THE SUOJELUSKUNTA
A History of Finnish Civil Guard
Foreword
About two decades ago I was asked to write a short history of Finnish Civil Guard for Mosin-Nagant Dot Net – website created by Tuco and Vic Thomas for collectors of Mosin-Nagant rifles. I wrote the article and ended up going bit more into detail than what they expected. At the time there was very little to be found in any other language than Finnish, which is probably why the article ended up being translated to number of other languages as well.
The website that I originally wrote is no longer active and can only be found with Wayback machine and have since learned more about the subject, so at year 2023 I decided to start working to create new improved version and publish it on my own website. Since I was unhappy about certain parts of the text I decided not only to fix the errors, but also add some more data acquired from additional books. Thanks to Charlie Bowles for editing earlier version of this article – even after numerous changes and edits some of his hard work in improving the text produced with my limited skill of English language are still visible in it.
This text documents the history of the voluntary organization, known as Suojeluskunta in Finland. On the internet in Finland, Suojeluskunta has often been compared to the US National Guard and the British World War 2 era Home Guard. During certain phases of its history its functions were somewhat similar to these two, but in reality neither is a good fit. Some studies also compare Suojeluskunta to right-wing paramilitary movements that appeared in many European countries after World War 1, which is not entirely inaccurate, but the starting point of Finnish Civil Guard combined where it ended up do make its history quite unique. Even though Suojeluskunta was abolished more than 80 years ago, such was its political weight in Finnish history, that discussion about the subject can still start bitter arguments in Finland. The idea of this text is to tell history of the organization without hiding its best or worst. At the same time I would like to shed some light on many roles of Civil Guard and how it effected Finnish Society.Few words about a terms frequently used in the text. I have used in this text CG as abbreviation of Civil Guard, while Sk was the abbreviation for Suojeluskunta used at the time. In this text I am also intentionally referring Finnish Civil War era Suojeluskuntas as White Guards and post Civil War era Suojeluskuntas as Civil Guards not only to differentiate between the two, but because while the two were directly related and often shared number of people and the name, they were not the same. White Guards were volunteer troops of Finnish White Army, which existed during Finnish Civil War. Civil Guards on the other hand were post Civil War, had national organization of their own plus legally defined role as voluntary organization with numerous duties. Due to change of mobilization system in 1930's Civil Guards turned into training organization for reservists and during World War 2 the core around which Home Front Troops were organized.
When I am writing Civil Guard organization I am referring to its whole national level organization lead by its General Headquarters and Commander of Civil Guard (early referred as Commander-in-Chief of Civil Guard), while members of Civil Guard are referred here as guardsmen.
Contents:
PART I: From Noble Ideas to Bloody Civil War
PART II: Suojeluskunta During 1920's and 1930's
PART III: Suojeluskunta and Politics
PART IV: Suojeluskunta Training
PART V: Suojeluskunta and Mobilization
PART VI: Suojeluskunta in World War 2
PICTURE: Civil Guard gymnasts form insignia of Civil Guard on the field during National
Gymnatics Championships of Finnish National Sports Alliance (SVUL) at year 1930 in Helsinki. Photographed
by Neittamo. Photo source Helsinki City Museum (Helsingin kaupunginmuseo), acquired via
finna.fi and used with
CC BY 4.0 Creative Commons license. CLICK
THUMBNAIL TO SEE LARGER PIC (294 KB).