The convening of the Finnish Diet in 1863, after a break of over fifty years, marked the beginning of a new era in Finnish political life. The Language Decrees of 1863 and 1865, described during a meeting of the Diet in 1877 as ‘a sort of Magna Carta for the Finnish-speaking part of the nation’, took over twenty years to be implemented, but progress was made, however slow. It would have been much slower if the authorities had not been constantly prodded by the Diet. The Diet Act of 1869 laid down that the Diet should be summoned at least every five years, and in fact it was summoned more frequently. In 1879 the electoral laws were relaxed and the franchise in the towns was widened. Legislation on economic and commercial questions and on education was enacted during the 1870s and 1880s. Although the Tsar still had the power to reject legislation passed by the Finnish Diet, in practice the degree of self-government increased at both national and local level within the Grand Duchy.

The gradual liberalization of the system gave an opportunity for political parties to develop. The language issue was foremost in the early period, with the Finnish nationalists – the so-called Fennomen, led by Yrjö-Koskinen (also known as Forsman) opposing the Swedish language supporters – the Svecomen. These labels were attached to groups of people who generally took up similar positions on certain political issues, but there were at this time no political parties in the modern sense.