Gritsenko, S. A. “FINLAND’S COURSE IS OURS”: FINLAND IN SWEDEN’S PUBLIC OPINION DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR. Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2022;44(2):14–18. DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2022.732


World history

“FINLAND’S COURSE IS OURS”: FINLAND IN SWEDEN’S PUBLIC OPINION DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Gritsenko
S. A. 		MIREA – Russian Technological University
Keywords:
The First World War
foreign policy of Sweden
Swedish “pro-Germanism”
Rudolf Kjéllen
Adrian Molin
Finland		 Summary: The article is devoted to active public discussions about political situation and perspectives of Finland which started in Sweden in the early First World War and finally provided the basis of Sweden’s modern foreign policy.The main purpose of the study was also clearing of the significance level of the “Finland’s course” and its consequences in political discussions in Sweden of that time. On a historical basis of Swedish publicism and media, and also of some diplomatic documents of that time examined by such methods as comparative-historical and typological-historical ones it is concluded that the idea of military invasion into the Grand Duchy of Finland was coordinated by the Swedish militarists with Sweden’s entry to the “Great War” on the side of Germany. Such ideas provided the basis of the socalled “Pro-Germanism” (pro-German activism) a part of Swedish officership, intellectuals and political establishment was overtaken by. Despite of that, the activists’ influence over Swedish public opinion was not enough strong to oblige the royalistic government to enter into a kind of military alliance with Germany and to levy war against Russia within Finland. As a result, at the end of 1916 Knut Wallenberg, Sweden’s Minister of foreign affairs, closed the door on this idea, and most of Swedish political writers stopped the debate on Sweden’s foreign policy.



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