Finland were Nazi collaborators too, and for some reason everyone loves them. They conquered Russian territory that did not belong to them, ethnically cleansed it, and had their own concentration camps.
You know how it goes, you can’t make a Greater Finland without collaborating with a few Nazis
Didn’t know about this bit:
After the Finnish Civil War in 1918, the Red Guards fled to Russia and rose to a leading position in Eastern Karelia. Led by Edvard Gylling, they helped establish the Karelian Workers’ Commune. The Reds were also assigned to act as a bridgehead in the Finnish revolution. Finnish politicians in Karelia strengthened their base in 1923 with the establishment of the Karelian ASSR. Finnish nationalists helped some Karelians who were unhappy with the failure of the Karelian independence movement to organize an uprising, but it was unsuccessful, and a small number of Karelians fled to Finland.
After the civil war, a large number of left-wing Finnish refugees fled for the Karelian ASSR. These Finns—an urbanized, educated, and Bolshevik elite—tended to monopolize leadership positions within the new republic. The “Finnishness” of the area was enhanced by some migration of Ingrian Finns, and by the Great Depression. Gylling encouraged Finns in North America to flee to the Karelian ASSR, which was held up as a beacon of enlightened Soviet national policy and economic development.
Even by 1926, 96.6% of the population of the Karelian ASSR spoke Karelian as their mother tongue. No unified Karelian literary language existed, and the prospect of creating one was considered problematic because of the language’s many dialects. The local Finnish leadership had a dim view of the potential of Karelian as a literary language and did not try to develop it. Gylling and the Red Finns may have considered Karelian to be a mere dialect of Finnish. They may also have hoped that, through the adoption of Finnish, they could unify Karelians and Finns into one Finnic people. All education of Karelians was conducted in Finnish, and all publications became Finnish (with the exception of some in Russian).
mfw even Finnish communists couldn’t help but do imperialism :sadness:
Concentration camp inmates on liberation by the Red Army in 1944. They were not put there by Nazis - no, they were put there by the Finnish government, which had its own set of camps. The children in the photo were imprisoned due to their ethnicity - Russian.
https://www.histclo.com/imagef/date/2015/01/kar-cc44s.jpg
https://catflag.wordpress.com/2018/06/10/finland-in-wwii-the-democratic-axis-power/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War-responsibility_trials_in_Finland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Karelian_concentration_camps
I read once that the brutal oppression of the Finnish revolution made it clear to the Russian Bolcheviks that they had to defeat the bourgeoisie with any means possible as they would not be shown any mercy if they lost.
Russian communists used terror and violence against the enemies of the proletariat. It was not pretty and in a better world it could have been avoided. But in this world it was either kill or get killed.
I read once that the brutal oppression of the Finnish revolution made it clear to the Russian Bolcheviks that they had to defeat the bourgeoisie with any means possible as they would not be shown any mercy if they lost.
Where did you read that?
I looked it up and it turns out to be from Victor Serge:
One more observation. The butcheries in Finland took place in April 1918. Up to this moment the Russian revolution had virtually everywhere displayed great leniency towards its enemies. It had not used terror. We have noted a few bloody episodes in the civil war in the south, but these were exceptional. The victorious bourgeoisie of a small nation which ranks among the most enlightened societies of Europe [11] was the first to remind the Russian proletariat that woe to the vanquished! is the first law of social war.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1930/year-one/ch06.htm
Concentration camp inmates on liberation by the Red Army in 1944. They were not put there by Nazis - no, they were put there by the Finnish government, which had its own set of camps. The children in the photo were imprisoned due to their ethnicity - Russian.
https://www.histclo.com/imagef/date/2015/01/kar-cc44s.jpg
https://catflag.wordpress.com/2018/06/10/finland-in-wwii-the-democratic-axis-power/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War-responsibility_trials_in_Finland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Karelian_concentration_camps
