Do you mean 1100, 1400, 1800 or 1917 on?

Inquiring minds want to know.

...though, then that was the one time Russia treated Finland with great humanity and generosity.

Recap for those not up on their history of the North-Eastern corner of Europe: After one of their many wars (the second or third after Russia had become a great power, and Sweden had ceased being one), in 1805 Russia took the Eastern half of Sweden for its own, thus finally securing its "new" (by then, 100-year-plus) capital St. Petersburg and its access to the Baltic Sea.

The annexation was an unusually -- for the time, almost incredibly -- mild and distant one: Finland became, not a province in the Russian empire, but a Grand Duchy directly under the Tsar (its Grand Duke); more or less *beside* the (rest of the) Empire. It got to keep its separate laws (i.e, Swedish law) and its own administrative language (i.e, Swedish -- as for Finnish, I guess the attitude must have been, "Who cares what the peasants speak with each other?!?").

Unfortunately, this generosity didn't last more than a few decades: From about the 1860s on, there were increasingly frequent attempts at, and increasingly intensive campaigns for, Russification. So it's no big wonder the Finns -- or make that Finlanders, as it includes the ethnic Finland Swedes -- took their chance and declared independence during the Russian October Revolution, in November 1917.

Given the fighting ability -- especially, relative to that of the Russians -- they demonstrated three decades later, it was damn smart of Lenin (who had his hands full everywhere else anyway) not to try to stop them. What "generosity" on the part of the Russians are you trying to claim this demonstrates?

I have no idea what you're talking about WRT the years 1100 or 1400 -- and frankly, I don't think you do, either... In 1100, Russia was still in some respects the Far East, about as relevant to the Finns as China. In other respects, it wasn't yet really Russian, but the Easternmost of the Scandinavian kingdoms; related by blood and marriage to its Western neighbour, Sweden, with both meddling in each other's internal affairs as far as dynastic matters were concerned. Its "treatment" of the Finnish populace was no different from that of its "treatment" of the Norwegians or Azerbaijanis, i.e, for the most part non-existent.

And 1400... WTF is supposed to have happened in 1400, where Russia should have had anything to do with Finland?!? YM the war in, IIRC, the 1380s, the "Big Bang of Viborg" and all that? Again, in a war between neighbouring mediaeval kingdoms, the populace of the territory in dispute was treated no different than their immediate neighbours to both sides (i.e, the more or less undisputed subjects of the respective combatants): Harshly trodden over in the course of war, oppressed as a matter of routine, but mainly ignored.

You're batting one out of four, Arkadij.