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133-598: The White Guard , officially known as the Civil Guard ( Finnish : Suojeluskunta , IPA: [ˈsuo̯jelusˌkuntɑ] ; Swedish : Skyddskår ; lit.   ' Protection Corps ' ), was a voluntary militia , part of the Finnish Whites movement, that emerged victorious over the socialist Red Guards in the Finnish Civil War of 1918. They were generally known as the "White Guard" in

266-447: A pointed hat in the style of a christmas elf , covered by a balaclava and with an airsoft gun in hand. While two others were doing a nazi salute in the same picture. Because of this, Lindtman was accused of being a nazi. He responded by stating that the image had been taken during his time in a high school film group by the name of "Team Paha, English: Team Bad" in a Pikkujoulu party while they were messing around and firmly denied

399-819: A "j", e.g. vesj [vesʲ] "water", cf. standard vesi [vesi] . The first known written account in Helsinki slang is from the 1890 short story Hellaassa by young Santeri Ivalo (words that do not exist in, or deviate from, the standard spoken Finnish of its time are in bold): Kun minä eilen illalla palasin labbiksesta , tapasin Aasiksen kohdalla Supiksen , ja niin me laskeusimme tänne Espikselle , jossa oli mahoton hyvä piikis . Mutta me mentiin Studikselle suoraan Hudista tapaamaan, ja jäimme sinne pariksi tunniksi, kunnes ajoimme Kaisikseen . There are two main registers of Finnish used throughout

532-527: A Finns Party representative, joined the SDP. This increased the SDP's parliamentary seat number to 35. In the 2019 Finnish parliamentary election , the SDP gained 6 seats in comparison to the 2015 parliamentary election and became the largest party in the parliament. Based on the answers and initial talks with all parties, Rinne announced that he would negotiate forming a government with the Centre Party ,

665-612: A Latin-script alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, and is phonemic to a great extent. Vowel length and consonant length are distinguished, and there are a range of diphthongs , although vowel harmony limits which diphthongs are possible. Finnish belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family ; as such, it is one of the few European languages that is not Indo-European . The Finnic branch also includes Estonian and

798-413: A blue field, but in the provinces, the field was divided (party per sinister), with two or three colors representing each province. The white armband also bore the name of the municipality. Each chapter had its own flag, but generally it was a symmetric variant of the modern State Flag of Finland where the cross was extended with small swastika arms, the "S" symbol in the canton and local symbols instead of

931-638: A breakdown of security in Finland , which was then a Grand Duchy under the rule of the Russian Tsar . Citizen militias formed as a response, but soon these would be transformed along political (left-right) lines. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent independence of Finland (declared in December 1917) also caused conflicts in the country. On January 27, 1918, the Finnish government ordered

1064-402: A chiefly extra-parliamentary movement until universal suffrage was introduced in 1906, after which the SDP's share of the votes reached 47% in the 1916 Finnish parliamentary election , when the party secured a majority in the parliament, the only time in the history of Finland when one party has had such a majority. The party lost its majority in the 1917 Finnish parliamentary election after

1197-635: A close relationship with the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions . It is also a member of the Party of European Socialists , Progressive Alliance and Socialist International . Following the resignation of Antti Rinne in December 2019, Sanna Marin became the country's 46th prime minister . The SDP formed a new coalition government on the basis of its predecessor, the Rinne Cabinet , in effect continuing its cooperation with

1330-473: A considerable influence upon the spoken word, because illiteracy is nonexistent and many Finns are avid readers. In fact, it is still not entirely uncommon to meet people who "talk book-ish" ( puhuvat kirjakieltä ); it may have connotations of pedantry, exaggeration, moderation, weaseling or sarcasm (somewhat like heavy use of Latinate words in English, or more old-fashioned or "pedantic" constructions: compare

1463-592: A faction of the SDP resigned and formed the Social Democratic Union of Workers and Smallholders (TPSL) around the former SDP chairman Emil Skog . The dispute was over several issues, namely whether the party should function as an interest group and whether it should co-operate with the anti-communists and right-wingers or with president Kekkonen, the Agrarian League and the SKP. During the 1960s,

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1596-518: A few minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in Russia's Republic of Karelia . The closest relative of Finnish is either Ingrian , or depending on the definition, Karelian . Finnic languages form a dialect continuum, where for instance Finnish and Estonian are not separated by any single isogloss that would separate dialects considered "Finnish" from those considered "Estonian", despite

1729-460: A language of administration, journalism, literature, and science in Finland, along with Swedish. In 1853 Daniel Europaeus published the first Swedish-Finnish dictionary, and between 1866 and 1880 Elias Lönnrot compiled the first Finnish-Swedish dictionary. In the same period, Antero Warelius conducted ethnographic research and, among other topics, he documented the geographic distribution of

1862-475: A more systematic writing system. Along the way, Finnish lost several fricative consonants in a process of sound change . The sounds [ð] and [θ(ː)] disappeared from the language, surviving only in a small rural region in Western Finland. In the standard language, however, the effect of the lost sounds is thus: Modern Finnish punctuation, along with that of Swedish, uses the colon (:) to separate

1995-445: A north–south split as well as an east–west split. The northern dialects of Proto-Finnic, from which Finnish developed, lacked the mid vowel [ ɤ ] . This vowel was found only in the southern dialects, which developed into Estonian , Livonian , and Votian . The northern variants used third person singular pronoun hän instead of southern tämä (Est. tema ). While the eastern dialects of Proto-Finnic (which developed in

2128-694: A result, there was strong discontent in Finnish society. In 1905 Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War . This stunning and unexpected defeat led to the Russian Revolution of 1905 . In Finland the unrest was expressed in the Finnish general strike of 1905 . During the strike Finnish police forces were effectively disbanded, as they had been closely associated with the occupying Russian authorities. Municipal, mostly unarmed, security guards were spontaneously organised by individuals associated with

2261-449: A retired old lady's summer cottage as a 15-year-old teenager with three others around the same age as him and participated in the killing and burning of a grown-up cat in a bonfire . Following this, he was charged with burglary, vandalism and animal cruelty as a young person. Näkkäläjärvi has apologised for all of his past misdeeds. The average age of an SDP member is 61.5 years. Over one half of all SDP voters are active members of

