Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XI. The Government of Finland and its Future
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educated classes, should be obliged to use the Russian
language without any necessity, and without thereby
obtaining the least good, is intolerable, and so much
the less tolerable because the country has already two
languages (and languages so fundamentally different
as Finnish and Swedish) which all educated persons
must learn and use. To make Russian the official
language, contrary to the laws of the country, is
another reason for discontent; and instead of
attracting a greater number of Russians, it will render their
position in the country more difficult, and finally
impossible.
The position of the press in Finland is one of the
darkest features of its modern public life. Like all
well educated nations in the North, where the winter
nights are long, the Finlanders read much. In the
autumn of 1899, before the late attack on the press
had taken place, there were ten Swedish and
thirteen Finnish daily papers, and a total of eighty-two
Swedish, one hundred and forty Finnish, and four
mixed periodicals. Now a number of dailies and
political weeklies have been suppressed. In the liberal
period under Alexander II. it was of course intended
to introduce legal rights for the press. From 1865
to 1867 a press law was even in force, but as the
Estates did not agree with the government about
certain restrictions the provisional law went out of
force. There was then a return to the former system
of “preventive” censorship, so that a paper can be
censored and forbidden before the printing. In the
last few years, since the present Governor-General
came to Finland, press restrictions have become
intolerable. Notwithstanding the control exercised by
the preventive censorship, numerous papers have been
suppressed in a most arbitrary manner, and without
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