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Stalin and the Winter War
This deals with the one of the most typical slanders against Stalin- that he was a cryptoimperialist expansionist and Great Russian chauvinist who harrassed and conquered independent nations who could not defend themselves, which was supposedly demonstrated in his "Winter War" against Finland, 1939-1941.
Let's get the facts straight.
In the year 1992, 75 years after Lenin gave Finns independence (contradiction here? Finns, among the most petit-bourgeois-nationalist, most anti-bolshevist ethnic groups, have to thank LENIN for their independence) Finns published a book called "Finland 75", a quirky propaganda trashcan work about how Finland "has no dark pages in history which they would have hide". Well, let's just say that this is among the most idiotic propaganda books EVER! It is NOT VERY WISE to reveal all these appalling facts about pre-WWII Finland. Straight from the horse's mouth:
1. General Mannerheim, the national hero of Finland, played an important role in the what we Communists call Finnish class war. That was a civil war that took place in 1918. The Reds were defeated in the city of Tampere by the Whites. When the city was captured, Mannerheim ordered thousands of Reds be gathered to the public marcet place, almost all were immediately mass- slaughtered. No, he did not do this because of the Reds were a threath; they were tired and wounded and without proper arms. He did this BECAUSE HE WANTED TO SHOW THE GERMANS WHAT A GREAT MILITARY MASTERMIND HE WAS AND THAT HE DIDN'T NEED ANY HELP FROM THEM TO DEFEAT THE REDS! (The German troops were few kilometres away, he could had waited them if he wanted to, he could had acted more leniently, the Reds were incapable to fight, but no) The BOOK ADMITS THAT THE WHITE TERROR OF THE WHITE ARMY LED BY MANNERHEIM WAS SYSTEMATIC AND COLD-BLOODED AND KILLED HUNDREDS, EVEN THOUSANDS MEN, WOMEN ANS CHILDREN, EVEN BEFORE THAT! THE BOOK ADMITS THAT ON THE CONTRARY, RED "terror" WAS SPONTANEOUS AND MARGINAL AND ONLY KILLED FEW TENS OF PEOPLE! (Majority of them rich industrialists and landlords)
2. Finns had concentration camps. All what was left of the Red prisoners were sent there. Communist party was outlawed. The camps began to be a problem when professional revolutionaries trained in the Soviet Union, who returned to Finland and tried to do some party organizing, were sent there; they had education in Communist theory and practice, and they started to arrange organized resistance in the camps. Thus, the camps were replaced by ordinary prisons, were Communist could be kept isolated from other prisoners. In that sense, their position became WORSE when Finns got rid of the camps (to re-introduce them when the war begun)
3. Finland had many "dictatorial" (what am I talking about, all social systems are dictatorships as Marx said, there are capitalist and proletarian dictatorships) characteristics. One example: industrialists were ALLOWED to organize their own paramilitary forces composed mainly of the Finnish kulaks, in order to violently break strikes.
4. Finland was a firm believer in eugenics. One example: when the first Miss Finland- beaty contest was held, it's goal was to find "the most racially pure and flawless type of Finnish women"! When the winner was announced, all details about her (the size of her hips, breasts and even the skull structure) were given to the department of anthropoligist sciences in the Helsinki university! When the winner won the Miss European- contest, Finnish press wrote enthusiastically: "FINNS ARE NOT MONGOLIANS"! (This refers to the debate in the Finnish press about how Finns were supposedly identified in the eyes of international audience as members of "racially inferior" ethnic groups) (1)
THIS PROPAGANDA BOOK ADMITS ALL OF THIS AND DARES TO CLAIM THAT FINLAND WAS A VANGUARD OF DEMOCRACY!
This is not the end of it.
5. Finns sterilized the asulym-seekers, other poor and their children, since it was OFFICIALLY HELD BELIEF THAT POVERTY WAS INHERITABLE! They also sterilized their mentally disabled children, SINCE THEY BELIEVED THAT MENTAL DISABILITES WERE AMONG THE REASONS THAT THEIR PARENTS WERE POOR! (2) The social-democrats ALSO SUPPORTED THIS PRACTICE! Well, no wonder that they collaborated with Nazis during the war (3). Stalin was right when he said that social democracy and fascism are twins!
