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Finland THE RUSSIAN GRAND DUCHY OF FINLAND, 1809-1917
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Figure 5. Grand Duchy of Finland, 1809-1917
Source: Based on information from Hugh Seton-Watson, The
Russian Empire, 1801-1917, Oxford, 1967, 774
Russia planned at first to annex Finland directly as a
province of the Russian Empire, but in order to overcome
the
Finns' misgivings about Russian rule, Tsar Alexander I
offered
them the following solution. Finland was not annexed to
the
Russian Empire but was joined to Russia instead through
the
person of the tsar. In addition, Finland was made an
autonomous
state--the Grand Duchy of Finland--with its inherited
traditions
intact. Thus the laws and constitution of Finland remained
unchanged, and the tsar took the place of the Swedish king
as
sovereign. The official forms of government inherited from
the
era of Swedish absolutism were sufficiently autocratic to
allow
the tsar to accept them largely intact; however, included
in
these forms of government was the comprehensive law code
of 1734
that protected individual rights. Imperial assurances that
Finland would be autonomous and that its traditions would
be
respected were encoded in two 1809 decrees that
constituted for
the Finns the basis of their relationship with Russia. The
Finnish Diet that met at Porvoo (Swedish, BorgA) in 1809
seconded
the tsar's decrees. As a further gesture of magnanimity,
in 1812
the tsar restored to Finland the lands Russia had annexed
in the
eighteenth century. These conciliatory measures were
effective,
and, as long as Russia respected this arrangement, the
Finns
proved to be loyal subjects of the Russian Empire
(see
fig. 5).
According to the terms of the agreement reached between
the
Diet and the tsar, the government of Finland was directly
controlled by the tsar, who appointed a governor general
as his
advisor. With one brief exception, all of the governors
general
were Russian. The first governor general was the
Swedish-Finn
Göran Sprengtporten, who was ably assisted by the
prominent
Swedish-Finn politician, Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt. The chief
instrument of government in the grand duchy was the
Government
Council, renamed in 1816 the Senate, which was composed of
fourteen Finns appointed by the tsar. The counterpart of
the
Senate in St. Petersburg was the Committee for Finnish
Affairs,
composed of Finns, which presented Finnish requests to the
tsar;
however, Finnish civil servants usually carried on the
business
of government with little interference from the tsarist
government in St. Petersburg. The Diet was formally the
lawmaking
body of the government; it could not initiate legislation,
however, but could only petition the tsar to introduce
legislation. The tsar, moreover, could summon and could
dismiss
the Senate without reference to the Diet. There was an
independent judicial system. Finland even maintained its
own
customs system, and taxes collected in Finland remained in
the
country. Finns were exempted from conscription into the
Russian
army.
Despite these safeguards, Finland still felt the
autocracy of
the tsar. The Finnish Diet was dismissed in 1809, and it
was not
reconvened for more than fifty years. Although the
government of
the grand duchy represented an uneasy balance between the
traditions of Finnish self-government and those of Russian
autocracy, as long as the Russians respected the balance,
the
Finnish people were satisfied. The period of Russian rule
was
characterized by peaceful internal development, largely
because,
for the first time in centuries, Finland was free of war.
Data as of December 1988
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