this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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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.
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.
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.
It's not massively unreasonable on the surface of it. A main defence line is easier to move than a whole city. The argument is there. But also not giving up land is also not unreasonable when you consider the examples of what happened when you gave in with Czechoslovakia and Baltics, especially when that land includes parts of that main defence line, making the whole line kinda worthless. Czech Sudetenland also included their defence line, so it's understandable that that example would be fresh in people's minds.
So really there were no guarantees that after agreeing to it, giving up the main line, the USSR wouldn't just take the rest of it. It clearly had ambitions in Eastern Europe, in the former Russian Empire's lands and had just divided Poland with Nazi Germany. So if you gain anything depends on whether you believe USSR had further ambitions in Finland or not.
That's just a result of USSR wanting a quick conclusion to the embarrassment that was Winter War. Had Finland folded in the war like they had hoped, I doubt they would've settled for just those areas. They had puppet government ready, were planning that they'd do this and that once they win and so on. See the Baltics, it started out smaller then they were absorbed.
No. USSR compelled them to take in troops with ultimatums, same ultimatum Finland got. Baltics and Finland just chose differently, Finns to fight and Baltics to give in. But once the USSR's troops were in, it was basically over for the Baltics and those troops were used then to conquer and absorb them.
But that's an openly recognized thing here in Finland. It's more of a surprise to foreigners