the Workers' Order Guards. The general strike was the first time the Workers' Order Guards were used as a nationwide organization. In many places, they were actually leading the strike, instead of the strike committees. The guards were acting on their own, searching for food supplies and weapons from wealthy houses. As the right-wing Protection Corps were rather weak, the Workers' Order Guards could usually act without any resistance, although, in some places, the Protection Corps took up arms, which resulted in violent clashes, prefiguring the oncoming Civil War. The Workers' Order Guards were most powerful in Helsinki as they were armed by the Russian troops. The Helsinki Guard captured a couple hundred people and invaded the House of the Estates, which prevented the Senate from working. The leaders of the Social Democratic Party strictly condemned this kind of action, insisting the militant guards must be taken under the party control. Soon after the general strike, the first congress of the Worker's Order Guards was held in the Tampere Workers' Hall on 16–18 December 1917. By the new rules adopted in the meeting, the guards were now under an unconditional authority of the Social Democratic Party and the Trade Union Federation. Drift toward war After Finland gained its independence from Soviet Russia on 6 December 1917, disagreement and discontent were still growing. Incidents occurred across the country as the striking workers and the Workers' Order Guards clashed with the Protection Corps and right-wing bourgeoisie. Unemployed demonstrators surrounded the town hall for two days in Vyborg and in Tampere the city council was captured by the local Workers' Order Guard. In Turku, the Order Guard occupied town offices and captured the chief of police. The Protection Corps attacked the labour activists in some places too. On 6 January, the Helsinki Workers' Order Guard declared itself independent from the Social Democratic Party. The unit was renamed the Helsinki Red Guard. Three days later, the guard occupied the residence of the Governor-General of Finland. It was now called as the Smolna, like the Bolshevik headquarters in Saint Petersburg. On the same day, the Helsinki Guard sent 200 men to Sipoo to search for guns hidden by the local Protection Corps. The operation escalated into a gunfight in which two Reds were killed. At the beginning of 1918, the Workers' Order Guards still had very few guns. For example, the largest guard in Helsinki