A Woman as an Enemy: The Finnish Civil War, Gender Roles, and Violence

: Hoppu, Tuomas; Lintunen, Tiina

: Leira-Castiñeira, Francisco J.; Sakkas, John

: 1

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

: 2025

: Patterns of Violence Behind the Lines in Europe’s Civil Wars

: World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence

: 239

: 258

: 978-3-031-96984-3

: 978-3-031-96985-0

: 2730-9630

: 2730-9649

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-96985-0_13

: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-96985-0_13

During the Finnish Civil War in 1918, the radical socialist ideas of the revolutionary Red Guard influenced thousands of women. There were ca. 2600 female soldiers and approximately 10,000 women worked in the service of the Red troops. Women received very short military training where half of them took part in the battles. By supporting the revolutionary actions, Red women challenged the traditional gender roles. They were thus seen as a threat to the prevailing social order. With harsh labeling in their propaganda, the opponents tried to justify, in retrospect, the rapes and the illegal executions they had committed during the war. Approximately 450 women were executed by the Whites. In the aftermath of the war, many of the women who tried to escape ended up in the prisoner of war camps, where conditions were inhuman, and discriminated in various ways after their release.