History of Finland VIII: Joining of Finland to Russia led to an increase in crime

This is the eighth part of a blog post series where I go through the most significant phases of Finnish history. In the seventh post, I described how King Gustav III's coup continued to strengthen the position of peasants and urban bourgeoisie, thereby increasing their economic activities.

But then a new major turning point in our country's history came. It turned out that Finland's administration was transferred from Sweden to Russia, and the kings were replaced by grand dukes. The first of them was Tsar Alexander I.

At least according to my history education during school, this was said to have happened by elevating autonomous Finland to a nation among nations. In reality, however, the power used in Finland was transferred to the highest officials who shared common interests with the Tsar and further to the nobility, officials, rural businessmen, and urban bourgeoisie, who merged into a Swedish-speaking entity.

During the era of the emerging bureaucracy, the liberalization of the Finnish economy came to a halt, and the economic inequality among people increased. The wealthier population, including the peasant landowners, became richer, while the rapidly growing population became poorer. This was due to the fact that the business sector was not liberalized, and therefore the economy did not grow much. As a result, there were not enough jobs for the growing population.

In Finland, this led to a situation where previously salaried farmhands were reduced to seasonal laborers, whose recruitment principle was to choose the applicant who was willing to accept the lowest wage. As a result, the general standard of living of the people quickly declined.

As living conditions deteriorated, the marginalized and dissatisfied responded with crime, which quickly began to grow, reaching an exceptionally high degree of organization. An example of this was a group terrorizing the area of Nurmijärvi, Uusimaa, and Southern Häme, which included the great-uncle of a noted writer Aleksis Kivi.

This group started their criminal career in 1820, at first with petty thefts and later expanding their operations to include robbery and murder. Eventually, Finland's first organized criminal gang was brought to justice by as many as 700 Cossacks and soldiers - and even after that, they organized a prison uprising.

Another well-known example is the "puukkojunkkarit" (knife-fighters) of Southern Ostrobothnia, whose story may be familiar to some readers. The roots of this group also lay in the lack of future prospects for young men.

As the Finnish economy faltered under the power of bureaucratic administration, and more and more people turned to a life of crime, a growing portion of the population ended up in prison. The numbers were so large that overcrowding in prisons had to be alleviated by even sending people to serve their sentences in Siberia.

Overall, it can be said that Finland's annexation to Russia was initially a step backwards for the country, while our old motherland Sweden continued its positive development, which may explain a significant part of our western neighbor's substantially stronger economy even today.

The original blog post in Finnish:
Suomen liittäminen Venäjään johti rikollisuuden nousuun

All the blog posts in this series:
History of Finland I: How did Finland become culturally part of the West?
History of Finland II: From a hinterland of the Union into a modern state
History of Finland III: The legal and economic weakening of the position of the people
History of Finland IV: The bleakest time in Finnish history
History of Finland V: The pursuit of economic profit saved the country
History of Finland VI: Age of freedom and utility
History of Finland VII: The dictator of the era of Enlightenment promoted capitalist economy
History of Finland VIII: Joining of Finland to Russia led to an increase in crime
History of Finland IX: Enlightended dictator initiated economic growth
History of Finland X: The birth of Finnish identity
History of Finland XI: Finnish democracy and gender equality for women
History of Finland XII: Bloody civil war
History of Finland XIII: The far-right's rebellion
History of Finland XIV: The end of the first Finnish Republic
History of Finland XV: Paasikivi-Kekkonen doctrine
History of Finland XVI: Through rise and fall to a new kind of future