able to pay the rent. However, by 1918 this system had been implemented only partially 44 Still, this development and secondary jobs, such as 'floating timber, and working in the construction of canals and railroads,'45 contributed to a situation in which the crofters were increasingly subsumed directly into the market.

In other words, both the indirect and direct linkage to the market undoubtedly undermined the customary institutional arrangements of the crofter. This development rather than population growth as such may have resulted in both antifeudal and anticapitalist resentment among the crofters. Anti-capitalism was not really socialist by nature, which may be seen in the fact that in the conflict with landowners the crofters wanted full ownership of the land they cultivated; the Social Democratic Party had to sympathize with the small farmers at the beginning of the century, and later, in the 1910s, it remained neutral in order to keep crofters attached to the party.46

But how did the relationship between crofters and landless laborers develop? Rasila indicates that no strong ties existed between them. This situation can be illustrated by Barrington Moore's discussion on radical or rebellious solidarity among peasants.47 To create this solidarity, institutional arrangements must be such as to spread grievances throughout the peasant community and turn it into a solidarity group hostile to the overlord. This may happen if property arrangements are such that, in order to be a full member of the village, it is necessary to have a certain rough minimum of property, usually land. As Moore points out, the process of modernization may considerably increase the number of those below this minimum, creating a radical potential. With the growth in population in the southwestern region the number below this minimum increased steadily - and this increased the radical potential. The problem is the extent the hunger for land brought the crofters and rural landless strata together into a solidarity group.

No such close alignment took place, regardless of the fact that both crofters and landless laborers largely supported the Social Democrats. This may be accounted for by the fact that the crofters were nevertheless able to maintain de facto control of the land they cultivated; the landless laborers were forced to compete for their position.48 On the other hand, the 'peasant community' as a

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basis for solidarity only partially applies to the situation, and more so at the beginning of the period than after the turn of the century. The wealthy landowners, crofters, and landless laborers had all belonged to the peasant community in earlier times. However, the rise of the forest industry steadily widened the gap between the wealthy landowners and the others; some indications of this sort of development had been noticeable earlier at the end of the preceding period.49 It is questionable whether there any longer existed effective traditional arrangements capable of providing an appropriate framework for turning the non-landowning agrarian population into a solidarity group.

c. The eastern region

In the eastern region the market intruded into the countryside through lumbering in a different manner and also a little later (from the 1890s on). This was by no means the first indication of the involvement of the peasants in the market. Already in the 1830s and 1840s they became linked to the market through butter exports to and grain imports from Russia, and the sales gained in importance in later decades.50 The relation between the earlier impact of the market and the


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Map 5. Purchases of land by 'timber companies by 1937. The communes in which the com panics had purchased 20 per cent or more of the privately owned land.

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impact of the forest industry needs investigation, but it is reasonable to suggest
that the earlier involvement was much weaker than the impact of the timber
boom.51

It was also qualitatively different. Butter sales were based on the peasants' own cattle, and benefitted the peasants, but this was not the case with the forests: selling timber from the peasants' forests was not the main process here as it was in the southwest. Instead, the timber companies purchased large areas of land. One authority says that the purchases of land by timber companies in Finland are, in part, due to the fact that 'the landowning population in our country has rather small resources. Under different circumstances .. the owners of forests had engaged in the forest industry.'52 This statement applies specifically to the eastern region where the timber companies made the bulk of their purchases; they concentrated mainly on the province of Kuopio in the eastern area of the region (see Map 5).53 In this area, peasants were largely at the mercy of the companies after the boom began. It seems clear that particularly peasants with economic difficulties were forced to sell their farms.54

In this region, which was poorer than the southwestern region, the peasant did not become a capitalist farmer, let alone a capitalist. It seems that the impact of the market was not mediated through him to the landless strata of the agrarian population as was the case in the southwestern region. He never assumed the role of the economic mediator in the sense the landowning peasants in the southwest did. No gap developed between different agrarian groups comparable to the one in the southwest. Rather the peasant himself became a crofter or a landless laborer suffering from the consequences of capitalism. The timber companies themselves were important mediators here. The hypothesis may be illustrated with a quote from the observer we cited earlier:

Also in the case of our primitive 'rural capitalism' one may notice the tendency characteristic of all capitalism to make the position of the laboring class of the people insecure, both economically and socially. Commercial and industrial capitalism, through the purchases of land by the timber companies, has spread this insecurity of existence in certain parts of the country in a very striking way. It has taken farms from landowning peasants, leases from crofters, and cottages from cottagers.55

At the beginning of the century, it was maintained that after the timber companies had purchased the land the former owner usually remained on the farm as a crofter under vague terms; eventually the farm fell into decay and may in the end have been abandoned.56 Usually the companies purchased whole farms along with the forests. Of the owners investigated in a study published in 1906 one third had purchased a new farm, a little less than one third remained on their former farms as crofters, and a little more than one third had become casual farm workers or moved away.57

In large areas of the region, the companies had by 1937 purchased 20 per cent

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or more of the land not owned by the state. Because these purchases were denied almost totally in 1915, Map 5 describes reasonably well the developments by 1915. Taken all together, the proportion of land owned by the companies was not very large; companies purchased less land in Finland than in Sweden, for example.58 But locally, in the eastern region, the purchases had a strong impact. Here, traditional arrangements were partially dissolved and to a large extent also threatened without really breaking down. The dissolving tendencies came from outside the region and not from a group belonging to the agrarian population, as was the case in the southwest. The impulses did not create severe cleavages between agrarian groups to the extent they did in the southwestern region.

Did these conditions result in a radical solidarity in the peasant community? This might seem a plausible suggestion hi a situation where the peasant community and an outside market agent really were opposed to each other. Did the peasant community become a solidarity group against an outside agent? Soikkanen's observation that in the province of Kuopio the strong support for the Social Democrats did not correlate with structural differences in the agrarian population (measured by the proportion of households owning land) might be approached from this perspective. But, as a matter of fact, radical solidarity is not a very appropriate characterization of the political reaction here. For example, in the first general elections the turnout was lower than in other regions under study in this paper.59 That the area was 'passive' (whatever this may mean) is indicated also by the above quotation on the standstill of the economy in this part of the country.

Some features of the situation preceding the rise of the forest industry are important. Slash and burn methods had reached a critical stage here already by the middle of the nineteenth century. The attempted transition to stockraising and to arable cultivation considerably weakened the position of crofters; they were largely forced to continue to adhere to slash and burn methods, for example. The transition also greatly reduced the need for labor by landowning peasants, whereas the population was increasing steadily. There emerged a floating population of permanently unemployed workers. Groups of beggars were wandering about the countryside of the eastern region.60 In other words, the crisis in traditional agriculture had begun already by the middle of the nineteenth century to markedly alter or break down the traditional peasant community. The developments starting in the 1890s certainly created anticapitalism, but to speak about a radical solidarity based on the peasant community would be even more inappropriate here than in the southwestern region.

A comparison with southwest Finland is enlightening. The traditional method of agriculture in the east and the institutional arrangements linked to them produced a crisis in the middle of the nineteenth century. The people of this region experienced the first consequences of the rise of the forest industry only a half century later - from the 1890s on. In the southwest, on the other hand, traditional agriculture (arable cultivation) did not enter a crisis stage until the 1870s, and the crisis was immediately accompanied by the boom which essentially facilitated the transition to stockraising and new cultivation methods. In the southwest it was the boom which greatly changed the old institutional arrangements, whereas

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in the east they had been steadily disintegrating for a half century before its impact was felt. Arvo M. Soininen, who has studied traditional Finnish methods of agriculture, observes that 'the structural changes in agricultural methods in the areas of arable cultivation were considerably less significant and did not [by the 1870s] result in a crisis comparable to the one experienced in the slash and burn area'.61

These findings indicate that there was no strong structural framework for radical solidarity in the eastern region. Another implication seems important too. The change-over from peasant to farmer began to accelerate in the southwest in the 1870s but in the east only in the 1890s. The decade of the 1890s coincided with an abrupt rise in the prices of timber, and the peasants in the east were forced to learn new market conditions; they had only a very vague idea of the value of their forests.62 In the southwest the farmers by this time had learned, at least to some extent, to manage their farms "like enterprises'.

