V. I.

Lenin

31

TELEGRAM TO KULLERVO MANNER AND KARL VIIK

Urgent . Governmental

Prime Minister Manner and Karl Viik
Helsingfors

Radio transmissions in Swedish and telegrams on behalf of the unions of Swedish workers in Finland should be
sent to Sweden as frequently and in as great detail as possible in order to refute the extremely mendacious reports
of the Swedish bourgeois press about the events in

Finland. [1] Please let me know whether you are taking all
measures.

Lenin

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Notes:
[1]
This refers to the reports in the Swedish bourgeois press
concerning the revolution that had started in Finland.

On January 27 (new style), 1918, the bourgeois government
of Svinhufvud was overthrown and power passed into the hands
of the workers. On January 29, a Finnish revolutionary government was set up—the Council of People’s Representatives—
which included E. Gylling, 0. Kuusinen, Y. Sirola, A. Taimi
and others. But the proletarian revolution was victorious only
in southern Finland. The Svinhufvud government, entrenched
in the north, appealed to the government of imperial Germany
for assistance. Owing to the intervention of the German armed
forces, the workers’ revolution in Finland was crushed on May 2,
1918, after a bitter civil war which lasted for three months. A
period of white terror set in in Finland and thousands of
revolutionary workers and peasants were executed or tortured to death
in the prisons.