That's true, except people from Baltic countries, all of the Eastern Block, and notably Finns love the narrative of bad bad barbaric Russia that always oppressed them, and bad bad totalitarian USSR that was "worse than Nazis".

Just recently certain Linus Torvalds expressed a interesting sentiment about being a Finn and knowing something about "Russian aggression", well, Soviet-Finnish conflicts didn't start with the Winter war, and the Winter war was preceded by a few suggestions ending in an ultimatum. By those suggestions Finland would receive far greater amounts of territory (in the areas it claimed before at that) than the stripe of land and a few small islands in artillery range of Leningrad it would be giving away. That's rather soft if you consider the character of the preceding Soviet-Finnish war. And Finland's participation in the blockade of Leningrad while allied with, well, Nazis makes the "worse than Nazis" argument more easily understandable and still wrong.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

But that's an openly recognized thing here in Finland. It's more of a surprise to foreigners

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The area USSR wanted to take had parts of Finnish main defensive line at the very important Karelian Isthmus and areas they wanted to give were total wilderness. So it's not that surprising it wasn't agreed to, even if the total area was larger.

It did feel like the sort of deal Czechoslovakians were forced into. And we know what happened there. Same for Baltics.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Building a few more bunkers is easier than moving a city, especially in the 30s.

But to help your argument, there were plenty of propaganda pieces and Finnish communist organizations supported by the USSR before the war. So probably there were intentions of biting off more than expressed.

And to help mine (sort of, it's an appellation to authority), I think I've read many notable figures, even Mannerheim himself, considered the proposed deal reasonable.

Comparing this to Czechoslovakia, USSR still took exactly what it initially demanded, and I don't remember Nazis offering anyone anything in exchange. And comparing this to Baltics - there it was a different scheme, where IIRC their governments (small cozy authoritarian ones, which is very funny) asked USSR for protection (because Nazis were scarier), Soviet troops entered those countries and suddenly there were Soviet state institutions in place and plebiscites.

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[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

Percentage-wise Latvia had more % of population in SS than any other country including Germany so i think the "Latvian" part did played at least some role.

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