White Guards

(1) The name of the bourgeois police created in Finland in 1906 to combat the revolutionary movement. The distinguishing signs of the White Guards were white armbands.

(2) During the Civil War and armed intervention of 1918—20, armed formations that were fighting for the restoration of the bourgeois-landowner order unofficially bore the name White Guards (White Guardsmen). In Soviet literature and publicism, and likewise in common usage, the designation “White Guards” applied to several counterrevolutionary nationalistic military formations (White Finns, White Czechs, White Poles, and others), and to counterrevolution in general. The origin of the term “White Guards” is connected with the traditional symbolism of the color white as the color of the supporters of “legitimate” law and order (in contrast to the color red, the color of a rebellious people and of revolution).