"Wapaus" (Freedom). Organ of the Central Office of the Finnish Organizations of the R.C.P., Oct. 9, 1920:

Making the peace.

The peace negotiations between Red Russia and White Finland seem to have a favourable ending these day — the swords will be put back in their sheaths and a peaceful coexistence will commence. The terms for peace have finally been agreed on. At the same time another happy news is received — Poland of the Pans agrees on an armistice and good prospects for peace negotiations can be seen.

This way workers' and peasants' Soviet power and its proletarian army make the imperialist backed bordering countries of butchers to haul their blood-thirsty claws back in paws. In front of the bourgeois world and the whole international proletariat the workers' revolution has shown in wars, having last now for three years, its undepleted strength rising from the depth of million-strong toilers. The aggressive cordon of bordering state White Guards, a wishful creation of the Entente for strangling the Soviet Russia to death, has now been curbed by the Red Army and been forced to make peace.

The Finnish blood-thirsty butchers were not among the first ones to shake hand of peace. A substantial downfall in the position of the White Finland made them to do this. The economic position of Finland was according to their own bourgeois statistics close to a catastroph, and there were no way to keep this concealed. In all leading capitalistic circles the hair is teared in desparation. The mental state of these gentlemen can be described with words from the newspaper "Karjalan Aamulehti" which wrote the following in the article "Don't be sinked in despair!", of the 5th of this month:

"Soon it will be two years from the time when the Great Powers laid down their arms but the much dreamed times of happiness have given no signs yet. On the opposite, everything goes darker and darker. At the mercy of the forces of nature the life seems to go down to the worse: prices go up, the value of money falls, the crisis of wage-earners deepens, but this seems to be even the fate of businessmen, at least those of them, who lack a good financial standing or wealth. It is not clear to us that a depression is an inevitable consequence from the recent past and that any crisis in front of us is a sign of change that might bring along some relief to us."

So this capitalist newspaper in Viipuri. But all signs over a longer period of time hint to the fact that no "reliefs" for the Finnish bourgeoisie can be expected from the future, and the very crisis ahead, a full collapse. It will be the proletariat pushed forward by misery that will bring along a "change" but it might not be called as relief by the butchers. A wave of economic strikes has flooded the industrial sites of White Finland since the spring. Now, when the autumn falls, now when the life has worsened in an unprecedented way, the waves from wage hike movements will rise upto whitecaps. Here and there one can see the frightening ominous signs of political strikes. Very easily an economic strike might turn into a political one in the White Finland. In the depths of the proletariat forces of a battle can already now be seen.

Although now, this huge strike movement has not generally adopted an outwardly political nature, it at least has political dimensions. The capitalistic class has noticed that it stands at the edge of an abyss.

The bourgeois system will not rescue White Finland for long. A restless movement of the proletariat, having broken with class renegades now strives in the heart although not yet in open expressions for communism — a proletariat of this kind means a frightful turn to the capitalistic class. When thinking all this we can see why the Finnish butchers show their approval to the peace.

The whole capitalistic world lives now a time of depression without being able to win it. But the proletarian revolution has, in front of the whole world, proved its vitality and invincibility. After the peace and now being able to take breath, the proletarian revolution will invincibly rush forward in bourgeois states which suffer from a continuous economic declines and in which, in addition to this, the mole of revolution will do its passionate digging work.
In the newspaper "Wapaus" (Freedom). Organ of the Central Office of the Finnish Organizations of the R.C.P., Petrograd, Oct. 9, 1920, nr. 218

Translation Pauli Kruhse,

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