It was on this day one hundred years ago that the Finnish senate declared the country’s independence from the fledgling Soviet Russia. Finland had been an autonomous Grand Duchy inside the Russian Empire ever since it was captured from Sweden during the Napoleonic wars in 1809. That time had usually been calm and the first real effort towards Finnish secession started around 1900 when tsar Nicholas II embarked on a spree of laws limiting Finnish autonomy and after many turbulent events (like the general strike of 1905 and the revolutionary parliamentary reform of 1907 as well as the Russian revolutions) and with the help of the First World War, the country found a chance to gain its independence. In the absence of a dominant political force in Russia, the senate led by Pehr Evind Svinhufvud (who would later serve as the third president from 1931 to 1937) declared Finland an independent republic on December 6th 1917. The search for recognition was a difficult one but on December 31st just before the dawn of the new year, Lenin recognized Finnish independence , a move which was soon followed by the rest of the international community.
Sadly, the newborn country descended into a short but brutal civil war which ended in the defeat of the socialists. However, after it, Finland started a quick transformation from a backward, agrarian country into a wealthy, Nordic nation through social democratic reforms and the final national unification following the Winter War against the Soviet Union. I wished to make this occasion known to everyone here as this century has mostly been a huge success from a Finnish perspective. Despite the country's numerous problems (and there's a lot of them), I’m happy to live here and I truly hope we can look at the country’s history in the same manner after the next 100 years!
