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Though the Swedish language was still widely spoken, during this period the Finnish language began to gain more recognition. From the 1860s onwards, a strong Finnish nationalist movement known as the Fennoman movement grew. One of its most prominent leading figures of the movement was the philosopher and politician J. V. Snellman, who pushed for the stabilization of the status of the Finnish language and its own currency, the Finnish markka, in the Grand Duchy of Finland.[52][53] Milestones included the publication of what would become Finland's national epic – the Kalevala – in 1835, and the Finnish language's achieving equal legal status with Swedish in 1892. In the spirit of the notion of Adolf Ivar Arwidsson (1791–1858) – "we are not Swedes, we do not want to become Russians, let us therefore, be Finns" – a Finnish national identity was established.[54] Still there was no genuine independence movement in Finland until the early 20th century.[55]
The Finnish famine of 1866–1868 occurred after freezing temperatures in early September ravaged crops,[56] and it killed approximately 15% of the population, making it one of the worst famines in European history. The famine led the Russian Empire to ease financial regulations, and investment rose in the following decades. Economic development was rapid.[57] The gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was still half of that of the United States and a third of that of Britain.[57]
From 1869 until 1917, the Russian Empire pursued a policy known as the "Russification of Finland". This policy was interrupted between 1905 and 1908. In 1906, universal suffrage was adopted in the Grand Duchy of Finland. However, the relationship between the Grand Duchy and the Russian Empire soured when the Russian government made moves to restrict Finnish autonomy. For example, universal suffrage was, in practice, virtually meaningless, since the tsar did not have to approve any of the laws adopted by the Finnish parliament. The desire for independence gained ground, first among radical liberals[58] and socialists, driven in part by a declaration called the February Manifesto by the last tsar of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II, on 15 February 1899.[59]
After the 1917 February Revolution, the position of Finland as a part of the Russian Empire was questioned, mainly by Social Democrats. The Finnish Parliament, controlled by social democrats, passed the so-called Power Act to give the highest authority to the Parliament. This was rejected by the Russian Provisional Government which decided to dissolve the Parliament.[60] New elections were conducted, in which right-wing parties won with a slim majority. Some social democrats refused to accept the result and still claimed that the dissolution of the parliament (and thus the ensuing elections) were extralegal. The two nearly equally powerful political blocs, the right-wing parties, and the social-democratic party were highly antagonized.
The October Revolution in Russia changed the geopolitical situation once more. Suddenly, the right-wing parties in Finland started to reconsider their decision to block the transfer of the highest executive power from the Russian government to Finland, as the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. The right-wing government, led by Prime Minister P. E. Svinhufvud, presented the Declaration of Independence on 4 December 1917, which was officially approved on 6 December, by the Finnish Parliament. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), led by Vladimir Lenin, recognized independence on 4 January 1918.[61]
On 27 January 1918 the government began to disarm the Russian forces in Pohjanmaa. The socialists gained control of southern Finland and Helsinki, but the White government continued in exile from Vaasa.[62][63] This sparked the brief but bitter civil war. The Whites, who were supported by Imperial Germany, prevailed over the Reds,[64] and their self-proclaimed Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic.[65] After the war, tens of thousands of Reds were interned in camps, where thousands were executed or died from malnutrition and disease. Deep social and political enmity was sown between the Reds and Whites and would last until the Winter War and even beyond.[66][67] The civil war and the 1918–1920 activist expeditions called "Kinship Wars" into Soviet Russia strained Eastern relations.[68][69]