As a political consequence both the Social Democrats and, to a lesser extent, the Agrarian Union with its populist ideology found support there. There was a strong anticapitalist feeling in both political tendencies; besides being socialist, anticapitalism also had a peasantist base.

d. The other regions

The rise of the forest industry hardly touched the small peasants in the province of Viipuri; they did not benefit from it, and this created some bitterness.63 More important, they were linked to the market in a different way. The peasants here were really poor small-holders in that the farm remained 'a sort of stronghold and dwelling for the family',64 and they survived by working at jobs outside of farming. The location of the province in the vicinity of St. Petersburg made it possible to find secondary employment - for example, in the transport of goods and in different seasonal jobs. In practice, these jobs were often primary jobs.65

On the basis of this sketch it seems apparent that the end of the last century brought no sharp break with the past. It is not without importance that the agrarian population in this region increased slower than in all other regions under study.66

The region of Ostrobothna, another strong area for the Agrarian Union and exclusive rural stronghold for the Conservatives, was not affected by the rise of the forest industry. Ostrobothnia had been one of the central trading areas of the country when Finland was a Swedish province. At that tune, lumbering had played a more important role than anywhere else in Finland because of considerable shipbuilding and especially tar exporting; Ostrobothnia produced nearly all the export tar in Finland, and Finland was the biggest tar exporter in Europe.67 From the middle of the nineteenth century ships were no longer built of wood and tar export also declined, creating many difficulties for both the landowning peasants and the landless groups. As Soininen notes:

The backwardness [in comparison to other parts of the country]
began to manifest itself... from the time forestry began to

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change the structure of farming in Finland in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The change was particularly acute in Southern Ostrobothnia because the tar economy and shipbuilding began to definitely decline in the 1860s and 1870s, at a time when the sale of timber to sawmills began to bring income for farmers elsewhere in Finland. Southern and Central Ostrobothnia were left without these forest incomes because the earlier tarburning, shipbuilding, and other timber sales had used up the timber usable for sawmills in these regions. Only the forests in Northern Ostrobothnia were large enough for the new forest industry, but even in these regions the timber was taken mainly from the state-owned forests in the beginning. Therefore, Southern and Central Ostrobothnia were not in a position to undergo the economic upsurge that the timber economy brought to other parts of Finland in the 1870s. This aggravating situation ... in Ostrobothnia may be seen in the rise of emigration. But the real difficulties in the economy of Ostrobothnia were experienced only in the next period [from the 1880s on].68

It is not surprising that under these circumstances 'the disadvantages caused by backwardness seem to have been distributed more evenly among the different social groups of the agrarian population in Ostrobothnia' than in southern Finland 69 It can be added that the growth in population, which was considerable here as well as in the southwestern and the eastern regions, was partly channeled into the prevailing structure. The number of landowning peasants increased in Ostrobothnia during the whole of the nineteenth century because it was usual to divide the farm among the heirs of deceased owners. It was also more common than elsewhere that some of the heirs remained on the home farm as crofters paying a nominal rent. On the other hand, the increase in population was also channeled outside the region. The emigration from Finland to the United States in the decades around the turn of the century can in practice be equated with emigration from Ostrobothnia.70

It seems, then, that the traditional structures in Ostrobothnia also retained some of their strength, or perhaps more aptly, were not as drastically undermined, as compared to the southwestern and eastern regions. But this future Conservative/ Agrarian Union stronghold was in decline, because it had lost its old market contacts and it was left without the economic influence of the forest industry.

