The strike began in reaction to the Russification of Finland and was a joint effort between the Social Democratic labour movement and the political right.

As the mutiny started, the Helsinki Red Guard, led by Johan Kock, joined the rebellion by conducting sabotage in the mainland.

In the final day of the revolt, Johan Kock declared a general strike on his own, without permission from the Social Democratic Party, which was leading the Finnish labour movement in the absence of any central trade union.

The bourgeoisie opposed the strike and sent the Protection Corps to the Hakaniemi working-class district in order to keep the city's tram traffic rolling.

[2][3] The Red Guards were re-established during the 1917 Russian Revolution as a result of disputes over law enforcement and the general turmoil in the Grand Duchy of Finland.

This law would have enabled a purely Social Democratic government to be formed in consequence of the position the party gained in the 1916 election.

The Russian Provisional Government refused to approve the law and, with the co-operation of the Finnish bourgeois parties, dissolved the parliament.

[6] The Senate now disbanded the People's Militia and established a police force which left-wing and labour activists were not allowed to join.

After the Huittinen riot, the right-wing farmers in the Satakunta province started forming Protection Guards and were soon followed in other parts of the country.

By the early October, guards were formed in seventeen towns and twenty rural municipalities, mostly in the industrialized areas of the Turku and Pori, Uusimaa and Viipuri provinces.

The newspaperman Ali Aaltonen, who had served as a lieutenant in the Imperial Russian Army, was named the first commander-in-chief of the Workers' Order Guards.

The Helsinki Guard captured a couple hundred people and invaded the House of the Estates, which prevented the Senate from working.

By the new rules adopted in the meeting, the guards were now under an unconditional authority of the Social Democratic Party and the Trade Union Federation.

Unemployed demonstrators surrounded the town hall for two days in Vyborg and in Tampere the city council was captured by the local Workers' Order Guard.

On 13 January, Aaltonen informed the general staff of the cargo of 10,000 rifles and 10 artillery pieces which would be brought to Finland within a couple of weeks.

[9] Up to this point, many of the largest Workers' Order Guards were occupied by radicals who were pushing the Finnish labour movement towards an armed conflict.

Many of the leading Social Democrats, such as Väinö Tanner, Taavi Tainio and Evert Huttunen, were moderate and opposed armed revolution and the acts of the Order Guards.

[7] In 19–23 January, violent clashes between the Workers' Order Guards and the Protection Corps occurred in eastern Finland in Vyborg and Luumäki and in the western part of the country in Kiikka.

The order for the mobilization came on the next morning from the executive committee of the Trade Union Federation, coinciding with the spontaneous clashing of Red Guards and the Protection Corps.

[6][7] The first commander-in-chief of the Red Guards was the former Russian Army lieutenant Ali Aaltonen, who was elected during the general strike in November 1917.

[7] As the Civil War started, the task was given to Eero Haapalainen, with the Russian colonel Mikhail Svechnikov as his military advisor from the end of February.

In the beginning of February, a train commanded by Jukka Rahja arrived from Saint Petersburg, carrying a cargo of 15,000 rifles, machine-guns, artillery pieces and 2 million cartridges, which the commander-in-chief Ali Aaltonen had purchased from the Bolsheviks.

For example, the Helsinki Red Guard had units composed of shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, sheet metal workers, plumbers, stonemasons and so on.

[24] The Red Guards' major problems were a lack of equipment, poor leadership and training, and food shortages at the front.

[26] As the war started on 27 January, the Red Guards occupied the capital, Helsinki, and the largest towns of industrialized southern Finland.

The front line was soon established, stretching from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Karelian Isthmus, 30–50 kilometres north of Pori, Tampere, Lahti, Lappeenranta and Vyborg.

[27] In the Ostrobothnia, Central Finland, Savonia and North Karelia regions most Reds were captured, but in Lapland many were able to flee to Sweden, Norway or Soviet Russia.

The Battle of Tampere ended with mass executions of surrendering Reds, of whom 10,000–11,000 were captured, and thousands fled the surrounding areas.

[12] A substantial number of Finnish Red Guards managed to retreat into Russian-held territories after the Whites' victory in Finland.

The United Kingdom organized the Murmansk Legion from Red Guard refugees as part of the North Russia Intervention of the Allies.