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The "People's Government's" declaration read a stern lesson to the Helsinki Government, outlined an ambitious program and called upon all Finns to "chase these hangmen" from Finland.
"By the will of the people, indignant at the criminal policy of the contemptible Government of Cajander, Erkko and Tanner, a new Government of our country—the People's Provisional Government—was formed today in Eastern Finland," begins the declaration.
"This Government hereby calls the entire Finnish people to a determined struggle for the overthrow of the tyranny of hangmen and war provocateurs. The reactionary, avid plutocracy which in 1918, aided by the troops of foreign imperialists, drowned democratic freedom of the Finnish toiling people in a sea of blood, transformed our country into a White-Guard hell for toilers.
"Having sold the interests of the country's independence, the plutocratic rulers of Finland, jointly with all kinds of imperialist enemies of the Finnish and Soviet peoples, ceaselessly hatched plans of anti-Soviet war provocations and finally plunged our country into the furnace of war against the Socialist Soviet Union—the great friend of the Finnish people."
The "People's Government" invited the Red Army to join it in a struggle against the Government at Helsinki and announced the formation of the First Finnish Army Corps which, it was said, will be "accorded the honor of bringing the banner of Finland's democratic republic into the capital and hoisting it on the roof of the Presidential Palace to the joy of the working people and to the awe of the enemies of the people." A warning was given, however, that the new Finland would not be a Soviet State, "because the Soviet regime cannot be established by the efforts of the Government alone without the consent of the whole people, in particular the peasantry." As for an internal program:
1) "Creation of the People's Army of Finland."
2) "The institution of State control over large private banks and large industrial enterprises and the realization of measures assisting medium and petty enterprises."
3) "The realization of measures for the complete elimination of unemployment."
4) "Reduction of the working day to eight hours, provision for a two-weeks' summer vacation for workers and reduction of house rents for workers and employes."
5) "Confiscation of lands belonging to big landowners, without touching the lands and properties of peasants, and transfer of the confiscated land to peasants having no land or possessing small allotments."
6) "Exemption of peasants from the payment of tax arrears."
7) "State assistance in every form for the improvement of economies for the poor peasants, in the first place by alloting to them additional land, pastures and when possible also forests for their domestic needs, from lands confiscated from large landowners."
8) "Democratization of State organization, administration and courts."