6. Finnish church had close ties with the Nazi church already in the beginning of the 30's, whose "aryanization" of religion- campaigns were carried out also in Finland. During the war, the Finnish church OPENLY PURPOSED that the Roma people should be held in captivity in a swamp, so that "these inferior beigns" would not "be a burdon of decent and hard-working people". They also purposed that Russian war prisoners should be used as "mine treaters" in order to find out were Russian land mines were. FINNISH CHURCH STILL HASN'T APOLOGIZED FOR THEIR NAZI PAST! (4) All leading Finnish intellectuals were openly Nazi symphatizers. (5)
7. Finns set up Nazi-type concentration camps during the World War. All USSR-born civilians they captured were sent there. The practices were hair-rising; children in the camps were gathered into circles and the commander of the camp would push a snake he was holding in his hand into each child's face, and if someone was scared, s/he was brutally beaten; the commander would pick a random child and bring him/her to his office, where s/he was stripped naked and beaten; when a teenage girl tried to escape with her brother, they were shot to death with machine guns while they were climping over the barbed wire, and their bodies were left to hang there until they started to stink as a warning for other prisoners. This was admitted by Apu, a yellow press arch- right periodical. (6) THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS WERE MANNERHEIM'S IDEA!
LETS NOT FORGET THAT ALL FINNISH NAZI GENERALS ARE HONORARY GUESTS AT THE INDEPENDECE DAY PARTY AT THE PRESIDENTIAL CASTLE!
Arch-Right Finnish Totalitarian Paradigmatist historicians claim that Stalin hated Finns and that simply beign a Finn was a reason for someone to be sent to labor camp if s/he happened to live in the Soviet Union. Given the facts above, this clearly demonstrates that Finland was probably the last fascist state that hasn't been convicted in Nurnberg. If anyone wants to sign a petition to bring Finland to trial, I would be pleased to see that.
Finland itself claims that it was not
fascist, on the grounds that it dissolved the Lapua movement, a
half-spontaneus kulak movement in Finland, which was openly
fascistic. (7) That is not true. As long as Lapua movement kept
harassing Communists, assaulting and even killing them,
authorities were down with it. Then, the movement started to have
more anarchist characteristics, it became the right-wing version
of Narodniks; since it was mainly composed of Finnish kulaks, it
also started to attack the town-dwelling bourgeoisie in Finland,
which it saw as a threath. "We do what we want!" it
announced, and took up arms in the countryside. When the
president heard of this, he simply made a friendly plea that they
would lay their arms down -and they did! If they were ready to
listen to the president,
it clearly shows that the president enjoyed their support. (8)
There would had been no point to overthrow a regime that already
WAS a fascist, and fostered all fascist movements who were down
with the fascists in power (the town-dwelling Finnish bourgeoisie).
Totalitarian Paradigmatists in Finland claim that Stalin had plans to send Finns to Asian hinterlands, in the case he won the Winter War. Again, I've never seen any evidence of this, but concerning that since Finland was an "unofficial" Nazi country, it would had been the most sensible thing to do in this situation.
Stalin CLEARLY HAD GOOD REASONS to be cautious with Finland.
Then, some facts about the war.
