February Manifesto

The February Manifesto of 1899 was an attempt to massively restrict the traditional political and economic freedoms of the Grand Duchy of Finland by way of the Russification policy at the turn of the century . It brought about a massive mobilization of the Finnish nation and thus stimulated the Finnish independence movement .

The Grand Duchy of Finland, which had been under Russian sovereignty since 1809, had significant special rights in trade, politics and administration until 1899. Compared to the tsarist autocracy , there was extensive freedom of the press , Finnish recruits only served three years in their own Finnish army (Russian recruits, on the other hand, had to do up to five years of military service). Finland had its own currency linked to the gold standard . These special rights were to be largely dissolved by the February Manifesto, which was promulgated by the Russian Governor General Nikolai Bobrikow in 1899 and thus put into effect immediately after its proclamation. The printing of Finnish-language printed matter was also severely restricted. A petition from 520,000 Finns to Tsar Nicholas II had no consequences, the language manifesto of 1900 established Russian as the administrative language, and from 1901 Finnish recruits were drafted into the general Russian army.

The February Manifesto and its follow-up decrees stimulated the Finnish opposition at all levels. Bobrikov himself was murdered by an assassin in 1904, but mass protests proved more successful, such as the general strike that began on October 30, 1905 and led to the November Manifesto on November 4, 1905 , with which Tsar Nicholas II took back some of the toughest repression measures. The restrictions on Finnish-language print products on books with economic content also stimulated the Finnish cooperative system , which flourished around 1900.

literature

• Tuomo Polvinen: Imperial Borderland. Bobrikov and the Attempted Russification of Finland 1898-1904 , C. Hurst & Co, London 1995