2394-555: A separate taxonomic " Finno-Samic " node is controversial. The Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , United States, classifies Finnish as a level III language (of four levels) in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers. Finnish is spoken by about five million people, most of whom reside in Finland. There are also notable Finnish-speaking minorities in Sweden, Norway, Russia, Estonia, Brazil, Canada, and

2527-770: A separate, political armed force. During the war the Guard membership mostly served at the front. In the home area the Guard districts formed the local headquarters for the military districts and the oldest and youngest Guard members served in guard and anti-aircraft duties. There were some small anti- desant actions on the home front, e.g. in Hollola in 1941. After the Continuation War , the Finnish White Guards were disbanded in November 1944, as demanded by

2660-440: A total amount of Finnish-speakers roughly between 7,200 and 15,600. In the latest census , around 1000 people in Russia claimed to speak Finnish natively; however, a larger amount of 14,000 claimed to be able to speak Finnish in total. There are also forms of Finnish spoken by diasporas outside Europe, such as American Finnish , spoken by Finnish Americans , and Siberian Finnish , spoken by Siberian Finns . Today, Finnish

2793-409: A voluntary part of the army, and separate Guard formations served in the reserve, but in 1934 all defence was consolidated into the regular army and the Guard became a voluntary defence-training organization only. Politically it was neutral, although unofficially it was anti-leftist, clearly anti-Communist, conservative, largely rejected by the labour movement and by the political left. Units of it formed

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2926-437: Is a Finnic language of the Uralic language family, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland, alongside Swedish . In Sweden , both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish ) are official minority languages . Kven , which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish,

3059-508: Is abbreviation of word-final vowels, and in many respects they resemble Estonian. The Tavastian dialects ( hämäläismurteet ) are spoken in Tavastia . They are closest to the standard language, but feature some slight vowel changes, such as the opening of diphthong-final vowels ( tie → tiä , miekka → miakka , kuolisi → kualis ), the change of d to l (mostly obsolete) or trilled r (widespread, nowadays disappearance of d

3192-622: Is based on the Erfurt Programme approved by the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1891 and the Social Democratic Party of Austria 's programme, respectively. Its immediate demands have been fulfilled, but the most significant and currently unfulfilled requirement is the right to vote directly on laws ( direct democracy , as opposed to representative democracy [except for two times, and then just on advisory referendums: once about prohibition in 1931 and another on

3325-609: Is one of two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish), and has been an official language of the European Union since 1995. However, the Finnish language did not have an official status in the country during the period of Swedish rule , which ended in 1809. After the establishment of the Grand Duchy of Finland , and against the backdrop of the Fennoman movement , the language obtained its official status in

3458-746: Is popular) and the personal pronouns ( me: meitin ('we: our'), te: teitin ('you: your') and he: heitin ('they: their')). The South Ostrobothnian dialects ( eteläpohjalaismurteet ) are spoken in Southern Ostrobothnia . Their most notable feature is the pronunciation of "d" as a tapped or even fully trilled /r/ . The Central and North Ostrobothnian dialects ( keski- ja pohjoispohjalaismurteet ) are spoken in Central and Northern Ostrobothnia . The Lapland dialects ( lappilaismurteet ) are spoken in Lapland . The dialects spoken in

3591-629: Is spoken in the Norwegian counties of Troms and Finnmark by a minority of Finnish descent. Finnish is typologically agglutinative and uses almost exclusively suffixal affixation . Nouns , adjectives , pronouns , numerals and verbs are inflected depending on their role in the sentence . Sentences are normally formed with subject–verb–object word order, although the extensive use of inflection allows them to be ordered differently. Word order variations are often reserved for differences in information structure . Finnish orthography uses

3724-494: The 1994 Finnish European Union membership referendum .]) The demands on total separation of church and state, abolition of religious education in all schools and the prohibition of alcohol have all since then been abandoned. The SDP was closely associated with the Finnish Trade Union Federation (SAJ), established in 1907, with all of its members also being members of the party. The party remained

3857-710: The 2007 Finnish parliamentary election , the SDP gained the third-most votes. The chairman of the then-largest Centre Party, Matti Vanhanen, became the Prime Minister and formed a coalition cabinet consisting of the Green League , the NCP and the Swedish People's Party of Finland (SPP), leaving the SDP to the opposition. SDP leader Eero Heinäluoma did not immediately resign as party chairman, but he did announce his withdrawal from running for party chairman in

3990-670: The Centre Party , Green League , Left Alliance and Swedish People's Party . Of the nineteen ministerial spots that were decided upon in conjunction, seven of them were designated to the SDP in the Marin Cabinet . In September 2023, Antti Lindtman was elected as leader of the party following Marin's resignation after the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election . The party was founded as the Workers' Party of Finland in 1899, with its first meeting being held from 17–20 July in Turku . At

4123-518: The Communist Party of Finland (SKP) in Moscow. Although the SKP was banned in Finland until 1944, it was represented by front organisations, leading to the support of the Finnish working class being divided between the SDP and the SKP. It became the life's work of Väinö Tanner to re-establish the SDP as a serious, governing party. The result was a much more patriotic SDP which leaned less to

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4256-615: The Finnish Diet of 1863. Finnish also enjoys the status of an official minority language in Sweden . Under the Nordic Language Convention , citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Finnish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs. However, concerns have been expressed about

4389-547: The Finns Party for their lack of willingness to the easing of work permit requirements to foreigners coming from outside the European Union. The party opposed certain economic reforms both in the 2011 Finnish parliamentary election and in the subsequent negotiations about the government programme. The SDP maintains a close relationship with trade unions. The party has opposed social reforms that would reduce

4522-605: The Green League , the Left Alliance and the Swedish People's Party . The negotiations were ultimately successful and the Rinne Cabinet was formally inaugurated on 6 June 2019. On 3 December 2019, Rinne resigned as Prime Minister after the Centre Party had expressed a lack of confidence in Rinne for his handling of the events surrounding a postal strike in Finland. He was followed in the position by Sanna Marin , who

