Finnish People's Delegation

The Delegation was established as a rival to the Government of Finland and seized power in Helsinki at the start of the Civil War by supplanting Pehr Evind Svinhufvud's first senate and Parliament.

It passed laws and enactments aspiring to a socialist reform of Finland as per the policy of the labor movement with support from the armed Red Guards.

However, this failed completely, and the Red Guards' Supreme military staff postponed the coup by a day because of unfinished preparations, so the senators were informed of the arrest warrant through a prematurely issued public handout, and had time to hide.

In March, the Delegation's Postal and Announcement Department placed preventive censorship on the remaining papers' reporting on the military and foreign affairs.

In practice, the Delegation was later forced to confess that it could barely control the actions of the Red Guards, and reduced the number of military affairs cases it handled.

It has been estimated that about two thirds of its written laws were reactions to acute administerial issues, and the rest aimed at ideological goals or increasing support.

Particularly the laws passed on ideological grounds were modeled after the legislation produced by the Paris Commune of 1871 and also the October Revolution in neighboring Soviet Russia, but mostly after Finland's labor movement's previous programmes.

Delegation members in Russia were soon repurposed by the Bolsheviks for activities related to Finland and other Finnic peoples, particularly in Soviet Karelia.