To argue only that the 'traditional structures' were not undermined or threatened by the boom is not very enlightening; for example, there may be many different 'traditional' or 'peasant' communities. It is not even self-evident that the preservation of the traditional communities is favorable to populist and/or conservative political tendencies. It is possible to go into these problems only briefly, by referring to Barrington Moore's conclusions on the degree of solidarity displayed by peasants. In addition to the radical solidarity mentioned above, Moore distinguishes weak solidarity from conservative solidarity.71

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Moore considers the weak solidarity among the peasants mainly as a modern phenomenon, belonging to a period after a capitalist legal framework has been established and after commerce and industry have made a substantial impact. This happened, for example, in much of France in the first half of the nineteenth century. The key feature is the absence of a network of cooperative relationships; the villages, made up of small peasant holdings, are like sacks of potatoes, as Marx's well-known metaphor describes them. According to Moore, the general factors are, among other things, the overwhelming importance of the small plot worked by family labor and the competitive relationships introduced by capitalism. This description in many respects seems to apply to the small peasants in the province of Viipuri. Even before the boom, they had lived under the impact of St. Petersburg, working their plots and competing with each other for seasonal jobs. This situation did not change at the end of the nineteenth century. Moore suggests that this form of institutional arrangements in the peasant community severely inhibits any effective political action, but may become the seedbed of 'reactionary anticapitalist sentiment' in the advancement of capitalism.

Conservative solidarity derives its cohesion by tying those with actual or potential grievances into the prevailing social structure. This takes place through a division of labor that provides a legitimate if lowly status for those with little or no property. Perhaps something like this took place in Ostrobothnia where the growth in population at least, which caused strains in the southwestern and eastern regions, was channeled largely to areas outside Ostrobothnia or tied to the prevailing structure.

e. Summary

The hypotheses and suggestions laid out in the preceding pages have as their premiss the view that the political mobilization of the agrarian population in Finland could and should be studied by analyzing regional variations in the changeover from peasant to farmer. What were the major shifts in the institutional context within which men had to make their choices? What were the emerging alternative institutions, and could the peasant make a viable commitment to them when he could no longer rely on his accustomed institutional arrangements? No area remained outside this process of change-over which in Finland gathered momentum in the 1870s. However, the dissolution of the traditional institutional structures took place in different ways and to a different extent in each region of the country.

This paper has suggested that the most appropriate starting point is provided by the differential impact of the forest industry in the countryside. The fact that some areas were overwhelmed by the boom and other areas were not has importance as such. Yet the structure and nature of the peasant communities which experienced the boom affected the mode of its impact. Because these factors are intertwined with so many others, it is difficult to assess their importance; therefore the following suggestions may well need modification. Certainly one of the important problems in need of further study is how, in a concrete way, the prior

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- and also contemporaneous - indications of the market orientation among
peasants through grain and butter sales were related to the impact of the timber
boom.

In Ostrobothnia and the province of Viipuri the impact of the rise of the forest industry was not essential to political mobilization. In those areas, the prevailing social organization was preserved and political mobilization took place within this framework: consequently, the Conservatives and/or the Agrarian Union found strong support in these areas. Specific conditions in these two regions - which in some respects bore marks of 'backwardness' - became increasingly pronounced, because political mobilization was making comparisons within the national framework relevant for the first time. More than elsewhere, the prevailing arrangements were undermined in the southwestern and eastern regions. In the southwest, lumbering had decisively contributed to a class conflict between different agrarian groups - hence the strong support for the Social Democrats and Conservatives. Anticapitalist feelings were strong also in the east. However, they did not become manifest in relations between agrarian groups, but rather in relation to an outsider, the economic mediator through which capitalism intruded into the eastern countryside. The timber companies had the central role in mediation; anticapitalism was partly socialist and partly peasantist by nature.

To conclude: where capitalism intruded into the countryside through lumbering, the Social Democrats received heavy support indicating the heightening of class conflict in those regions. In regions where class conflict was manifest in the relations between agrarian groups, the Social Democratic support was accompanied by support for the Conservatives; in those areas where the conflict brought by capitalism manifested more in relations between the agrarian population and the outside economic agent, Social Democratic support was accompanied by support for the Agrarian Union. On the other hand, in those areas where capitalism did not intrude into the countryside through lumbering and where there was no sharp break with the past, the Agrarian Union alone, or the Agrarian Union and the Conservatives together, gained the most support.