4655-476: The Imperial Russian Army was slowly disintegrating and had already started to withdraw its units from Finland, the demoralized, poorly trained and undisciplined Russian military forces in the country posed a substantial challenge to Finnish authority. In parliament the question on forming a new security force was hotly debated. On January 13, 1918, the non-socialist majority gave authorization to

4788-575: The Nordic model 's accomplishments. In the 1900s, the party known as the Finnish Workers' Party was founded on the basis of social issues , class and socialism . SDP was the only political party in Finland for a long time. In 1907, the SDP was the strongest socialist party in Europe, as evidenced by the qualified majority in the Senate of Finland in 1917. At the beginning of the 20th century,

4921-688: The Russian Provisional Government had rejected its Valtalaki 1917 proposal and disbanded the Finnish government, starting a rebellion with the broader Finnish labour movement that quickly escalated into the Finnish Civil War in 1918. SDP members declared Finland a socialist republic , but they were defeated by the forces of the White Guard . The war resulted in most of the party leaders being killed, imprisoned or left to seek refuge in Soviet Russia . In addition,

5054-701: The Soviet Union . However, the military district system as the basis for mobilisation was retained, now fully as an army structure. In the Winter War the White Guard was responsible for the carrying out of the mobilisation. A quarter of the manpower of the field army consisted of Guard members. This contribution proved important, as Guard members were the best trained and equipped personnel in an army which lacked even basic supplies. The frosty relations between White Guards and Socialists started to ease during

5187-571: The Speaker of Parliament and the Centre Party leader Anneli Jäätteenmäki became the new Prime Minister , leading a coalition cabinet that included the SDP which got eight ministerial posts. After two months in office, Jäätteenmäki resigned due to a scandal relating to the Iraq leak and was replaced by Matti Vanhanen , another Centre Party representative, who commanded the Vanhanen I Cabinet . In

5320-532: The Ural Mountains region and/or the bend of the middle Volga . The strong case for Proto-Uralic is supported by common vocabulary with regularities in sound correspondences, as well as by the fact that the Uralic languages have many similarities in structure and grammar. Despite having overlapping geographical distributions, Finnic languages and Sami languages are not closely related, and the hypothesis of

5453-595: The centrist - agrarian Centre Party (formerly the Agrarian League), but sometimes with the liberal-conservative National Coalition Party . The SDP was in opposition from 1991 to 1995, when the main parties in the cabinet were the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party (NCP). The 1995 Finnish parliamentary election saw a landslide victory for the SDP, achieving their best results since World War II . The SDP rose to government from

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5586-513: The stem of a word and its grammatical ending in some cases, for example after acronyms , as in EU:ssa 'in the EU'. (This contrasts with some other alphabetic writing systems, which would use other symbols, such as e.g. apostrophe, hyphen.) Since suffixes play a prominent role in the language, this use of the colon is quite common. In the 19th century Johan Vilhelm Snellman and others began to stress

5719-542: The 1930s. During the 1920s Socialists had demanded the White Guards be demobilised, but as the Guard leadership and the overwhelming majority of the members remained loyal to the government during Mäntsälä rebellion , the demands were changed to making the Guards an official part of the army. The political rift between the White Guard and the labour movement was ultimately healed during the Winter War, when leadership of

5852-476: The 2014 party conference, Urpilainen was narrowly defeated by her challenger Antti Rinne in a 257 to 243 vote. Urpilainen subsequently stepped down as the Minister of Finance, passing the seat on to Rinne. In the 2015 Finnish parliamentary election , the drop of support continued for the SDP. The party lost eight more seats compared to the 2011 parliamentary election, ending up with 34 seats and 16.5 percent of

5985-696: The Defence Forces. The legal basis for the activities was given by changing the Act on Defence Forces in 1994. More accurate basis was given by the Act on Voluntary Defence Work of 2007, which will make the Association a nominally independent public organization under political state control. As the heritage of the White Guard in Finland is very mixed, the National Defence Training Association does not consider itself to be

6118-459: The EU from working in Finland, but has since then softened its positions on immigration and has come to support certain immigration reforms. In its 2023 parliamentary election programme its self-declared goal was the increasing of work-based immigration coming to Finland as a way of responding to the country's labour shortage and low birth rate . In 2023, the SDP, along with the NCP , both criticised

6251-557: The European politicians that Russia and China had hijacked to promote their special interests. Some current SDP politicians have therefore built their careers by appeasing Russia. However, in 2023, during the premiership of former Social Democratic Party chair Sanna Marin, Finland officially joined NATO . In September 2023, when Antti Lindtman got elected chair of the SDP, a scandal broke out due to him in his adolescent years , posing near four other naked young adults, nude, wearing

6384-458: The Finnish dialects. The most important contributions to improving the status of Finnish were made by Elias Lönnrot . His impact on the development of modern vocabulary in Finnish was particularly significant. In addition to compiling the Kalevala , he acted as an arbiter in disputes about the development of standard Finnish between the proponents of western and eastern dialects, ensuring that

6517-646: The Guard and the Social Democratic Party issued a joint statement February 15, 1940, in which the Guard leadership recommended local Guards to recruit Socialists and the Party leadership recommended to its members that they join the Guards. At the same time, the employers' associations conceded to collective-bargaining agreements with the trade unions. The White Guards' relations towards non-socialist parties were mostly warm. The Guard did not distinguish between any non-socialist political views and received

6650-955: The Russian garrisons in Ostrobothnia . During the night the executive committee of the Red Guards declared the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic in Helsinki. The Civil War of Finland had begun. Neither the Red nor the White Guard were trained for combat. Structures had to be built in extreme haste by both parties. The White Army had a better foundation for this, as it received the Finnish Jaeger troops , some 1,900 men trained by Germany since 1915. These soldiers were able to act as instructors and officers, forming

