Re: [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [External] [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [cliospsyche] Ukraine/Russia - an op-end by Columbia prof. Matthew H. Murray

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Peter Petschauer

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Jun 9, 2025, 11:41:13 AMJun 9
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Just a short note: 
German and Finnish troops fought together against the Soviets until 19 September 1944 when the Finns and Soviets made peace in the so-called Moscow Armistice. It was a necessary treaty for Finland. They also needed to fight from one day to the next with the German units which then marched, fighting all the way, and came out through Norway. Way up North. If memoirs of German  soldiers are correct, they also encountered Soviet troops early on and later along the way. BTW, as far as I read, Germany did not occupy Finland; it’s troops fought with Finnish troops. 
It must have been a terrible cold Winter for everyone involved. 

Peter

Peter Petschauer, PhD, Dhc.
Professor Emeritus, Appalachian State University.
Author and poet.
Recently published: 
“Seasons — of Life and Understanding,” a poetry book honoring Basho, the Japanese poet, Charleston, SC (2024);
“Was man so Alles lernt. Südtiroler Rückhalt für die moderne Welt“ (“All the Things one Learns”), Weger, Brixen/Bressanone, IT (2022);
“Listen to Rarely Heard Voices,” a second poetry book, New York City (2022);
“An Immigrant in the 1960s; Becoming an American in New York City” (2020);
“Hopes and Fears. Past and Present,” the first poetry book (2019).
Also available are: “In the Face of Evil. The Sustenance of Tradition,” about my four German “mothers”; a novel, “A Perfect Portrait. A Woman Artist in Eighteenth-Century Germany” and earlier books. Most available at peterpetschauer.com, or through amazon.com.  

On Jun 7, 2025, at 04:29, Esa Palosaari <esa.pa...@gmail.com> wrote:


Hi,

Sorry, David, but I don’t understand what you are trying to say. Finland bad, Russia good? I’ll try to spell my understanding of the facts and their interpretations once more and point you to some Wikipedia articles about the basic issues where you can find more literature referenced if you are interested.

1. Finland participated in the siege of St. Petersburg/Leningrad. That was the starting point of my discussion earlier. Why did Finland participate in the siege with the Germans? One reason could be that USSR had attacked it earlier and threatened its existence; the Winter War was a kind of an escalation. As I said, one thing that Finns did, however, was to refrain from German requests for completing the encirclement, capturing the city, or bombing or shelling it [1]. My suspicion is that this might have been partly because the leadership in Finland could see that the Russians might want a hard revenge on or the extermination of Finland after the war if they were to destroy St. Petersburg.

By the way, the city of St. Petersburg was founded on top of a captured Swedish fortress that was in the midst of Finnic peoples [2]. My guess is that Russian children are still taught the Pushkin’s poem The Bronze Horseman where the founding of the city is described as displacing simple and poor Finns and as against the Swedes [3].

2. I mentioned the destruction of the land mines in the context of other things illustrating the general view that Russia was not seen as a serious threat in Finland before their full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I don’t understand what other meanings it might have. You suggest that by mentioning the treaty I think the whole worldwide treaty is a conspiracy by Russia against Finland? I guess such paranoid conspiracies are common in the MAGA and Q-Anon world there with pizzagates etc, but I don’t think that way.

3. I don’t understand this part either: 
  1. Would you consider the possibility that the USSR did not invade Finland in 1945 – as opposed to invading so many other countries in Eastern Europe – Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria because in all of the long list above Russian troops fought and died against the Germans and their allies in these countries. This was not the case with Finland. 

Were you not earlier saying that Finns fought against the Russians (and the Ukrainians!) of the USSR with the Wehrmacht and they participated in the siege of Leningrad? That is a contradiction.

Again, this is poorly informed guesswork, but my understanding is that the major reason Finland remained independent was because it caused such large casualties to the Soviet troops when they tried to invade it earlier. Countries like the Baltics which gave in to Stalin’s demands of installing military bases and troops were quickly also occupied before any war between the Soviets and the Nazis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia_in_World_War_II). The price for Finland was also heavy losses of lives and resources. The gain was not being occupied and losing independence, democracy, the rule of law and basic rights protecting all Finns, including Jews during the time of cooperating with the German army [4].   

My understanding is that similar to Putin now, Stalin then first had poor intelligence that the Finns would quickly rise up against the capitalist regime and the invasion and occupation would be a walk in the park. It seems like there were no preparations that the fighting would last long and would carry on to the deep and cold winter. The Soviets knew about the Finnish Civil War where the Reds and Whites had killed each other and apparently they thought that the Reds would join the Soviets like the ”really, actually Russians” in Ukraine would join the attacking Russians against the ”puppet regime of the West”. This did not happen, the country had changed during the decades after the civil war. The Finns were ready to fight even after possibly losing and being occupied. The discovery of the arms caches and the resistance plans in 1945 lead to the imprisonments of many participants but it may have also been a clear signal to the Soviet and the Communists of the costs of trying to take Finland by force (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_Cache_Case).


Esa



By August 1941, the Finns advanced to within 20 km (12 mi) of the northern suburbs of Leningrad at the 1939 Finnish-Soviet border, threatening the city from the north; they were also advancing through East Karelia, east of Lake Ladoga, and threatening the city from the east. The Finnish forces crossed the pre-Winter War border on the Karelian Isthmus by eliminating Soviet salients at Beloostrov and Kirjasalo, thus straightening the frontline so that it ran along the old border near the shores of Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and those positions closest to Leningrad still lying on the pre-Winter War border.

