On this day in 1918, the Finnish People’s Delegation declared a socialist workers’ republic (known “Red Finland”), at the start of the Finnish Civil War. The burgeoning working class movement was crushed by imperialist German forces.
Prior to 1917, Finland had been ruled as a Grand Duchy, an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. With the collapse of the Tsarist state in the wake of February Revolution and a long-term increase in nationalist sentiment, Finland declared independence on December 4th, 1917, formally recognized by the Russian Bolsheviks on December 31st.
Due to industrialized Finland having a strong revolutionary labor movement, conservative and proletarian forces were immediately thrown into conflict.
Red Guard paramilitary units representing the labor movement found themselves in a cycle of escalation with loyalist “White” Guards, culminating in a mass uprising of Reds in Helsinki on January 27th, 1918, marking the start of revolution. The following day, the Finnish People’s Delegation was formed by members of the Social Democratic Party. Bourgeois forces fled to Vaasa, where they set up their own “White Senate”.
The war saw the Whites, under the leadership of General Mannerheim, receive support from the German Empire, which was more well-established than the Reds’ primary ally, the newly-created Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Following an imperialist intervention by Germany on the side of the Whites in March 1918, the war ended in defeat for the Reds in May. Over 12,000 people perished from starvation and hunger while imprisoned in White-operated POW camps, and reparations were not paid to former victims of the White Terror until 1973.
Lessons of the Finnish Revolution of 1917–1918
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Use the portrait function of your phone (if it has it) and use the main camera for better quality. Hold your camera between you and a light source, and turn your body a bit away from the camera wile keeping your head towards it for a more natural look. As others said, the result looks best if you take the picture from further away and then crop the result. I usually try to crop out my arm as well so you can’t clearly tell I made the picture myself. Take some pictures while playing around with the angle a bit and look at the results, then take more pictures with the best looking angle and repeat until you’re satisfied with the result.
It takes around an hour for me to get a good picture usually because you need to play around a bit with different angles and faces but the result is often really good. I hate taking pictures of myself but putting in the effort once every while is worth it for me.
A picture in which you smile usually does better on dating apps because it makes you seem more approachable, but a more neutral expression is also fine
Use the portrait function of your phone
whoa yeah this like instantly made my picture attempts better, idk if my current face pic is up to snuff but this definitely led to an improvement