1. Leningrad was only few tens of kilometres away from Finnish border. It would had been SUICIDAL in the case of the war! "If we look at the map, we shall find that the best approach to Petrograd is from the Baltic, and that the shortest and easiest route is through Finland, whose frontiers are only about 30 miles distant from the Russian capital. Finland is the key to Petrograd and Petrograd is the key to Moscow". (9)
2. Stalin purposed aerial exchangements with Finland, but Finland didn't agree, EVEN THOUGH STALIN'S SUGGESTIONS WERE MORE BENEFICIAL TO FINLAND THAN THEY WERE TO USSR! The total area of the territory requested for these purposes and to achieve point 3 was 2,761 square kilometres, in exchange for which the Soviet Union would cede to Finland territory with an area of 5,529 square kilometres i.e., more than double the area! This CLEARLY WAS NOT NEOIMPERIALIST BLACKMAILING, as Finns claim! Even Tanner, the social-democrat nazi-symphatizer who later played an important part in Nazi puppet regime in Finland, ADMITS this in his book "The Winter War: Finland Against Russia 1939-1940"! He says that Stalin was UNBELIEVABLY patient with Finns, and when they rejected his purposals again and again, he almost DESPERATELY tried to find a solution which would please the both sides. When the negotiations failed and Finnish delegation decided to return home and start to prepare themselves to the war, Stalin even wished them "The best of luck"! (10) It was simply due of the Great-Finnish chauvinism, which was very common in Finland at that time, that Finnish fascist leaders couldn't accept these friendly purposals. (11)
3. Some facts about the Mainila incident, the "starting shot" of the war, need to be discussed here. (The war was declared when Finnish aggressors shot and killed some Russian soldiers with gunfire from Mainila village in the Finnish-Soviet border) Finns claim that it was just a propaganda story from Moscow and an artificial excuse to start the war, and their official sources still claim so. BUT AS WE'VE SEEN ABOVE, THE FINNISH "INNOCENCE" IS VERY QUESTIONABLE! (Note that NONE of the facts above aren't STILL discussed in Finland openly, Finland hasn't denounced it's crypto-Nazi past or even apologized the victims of it's right-wing power plays in the 20's and 30's) FINNS HAVE SHOWN NO EVIDENCE SO FAR THAT IT WASN'T THEM WHO FIRED THE FIRST SHOTS! The most powerfull evidence is that Gorbachev supposedly admitted this (I've seen no evidence even about this) but, we should remember, that Gorbachev also "admitted" that Stalin supposedly killed millions, WHICH IS NOT TRUE! GORBACHEV ADMITTED EVERYTHING THE WEST WANTED HIM TO ADMIT! And as we've seen so far, Stalin was much LESS aggressive with Finland than Finland was with him! And furhermore, IT IS QUITE IRRELEVANT who fired the first shots. Finland was a fascist state who had conducted many anti-Soviet operations before, and who had close ties with both Germany and all other Great-Power imperialist aggressors. During the Civil War in Russia, Finns let foreign troops who backed Whites ENTER TO RUSSIA TROUGH FINLAND. (11) Finland would had been a deathtrap to USSR in the case of the war! Even IF it was them who fired the first shots, IT WOULD HAD BEEN PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDABLE!
4. Something that is usually NOT discussed in public is the Democratic People's Republic of Finland. The story goes as it follows: On 1 December 1939, Soviets captured the city of Terijoki (Finns claim that there was still a battle going on there that day, but as shown above they're not very trustable). They set up a provisional government headed by Communist Otto Ville Kuusinen (a downrotten revisionist, but that's irrelevant here). The thing is, SOVIETS IMMEDIATELY MADE PEACE WITH THE DPRF! (12) Finnish version of the Totalitarian Paradigm of course assumes that it was just a propaganda act by Stalin in order to make Russians to believe that USSR was not aggressor; (13) but that's just ASSUMPTION, which doesn't WORK if you don't accept the Totalitarian Paradigm! The fact is that Stalin gave in the peace treaty with DPRF to the new Finnish governments ALL the areas in USSR that Great-Finnish chauvinists had always dreamed of! He made their dream od Great Finland come true! There were two governments in Finland at that time. The other was the fascist one and the other was that of the DPRF. USSR made peace with the DPRF, but not with the fascist Finland- with them, the battle was still going on. DPRF goverment was overthrown when Finns captured Terijoki. The thing is that Stalin made peace with Terijoki government and made great aerial concessions to it. Thus, hard to believe that the Winter War was just a matter of Soviet imperialist aggression.
5. The Finns claim that "heroic soldiers won the imperialist USSR relying purely on their own strenght". NOT TRUE. First of all, Finland relied very heavily on help from the imperialist countries, and pershaps would not had survived without them.