6783-403: The Russian-associated Finnish police were effectively disbanded, while the largely undisciplined Russian troops engaged in violence, mostly towards their own officers. During the summer of 1917 paramilitary groups were formed for protection and to preserve order. Although the founding of these "fire brigades" was often done in a non-partisan manner, they often split into two opposing factions during

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6916-436: The SDP became the second-largest party in the country after the NCP, receiving only some 1,500 votes more than the Finns Party which came in third. After lengthy negotiations, a six-party coalition government, the Katainen Cabinet , was formed with the NCP and the SDP as the two main parties. SDP leader Jutta Urpilainen became the cabinet's Minister of Finance , with NCP chairman Jyrki Katainen serving as Prime Minister. In

7049-408: The SDP candidate Karl-August Fagerholm lost by only one electoral vote to Urho Kekkonen . Fagerholm would act as Prime Minister in the Fagerholm II Cabinet (1956–1957) and the Fagerholm III Cabinet (1958–1959). The latter cabinet was forced to resign due to Soviet pressure, leading to a series of cabinets led by the Agrarian League. In 1958, due to the election of Väinö Tanner as party chairman,

7182-433: The SDP from using "social democratic" in their name before, but this ban was not followed on by the party members when the name was changed. At the same time, the at the time radical Forssa Programme was agreed upon, which served as the official party platform until 1952. The goals of the programme were as follows: an 8-hour workday, a minimum wage , universal compulsory education and prohibition . The Forssa Programme

7315-419: The SDP than the centre-right parties. Because of the SDP's anti-communism , the United States Central Intelligence Agency supported the party by means of funds laundered through Nordic sister parties or through organisations that bought luxury goods such as coffee abroad, then imported and sold them for a high profit as post-war rationing served to inflate prices. In the 1956 Finnish presidential election ,

7448-422: The Senate (Finnish cabinet) to organize a police force of the White Guard. Soon the Senate asked General Mannerheim to form a new Finnish army on the basis on the White Guard militia. In southern Karelia the White and Red Guards clashed in small-scale engagements as both sides attempted to secure the railway to St. Petersburg . During the night of January 27–28, 1918, the White Guards started to disarm and arrest

7581-450: The TPSL dwindled, its members returning one by one to the SDP or joining the SKP, with Skog himself returning to the SDP in 1965. In the 1970 Finnish parliamentary election , the TPSL failed to gain any seats in parliament. Only in 1966 was the SDP able to satisfy the Soviet Union about its friendly attitude towards it and could thus return to the cabinet. Since then, the SDP has been represented in most Finnish cabinets, often cooperating with

7714-473: The United States. The majority of the population of Finland (90.37% as of 2010 ) speak Finnish as their first language . The remainder speak Swedish (5.42%), one of the Sámi languages (for example Northern , Inari , or Skolt ), or another language as their first language. Finnish is spoken as a second language in Estonia by about 167,000 people. The Finnic varities found in Norway's Finnmark (namely Kven ) and in northern Sweden (namely Meänkieli ) have

7847-416: The West due to their opposition to the " communist " Red Guards . In the White Army of Finland many participants were recruits, draftees and German-trained Jägers – rather than part of the paramilitary. The central organization was named the White Guard Organization, and the organization consisted of local chapters in municipalities. The Russian Revolution of 1905 led to social and political unrest and

7980-426: The White Guard and the district chiefs were selected by the President of Finland . From 1921 until the organisation's demise, this post was occupied by General Lauri Malmberg who took command in the aftermath of the White Guard Affair . Usually, the district chiefs and most officers in the district headquarters were from the regular army. Only able-bodied males between 17 and 40 years of age could be full members of

8113-424: The White Guard effectively ended all Finnish voluntary military training for the next several decades. The sports activities of the Guard were taken over by ordinary civilian sports associations, while the psychological work of instilling a national defence spirit was continued by the reservists' associations. However, the Guard itself is a contentious issue, which still divides the people along political lines. After

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8246-407: The White Guard organisation consisted of the General Staff, White Guard districts and local White Guard chapters. Every municipality had at least a single chapter, which in part acted as an NGO (non-governmental organization) but in military affairs was part of the national chain of command. In an economical sense, each chapter was responsible for its own funding, although it received a minor grant from

8379-441: The White Guard units in number. These troops, which were much better disciplined and trained than the volunteer Guards, proved to be crucial for the outcome of the war. The Red side never accomplished conscription, which was one of the reasons for its demise. After four months of bitter fighting, the Red Guards were defeated and the White Guards were recognized as one of the key agents in the victory, downplaying for political reasons

8512-413: The White Guard. Every member was required to attend a specified amount of training on pain of losing membership. The members were required to buy their own equipment and rifle, but the local chapters helped their members if the chapters had funds for it. Until 1934 the White Guard would have formed a division in the full-scale mobilisation. In 1934 the Finnish mobilisation system was changed. The new system

8645-428: The allegation of being a national socialist . The party secretary , Mikkel Näkkäläjärvi 's, nomination and subsequent appointment to his role during the SDP's 2023 conference in Jyväskylä was criticised because of his criminal background. In 2011 he had driven a car while under the presence of alcohol , and was charged with a 30-day suspended sentence and an accompanying fine. Näkkäläjärvi had also broken into

8778-399: The autumn of 1917. The initially unarmed Red and White Guards strove to obtain weapons. The Red Guards usually were able to get arms from revolutionary Russian military units, while the White Guards got theirs from Swedish and German supporters abroad. At the same time, political tensions between socialists and non-socialists escalated. Inside the Social Democratic party, the official leadership

8911-445: The beginning of the 1900s the party presented demands as well as solutions to the tenant farmer question, the managing of employment, improvement of workers' rights , freedom of speech and an 8-hour work day . In its 1903 second party conference in Forssa , the party's name was renamed to the present form: Social Democratic Party of Finland, but the Grand Duchy of Finland 's then governor-general Nikolay Bobrikov had outlawed

9044-474: The border created between Sweden and Finland in 1809 when Russia annexed Finland. This caused the speakers of Meänkieli to be isolated from the developments of standard Finnish and instead be influenced by the Swedish language. However, it is still mutually integible with Finnish, and is thus sometimes considered a dialect of the Finnish language. The Kven language is spoken in Finnmark and Troms , in Norway. Its speakers are descendants of Finnish emigrants to

