From: sedergre@valt.Helsinki.FI (JARI SEDERGREN (COMM))
Subject: Re: Karelians the palestinians of the north
Organization: University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 11:08:46 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.070417.24008@jyu.fi> ryyti@jyu.fi (Jarmo Ryyti) writes:

>Bob Hammarberg (hberg@polisci.umn.edu) wrote:
>: Jarmo Ryyti writes:
>: It is a good thing that an international 
>: magazine focus on karelian question and people get to know about
>: the occupation of Karelia,Salla and Petsamo (Petsenga).
>: 
>: Jarmo, you silly fascist revanchist:  Finland's claims to Petsamo are 
>: extremely tenuous.  The area was given to Finland by the Dorpat treaty in 
>: 1921 (or was it 20?) just so Finland could have an outlet to the Arctic 
>: Sea - before that, Finland had no claims to the area whatsoever.

>So you consider it completaly correct that SU attacked Finland 1939 
>according to the agreement they had made with Nazi-Germany and occupied
>big parts of Finland and thrived 440 000 persons to flee to those
>parts of Finland which SU did not succeded to take.  Winter War
>1939-40 lasted 103 days and 1941 SU attacked again and Finland lost again
>more areas and people. 

Now, this looks clear to me. BH is talking about Petsamo and Jarmo's somewhat
strange historical outlook on that, and what we get: JR starts an
outburst about Winter War and Continuity War, and his opinions about 
latter are now even more curious. Is there anyone else in this planet to 
claim that Soviet Union attacked Finland 1941? Certainly not any historians? 
If I were a modern propagandist, as JR appears to be, I'd stick clearly to 
facts: lying - because we cannot talk about ignorance here - is not a good 
way to convince people about one's possible message in this media. 

>Today I have seen with my own eyes in Sortavala how Russians live
>in old Finnish houses whose owners are in many cases living still
>and surprise , surprise in Jyvaskyla. Stronger can take from
>weaker what he wants? It is not faschism according to you?

In this world there are many places which have been occupied many times by 
different powers. Sortavala is one of those places. People living now in
Sortavala cannot be accused about what happened in II World War. In that
war 1941-1944 Finland fought with fascist Germany against SU. Finland
changed side only after losing the war! So Russian claims of that area are 
unfortunately justified (this time by war), too. 
	Apropos! Originally SU wanted to secure Leningrad:
they needed Carelian Isthmus up to Viipuri (Viborg) for that. (That was 
what Molotov wrote in his memoires (1992) and his secretary confirmed last 
week in Moscow). 

That was one of the reasons SU never occupied Finland:
Molotov says how it was wise not to occupy Finland 1944, they would have 
been a big worry to SU, not because of people in Finland, but because of 
other powers which would have turned against Finland. Molotov said that 
minority of people of Finland were dangerous (meaning anti-Soviet). Later
Molotov writes (or his ghost-writer) that they never succeeded making 
Finland more democratic than Austria ever was. All they could do was to make 
relations "stronger". 
	They were other reasons why SU did not occupy Finland 1944. One 
reason was that they needed troups elsewhere and there were certainly not 
any reasons to leave considerable troops to sit (or fight against probable 
resistance) to Finnish garrisons! This gets confirmation about the fact that
when Finnish general Airo asked Red Army to cut Germans retrieval to 
Norway in Lappland they refused to cross Finnish/SU border! Only 
message from SU side was: "Mind your own problems"!

Jari Sedergren
Department of Communication
University of Helsinki
Finland

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