Example one: List of French and British material supplies to Finland, published 22 February 1941:
"150 anti-tank rifles,
10,000 anti-tank mines,
50,000 hand grenades,
25 howitzers,
100 machine-guns,
large quantities of ammunition,
24 anti-aircraft guns,
30 field guns,
4 tanks,
12 6-inch guns,
10 trench mortars,
and equipment, clothing, respirators and tents".(14)
Example two: Chamberlain declared in the House of Commons 19 March 1940, that Britts had gained these "victories" on the aid-to-fascist-Finland-field:
"Aeroplanes promised, 152; actually
sent, 101.
Guns of all kinds promised, 223; sent, 114.
Shells promised, 297,200; actually sent 185,000.
Vickers guns promised, 100; all sent.
Marine mines promised, 500; sent, 400.
Hand-grenades promised, 50,000; all sent.
Aircraft bombs promised, 20,700; sent, 15,700.
Signalling equipment promised, 1,300 sets; sent, 800.
Anti-tank rifles promised, 200; all sent.
Respirators promised, 60,000; all sent.
Greatcoats promised, 100,000; all sent.
Battledress suits promised, 100,000; all sent.
Anti-tank mines promised, 20,000; sent, 10,000.
Ambulances promised, 48; all sent.
The list includes many minor items such as medical stores, tents,
equipment, sandbags, steel helmets, sand, etc., and also large
quantities of small arms ammunition and, I may add, in fact, that
arrangements were made here for the manufacture of very large
supplies of ammunition and ammunition cases." (15) So much
for "relying on their own strenght"-part.
Secondly, while it is true that the Soviet troops went through setbacks during the first months of the battle, IT WAS NOT due the supposed "Soviet tyranny" which didn't supposedly encourage their soldiers to fight. It was more likely due the following facts: In the first place is the fact that the Soviet troops had to break through or outflank an extremely strong line of fortifications built across the Karelian Isthmus in the form of the 'Mannerheim Line': "Unlike the Maginot Line, the Mannerheim positions are not a string of great fortresses, the loss of any one of which would rob its defenders of enormous strength. They are rather a series of trench and machine-gun positions ranged behind waves of anti-tank barriers made of granite blocks. Only a small part is formed of concrete gun positions and pill- boxes. The waves of defences stretch right back across the twenty miles from Summa to Viipuri". (16) And, as we've seen, these guns with the lines were build were provided with Western imperialists. Nothing heroic in that. Secondly, the war was fought in extremely difficult conditions of terrain and climate: "Just now the operations in the far north around Petsamo are for the most part being conducted in darkness; while in the centre, opposite the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, daylight is only a matter of a couple of hours of twilight at midday". (17)
"The roads were so slippery that our car skidded into the ditch three times, which delayed us considerably but gave us a small idea of what the mechanised Russian units were up against".(18) "Blizzards driving across the Karelian Isthmus and Lake Ladoga have come again to the aid of the Finns in their bitter and gruelling fight to maintain their positions in the Mannerheim Line. . . . Riding and skiing are reduced to the minimum, and almost every sort of transport is at a standstill". (19) The majority of Soviet soldiers sent to Russia came from Southern USSR. They HAD NOT EXPERIENCE whatsoever about fighting in -30 degrees! Thirdly, even the Finnish propaganda book notes that as soon as Stalin put marshall Timosenko on command in 1940, the performance of the Red Army TRASTICALLY INCREASED! It was the TACTICS used! (20) Not paranoia, fact: in 1939, the Red Army was a HOTBED of defeatists and Nazi collaborators! Can one HONESTLY suggest that the Soviet defense was NOT wrecked? The previous heads were all ousted since they SCREWED the Soviet defense in the worst possible way! Can one HONESTLY suggest it was an accident...?
