“Russian Citizens Interfering in Someone Else’s Civil Strife”: the Theme of Civil War in Finland’s Russian-Language Press, January — May 1918

Abstract

The paper examines the use of the term “civil war” and semantically related expressions (“internecine struggle”, “class war”, etc.) in the Russian-language press of Finland in January-May 1918, when the country was experiencing an intrastate conflict. It demonstrates the influence of the Svedophone socialist press on the language and interpretation of events, the predominant importance of events in Russia for Russian-language periodicals compared to Finnish news. Examples of justifications of revolutionary violence, in particular red terror, are provided. The inability of the Russian-language press of Finland in the first half of 1918 to create a special “political dialect”, and the dependence of its interpretations on all-Russian and all-Finnish discourses are noted.