9177-423: The coat of arms. The rank insignia was rather different from modern Finnish insignia . In principle, the enlisted did not have a rank system, and there was only one officer rank ( suojeluskuntaupseeri ), marked by a single metal spruce branch worn on the collar. However, task-specific insignia was used instead. Underofficers wore a chevron pointed downwards, and chiefs of local chapters wore 1–4 horizontal bars,

9310-418: The collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917. These militias remained in existence until World War II , evolving somewhat into home-guard militias. The phenomenon should be distinguished from the Freikorps established in Germany after its defeat in World War I , although some similarities exist. During the first years of the 20th century, Russia had been working on the abolition of Finland's autonomous status . As

9443-435: The collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland unilaterally renounced the military articles of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947 . Following this, the NGOs working in fields with connections to total defence formed the National Defence Training Association of Finland ( Finnish : Maanpuolustuskoulutus ry ), which started to organise supplemental voluntary training primarily for Finnish Defence Forces reservists in conjunction with

9576-472: The colloquial language) ei kö teillä ole e(i) ks teil(lä) oo "don't you (pl.) have (it)?" (compare eiks to standard Estonian confirmatory interrogative eks ) Social Democratic Party of Finland Founded in 1899 as the Workers' Party of Finland (Finnish: Suomen työväenpuolue ; Swedish: Finlands arbetarparti ), the SDP is Finland's oldest active political party and has

9709-487: The constitutional and Social Democratic parties. At first all political groups were able to work together, but towards 1906 the civil guards of large towns had become divided along party lines. The first violent clash between Red and White Guards occurred in July 1906 in Helsinki , but after the return of Finnish autonomy the moderate Social Democrats and the whole constitutional party withdrew from military activities. However,

9842-479: The control of the Finnish Defence Forces. The first ad hoc symbols were a white armband and a small, three-branched shoot from a spruce branch, placed into the hat. The basic insignia was an embroidered badge with a white "S" topped by three single shoots of spruce branches. The badge and the "S" were embroidered with a gold-colored border. The symbol worn by General C.G.E. Mannerheim had

9975-404: The country. One is the "standard language" ( yleiskieli ), and the other is the " spoken language " ( puhekieli ). The standard language is used in formal situations like political speeches and newscasts. Its written form, the "book language" ( kirjakieli ), is used in nearly all written texts, not always excluding even the dialogue of common people in popular prose. The spoken language, on

10108-478: The difference between saying "There's no children I'll leave it to" and "There are no children to whom I shall leave it"). More common is the intrusion of typically literary constructions into a colloquial discourse, as a kind of quote from written Finnish. It is quite common to hear book-like and polished speech on radio or TV, and the constant exposure to such language tends to lead to the adoption of such constructions even in everyday language. A prominent example of

10241-565: The disarming of all remaining Russian garrisons by the forces of the White Guard, and on the same day the Reds proclaimed revolution, leading to a bloody civil war. White Guards, led by General Gustaf Mannerheim , constituted the bulk of the victorious White Army during the Finnish Civil War (1918). After the war the Finnish Defence Forces and a regular police service were founded. From 1919–1934 White Guards were considered

10374-445: The effect of the standard language is the development of the consonant gradation form /ts   : ts/ as in metsä : metsän , as this pattern was originally (1940) found natively only in the dialects of the southern Karelian isthmus and Ingria . It has been reinforced by the spelling "ts" for the dental fricative [θː] , used earlier in some western dialects. The spelling and the pronunciation this encourages however approximate

10507-421: The following party conference. He was replaced by Jutta Urpilainen . The SDP suffered further losses in the 2008 Finnish municipal elections and the 2009 European Parliament election . In the 2011 Finnish parliamentary election , the SDP lost three more seats, ending up with 19.1 percent of the vote which corresponded to 42 seats, the party's worst-ever result. However, as the Centre Party lost even more voters,

10640-551: The formal. However, in signalling the former in writing, syncope and sandhi – especially internal – may occasionally amongst other characteristics be transcribed, e.g. menenpä → me(n)empä . This never occurs in the standard variety. he mene vät ne mene e "they go" loss of a number contrast on verbs in the 3rd person ( menee is 3rd person singular in the formal language) ( minä) o le n mä o o n "I am" or "I will be" and no pro-drop (i.e., personal pronouns are usually mandatory in

10773-446: The future status of Finnish in Sweden, for example, where reports produced for the Swedish government during 2017 show that minority language policies are not being respected, particularly for the 7% of Finns settled in the country. The Uralic family of languages, of which Finnish is a member, are hypothesized to derive from a single ancestor language termed Proto-Uralic , spoken sometime between 8,000 and 2,000 BCE (estimates vary) in

10906-461: The grammatical and phonological changes also include the most common pronouns and suffixes, which amount to frequent but modest differences. Some sound changes have been left out of the formal language. For example, irregular verbs have developed in the spoken language as a result of the elision of sonorants in some verbs of the Type III class (with subsequent vowel assimilation ), but only when

11039-470: The language, which he based on Swedish, German, and Latin. The Finnish standard language still relies on his innovations with regard to spelling, though Agricola used less systematic spelling than is used today. Though Agricola's intention was that each phoneme (and allophone under qualitative consonant gradation ) should correspond to one letter, he failed to achieve this goal in various respects. For example, k , c , and q were all used for

11172-690: The left and was relatively isolated from its Nordic sister parties, namely the Danish Social Democrats , the Norwegian Labour Party and the Swedish Social Democratic Party . President Pehr Evind Svinhufvud 's animosity kept the SDP out of government during his presidency from 1931 to 1937. With the exception of a brief period in 1926, when Tanner formed a minority government, the SDP was excluded from cabinet participation until Kyösti Kallio

11305-415: The main cultural and political centres. The standard language, however, has always been a consciously constructed medium for literature. It preserves grammatical patterns that have mostly vanished from the colloquial varieties and, as its main application is writing, it features complex syntactic patterns that are not easy to handle when used in speech. The colloquial language develops significantly faster, and