6. A Note on the Civil War and Agrarian Fascism

Up to this point, the development of certain political tendencies among agrarian groups has been under scrutiny. In this final section, it must be emphasized that analytically it is another question whether or not these tendencies become politically effective in a crisis. Both weak solidarity and strong solidarity (whether conservative or radical) produce certain political tendencies and support for parties in elections, but usually only strong solidarity is the basis for effective action in a revolutionary situation. And given the strong solidarity, it is another matter as to what will be the factual consequences of the action of a solidarity group; Eric R. Wolf tells us about peasant movements which have contributed to socialist revolutions without being at all socialist themselves. It is the configuration of different groups or classes in the whole society that counts, not grievances and their ideological complexion among peasants as such.72

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Both of these distinctions have importance in considering the other two periods of collective action in the perspective given by developments up to 1907. Obviously the major factors behind the Civil War in 1918 may be found outside the agrarian groups or classes. The revolutionary potential of the working class, together with the inability of the dominant groups to summon the armed forces to defend the prevailing system, because of the Russian Revolution, presumably contributed decisively to a revolutionary situation. Therefore, one can first ask which agrarian groups were to act effectively in the crisis; this is the question of the grievances of solidarity groups. The agrarian groups manifested their grievances in an articulate way mainly in the southwestern region and Ostrobothnia, which is not incompatible with the preceding analysis. In the province of Viipuri and especially in the eastern region they were more 'passive.' Secondly, what were the possibilities of a fusion between the grievances of these groups and those of other social groups? The relatively industrialized southwestern region was the stronghold of the revolutionaries who were supported by the landless and the crofters, and opposed by the farmers. Ostrobothnia, on the other hand, was the stronghold of the Whites, and the Ostrobothnian peasants played a central role in their mass support. In studying these problems more concretely, one should focus on agrarian communities in different regions; it is important to analyze the networks of interrelationships of groups within the communities and their relations to groups outside the community.

The political mobilization manifested in 1907 provides an essential starting point for studying the role of the agrarian population in the Civil War. This is true also with the period of agrarian fascism in 1929-32. Many important features of agrarian fascism in Finland may be viewed from the perspective of the political mobilization only 25 years earlier. In addition, because Finnish exports in the 1920s and 1930s consisted essentially of wood products, the impact of the Depression was immediately felt in the Finnish countryside through the decline in the forest industry. Other factors should not be neglected but this development suggests a reasonable starting point for analysis. There was a differential impact in the countryside because wealthy farmers continued to own forests while the small farmers were dependent on the forest industry mainly through felling timber for the lumber companies. In this period also, one should examine solidarity groups and the possibilities of a fusion of grievances as manifested in different regions; in the varying phases of the rise of fascism in Finland, the role of the agrarian movement varied in relation to the dominant groups exploiting it or benefitting from it.



NOTES

1. There are important studies focusing on one mobilization period or one group in two first periods. See especially Hannu Soikkanen, Sosialismin tulo Suomeen. Ensimmdisiin yksikamarisen eduskunnan vaaleihin asti (The Breakthrough of Socialist Ideas in Finland up to the First General Elections) (Porvoo: WSOY, 1961); Viljo Rasila, Suomen torppa r iky sy my s v not een 1909 (with an English summary 'Finland's Crofter Question up to 1909') (Kajaani: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1961); Viljo Rasila, Torpparikysymyksen ratkaisuvaihe (with an English summary 'The Solution of the Finnish Crofter Problem') (Joensuu: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1970); Viljo Rasila, Kansalaissodan sosiaalinen tausta (The Social Background of the Civil War) (Helsinki: Tammi, 1968).

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1. There are important studies focusing on one mobilization period or one group in two first periods. See especially Hannu Soikkanen, Sosialismin tulo Suomeen. Ensimmdisiin yksikamarisen eduskunnan vaaleihin asti (The Breakthrough of Socialist Ideas in Finland up to the First General Elections) (Porvoo: WSOY, 1961); Viljo Rasila, Suomen torppa r iky sy my s v not een 1909 (with an English summary 'Finland's Crofter Question up to 1909') (Kajaani: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1961); Viljo Rasila, Torpparikysymyksen ratkaisuvaihe (with an English summary 'The Solution of the Finnish Crofter Problem') (Joensuu: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1970); Viljo Rasila, Kansalaissodan sosiaalinen tausta (The Social Background of the Civil War) (Helsinki: Tammi, 1968).

