February Manifesto
During the following years and decades, it gradually became an established interpretation in Finland that this meant the Swedish Instrument of Government of 1772 and the Union and Security Act of 1789, except for some points in conflict with the new situation.
[5]: 15, 19–21, 41–42 [6][7]: 30, 43–45 This led to the conclusion that although the emperor was an autocrat in Russia, in Finland he had agreed to a position of a constitutional ruler, who had no right to decide on certain matters without approval from the diet.
The Finns were especially interested in the codification of constitutional laws, as that would allow the Grand Duchy of Finland to have its own form of government and gain Russia's recognition.
[8]: 429–493 The birth of the February Manifesto was a natural result of the politics the old and patriotic Russian Slavophiles and Pan-Slavists had towards conquered lands, with their most important goal being a strong and unified Russia.
The Russian zapadniks, meaning politicians geared towards renovation, opposed the conservative politics seeking to replace the old and autocratic system with a more democratic and liberal state.
Other committee members included senator Isak Fellman, professors Thiodolf Rein and Robert Hermanson, and judge Karl Woldemar Nystén.
To Heiden's disappointment, Weissenberg and the majority of the committee supported Leo Mechelin's controversial theory that Finland was a separate state in a real union with Russia.
Instead of mere codification, the committee wanted to strengthen Finland's judicial position and made a proposal for a new form of government based on Swedish-era constitutional laws.
Of the committee members, only Hermanson disagreed with the idea, rejecting the union theory, but he also agreed that Finland was an autonomic state inside Russia.
[8]: 496–499, 519 The report, written in Swedish, was interpreted to Heiden by Konstantin Ivanovich Yakubov, a teacher of the Alexander Gymnasium in Helsinki, who wrote a critical note about it.
[13] A commission led by Governor-General Heiden met in Helsinki from October to November 1890, attempting to review the report given by the Weissenberg committee after they had returned from St. Petersburg.
The Russians repeated the opinion of historian Kesar Ordin and rejected the idea of the Grand Duchy of Finland being its own state, while the Finns kept to their own interpretation of the constitutional law and defended the report given by the Weissenberg committee.
At this time, the emperor decided to appoint a mixed Russian-Finnish committee led by the former finance minister of Russia Nikolai von Bunge to create rules about the relationship between the general and local legislation.
[5]: 70–71 Secretary of the state council Vyacheslav von Plehve asked the new Emperor Nicholas II in January 1895 what to do about the question investigated by the Bunge committee.
According to von Plehve, taking the Russian proposal of the committee into action would cause unrest in Finland, and so the emperor decided not to pursue the matter.
[4]: 60–64 [13] After Nicholas II succeeded Alexander III as emperor and the elderly Heiden had resigned from his post, two new committees were founded from 1896 to 1897 to investigate the matter according to Vannovsky's previous proposal, both of which were led by general Viktor Dandeville.
The committee members also included Finnish soldiers, such as Waldemar Schauman, Michael Leonard von Blom, Kasten Antell and Guido Gadolin, but their opinions were not noted.
Nicholas II appointed a new committee to investigate the matter, led by chief procurator of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev and other members including Kuropatkin, Bobrikov, Heiden, Procopé, Frisch, judicial minister Nikolay Muravyov and Stepan Goncharov, the acting governor-general at the time.
Fredrik Björnberg, the commissary of the St. Petersburg office of the Bank of Finland was also informed of the matter in advance as he had connections to the widowed Empress Maria Feodorovna.
[2]: 16–17 [19]: 32, 86 [3]: 19 Furthermore, the manifesto did not define what exactly constituted state legislation, which meant any law or edict whatsoever could be considered as included in it and thus be altered or revoked by government decree.
A great popular meeting was held on short notice at the Ateneum in Helsinki on the evening of Friday 17 February on the initiative of Arvid Neovius and the Nya Pressen newspaper, consisting of about 300 men from academia, both Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking.
The immediate publication was opposed by deputy chairman of the judicial department Theodor Cederholm and the senators Karl Ferdinand Ignatius, Waldemar Schauman, Lennart Gripenberg, August Nybergh, Nikolai Konstantin Hornborg, Gustaf Robert Alfred Charpentier, Ludvig Gustaf Leonhard Clouberg, Sven Wilhelm Hougberg and Gösta von Troil.
Tudeer and Söderhjelm representing the senate as well as the speakers of all four estates of the diet had arrived in St. Petersburg to appeal to the emperor, but Nicholas II refused to meet them.
Minister-secretary of the state Procopé read the response had got from the emperor to representatives on the delegation on 18 March, according to which the Finns should return home and the petition should be delivered via a normal route through provincial governors and the governor-general.
[12]: 203–204 Nicholas II's refusal to receive the Great Petition or meet the delegation strengthened his image in Finland as an "oath-breaking emperor" who had knowingly broken the Finnish constitution.
A special fund for influencing the foreign press had already been collected in Finland through donations, and in January 1899 a three-person committee consisting of Leo Mechelin, Emil Nestor Setälä and Arvid Neovius was set up to guide its use.
Von Plehve, who had acted as minister-secretary of the state since 1899, decided in spring 1902 to support the idea of making the February Manifesto more exact in this way, because he thought this would calm the Finns down.
Of historians, Osmo Jussila, Matti Klinge, Tuomo Polvinen, Päiviö Tommila, Toivo Nygård and Panu Pulma have viewed the significance the Finns gave to the February Manifesto at the time as exaggerated.
The historians have seen the February Manifesto as having assembled, specified and clarified previously existing practices of enacting state legislation and being a logical consequence of long-time legal development.
[7]: 16, 26, 62–64 Historians Timo Soikkanen, Juhani Mylly, Mårten Ringbom and Aki Rasilainen have later defended the more traditional interpretation of the manifesto as a revolutionary turning point of the autonomy period, which discontinued constitutional government and changed the legal circumstances.