According to Soviet claims, the Finnish advance was stopped in September through resistance by the Karelian Fortified Region;[43] however, Finnish troops had already earlier in August 1941 received orders to halt the advance after reaching their goals, some of which lay beyond the pre-Winter War border. After reaching their respective goals, the Finns halted their advance and started moving troops to East Karelia.[44][45]

For the next three years, the Finns did little to contribute to the battle for Leningrad, maintaining their lines.[46] Their headquarters rejected German pleas for aerial attacks against Leningrad[47] and did not advance farther south from the Svir River in occupied East Karelia (160 kilometres northeast of Leningrad), which they had reached on 7 September. In the southeast, the Germans captured Tikhvin on 8 November, but failed to complete their encirclement of Leningrad by advancing further north to join with the Finns at the Svir River. On 9 December, a counter-attack of the Volkhov Front forced the Wehrmacht to retreat from their Tikhvin positions in the Volkhov River line.[2]

On 6 September 1941, Germany's chief of staff, Alfred Jodl, visited Helsinki. His main goal was to persuade Mannerheim to continue the offensive. In 1941, President Ryti declared to the Finnish Parliament that the aim of the war was to restore the territories lost during the Winter War and gain more territories in the east to create a "Greater Finland".[48][49][50] After the war, Ryti stated: "On 24 August 1941 I visited the headquarters of Marshal Mannerheim. The Germans aimed us at crossing the old border and continuing the offensive to Leningrad. I said that the capture of Leningrad was not our goal and that we should not take part in it. Mannerheim and Minister of Defense Walden agreed with me and refused the offers of the Germans. The result was a paradoxical situation: the Germans could not approach Leningrad from the north..." There was little or no systematic shelling or bombing from the Finnish positions.[22]

The proximity of the Finnish border – 33–35 km (21–22 mi) from downtown Leningrad – and the threat of a Finnish attack complicated the defence of the city. At one point, the defending front commander, Popov, could not release reserves opposing the Finnish forces to be deployed against the Wehrmacht because they were needed to bolster the 23rd Army's defences on the Karelian Isthmus.[51] Mannerheim terminated the offensive on 31 August 1941, when the army had reached the 1939 border. Popov felt relieved, and redeployed two divisions to the German sector on 5 September.[52] 



Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, which was later called Ingermanland. The small town of Nyen grew up around the fort. Before the 17th century, this area was inhabited by Finnic Izhorians and Votians. The Ingrian Finns moved to the region from the provinces of Karelia and Savonia during the Swedish rule. There was also some Estonian, Karelian, Russian and German population in the area.[34][35]

At the end of the 17th century, Peter the Great, who was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, wanted Russia to gain a seaport to trade with the rest of Europe.[36] He needed a better seaport than the country's main one at the time, Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea in the far north and closed to shipping during the winter.

On 12 May [O.S. 1 May] 1703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans and soon replaced the fortress.[37] On 27 May [O.S. 16 May] 1703,[38] closer to the estuary (5 km (3 mi) inland from the gulf), on Zayachy (Hare) Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city.[39]

The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia; in some years several Swedish prisoners of war were also involved under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov.[40] Tens of thousands of serfs died while building the city.[41] Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, nine years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war. He referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital (or seat of government) as early as 1704.[36]







Despite the presence of German troops in Finland and the German command and Gestapo in Helsinki, Finland rejected Hitler’s demands to introduce anti—Jewish laws. Neither in Finland nor in the occupied parts of the USSR were Jews persecuted. Himmler twice came to Finland and tried in vain to persuade the Finnish authorities to deport the Jewish population. 

--

On 6 December (Independence Day) 1944 President Mannerheim visited the Helsinki synagogue, took part in a commemorative service for the Jewish soldiers who had died in the Winter and Continuation Wars and presented the Jewish community with a medal. 

It was because of Mannerheim that Finland remained an independent state, unlike the many East European countries which became satellites of the Soviet Union. Finnish Jews continued to have every opportunity to live as a vibrant community or to emigrate to Israel. Twenty-seven Jews with battle experience went there in 1948 to take part in the War of Independence.





dlo...@nycap.rr.com kirjoitti 7.6.2025 kello 7.15:

Just 3 things.
 
  1. During WWII Finnish troops participated in the siege and blockade of Leningrad, in which some 1.5 million Russians died. 
  2. Did I really misunderstand? I too think that it was admirable that the Finnish government was concerned about civilians in war zones in other countries but why would you mention this in the course of a discussion of Finnish-Russian relations?
  3. Would you consider the possibility that the USSR did not invade Finland in 1945 – as opposed to invading so many other countries in Eastern Europe – Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria because in all of the long list above Russian troops fought and died against the Germans and their allies in these countries. This was not the case with Finland. 
 
                
 
From: clios...@googlegroups.com <clios...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Esa Palosaari
Sent: Thursday, June 5, 2025 1:15 AM
To: clios...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [External] [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [cliospsyche] Ukraine/Russia - an op-end by Columbia prof. Matthew H. Murray
 
Hi David,
 
Please do read up on the history if you are interested. It’s long and complex. Good for you to discover some of the first basic facts, but there are lots more.
 
I think I had mentioned the WWII in a post some years ago. There is some relevance to the current situation. In the division of Europe by the Nazis and the Soviets in the secret part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact Finland was given to the Soviet Union. Stalin then made demands on Finland to give up its territory, especially near St. Petersburg. This would have given Soviet Russia some more security by pushing Finland’s border further away from the strategic major population center. It would have also meant that Finland would have lost the major defensive line, the Mannerheim Line. My understanding is that one reason for the demands then and later was that Stalin was afraid that Germany and others would use Finland as a place to attack the Soviet Union, and especially St. Petersburg. It is interesting that there were no such worries now with joining NATO. Finland was neutral in 1939 and had no such plans with any other country. The unprovoked Soviet attack and barely surviving the Winter War against an overwhelming amount of tanks, airplanes, and men made Finland look for help anywhere it could find. Germany was apparently first viewed with distrust in Finland after the Winter War, as it was considered an ally of the Soviet Union. No Allied powers were there to help and, after Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union, Germany promised to sell arms to Finland and then to take it in the war planning. Finnish leadership did not consider themselves as allies of the Germans but ”co-belligerents” and they also went to war against the Germans to drive them out of Lapland in the end. My understanding is also that the old Tsarist officer Mannerheim understood the security importance of St. Petersburg for Russians and did not go fully in to cut it out of its supplies from Murmansk or to destroy it as the Germans demanded. This may have created some trust among the Russians/Soviets after the war so that they did not see the need to put all of their effort to invade and take Finland out completely. However, it seems to me that the Soviets themselves created the situation they were afraid of: by attacking Finland, they made it search for help from outside powers. The same thing happened now: if the aim really was to prevent the border states from joining NATO, the Russians achieved the exact opposite by its violence and force. There was no real will in Ukraine nor in Finland, nor in Sweden to join NATO before Russia started making its demands and started the war.
 
