From Underground Terrorism to State Terrorism and Beyond: The Question of Terrorism in the Finnish Jäger Movement during and after the First World War

Political terrorism has played an integral part in the independence struggle of several sovereign nations, and resistance and liberation movements have often had to resort to terrorism as a deliberate strategy. In the Finnish nationalist struggle for independence, a key role was played by the Jäger Movement, which combined the features of transnational war volunteerism and an underground organization. The military cooperation with Germany against the Russian Empire during the First World War, and the creation of the Finnish 27th Royal Prussian Jäger Battalion, also necessitated the establishment of a clandestine recruitment network in Finland, which effectively operated as an underground organization. During the war, the Jäger Movement was repeatedly faced with the question of resorting to reprisals and terror tactics. This process culminated in the autumn of 1916, and briefly showed signs of escalating to the level of an actual terror campaign, until it was cut short by the Russian February Revolution. Nonetheless, the accumulated propensity for political violence manifested itself during the subsequent Finnish Civil War, as well as during the far-right reaction of the early 1930s. The article approaches the question of terrorism in the Jäger Movement during this era, the issue of deploying “enforcement terror” during the independence struggle, and the subsequent distinctive participation of Jägers in state terror during the Civil War and the extreme right-wing political terror in the 1930s.