2. Elisabeth Elfvengren, Finlands arbetskraft, struktur och utvecklingstendenser (The Labor Force in Finland, Structure and Trends of Development) (Helsinki: Taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus, 1955), p. 233.

3. See Goran von Bonsdorff, Studier rorande den moderna liberalismen i de nordiska landerna ('Studies on Modern Liberalism in the Nordic Countries', with an English summary) (Ekenås: Fahlbeckska stiftelsen, 1954), especially pp. 149, 186.

4. See Onni Rantala, Suomen poliittiset alueet I (The Political Regions of Finland, I) (Turku: Monistepalvelu, 1970).

5. In the east the border is drawn along the northern border of the province of Kuopio, and in the west along the northeastern and northern border of 'Ostrobothnia proper.' See Eino Jutikkala, Bonden i Finland genom tiderna (The Finnish Peasant in the Past and the Present) (Helsingfors: LTs Forlag, 1963), pp. 381, 387.

6. The Agrarian Union increased its support strongly as early as in 1919 but because of party alliances the exact number of votes it gained in different communes is not available. The information in maps 1 through 3 is basedon official Finnish election statistics.

7. To the southwestern region belong mainly the provinces of Turku and Pori, Hame, and Uusimaa, and certain bordering areas of the provinces of Mikkeli and particularly of Kuopio. To the eastern region belong the main areas of the provinces of Kuopio and of Mikkeli. See Jutikkala, op. cit., pp. 364-366.

8. Soikkanen, op. cit., pp. 364-366.

9. Ib id., pp. 368-389.

10. Ibid. pp. 365-366, 368, 370-379; Rasila, op. cit., 1970, pp. 291-298.

11. von Bonsdorff, op. cit., pp. 54-55, 131-134, 175-180.

12. Soikkanen, op. cit., pp. 8-9.

13. Jutikkala, op. cit., pp. 381-387; Arvo M. Soininen, Vanha maataloutemme (with an English summary 'Old Traditional Agriculture in Finland in the 18th and 19th Centuries') (Forssa: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1975), pp. 384-394; Pekka Haatanen, Suomen maalaiskoyhdlisto ('The Rural Proletariat in Finland', with an English summary) (Porvoo: WSOY, 1968), pp. 65-67.

14. Jutikkala, op. cit., p. 383.

15. Soikkanen, op. cit., pp. 366, 368, 385.

16. von Bonsdorff, op. cit., pp. 54-55, 131-132, 175-180; Goran von Bonsdorff, 'The Party Situation in Finland,' in Democracy in Finland. Studies in Politics and Government (Helsinki: The Finnish Political Science Association, 1960), pp. 20-21.

17. E.g., Jaakko Nousiainen, The Finnish Political System (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 23.

18. Jutikkala, op. cit., pp. 387-391.

19. von Bonsdorff, op. cit., 1954, p. 54; Nousiainen, op. cit., pp. 23-24; Raimo Salokangas, 'Maalaisliiton kannatuksen leviaminen Vaasan låanissa 1906-1917' (with an English summary 'The spread of support for the Agrarian Party in Vaasa Province 1906-1917'), Turun Historiallinen Arkisto 30 (1975), pp. 175-178.

20. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974), pp. 90-116.

21. Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon, 1966).

22. Ibid., especially pp. 3-14, 20-29.

23. Ibid., especially pp. 40-56, 101-108.

24. Ibid., especially pp. 433-436, 460-463.

25. Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. xiv-xv.

26. Ibid., p. 286.

27. Charles Tilly, The Vendee (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 59-65, 80-81.

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28. Lennart Jorberg, 'The Industrial Revolution in Scandinavia 1850-1914,' The Fontana Economic History of Europe, Vol. 4, Ch. 8 (London and Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1970), p. 59.

29. Jutikkala, op. tit., p. 344.

30. Soininen, op. cit., p. 278.

31. Jutikkala, op. cit., pp. 344, 378-379; the quote is taken from page 344.

32. See Soininen, op. cit., pp. 252, 411-412.

33. Jorberg, op. cit., p. 35.

34. Jaakko Forsman, Mistd syystti sosialismi levisi Suomen maalaisvdeston keskuutecn? (Why Did Socialist Ideas Spread among the Rural Population in Finland?) (Helsinki: Otava, 1912), p. 19; cf. Soininen, op. cit., p. 283; and Jutikkala, op. cit., pp. 343-344, 345-346, 380-381.