11438-799: The main forces of the Lapua Movement 's abortive coup d'état (the Mäntsälä Rebellion ) in 1932, however only a small fraction of the Guard participated and the majority of it stayed loyal to the government. White Guardsmen served in the regular army during the Second World War . The White Guard was disbanded according to the terms of the 1944 Moscow Armistice , following the end of the Continuation War . Similar militias operated in Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania , lands that, like Finland, came under Russian sovereignty until

11571-528: The main left-wing parties (the SKP and the SDP) and the high percentage of SKP voters in the first elections after the Continuation War. After the war, the SKP was allowed to continue working and the main feature of Finnish political life during the 1944–1949 period was the competition between the SDP and the SKP, both for voters and for the control of the labour unions. During this time, the political field

11704-411: The modern-day eastern Finnish dialects, Veps, Karelian, and Ingrian) formed genitive plural nouns via plural stems (e.g., eastern Finnish kalojen < * kaloi -ten ), the western dialects of Proto-Finnic (today's Estonian, Livonian and western Finnish varieties) used the non-plural stems (e.g., Est. kalade < * kala -ten ). Another defining characteristic of the east–west split

11837-624: The most part, the dialects operate on the same phonology and grammar. There are only marginal examples of sounds or grammatical constructions specific to some dialect and not found in standard Finnish. Two examples are the voiced dental fricative found in the Rauma dialect , and the Eastern exessive case . The Southwest Finnish dialects ( lounaissuomalaismurteet ) are spoken in Southwest Finland and Satakunta . Their typical feature

11970-419: The need to improve the status of Finnish. Ever since the days of Mikael Agricola, written Finnish had been used almost exclusively in religious contexts, but now Snellman's Hegelian nationalistic ideas of Finnish as a fully-fledged national language gained considerable support. Concerted efforts were made to improve the status of the language and to modernize it, and by the end of the century Finnish had become

12103-571: The number depending on the size of the chapter. It must be kept in mind that Suojeluskunnat were a civilian organization and many members did not have formal military training. Those members who had served in the military held a separate rank in reserve. Uniforms were Swedish and German-style and in "field gray" ( Feldgrau ) color. [REDACTED] Media related to Suojeluskuntajärjestö at Wikimedia Commons Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] )

12236-465: The officer and NCO corps of the new conscript army. In addition, the White side had 1,200 volunteers from Sweden (many of whom were officers), and a significant number of Finnish officers who had previously served in the imperial Russian Army but returned home after the revolution. Although in the beginning of the war the White Guard formed the bulk of the White army, the conscript units very soon matched

12369-417: The opposition and leader Paavo Lipponen headed two consecutive cabinets from 1995 to 2003. During this time, the party adopted a pro-European stance and contributed actively to the Finnish membership in the European Union in 1995 in concert with the cabinet. In the 2003 Finnish parliamentary election , the SDP won 53 of the 200 seats, ending up a close second to the Centre Party. As a result, Lipponen became

12502-453: The original pronunciation, still reflected in e.g. Karelian /čč   : č/ ( meččä : mečän ). In the spoken language, a fusion of Western /tt   : tt/ ( mettä : mettän ) and Eastern /ht   : t/ ( mehtä : metän ) has resulted in /tt   : t/ ( mettä : metän ). Neither of these forms are identifiable as, or originate from, a specific dialect. The orthography of informal language follows that of

12635-616: The other hand, is the main variety of Finnish used in popular TV and radio shows and at workplaces, and may be preferred to a dialect in personal communication. Standard Finnish is prescribed by the Language Office of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland and is the language used in official communication. The Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish ( Nykysuomen sanakirja 1951–61), with 201,000 entries,

12768-420: The parliament and the cabinet were divided on the question of whether Finland's army should stop at the old border and thereby demonstratively refrain from any attempt of conquests. However, the country's dangerous position called for national unity and the SDP's leadership chose to refrain from any visible protests. This decision is sometimes indicated as one of the main reasons behind the post-war division between

12901-544: The party opposed on joining NATO and instead preferred to remain in the Partnership for Peace . The SDP is in favour of queer rights , the construction of nuclear power plants , the conservation of Swedish as one of Finland's two official languages and the increasing of funding given by the state to public schools and universities. The party is advocating for Finland to become coal-free by 2030. The SDP had advocated for policies preventing foreigners from outside

13034-518: The party received its main support from groups of the landless population and the rural population . In 1919, at the SDP's meeting, a split was made with the radical communists, as a result of which they broke away and founded the SSTP . As a result of the civil war and the October Revolution , the workers' movement became even more divided. Up until Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine ,

13167-447: The phoneme / k / . Likewise, he alternated between dh and d to represent the allophonic [ ð ] (like th in English this ), between dh and z to represent / θː / (like th in thin , but longer in duration), and between gh and g to represent the allophonic [ ɣ ] . Agricola did not consistently represent vowel length in his orthography. Others revised Agricola's work later, striving for

13300-482: The prison camps. Because of their ruthlessness and eagerness to retaliate, the White Guards earned the title Lahtarikaarti (Butcher Guard) among the Reds. After the Civil War the function of the White Guards was unclear. In some municipalities the local White Guard was understood to be a part of the municipal administration. In others, the organisation was considered to have a primarily political role in safeguarding

13433-408: The process leading to the civil war and the war itself had stripped the party of its political legitimacy and respectability in the eyes of the right-wing majority. However, the political support for the party remained strong. In the 1919 Finnish parliamentary election , the party, reorganised by Väinö Tanner , received 80 of the 200 seats of the parliament. In 1918, former exiled SDP members founded

13566-565: The radicalized Red Guard of Helsinki did not disband, despite an order from the Social Democratic leadership to do so, and took part in the mutiny at Viapori fortress alongside revolutionary, anti-imperial Russian soldiers. In the ensuing fighting Czarist Russian troops destroyed the Red Guard as an organisation. The February Revolution in Russia in 1917 caused the collapse of Russian political and military power in Finland. Again,

