Why Finland attacked the USSR twice before 1939, and how the Finns treated the Russians on their territory

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On November 30, 1939, the Winter (or Soviet-Finnish) War started. For a long time, the dominant position was about the bloody Stalin, who was trying to seize harmless Finland. And the alliance of the Finns with Nazi Germany was considered to be a forced measure in order to resist the Soviet "evil empire". But it is enough to recall some well-known facts of Finnish history to understand that not everything was so simple.

Privileges for Finns in the Russian Empire

Until 1809, Finland was a province of the Swedes. The colonized Finnish tribes had neither administrative nor cultural autonomy for a long time. The official language spoken by the nobles was Swedish. After joining the Russian Empire in the status of a Grand Duchy, the Finns were endowed with broad autonomy with their own diet and participation in the adoption of laws by the emperor. In addition, they were released from compulsory military service, but the Finns had their own army.

Under the Swedes, the status of the Finns was not high, and the educated wealthy class was represented by the Germans and Swedes. Under Russian rule, the situation changed significantly in favor of the Finnish residents. The Finnish language also became the state language. With all these allowances, the Russian government rarely interfered in the internal affairs of the principality. The resettlement of Russian representatives to Finland was also discouraged.

In 1811, as a generous donation, Alexander I handed over to the Grand Duchy of Finland the Vyborg province, which the Russians had taken from the Swedes in the 18th century. It should be noted that Vyborg itself had a serious military-strategic importance in relation to St. Petersburg - at that time the Russian capital. So the position of the Finns in the Russian "prison of peoples" was not the most deplorable, especially against the background of the Russians themselves, who were carrying all the burdens of maintaining and defending the empire.

Ethnic politics in Finnish

The collapse of the Russian Empire gave the Finns independence. The October Revolution proclaimed the right of every nation to self-determination. Finland was in the forefront of this opportunity. At this time, not without the participation of the Swedish stratum dreaming of revanchism in Finland, the development of self-awareness and national culture was outlined. This was expressed mainly in the formation of nationalist and separatist sentiments.

The apogee of these trends was the voluntary participation of the Finns in the battles of the First World War against Russia under the German wing. In the future, it was these volunteers, the so-called "Finnish huntsmen", who took an especially active part in the bloody ethnic cleansing among the Russian population that unfolded on the territory of the former principality. The commemorative coin, issued for the 100th anniversary of the Independence of the Republic of Finland, depicts a scene of the execution of a peaceful Russian population by Finnish punishers. This inhuman episode of ethnic cleansing carried out by the nationalist Finnish troops is successfully hushed up by modern chroniclers.

The massacre of the "Reds" began in Finland in January 1918. Russians were ruthlessly exterminated regardless of political preferences and class affiliation. In April 1918, at least 200 Russian civilians were killed in Tampere. But the most terrible tragedy of that period occurred in the "Russian" city of Vyborg, occupied by the gamekeepers. On that day, Finnish radicals killed every Russian they met.

Katonsky, a witness to that terrible tragedy, told how "whites", shouting "shoot the Russians," broke into apartments, took unarmed residents onto the ramparts and shot them. According to various sources, the Finnish "liberators" took the lives of 300 to 500 unarmed civilians, including women and children. It is still not known exactly how many Russians fell victim to ethnic cleansing, because the atrocities of Finnish nationalists continued until 1920.

Finnish territorial claims and "Greater Finland"

The Finnish elite strove to create the so-called "Greater Finland". The Finns did not want to get involved with Sweden, but they expressed their claims to the Russian territories, the area exceeding Finland itself. The demands of the radicals were exorbitant, but first of all they set out to seize Karelia. The Civil War, which weakened Russia, played into the hands. In February 1918, the Finnish General Mannerheim promised that he would not stop until he liberated the lands of Eastern Karelia from the Bolsheviks.

Mannerheim wanted to seize Russian territories along the border of the White Sea, Lake Onega, the Svir River and Lake Ladoga. It was also planned to include the Kola Peninsula with the Pechenga region in the Greater Finland. Petrograd was assigned the role of a "free city" of the Danzig type. On May 15, 1918, the Finns declared war on Russia. Attempts by the Finns to put Russia on its shoulder with the help of any of its enemies continued until 1920, when the RSFSR signed a peace treaty with Finland.

Finland was left with vast territories to which they historically never had rights. But peace did not follow for a long time. Already in 1921 Finland again tried to resolve the Karelian issue by force. Volunteers, without declaring war, invaded the Soviet borders, unleashing the Second Soviet-Finnish War. And only by February 1922 Karelia was completely liberated from the Finnish invaders. In March, an agreement was signed on ensuring the inviolability of the common border. But the situation in the border zone remained tense.

The Mainil Incident and the New War

According to Per Evind Svinhufvud, Prime Minister of Finland, every enemy of Russia can become a Finnish friend. The Finnish nationalist press was full of calls for an attack on the USSR and the seizure of its territories. On this basis, the Finns even made friends with Japan, accepting its officers for training. But hopes for a Russian-Japanese conflict did not come true, and then a course was taken towards rapprochement with Germany.

Within the framework of the military-technical alliance in Finland, the Cellarius Bureau was created - a German center whose task was anti-Russian intelligence work. By 1939, with the support of German specialists, the Finns had built a network of military airfields, ready to receive aircraft ten times more than the local air force had. As a result, on the eve of World War II, a hostile state was formed on the northwestern frontier of Russia, ready to cooperate with a potential enemy of the Land of the Soviets.

Trying to secure its borders, the Soviet government took decisive measures. We reached an agreement with Estonia peacefully, concluding an agreement on the deployment of a military contingent. It was not possible to come to an agreement with the Finns. After a series of fruitless negotiations on November 26, 1939, the so-called "mining incident" happened. According to the USSR, the shelling of Russian territories was carried out by Finnish artillery. The Finns call it a Soviet provocation. But one way or another, the non-aggression pact was denounced and another war started.

During the Second World War, Finland again made a desperate attempt to become a state for all Finns. But representatives of these peoples (Karelians, Vepsians, Vod) for some reason these ideas were not accepted.