But I’m not an expert on the WWI in Finland either, and may get some facts wrong. Please check the literature and historical documents yourself, if you are interested. There may also be different interpretations and opinions.
 
The harassment and hybrid warfare has intensified after joining NATO, but it certainly has existed before it as well. Just some random search results:
 
- Russian aircraft suspected of airspace violation in Finland 17.7.2019  https://yle.fi/a/3-10881904 
- Finland confirms 6th Russian airspace violation in just over a year 9.7.2015 https://yle.fi/a/3-8143705 
- Russian group behind 2013 Foreign Ministry hack  13.1.2016  
 
In 2013 Finland’s Foreign Ministry had its systems hacked by what investigators described as ‘a state actor’. Now Yle's sources have confirmed who was behind the attack: the Turla group of Russian-speaking hackers who perpetrated attacks on targets in more than 50 countries worldwide during the same period. Stefan Tanase of Kaspersky security says that the Turla group is the premier Russian hacker organization—and it targets ministries, embassies and militaries in Russia’s neighbours. "We believe that the Turla group is a nation state-sponsored attacker," said Tanase. "We have seen traces in their malware and their servers, which we analyse, that point to the fact that the authors are Russian speaking and they definitely seem to have lot of resources to their cyber-espionage operation."                (https://yle.fi/a/3-8591548)
 
- Before the situation came to a head, Russia directed migrants to Latvia via Belarus, prompting Latvia to close one of its border crossing points in September. Russia has also directed migrants to the Estonian border. The last instance of Russia using migrants for foreign influence in Northern Europe occurred in 2015–2016, when approximately 7,200 people were directed to the northern border crossing points of Norway and Finland. (https://fiia.fi/en/publication/russias-hybrid-operation-at-the-finnish-border)
 
 
About the Ottawa treaty, David wrote "Are you suggesting that the real reason was to weaken Finland’s defenses against the coming Russian invasion? If Russia were to invade Finland, as Finland is a member of NATO, article 5 requires that all NATO countries, including the US, are obligated to use military force against an invading Russia. Thinking that, given this reality, Russia would invade Finland is truly insane.”
 
You misunderstood. I was saying that Finnish politicians were thinking that Russia was not a serious threat to anyone anymore and therefore Finland should think about the civilians in war zones in other countries. The treaty was sold to the public with the justification that it would help build norms in other countries that would save civilian lives when the mines are not properly mapped and left in the fields for farmers and others to step on. Finland joined the treaty in 2012 (https://um.fi/press-releases/-/asset_publisher/ued5t2wDmr1C/content/ottawan-jalkavakimiinasopimus-astuu-voimaan-suomessa-1-heinakuuta). It is now planning to get out of the treaty, as Russia appears to be a threat once more and the mines appear to work in Ukraine.
 
 
 
Best wishes,
Esa
 


dlo...@nycap.rr.com kirjoitti 5.6.2025 kello 7.09:
 
I would suggest that people search on the history of Russia-Finland conflict. It’s a bit more complicated than the account given below.  Among other things it leaves out the part where Finland fought alongside the Wehrmacht in their invasion of Russia in 1941.
 
All of the events highlighted in yellow below occurred after Finland joined NATO – which is an anti-Russian military alliance. Who is provoking who here?
 
From: clios...@googlegroups.com <clios...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Esa Palosaari
Sent: Wednesday, June 4, 2025 3:10 AM
To: clios...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [External] [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [cliospsyche] Ukraine/Russia - an op-end by Columbia prof. Matthew H. Murray
 
Hi,
 
I don’t think it is insane to think that Russia or Putin would want to invade also other areas that were part of the Soviet/Russian Empire in addition to Georgia and Ukraine. Putin has already talked in terms of spheres of influence and made demands on the foreign policy of its neighbours (like Finland) in contradiction to previous talks about their sovereignty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2021_Russian_ultimatum_to_NATO). Russia has also been constantly harassing and waging hybrid warfare against its neighbours like Estonia and Finland, including cutting underwater power and communication cables, jamming GPS (thereby threatening safety in the air and on the sea), attacking communication networks through cyber warfare, having its jets and bombers violate the airspace, and so on. There has been talk that Trump and his allies have already destroyed NATO by directly dishonouring their previous commitments and by sowing doubt that they will not honor their commitments in the future, saying that they are willing to leave the alliance. This cutting of the Atlantic ties happens to be one of the chief aims of the Russian strategy as articulated by Dugin, for example, in his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics. In addition to dismembering Georgia, cutting the United Kingdom from the European Union, and annexing Ukraine. Using that book as a source of predictions seems to have worked better than listening many analysts of Russia and Ukraine who thought that suggesting a large-scale invasion of Ukraine was insane just before it happened [1].
 
My understanding is that most Westerners have been giving Russia the benefit of the doubt despite the first and second Chechen Wars and the annexation of parts of Georgia, and with the first round of annexations from Ukraine. This happened also in Finland which tried to believe the best and did business with Russia until the full-scale invasion. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was also a fall in military expenditure as % of GDP in Europe and in the United States (according to SIPRI data used by the World Bank in the figure below [2]). The EU countries especially reduced their military spending as well as the size of their armies. Countries like Sweden gave up their conscription armies altogether. People in non-ex soviet block states, in general, believed that Russia had become or was on its way to become a ”normal” liberal democracy that wasn’t a threat to its neighbours. You would be shunned for thinking otherwise. It was considered a scandal in Finland when the minister of defence Häkämies gave a speech in Washington in 2007 where he said that Russia would be a security challenge for Finland [3]. Even in 2019, the former minister Eero Heinäluoma said that the member of parliament Jussi Halla-aho was talking about impossible, crazy things when Halla-aho suggested that Russian might take advantage of EU dependence of Russian energy (https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000009111897.html). Politicians in Finland also got rid of all anti-personnel land mines in 2012 because they thought it would help civilians in countries of the Global South (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty). Are you suggesting that the real reason was to weaken Finland’s defenses against the coming Russian invasion? If Russia were to invade Finland, as Finland is a member of NATO, article 5 requires that all NATO countries, including the US, are obligated to use military force against an invading Russia. Thinking that, given this reality, Russia would invade Finland is truly insane.
 
