Finnish White Guard
핀란드 자위대
The volunteer militia of the White side that defeated the Red Guards in the Finnish Civil War of 1918. Officially the Suojeluskunta (Protection Corps or Civil Guard), it was known in the West as the White Guard. Formed locally from the summer of 1917, it made up the core of the White Army in January 1918, remained a voluntary part of the armed forces after the war and was disbanded in November 1944 at the Soviet Union’s demand.
In depth
The civil guards formed during the 1905 general strike had split along party lines by 1906. When Russian power in Finland collapsed with the February Revolution of 1917, guards for protection and order sprang up again; the Red Guards got their arms from revolutionary Russian units, the White Guards from Swedish and German supporters. On 13 January 1918 the non-socialist majority in Parliament authorised the Senate to organise a police force of the White Guard, and the Senate asked Mannerheim to form a new army on that basis. During the night of 27–28 January the White Guards began disarming the Russian garrisons in Ostrobothnia. The Guards made up most of the White Army at first, but conscript units officered by some 1,900 German-trained Jägers and 1,200 Swedish volunteers soon matched them, which the English-language source counts as crucial to the outcome. The Red terror killed some 1,100 people; according to a government-commissioned study of 2004 the White terror executed or otherwise killed about 7,370 (older socialist-leaning studies say 10,000). Their ruthlessness earned them the name Lahtarikaarti, the Butcher Guard, among the Reds.
A decree of the Council of State gave the Guard a legal basis on 2 August 1918, and from 1919 to 1934 it was a voluntary part of the army with its own formations in mobilisation. Every municipality had a chapter, which also ran skiing, shooting and pesäpallo, choirs and orchestras. Officially neutral, it was unofficially anti-leftist, anticommunist and conservative, and largely rejected by the labour movement. Some units joined the Lapua Movement’s Mäntsälä rebellion of 1932, but the majority stayed loyal to the government. The 1934 reform of the mobilisation system ended its role as a separate armed force, and in the Winter War Guard members made up a quarter of the field army. On 15 February 1940 the Guard leadership and the Social Democratic Party issued a joint statement that healed the old rift. The Guard was disbanded in November 1944 at the Soviet Union’s demand; the Soviet Union regarded it as a fascist organisation.