13699-799: The region in the 18th and 19th centuries. Kven is an official minority language in Norway. The Eastern dialects consist of the widespread Savonian dialects ( savolaismurteet ) spoken in Savo and nearby areas, and the South-Eastern dialects now spoken only in Finnish South Karelia . The South Karelian dialects ( eteläkarjalaismurteet ) were previously also spoken on the Karelian Isthmus and in Ingria . The Karelian Isthmus

13832-574: The result of the war. The organisation was given a legal basis on August 2, 1918 by a decree of the Finnish Council of State . Changes to the decree were made later, refining the organisation's structure. From the beginning, the White Guard was considered to be a voluntary part of the Finnish military. The local White Guards' function in the following 20 years—up to the Winter War —was a mixture of Veteran Corps and Home Guards . After 1921

13965-953: The role of earnings-related unemployment benefits. The government pays the benefits to recipients through financial middlemen that are almost exclusively trade unions. The SDP also supports the separation of church and state . The SDP's politicians, among several other finnish political parties' members, have received criticism about their defense of Russia for years by the media and academics, for example, SDP politicians Eero Heinäluoma , Paavo Lipponen , Erkki Tuomioja , Antton Rönnholm and Tarja Halonen are among those who have been criticised. In 2005, according to Halonen, Russia's goals were: "... democracy , human rights and good governance." 9 years later, in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea , Halonen thought that Russia should not have been punished by sanctions or isolation. SDP's former party secretary Antton Rönnholm has also taken his part. Through his consulting firm's services offered to Gazprom , he

14098-719: The role of the German intervention units and the German-trained 2,000 Jaegers. The Civil War was portrayed as a liberation from Russian control after a 20-year-long Russification programme, with the Whites stressing the links of the Reds to the Russian Bolshevik regime. However the White victory was achieved with assistance from the Germans. German influence after the war was so strong that the independence of Finland

14231-401: The second syllable of the word is short. The result is that some forms in the spoken language are shortened, e.g. tule-n → tuu-n ('I come'), while others remain identical to the standard language hän tulee "he comes", never * hän tuu ). However, the longer forms such as tule can be used in spoken language in other forms as well. The literary language certainly still exerts

14364-408: The separate wartime White Guard units were removed from the mobilisation plans. The aim of the White Guard was no longer to provide ready fighting units but to act as a voluntary training organisation for reservists. Only the Guard chapters immediately adjacent to the eastern border had responsibility for starting the initial defence against invasion. This effectively ended the role of the White Guard as

14497-491: The state budget. The White Guard was active in numerous areas of Finnish life. It organised sports activities, especially cross-country skiing , shooting, orienteering and Finnish baseball . For fundraising, the chapters organised numerous informal events and lotteries. It is estimated that about one-fifth of all get-togethers in Finland were organised by the White Guard. To this end, the White Guard chapters had several hundred choirs, orchestras and theatre groups. The Chief of

14630-636: The status of official minority languages, and thus can be considered distinct languages from Finnish. However, since these languages are mutually intelligible , one may alternatively view them as dialects of the same language . No language census exists for Norway, neither for Kven, standard Finnish, or combined. As of 2023, 7,454 first- or second-generation immigrants from Finland were registered as having Norwegian residency, while as of 2021, 235 Finns were registered as foreigners studying at Norwegian higher education. Great Norwegian Encyclopedia estimates Kven speakers at 2,000-8,000. Altogether, this results in

14763-412: The successor of the White Guard. In 2007 formation of Territorial Forces was started, a volunteer military organization composed of reservists. Some political groups have criticized formation of these units, saying that they are too close to White Guards that were abolished as fascist organization in 1944. However, unlike the White Guard, local defense troops are not a separate organization, but fully in

14896-544: The support of all non-socialist parties. Only during the Mäntsälä rebellion did these relations deteriorate, as some more radical parts of the Guard were linked with the extreme right-wing. One of the chapters of the Treaty of Paris (1947) was disbandment of all "fascist-like organizations". The Soviet Union considered that the White Guard and Lotta Svärd were fascist organizations, and they were disbanded. The disbanding of

15029-465: The travel journal, the words are those of a Finnish bishop whose name is unknown. The erroneous use of gelen (Modern Finnish kielen ) in the accusative case, rather than kieltä in the partitive, and the lack of the conjunction mutta are typical of foreign speakers of Finnish even today. At the time, most priests in Finland spoke Swedish . During the Middle Ages, when Finland

15162-422: The two standard languages being not mutually intelligible. Finnish demonstrates an affiliation with other Uralic languages (such as Hungarian and Sami languages ) in several respects including: Several theories exist as to the geographic origin of Finnish and the other Uralic languages. The most widely held view is that they originated as a Proto-Uralic language somewhere in the boreal forest belt around

15295-499: The use of Finnish through parish clerk schools, the use of Swedish in church, and by having Swedish-speaking servants and maids move to Finnish-speaking areas. The first comprehensive writing system for Finnish was created by Mikael Agricola , a Finnish bishop, in the 16th century. He based his writing system on the western dialects . Agricola's ultimate plan was to translate the Bible , but first he had to develop an orthography for

15428-492: The vicinity of the Ural Mountains . Over time, Proto-Uralic split into various daughter languages , which themselves continued to change and diverge, yielding yet more descendants. One of these descendants is the reconstructed Proto-Finnic , from which the Finnic languages developed. Current models assume that three or more Proto-Finnic dialects evolved during the first millennium BCE. These dialects were defined geographically, and were distinguished from one another along

15561-574: The vote. With the repeat of the worst-ever result, the SDP dropped to being the fourth largest political party in Finland, receiving 50,110 fewer votes than the NCP, yet 237,000 more votes than the Green League. The SDP was left in the opposition and provided extensive criticism on the actions of the Sipilä Cabinet on matters such as alcohol policy, cuts to education spending and the so-called active model. On 22 June 2016, Maria Tolppanen ,