However, Finland fortunately is currently not as defenceless as many of its neighbours are. Russia knows that an invasion would be very costly, and an invasion or a special military operation is indeed currently unlikely, partly because of that. I don’t think we are trusting and I don’t think we ever should or will be trusting allies, NATO or otherwise, to come to our help when the Russians cross the border next time. Although Finland as an independent state has existed only about a hundred years, the territory and its inhabitants have seen war at least as long as there have been written records here. I believe that because of the memories of the wars and the facts of geography, the Finns never gave up on the conscription army and the Finnish defence forces bought the tanks and the artillery pieces from other European countries who thought that they had become useless with the new Russia. The civilian bomb shelters have been and will continue to be built and maintained. And the size of the reserves will increase and not decrease despite the NATO membership (https://yle.fi/a/74-20161729). Just in case something insane comes from the east.
 
 
Esa
 
 
 
 
Abstract: When Russia amassed troops in the winter of 2021–2022, many analysts deemed
a large-scale invasion of Ukraine unlikely. Surveying the expert literature, we
establish that these arguments largely relied on utility-based reasoning:
Analysts thought an invasion was improbable, as it would foreseeably entail
massive costs for Russia, its people, and its regime. We show that this regnant
expert opinion had not sufficiently accounted for the Russian regime’s
tendencies to increasingly accept risks, coupled with an inadequate processing
of information on Ukrainian and Western views and policies. We argue that
analysts miscalculated partially because the most prominent facts, long-term
trends, and causal mechanisms available to them jointly suggested Russian
cost-sensitivity, but provided only weak signs of countervailing factors. We
thereby showcase that good forecasting requires explicit theory with a view
on multiple interacting causal factors, area expertise and Socratic humility on
the extent, context and certainty of our findings.
 
 
[2]
 <image001.png>
 
 
 
[3] "In general, Finland is privileged to be located in one of the safest corners of the world. However, given our geographical location, the three main security challenges for Finland today are Russia, Russia and Russia. And not only for Finland, but for all of us.
 
"It is clear that Russia is, supported by the huge revenues it is reaping from oil and gas, on its way of becoming a world player again. According to the Russian world view, military force is a key element in how it conducts its international relations. As a consequence, there is a determined program to strengthen the Russian military capabilities. If the military procurement program 2006-2015 will be financed as expected, it will mean a much stronger Russia in military terms by the middle of next decade.
 
"In terms of its military capabilities, Russia will have a lot more weight to throw around. Whether it chooses to do it in its immediate neighbourhood is another matter. The bronze statue crisis with Estonia raises some disturbing questions. There is no smoking gun that will clearly indicate that the Russian authorities were behind the cyber attacks. Yet, the attacks were well coordinated and gave a foretaste of what could be done in situations where state-level actors would choose to use cyber attacks as a weapon.”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



<dlo...@nycap.rr.com> <dlo...@nycap.rr.com> kirjoitti 4.6.2025 kello 7.49:
 
At this time Russia has the 11th largest GDP of all the nations in the world, an economy  smaller than Canada, Brazil, and Italy, about 1/13  of the size of the US. It is 1.9% of the world economy.
 
                At one  time – roughly between 1945 and 1990 we had the USSR, an entity whose population (in 1989) was twice as large as the current population of the Russian Federation. The population of the USSR plus all the Eastern European countries that were members of the Warsaw pact in 1989  was more than 5 times as large than the current Russian population; larger than the population of the United States at the time. However, this is 2025 -  Russia is not what it used to be. They used to be an adversary we could sink our teeth into. We grew accustomed to having an enemy who was strong enough to be feared but from who we could protect ourselves, if we spent enough money on the MI complex. With the 1990 collapse of the USSR we were bereft. We made do with terrorists for a while, Sadam Hussein, Al Queda and ISIS; and now we have China.
 
                Russia is a nuclear power, is getting some military assistance from China and North Korea and is engaged in a full scale war in Ukraine -  and yes there are fanatics like pan-Slavist like Alexander Dugan, but to think that  Russia wants to invade  Poland, Estonia, Latvia, or Finland is insane. It can only come from the regression to the old familiar paranoid stance toward our (we used to say former) mortal enemies. It also stems from ignoring  the importance of the provocative  elephant in the room, US and NATO expansionism.
 
 
 
                                                                David
 
 
From: clios...@googlegroups.com <clios...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Brian D'Agostino
Sent: Tuesday, June 3, 2025 5:44 AM
To: clios...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [External] [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [cliospsyche] Ukraine/Russia - an op-end by Columbia prof. Matthew H. Murray
 
Thank you Peter, Brigitte, Esa, Hans, and all,
 
I want to comment on one of Peter's points.  He said, after the Second Chechen War, "Eastern Europeans got the message; one after the other, they joined NATO."  We need to unpack this and put it into a broader historical/geopolitical context. 
 
First, it is understandable given their history of domination by Russia that the Eastern Europeans would fear for their security in the wake of Russia's wars to prevent the secession of Chechnya.  However, it is a completely separate question why the United States and the leaders of NATO chose to admit these countries into the alliance.  With the end of the Cold War, a much easier and less expensive way to uphold the security of the Eastern Europeans would have been to negotiate verifiable threat reduction arrangements with Russia.  Such security treaties had been concluded with the USSR and both sides complied with these treaties.  Why was this successful method of pursuing security abandoned AFTER the Cold War, precisely when it would appear the time was ripe for demilitarization?
 
