With Russia consumed by revolution, Finland's Senate seized the moment and declared independence on December 6, 1917. The move set off a brief but brutal civil war between Reds and Whites the following year, but the declaration itself stood, and December 6 remains Finland's national day, marked each year with candlelit windows across the country.
For over a century, Finland had existed as an autonomous Grand Duchy under the Russian Tsar, enjoying its own legal system and senate but no true sovereignty. When the October Revolution toppled the Provisional Government in Petrograd, Finnish leaders recognized a narrow window and acted fast.
On December 6, 1917, the Finnish Senate, led by P.E. Svinhufvud, adopted a declaration of independence, and Parliament ratified it days later. Lenin's Soviet government, eager to avoid another front and perhaps hoping Finland would eventually turn Bolshevik anyway, recognized the declaration on New Year's Eve.
Independence did not bring peace. Within weeks, Finland plunged into a civil war between socialist Reds and conservative Whites that killed roughly 36,000 people in a nation of three million. Yet the December 6 declaration endured as the founding act of the modern Finnish state, and today Finns mark Itsenäisyyspäivä with quiet solemnity—torchlight processions, war memorial visits, and candles placed in windows at dusk, two of them, one taller than the other, a tradition whose origin nobody can fully explain.
Key people: Pehr Evind Svinhufvud