Civil war and military intervention in Karelia. The Olonets voluntary army invasion

The relevance of this topic is determined by the need for an objective analysis and evaluation of the events of the Civil war in Karelia (1918-1920), as well as the interference of foreign states (in particular Finland) in the RSFSR internal affairs. The political and military situation in North-West Russia in the spring and summer of 1919 is analyzed using previously unpublished archival documents and memoirs; numerous facts of Finland’s interference in the RSFSR internal affairs are covered; the subversion of the Finnish political and military leaders aimed at inciting separatist sentiments among local Karelian population is revealed; the role of Olonets volunteer army as a tool for the implementation of the aggressive plans of Finland’s military and political leadership is discovered. The Olonets campaign of Finnish “volunteers” (1919) is a typical example of open military intervention against the Soviet Republic to reject Russian Karelia. Measures taken by Karelia’s Revolutionary Military Council and by the Command of the 7th Army, the Baltic Naval Forces and Onega flotilla during the spring and summer of 1919 to repeal the aggression were not always effective due to objective and subjective reasons. In the North-West of Russia (as well as throughout the country) there was a complex process of the forming the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Fleet from the fragments of the Imperial Russian Army and the Imperial Russian Navy. Significant contribution to the creation of efficient armed forces of the Soviet Republic was made by former officers of the Russian Empire, who had participated in the First World War (1914-1918) and took the command of armies, divisions, regiments, fleets, flotillas and ships during a difficult period of Russian history.