The answer has nothing to do with Russia, Putin or Eastern Europe.  One part of the answer is that war and war preparations are big business, and the "defense" contractors, military bureaucracies and other special interests that benefit from militarizing security arrangements prevailed in the halls of power.  This explains two important facts that Peter's narrative does not address.  First, the expansion of NATO predated Putin and the Second Chechen War; the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were admitted into NATO in March 1999, five months before Chechan Islamists' attacks on Russian civilians set in motion the events that became the Second Chechan War.  In March 1999, the Cold War was long over and the First Chechan War had been over for nearly two years, so at least this first expansion of NATO was entirely "unprovoked" and requires a psychohistorical explanation.
 
Interestingly, pro-NATO Americans and Europeans are quick to construe Putin's conduct of the Second Chechen War as a manifestation of Russian imperialism, while making no such characterization of Yeltsin's conduct of the First Chechen War.  Why the double standard?  Here too, the answer is straightforward.  Yeltsin was the darling of "the West," having outsourced privatization of the Russian economy to Wall Street, while Putin brought the neoliberal party to an end, making him the villain de jour in Washington and Brussels.
 
Second, the expansion of NATO is part of a package of other militarist policies pursued concurrently.  These include US withdrawal from security treaties with Russia, nuclear weapons modernization, and US militarization of the Pacific, the Middle East and indeed the entire planet and outer space.  (Lest this sound like overblown rhetoric, it is the STATED policy of the United States--called "Full Spectrum Dominance"--though couched in less ominous sounding jargon.)
 
Third, and finally, we might well wonder why US and European leaders have been pursuing war and war preparations at the expense of international security and general prosperity.  The answer to this question will not surprise psychohistorians.  In my 1990 survey of the US Council on Foreign Relations, I found that hawks outnumbered doves by two-to-one, and this sample of the US foreign policy establishment probably undercounts hawks.  Male hawks (defined as men who support militarist policies) exhibit machismo and authoritarianism, and female hawks exhibit authoritarianism.  These unconscious motivations have nothing to do with the rational pursuit of security, which as I said could be more easily, effectively and cheaply achieved by verifiable threat reduction agreements.
 
For more on all this, I refer you to the PowerPoint from my May 24 IPhA presentation "Understanding the Ukraine War: NATO and the Psychology of Militarism."  It also contains a short bibliography with relevant supporting publications.
 
 
 
On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 11:55 AM 'Peter Petschauer' via Clio’s Psyche <clios...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
What a fascinating elaboration by one of our Finnish colleagues. 
Here are a few added points: one of the reasons several historians have written, it emerges in this essay, that Russians are generally supportive of Putin’s war against Ukraine is Russians’ diminishing Ukrainians, their language, their culture, their history. Medvedev's disdain fits well. Little Brother is not a positive term either. It came up recently in relation to Russia’s status vis-à-vis China. Also, calling them Nazis latches on to the reality of a Nazi element in Ukraine, but is just as much a refection of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union and Putin’s post-war trauma with that. It is also someone saying of someone else that they are a Nazi, a nasty, in other words.
I sense that some American thinkers see Russia’s war against Ukraine as a war the US somehow initiated and in some ways continues. It did not, but like the Europeans, it has supported Ukraine; it, like other Eastern European nations, want/ed to be free of Russian influence and domination. The argument that NATO’s expansion motivated Putin to defend himself, and thus Russia, against the corrupt West and its minions in Europe is not defensible historically. 
Three points: 
1. Whatever promises western leaders made to Gorbachev became null and void when Putin ascended power. He was no friend of Gorbachev, the man who in his mind buried the Soviet Union, his homeland, and he showed his cards when Russia’s military literally demolished Chechnya on his orders in 2000 in the 2nd war. It looked like Ukraine today.
2. Eastern Europeans got the message; one after the other, they joined NATO. Having been under Soviet (Russian) domination, they remembered not only the corrupt regimes sponsored by it and their failed uprisings. And since Putin started the war in Ukraine, for the most part, they see their wisdom to join, and others have joined as well. 
3. Russia’s propaganda about Ukraine always having been Russian defies what we know of the complexity of the past/region. Part is collapsing historical events. Let me not go all the way to ancient Kyiv and start with Peter the Great and Catherine the Great who conquered the area in the 18th century; as much as I admire her and her gentle approach in this case, the battles against the Ottoman Empire before then were some of most vicious of the century. 
No doubt, Putin conveniently forgets this subjugation and that Ukrainians suffered several million of its fellow citizens in the 1930s to starvation. They welcomed the German military when it first arrived, but soon realized that the new devil was worse than the one they knew; a generation later, they died in unbelievable numbers with their Soviet country-men and -women against the NS regime. 
Some did join the other side. My father was reassigned to a Wehrmacht army in Upper Austria in April 45. “The last stand.” Fighting so that the 300,000 soldiers and officers would be captured by the Americans rather than the Soviets was a Ukrainian division! My father most likely owed them his life. History can get very personal! 
4. Finally, we don’t seem to like the word dictator; it fits Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. We prefer to call our autocrats (one man rulers) authoritarians. It is an euphemism. The reality is that our autocrats have not killed millions of individuals in camps and war, but they have as little respect for human needs and life and, like their likeminded predecessors three generations ago, make war like them. Compare the photos of Germany and St. Petersburg after WWII to those of Ukraine and other war zones today. In their eagerness to dominate, to rework their tortured childhoods, they ignore everyone, except those who say yes and ignore previous carefully made plans, contracts, treaties, needs and generally held truths. 
All best wishes,
 
Peter
 
Peter Petschauer, PhD, Dhc.
Professor Emeritus, Appalachian State University.
Author and poet.
Recently published: 
“Seasons — of Life and Understanding,” a poetry book honoring Basho, the Japanese poet, Charleston, SC (2024);
“Was man so Alles lernt. Südtiroler Rückhalt für die moderne Welt“ (“All the Things one Learns”), Weger, Brixen/Bressanone, IT (2022);
“Listen to Rarely Heard Voices,” a second poetry book, New York City (2022);
“An Immigrant in the 1960s; Becoming an American in New York City” (2020);
“Hopes and Fears. Past and Present,” the first poetry book (2019).
Also available are: “In the Face of Evil. The Sustenance of Tradition,” about my four German “mothers”; a novel, “A Perfect Portrait. A Woman Artist in Eighteenth-Century Germany” and earlier books. Most available at peterpetschauer.com, or through amazon.com.  