15694-626: The western dialects preferred by Agricola retained their preeminent role, while many originally dialect words from Eastern Finland were introduced to the standard language, thus enriching it considerably. The first novel written in Finnish (and by a Finnish speaker) was Seven Brothers ( Seitsemän veljestä ), published by Aleksis Kivi in 1870. The dialects of Finnish are divided into two distinct groups, Western and Eastern. The dialects are largely mutually intelligible and are distinguished from each other by changes in vowels, diphthongs and rhythm, as well as in preferred grammatical constructions. For

15827-403: The western parts of Lapland are recognizable by retention of old "h" sounds in positions where they have disappeared from other dialects. One form of speech related to Northern dialects, Meänkieli , which is spoken on the Swedish side of the border is recognized in Sweden as its own distinct language, having its own standardized language separate from Finnish. This form of speech developed from

15960-496: Was a prescriptive dictionary that defined official language. An additional volume for words of foreign origin ( Nykysuomen sivistyssanakirja , 30,000 entries) was published in 1991. An updated dictionary, The New Dictionary of Modern Finnish ( Kielitoimiston sanakirja ) was published in an electronic form in 2004 and in print in 2006. A descriptive grammar (the Large grammar of Finnish , Iso suomen kielioppi , 1,600 pages)

16093-421: Was appointed as Prime Minister on 10 December 2019. The SDP is a centre-left social-democratic party. In its 2020 declaration of principles the party's ideals and priorities are: sustainable development , all-encompassing equality , peace , solidarity , freedom , co-operation , a clean and pristine environment together with democratic socialism . The SDP also embraces humanism 's values as well as

16226-401: Was based on military districts acting as the local mobilization centers. In practice, the military districts coincided with the White Guard districts. In case of mobilisation these two would be unified to act as a single home front district. After the change, the White Guard members formed the cadre of all wartime units, but no specific guard units were planned for mobilisation. On the other hand,

16359-529: Was derailed while the executive committee of the Red Guards and the labour unions gained more power. The Senate, led by Pehr Evind Svinhufvud , proposed a Declaration of Independence , which the Parliament adopted on December 6, 1917. Declaring independence was one thing, but exercising control over the territory was another. Svinhufvud's " White Senate " had nothing but the White Guards to rely on as yet. There were 42,500 Russian soldiers in Finland. Although

16492-551: Was divided roughly equally between the SDP, the SKP and the Agrarian League , each party commanding some 25% of the vote. In the post-war era, the SDP adopted a line of defending Finnish sovereignty and democracy in line with the Agrarian League and other bourgeois political parties, finally leading to the expulsion of the SKP from the cabinet in 1948. As a result, the Soviet Union remained more openly critical towards

16625-461: Was elected President in 1937. During World War II , the party played a central role in a series of broad coalition cabinets, symbolising national unity forged in response to the threat of the Soviet Union in the Winter War of 1939–1940. The SDP was a member of the Labour and Socialist International from 1923 to 1940. During the first few months of the Continuation War (1941–1944), the country,

16758-464: Was evacuated during World War II and refugees were resettled all over Finland. Most Ingrian Finns were deported to various interior areas of the Soviet Union. Palatalization , a common feature of Uralic languages, had been lost in the Finnic branch, but it has been reacquired by most of these languages, including Eastern Finnish, but not Western Finnish. In Finnish orthography, this is denoted with

16891-501: Was greatly in question until the end of World War I. There were reparations in the aftermath of the Civil War. As the Reds had murdered some 1,100 people in their zone of control (the so-called Red terror ), the Whites retaliated ruthlessly, executing some 7,370 people after the recapture of the Red areas (the so-called White terror ). Approximately 4,000 Whites and 4,500 Reds were killed in action. The famine of 1918 claimed another 20,000 lives. Of those who perished, some 13,000 died in

17024-505: Was instead a threat to Russia. Paavo Lipponen has lobbied for and been a consultant for Russia's Nord Stream project since 2008. That year, Russia went to war against Georgia , which marked the start of Putin's foreign policy's aggresiveness. In a report of the European Parliament 's special committee in 2022, former Social Democratic Party and Centre Party prime ministers Lipponen and Esko Aho were said to be among

17157-545: Was published in 2004. There is also an etymological dictionary, Suomen sanojen alkuperä , published in 1992–2000, and a handbook of contemporary language ( Nykysuomen käsikirja ). Standard Finnish is used in official texts and is the form of language taught in schools. Its spoken form is used in political speech, newscasts, in courts, and in other formal situations. Nearly all publishing and printed works are in standard Finnish. The colloquial language has mostly developed naturally from earlier forms of Finnish, and spread from

17290-564: Was sent an invoice for almost 200,000 euros for assisting in the South Stream gas pipeline project . More than half of Gazprom is owned by the Russian state, and it is partly used as a geopolitical tool in Europe and the rest of the world. In February 2022, politician Erkki Tuomioja published a work with the title "Finland and NATO – Why Finland should have the opportunity to apply for NATO membership and why that opportunity should not be used now". In his work Tuomioja estimated that Russia

17423-543: Was the use of the reflexive suffix -(t)te , used only in the eastern dialects. The birch bark letter 292 from the early 13th century is the first known document in any Finnic language . The first known written example of Finnish itself is found in a German travel journal dating back to c.  1450 : Mÿnna tachton gernast spuho sommen gelen Emÿna daÿda (Modern Finnish: " Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kielen, [mutta] en minä taida; " English: "I want to speak Finnish, [but] I am not able to"). According to

17556-562: Was under Swedish rule , Finnish was only spoken . At the time, the language of international commerce was Middle Low German , the language of administration Swedish , and religious ceremonies were held in Latin . This meant that Finnish speakers could use their mother tongue only in everyday life. Finnish was considered inferior to Swedish, and Finnish speakers were second-class members of society because they could not use their language in any official situations. There were even efforts to reduce

17689-484: Was viewed rather unanalytically. Also in February 2022, when Russia had already been pressuring Ukraine for a long time, the social democratic MEP Eero Heinäluoma and Mauri Pekkarinen from the Centre Party both said in a Finnish current affairs television programme that preparing for the Russian threat was part of the problem. According to Heinäluoma, placing defensive armaments in Russia's neighbouring countries

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