Talk:Finnish Civil War

FA sweeps

Concerns about this article:

• Citation style does not make for optimum verifiability. Putting all the citations for one paragraph in one footnote does not help the reader check a piece of information as they don't know which of the several sources cited to look in. It's better to cite each sentence or couple sentences individually.
• Article is a bit too long at almost 12,000 words for optimum readability. It would be better to use more aggressive summary style and shift details to sub-articles.
• Too many images that sandwich each other in violation of MOS:IMAGELOC, especially around the maps.
• The English language sources look OK for WP:RS, but I do not speak Finnish and cannot say if the same is true of them.

Overall, the article is in better shape than many FAs. (t · c) buidhe 06:39, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

The citation style is indeed highly problematic. For example, ref 9 essentially boils down to "this paragraph is sourced to a total of 205 pages of content across 5 sources". Verification is not possible in practice. For example, I was trying to verify that the label "Svecomans" is appropriate for the Jäger Movement (I've always associated it primarily with university students rather than Svecomans, even if there's probably a massive overlap in the Venn diagram of these groups) but just looking at the ref makes me want to give up.

The Finnish language sourcing also raises some concerns:

• Multiple references to newspaper articles about books/publications rather than the books themselves
• At least one newspaper editorial
• One master's thesis
• One SPS website; I'm not familiar enough with the author to determine whether they count as an SME
• A website for a company providing historical walking tours of Helsinki
• One student project website (even if supervised by profs.)
• Incomplete references for many (most?) of the online sources, missing authors and publishers. At least one bare link.

For non-Finnish references, a first glance raises the following questions:

• Why is there a thing by Otto Wille Kuusinen in the bibliography?
• Citing literature from the 60s for casualty figures seems dubious when there's much more moderns literature available, incl. the Finnish National Archive project used in fi.wp.

This might be in a better shape than many equally old FA articles, but needs a good look-over. Ljleppan (talk) 07:35, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Initial comments content-wise based on a skim-thru and some ctrl-F'ing:

• Should mention the aviation aspect at least briefly, incl. Eric von Rosen's donated aircraft; sufficiently notable that he continues to influence FAF symbology to this day.
• In the Warfare section, there's significant focus on individual actions, but little overarching analysis of how the battles were fought. A potential source would be The transfer of military knowledge and the Finnish Civil War: The Finnish volunteers in the Royal Prussian Jaeger Battalion 27 as adopters and disseminators of the German art of war, 1915–1918 by Pasi Tuunanen.
• Analysis of aftermath is limited, at least on the following points:
  • Public discourse in the following century (nb: Not "decades", "century": the conversation still goes one, even if it has calmed down), especially w/r/t what the name and nature of the conflict were (footnote A is insufficient; see e.g. fi:Suomen sisällissodan nimet for the fi.wp article on the name). This should also include discussion regarding the historiography. Possible sources include chapter 12, The Post-Cold War Memory Culture of the Civil War: Old-New Patterns and New Approaches in The Finnish Civil War 1918: History, Memory, Legacy (2014) edited by Tepora and Roselius.
  • The discussion regarding national unification (or the Finnish compromise) is very vague, esp. in the context of how important it becomes by the 1939 Winter War.
  • Communist Party of Finland is name dropped, but there's no description of how it was banned until 1944, or it's influence within Finland; these are important for understanding the post-civil war political landscape.
  • No discussion regarding the lasting impact of the Jäger Movement within the Finnish Defence Force, esp. how significant roles they played as commanders during the Winter War and Continuation War. If I recall correctly, there was a bunch of infighting between those from the Jäger background and those from the Russian army background in the 1920s.
  • No discussion on what happened to the White Guard/suojeluskunnat in the aftermath, e.g. how they get pretty much folded into the FDF structure, or the 1921 almost-a-coup (fi:Suojeluskuntaselkkaus).
  • No mention of Heimosodat (transl. Kinship Wars).

Not all of the above need extensive discussion, but I'd expect at least some prose about them. Ljleppan (talk) 10:28, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Listing at WP:FARGIVEN. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:19, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

"Fascist Whites"

Several recent biographical articles of Finnish Civil War -era people have introduced claims that Whites as a whole were fascist. As our coverage of the topic should be consistent across articles, including this one, please join a discussion at Talk:Väinö Kivisalo#Fascism on whether such claims are supported by reliable sources. Ljleppan (talk) 06:34, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Source

Could someone provide a source that states that 55 swedish volunteers were KIA, ive seen many diffrent figures. Dencoolast33 (talk) 11:37, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Separate peace

According to article:

The German-Soviet Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3 March restricted the Bolsheviks' support for the Finnish Reds to weapons and supplies.

And

The offensive led to a rapid collapse of the Soviet forces and to the signing of the first Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the Bolsheviks on 3 March 1918. Finland, the Baltic countries, Poland and Ukraine were transferred to the German sphere of influence.

More information:

Because of that separate peace agreement signed on 3 March 1918 the Soviet-Russian troops left the territory of Finland according to historian Jari Lehtoväre (published in newspaper Aamuposti in Hyvinkää, Finland, 3 December 2024). 194.111.119.48 (talk) 06:50, 6 December 2024 (UTC)