On Jun 1, 2025, at 06:59, Esa Palosaari <esa.pa...@gmail.com> wrote:


Hi,
Thank you for the op-ed, Brigitte. The material incentive motivation there seems clear and persuasive. I can believe it.
One part of the puzzle I have trouble understanding is the cultural argument Putin made for the war in his July 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians that was repeated in his war declaration as talk about Ukrainian territory being historical Russian homeland and Ukrainian officers having their common Motherland with Russia. I see this point repeated by pro-war Russians in individual conversations. Maybe experts here can help how the war and the atrocities follow from those premises in the minds of the Russians? Below are my non-expert thoughts about it if you happen to be interested.
Esa
 
In Finland, one justification for NATO membership was: “If Russians are willing to do that to members of a nation they consider as close brothers, then what horrors are they willing to inflict on us, a non-Slav, non-Orthodox nation?” The way of thinking was that you would be least likely to hurt your family members.
However, in discussions with Russians online who have Zs in their profiles and who seem to be ex-patriots, living outside Russia, I found the exact opposite justification for the war in Ukraine, and the lack of it in Finland. Despite Finland’s very real, realistic and eventually realized intentions to join NATO and double NATO members’ border to Russian right next to St. Petersburg and the nuclear warheads in Kola Peninsula, the “ordinary Russians” say they are not in the least interested in Finland, in general, and not especially in expending blood and treasure to invade it exactly because it “is not even Slavic”. 
Some historical and cultural examples that came to my mind were (1) Hitler’s ideologies, speeches and policies, (2) the Russification ideologies and policies over the past centuries, (3) and language policies and wars in the Nordics in the 20th century.

(1)  Hitler apparently had a similar playbook as Putin and focus on ethnicity across the borders which justified conquest: 

(i)             Ethnic unity: German Austrians/Sudeteners are “one people” with the Reich. “The oldest eastern province of the German people shall be, from this point on, the newest bastion of the German Reich”(https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-anschluss)

(ii)           Self-determination plebiscite: Hitler ordered a vote after troops were inside Austria to cloak annexation in legality.

(iii)         Victim narrative: Prague and “Jewish-Bolshevik” forces were allegedly abusing Germans. Hitler apparently told the Germans that the Sudeten Germans were being exterminated, annihilated, oppressed in an inhuman manner and treated in an undignified way: The Germans were not allowed to sing any song that the Czechs do not like. The greatest enemies England and France together with their natural allies were encircling Germany and keeping it weak.

(iv)          Promise of limited aims: Each land grab was the last revision required for peace. When the Czechs have come to terms with their other minorities, and that peaceably and not through oppression, then there is no further interest in the Czech state. “It is the last territorial demand I shall make.”

There were also Germanization programs before Hitler, it seems, like there was a tradition of Russification programs before Putin. For example, Polish was banned in primary schools in 1901 and German made the sole school language in Danish North Schleswig in 1888. Hitler also had similar kidnappings of children as Putin now has an arrest warrant for, stealing thousands of children looking physically like their preferred ethnicity and educating them into their preferred language and culture (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensborn-program; https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/vladimir-vladimirovich-putin).

(2)  Russification ideology in Putin’s war essay and policies has a long history. The idea of ‘triune Russian nation’ of Great Russians, Little Russians (Ukrainians) and Belarussians seems like an old nationalistic construction created in Tsarist Russia that was dormant during the Soviet Union but was resurrected by nationalists like Alexander Dugin after its fall (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449057.2023.2247664).