35. Cf. Heikki Laavola, Kun Suomen tyovdki herdsi (When the Working Class of Finland Woke up) (Helsinki: Tammi, 1974), pp. 9-10.

36. In 1901 the households of the agrarian workers made up 60.4 per cent of all agrarian households in the province of Uusimaa. The figures for the provinces of Turku and Pori, Harne, Mikkeli, and Kuopio were, respectively, 51.3, 57.7, 54.3, and 56.9. See, e.g., Soikkanen, op. cit., p. 7.

37. Cf. Soininen, op. cit., pp. 413-415.

38. See Soikkanen, op. cit., pp. 9-10, 16-17.

39. Rasila, op. cit., 1961, p. 451.

40. Ibid., p. 451; Rasila, op. cit., 1970, pp. 14, 18.

41. On this problem, see Charles Tilly, The Historical Study of Vital Processes,' in Charles Tilly (ed.), Historical Studies of Changing Fertility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

42. Jutikkala, op. cit., pp. 384-386.

43. Soininen, op. cit., p. 414. Cf. Inger Boesen, Asger Christensen, Michael Harbsmeier, Sten Rehder, 'Kapitalen og bønderne. Den ikke-kapitalistiske produktions underordning under kapitalen og produktionsmådernes "konkurrence",' Marxistisk antropologi l (1974), 2, pp. 63-64.

44. Rasila, op. cit., 1970, pp. 31-36.

45. Ibid., p. 18.

46. See Hannu Soikanen, Kohti kansanvaltaa 1 (Towards Democracy I) (Vaasa: Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen Puolue, 1975), pp. 56, 101-102, 134-135, 160-161.

47. Moore, op. cit., pp. 475-477.

48. Soininen, op. cit., p. 398.

49. Ibid., pp. 394-400.

50. Soininen, op. cit., pp. 216, 236, 245, 383-384.

51. See ibid., pp. 410-415.

52. Paavo Harve, 'Puunjalostusteollisuutta ja puutavarakauppaa harjoittavien yhtioiden maan hankinta Suomessa' (with a German summary 'Der Bodenerwerb der Holzindustrie und Holzhandelsgesellschaften in Finnland'), Acta Forestalia Fennica 52 (1947), 1, p. 66.

53. The information in Map 5 is based on Harve's findings. See ibid., p. 47.

54. Komiteanmietinto 8, 1906. Puutavaraliikkeiden maanostot (State Committee Report 8, 1906. Land Purchases by the Timber Companies) (Helsinki: Keisarilliscn Senaatin kirjapaino, 1906), pp. 10, 34-36.

55. Forsman, op. cit., p. 25.

56. Kalle Kajander, Metsdt ja yhtiot (The Forests and the Companies) (Porvoo: WSOY, 1901). Cf. Harve, op. cit., p. 32.

57. Komiteanmietinto, op. cit., p. 60. Cf. Jutikkala, op. cit., p. 386.

58. Jutikkala, op. cit., p. 386.

59. In the provinces of Kuopio and Mikkeli, which make up the largest area in the eastern region, the turnout was 60.6 per cent and 64.1 per cent respectively.

60. Haatanen, op. cit., pp. 60-72; Soininen, op. cit., pp. 384-394.

61. Soininen, op. cit., p. 397.

62. Cf. Komiteanmietinto, op. cit., p. 10; Kajander, op. cit., pp. 17-40.

63. Jutikkala, op. cit., pp. 402-404.

64. Soininen, op. cit., p. 303.



65. Ibid., pp. 362, 365, 386; Jutikkala, op. cit., p. 404

66. Jutikkala, op. cit., p. 405.

67. Ibid., pp. 389-390.

68. Soininen, op. cit., p. 402; cf. p. 353.

69. Ibid., p. 402.

70. Jutikkala, op. cit., pp. 387-391.

71. Moore, op. cit., pp. 475-479.

72. Cf. ibid.. PP. 479-480.