The myth of the "heroic Finland" was first launched by Finnish propaganda department. Almost none of the foreign journalists was allowed to the front, most were kept in luxury in the Grand Hotel in Helsinki! (21) They had to rely on what official Finnish sources told, and so all these David and Goljath-stories began to appear in the Western newspapers. Actually, Finnish crypto-Nazi government was LUCKY that Stalin decided to pull his army out of the Finnish border, since Germany had started to be the worst problem. Finland had already bled to dry, and if Mannerheim WOULDN'T had accepted Stalin's peace purposal, it would had been the easiest thing in the world for Stalin to march on to Helsinki! But HE DIDN'T. IS THIS HOW MEGALOMANIAC EXPANSIONIST ACTS? (22) 5. At last but not least, let's not forget that Stalin was UNBELIEVABLY lenient with Finns, when he negotiated about the division of post-war Europe. He told Truman and Churchill "any nation who has fought with such a bravery as Finland, deserves a special recoqnition". (23) Listen to this! Of course, if you accept the totalitarian paradigm, as Finnish historicians do, this is just another cynical, tactical move to mold the public opinion in Finland. But as always, those who take the totalitarian paradigm have NOTHING to proof their beliefs right; only their BELIEF in the paradigm and that Stalin was morally debraved and incapable to sincerity. All the FACTS above show otherwise! Practical example: While Germany, ALL who had anything to do with Nazis were brought to trial (this was, rightfully so, introduced by the Soviet government, but IDIOTICALLY denounced by the Western allieds after the division of Germany, so that they could take all former SS-officers and send them to fight for AmeriKKKan imperialism in Korea), in Finland, ONLY few tens of ministers of the Nazi puppet regime Finns had set up during the Continuous War (1942-1945) were tried! The longest prison sentence was given to Ryti, the Nazi puppet president (a life-term sentence) others got only 2-10 years! If they would had been in Nurnberg, they would had been shot! (24) Finns were lucky devils that it was Stalin who divided Europe with Truman and Churchill. If I would had been there instead of him, I wouldn't had shown any mercy to bloodsucking hypocrite Nazi collaborators WHO STILL CAN'T APOLOGIZE FOR IT.
Finland was not an exception -in all of those areas, that Stalin conquered during the WWII for security reasons, the conditions were quite similar. Western scholars usually claim that Stalin treated the inhabitants of the conguered ares "brutally". First of all, this is a gross exaggeration, as shown above; secondly, given these historical conditions, it was only sensible to take some strict actions.
The totalitarian paradigm, once again, can't survive without ribbing the facts out of the context.
References:
First of all, see this website: www.geocities.com/hari6kumar/finland_war.html
1. For all these four points, see "Suomi 75" (Finland 75), Weiling Goos, 1992, part two.
2. See transcripts to "A-Bros", documentary broadcasted in October 1999 by YLE (Finnish public broadcastiing network)
3. See "Suomi 75", part three.
4. See transcripts to "MOT", documentary broadcasted on November 1999 by YLE.
5. Even Helsingin Sanomat, leading neoliberalist newspaper, admitted this (but with very apologetic, almost glorifying tone).
6. Apu, the leading arch-right yellow press newspaper wrote about this in the late 80's. I can't remember the exact issue, so you have to take my word for it (but remember, Communists ARE NOT pathological liars, that's totalitarian paradigm) and you would ask them, they would probably deny they ever published these interviews with former prisoners.
7. Claim repeated constantly in "Suomi 75".
8. Ibid.
9.Times', 17 April 1919
10. Vaino Tanner, "The Winter War- Finland Against Russia, 1939-1940", Standford, USA, 1957
11. A large scale of Great-Finnish Hitlerite organizations were operating in Finland in the 20's and 30's, under the government saction. See "Suomi 75", part two (it, of course claims that they were not fascist but nationalist, even though they used Heil Hitler-salute and swaticha)
12. Admitted in various scale of bourgeois publications, (but with totalitarian paradigm-tone, namely that it was just Soviet propaganda), for example, "Suomi 75", part three.
13. Ibid.
14. 'Keesing's Contemporary Archives', Volume 3
15. Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, Volume 358
16.Daily Express', 21 February 1940
17.'Times', 22 December 1939
18.'Sunday Times', 4 February 1940
19. 'Times', 23 February 1940
20. "Suomi 75" part three.
21. See, for example, the website I referred above; even "Suomi 75" halfly admits this.
22. Admitted by almost every bourgeois anti-Stalinist historician, since IT IS AN OBVIOUS FACT. Even "Suomi 75" does this. But usually they use the totalitarian paradigm,which claims that it was only tactical and that Stalin still was an imperialist (NOT TRUE!)
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.