The official ideology of Nicholas I was Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality: a single faith, a single ruler, and a single Russian culture (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Orthodoxy-Autocracy-and-Nationality). These seem to have been common ideas also after Nicholas I. For example, in the 1880s, Polish was banned in schools, on school grounds and in the offices of Congress Poland. Research and teaching of the Polish language, Polish history or Catholicism were forbidden. In Lithuania, public use of spoken Lithuanian as well as the use of Latin and Gothic scripts in publishing were prohibited. In Bessarabia, the use of the Romanian language was forbidden in the administration in 1829, in churches in 1833, in secondary schools in 1842, and in elementary schools in 1860.
This is what Catherine had in mind for Ukraine and Finland in 1764:
"Little Russia [Ukraine], Livonia, and Finland are provinces governed by confirmed privileges, and it would be improper to violate them by abolishing all at once. To call them foreign and deal with them on that basis is more than erroneous-it would be sheer stupidity. These provinces, as well as Smolensk, should be Russified as gently as possible so that they cease looking to the forest like wolves. When the Hetmans are gone from Little Russia, every effort should be made to eradicate from memory the period and the hetmans, let alone promote anyone to that office."
The minister of education of Nicholas I, Uvarov, tried to eradicate Ukrainian identity by focusing on the future generations. For this he commissioned a new history textbook to all education districts of the whole empire. The second attempt at recruiting historians for this project succeeded and he got his book presenting Ukrainians and Russians as one nation instead of distinct peoples, similarly to Putin’s claims that he used for supporting his war.
Under Alexander II, all Ukrainian Sunday schools were abolished and proscribed. His minister of internal affair wrote to the censors that “there has never been, is not, and cannot be any separate Little Russian language", "the so-called Ukrainian language". Publication of the Ukrainian translation of the Gospels was banned. Similarly banned were the importation of all Ukrainian-language publications into the empire and the publication of any Ukrainian literature. The existing Ukrainian publications were to be removed from school libraries and the theatrical performances, songs and poetry readings in Ukrainian were prohibited. And so on.
In Finland, the imperial laws subordinating the previously autonomous Finnish laws to it, making Russian the administrative language, and merging the Finnish army into the imperial army as well as the press censorship, the infusion of Russian civil servants, and the plans to abolish the Finnish Diet led to a half-million-name petition, mass draft refusal, strikes, the assassination of Governor-General Bobrikov, and finally to the declaration of independence in the beginning of the 20th century.
Currently, there seems to be hostility in Russia to Finno-Ugric and other non-Russian languages still spoken within its borders. In 2018, it passed a law overruling previous laws by ethnic autonomies, made education in all languages but Russian optional, and reduced instruction in minority languages to two hours per week. Putin said that pupils must not be forced to learn a language that is not Russian. In the 2020 constitutional rewrite Russian was elevated at the language of the “state-forming people”.
In 2021, the Russian association removed itself from the World Congresses of Finno-Ugric peoples because of its criticism of Russia. Earlier in 2015, Putin’s right hand, Nikolai Patrushev claimed that the Finns attempt to create separatism in Karelia through support for its language and culture. The leader of the Karelian Congress Anatoly Grigoryev said that Patrushev’s words were typical for KGB and commented that the Russians themselves were provoking the same separatism in Ukraine that they were accusing of others doing.
Russia has also accused others of the child kidnapping it itself seems to be guilty of in Ukraine. There has been over a decade of Russian-language media claims that the Nordic child welfare authorities are stealing Russian children, running concentration camps, and selling youngsters to gay couples. 
For example, in 2014 the Russian children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov called both Finnish and Norwegian child welfare authorities as terrorists and fascists for removing children from their Russian families (https://yle.fi/a/3-7631016). Some other Russian headlines: “We are at the Finnish Gestapo. Russia, help us.” “Finnish government’s policy against Russian kids – genocide or fascism?”, “Finland – a concentration camp for kids”(https://euvsdisinfo.eu/finland-puts-russian-kids-in-prison-disinformation-that-shaped-the-minds-of-millions/). Similarly, the Norwegian the child-welfare agency is said to be a totalitarian stealer of children: “Scandinavians Take Kids From Russian Families to Reverse Population Decline“(https://euvsdisinfo.eu/norway-a-nation-in-moral-decay/).
The Nordic child welfare policies are in reality based on citizenship rather than on ethnicity or language, and favor keeping children with their parents as much as possible. This has been taken to the logical conclusion in that the government has organized flights to retrieve children and their Finnish citizen mothers of different ethnicities who travelled to the Islamic State to help ISIS and were imprisoned by the Kurds after its fall: “"Under the constitution, Finnish public authorities are obligated to safeguard the basic rights of the Finnish children interned in the camps insofar as this is possible” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55387991). Also there have been a few deaths of children by their parents because the authorities did not have enough resources to do their work or they were reluctant to remove the at-risk children from their parents (https://yle.fi/a/3-7344039). The Russian media claims about the nature of Finnish authorities therefore appear bizarre to me. They seem to be created for having handy propaganda available if there would happen to be a need for attacking the Nordics like with Ukraine. 

(3)  Nevertheless, there seems to be historical parallels with the Russian nationalist policies in the Nordics in the past. The official languages have been emphasized in the past in favor of unofficial minority languages. 

“The Sámi people were the subject of assimilation policies adopted by the state and church in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the forced accommodation of Sámi children in boarding schools, where they were forbidden to speak the Sámi language and forced to integrate into the majority culture. Some reportedly suffered violence and mistreatment.” (https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/03/finland-must-address-legacy-human-rights-violations-against-sami-people-says). Finnish-speaking children in Sweden were apparently also physically punished for speaking their own language at school even during class breaks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meänkieli).

In Finland, there have also been ideas of linguistic kinship among other speakers of Finno-Ugric languages like the Karelians and the Ingrians which have affected state policies like immigration and war. Before the Treaty of Tartu in 1920 which confirmed the border between the independent Finland and the Soviet Russia after the Finnish Civil War, there were volunteer Finnish expeditions in Russian East Karelia with goals from annexation to helping kindred peoples secede from revolutionary Russia. However, the goal was not to exterminate the “brother nations”. And nowadays Finland champions Nordic minority rights and funds Karelian heritage projects which support the unique cultural developments rather than making them conform to majority Finnish culture and ethnicity.

One Russian establishment utterance, regardless of its factuality, I have some contact from my own experience with Finnish language and culture, perhaps, is Medvedev’s post on Telegram that “the Ukrainian language is only a ‘mongrel dialect’ of Russian” (https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/19/ukraine-russia-war-stalemate-victory-congress-military-aid/; https://www.opinionglobal.cl/what-a-russian-victory-would-mean-for-ukraine/). There is some debate on whether the Finnish-like language spoken in Northern Norway (Kven) or in the Tornio/Torneå Valley border area of Sweden and Finland (Meänkieli) is really a separate language or a dialect. To me, who grew up in Tornio Valley, the language sounds more like a dialect than a separate language like Estonian. Those Finnish-like languages have been given minority statuses in Norway and Sweden, but I find it difficult to think of them as separate languages and ethnicities to Finnish. 

Maybe something similar is happening in the heads of Russians regarding the Ukrainian language. But I still don’t quite get why the killing of Ukrainians because of their Slavic ties instead of attacking non-Slavic Finland for its NATO ambitions, for example. Maybe the material incentives from the corruption racket, mentioned in the op-ed, and then the ideological compliance from claiming that the country is being held hostage by the ultimate evil, the Nazis, who back-stabbed Russia once before and threatened its existence in the Second World War and who now again persecute Russians?





