Great Petition



The Great Petition (Suuri adressi, Stora adressen) was a document produced in the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1899, during the first period of the Russification of Finland. It petitioned the Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar Nicholas II to reconsider his February Manifesto issued earlier in the same year. University students went from village to village to collect more than half a million signatures, roughly one fifth of the Finnish population at the time, within eleven days.

When the delegation, consisting of 500 men all around Finland, delivering the petition arrived in St Petersburg, the tsar declined to see it. Thus, it failed to have any effect.