Contact Admin. It declared Finland an independent nation, among nations ending its autonomy within Russia as its Grand Duchy of Finland , with reference to a simultaneously delivered bill to the Diet to make Finland an independent republic instead.
Declaring the independence was only part of the long process leading to the independence of Finland. The declaration is celebrated as the Independence Day in Finland. There were negotiations between the Russian Provisional Government and Finnish authorities. The resulting proposal, approved by the Provisional Government, was heavily rewritten in the Finnish Parliament and transformed into the so-called Power Act Finnish: Valtalaki , Swedish: Maktlagen , whereby the Parliament declared [1] itself to now hold all powers of legislation, except with respect to foreign policy and military issues, and also that it could be dissolved only by itself.
At the time of the vote it was believed that the Provisional Government would be quickly defeated by the rebellion in Saint Petersburg. The Provisional Government survived, however, disapproved of the Power Act and dissolved the Parliament.
This paragraph provided for the election of a new monarch in case of the extinction of the royal line and was interpreted in Finland as vesting sovereignty in the estates, later the Parliament, in such an interregnum. The regency council was however never elected because of the strong opposition of Finnish socialists and their general strike which demanded for more radical action.
On 2 November 15 November N. On the same day the Finnish Parliament issued a declaration by which it assumed, pro tempore , all powers of the Sovereign in Finland. The old Instrument of Government was however no longer deemed suitable. Leading circles had long held monarchism and hereditary nobility to be antiquated, and advocated a republican constitution for Finland. The Senate of Finland , the government that the Parliament had appointed in November, drafted a Declaration of Independence and a proposal for a new republican Instrument of Government.