'Brigitte DEMEURE' via Clio’s Psyche <clios...@googlegroups.com> kirjoitti 31.5.2025 kello 13.08:
 
Hello
Below an op-ed in the newspaper Le Monde by Columbia professor Matthe H. Murray about Russia and Ukraine – I fully agree with him, it has always been my point of view since I dealt with Russian customers for export from France.
Best
Brigitte
----
“The invasion of Ukraine is the consequence of the system of widespread corruption that is plaguing Russia”
To truly address the roots of the war in Ukraine, Russia must start by acknowledging and fighting systemic corruption, which poses a threat to Russians and the rest of the world, says U.S. public and international affairs expert Matthew H. Murray, in an op-ed in “Le Monde”.
After his phone call with Donald Trump on May 19 on the issue of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow supported “a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis”. However, he reiterated that the “roots” of the conflict must be eliminated . Roots that, in the leader's fallacious and revengeful speech, are clear: on the one hand, Ukraine belongs to Russia; on the other hand, the efforts of the United States and Europe to protect Ukrainian sovereignty pose a threat to the Russians. Thus, Putin continues to distort history to impose unacceptable conditions on Ukraine, to evade any negotiations worthy of the name, to neutralize and demilitarize the country.
The conflict in Ukraine is a war of choice. History will show that the Kremlin's decision to attack a sovereign Central European state in the 21st century is the consequence of the system of widespread corruption that plagues Russia. Because systemic corruption is fueling Russia's aggressiveness – against Ukraine, against the liberal international order and against democracy itself.
Under Putin, it is clear that Russia has failed to democratize and modernize its economy. Despite considerable natural resources, technological know-how and human capital, the country is unable to develop industries that are competitive on the world market and comply with international rules, including those of the World Trade Organization, which Russia joined in 2012. This economic failure is due to the omnipresent oligarchy, which monopolizes Russian institutions and bleeds the country dry in order to enrich itself and monopolize political power.
In Russia, corruption is truly systemic. In the “power vertical,” the president sits at the top of a nepotistic network that controls government agencies, budgets, and public and private companies. This network appropriates public resources, stifles innovation, and creates barriers to hinder market entry for Russian entrepreneurs and foreign investors. This state-backed oligarchy cannot remain within Russia's borders: it is under the necessity of laundering and placing its illicit gains in foreign markets.
Russia began invading Ukraine in 2014, in response to the “Revolution of Dignity” [or Maidan Revolution]. So, Ukrainians took to the streets and occupied Maidan Square in Kyiv to protest against President Viktor Yanukovych: he wanted to abandon Ukraine's plan to join the European Union (EU) and join the world's largest economic bloc. The demonstrators defended the right of citizen-entrepreneurs to innovate and evolve in an egalitarian market, regulated by transparent rules applicable to all.
For the Putin oligarchy, on the other hand, Ukraine's accession to the EU is the equivalent in the economic field of membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the military field. When, in 2014, Maidan protesters forced Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia, the Kremlin reacted manu militari by annexing Crimea and occupying the Donbass in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, he has embarked on a hybrid war aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the new government in Kiev. Putting corruption at the service of its war, Russia has been funding local henchmen to get their hands on Ukrainian government institutions and domestic industries.
Hatred of democracy
The fact remains that Russia did not succeed in stopping the Maidan revolution. A revolution that led to the election of anti-corruption candidate Volodymyr Zelensky as president. Ukraine then laboriously set about the task of dismantling oligarchic structures and replacing them with independent institutions. It has attacked the kingpins of corruption, targeting in particular the main Kremlin agent on its soil, the media tycoon and MP Viktor Medvedchuk. Thus, Ukraine was transforming into an independent democracy and a prosperous economy. A stone's throw from Russia.
By deciding to invade the entire territory of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin has shifted into high gear in his campaign against post-Maidan Ukraine. In his speech on February 21, 2022, preparing Russians for this invasion, the head of the Kremlin accused Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions of being destabilizing elements for Russia. His plan was simple: invade Ukraine in a matter of days and replace the Zelensky government with a new corrupt oligarchy, Medvedchuk included, and local proxies, all backed by Russia and under the thumb of the Kremlin.
To address the roots of the war in Ukraine, Russia must therefore start by acknowledging and combating this systemic corruption, which poses a threat to Russians and the rest of the world. Putin seems to be aware of Russia's economic failure. During negotiations with the Trump administration, its envoys repeatedly called for the lifting of European sanctions and export controls. They argue that a peace agreement would create considerable opportunities for trade with Russia.
Moreover, if Russia is serious about normalising its economic relations with the West, the Kremlin must first agree to an unconditional ceasefire and then negotiate an end to the war. He must also openly support Ukraine's EU membership project. And recognize that a stable, prosperous and democratic Ukraine would benefit both Ukrainians and the entire region.
As for the United States and the EU, they have a crucial role to play in this economic dimension of the war. Together, they must impose new sanctions on Russia, while promising to lift them if it takes steps towards a lasting peace. They must also help Ukraine to complete its EU accession process and to strengthen its anti-corruption institutions, laws and practices.
In short, to achieve lasting peace, it is imperative that Russia address the endemic corruption that plagues it. Otherwise, his foreign policy will continue to be characterized by a hatred of democracy and the use of armed force.
Matthew H. Murray is an Assistant Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, New York. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in the Obama administration's Department of Commerce.
Matthew H. Murray (Professor of Public and International Affairs at Columbia)
 
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Esa Palosaari

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Jun 9, 2025, 12:33:44 PMJun 9
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Thank you for the note, Peter. Finland as a whole indeed was not occupied by Germany nor by Soviet Union nor by any other power during the Second World War although its so-called friends changed over those years. No eternal allies, no perpetual enemies -- only everlasting interests, as Lord Palmerston said. 

The Soviet troops did not take a major part in the Lapland War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapland_War) but they did fight the Germans at least in the north-eastern part of Finland next to Norway, close to the pre-war border to Soviet Union which then also annexed that area (https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/Petsamo-Kirkenes-Operation.pdf). The Germans are now chiefly remembered in Lapland for burning it down. I am currently doing some forestry on my spare time near the same hamlet my grandmother fled from with her children, crossing into Sweden to escape the fighting. Nothing was left standing in the village but the church. The people survived. Mannerheim also argued to Hitler that this was his aim and his justification for breaking with Germany: despite defeat, the German nation would endure. Finland’s tiny population lacked that certainty. Instead, Mannerheim feared a fate akin to the Circassians’ earlier devastation at Russian hands (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide) or the forced population transfers, deportations of entire nationalities, under Stalin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union).

"I wish especially to emphasize that Germany will live on even if fate should not crown your arms with victory. Nobody could give such an assurance regarding Finland. If that nation of barely four millions be militarily defeated, there can be little doubt that it will be driven into exile or exterminated. I cannot expose my people to such a fate.” (https://histdoc.net/history/1941-1948/mannerheim1944-09-02.html)


Esa

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