From: ryyti@jyu.fi (Jarmo Ryyti)
Subject: Re: Karelians the palestinians of the north
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 12:36:01 GMT

JARI SEDERGREN (COMM) (sedergre@valt.Helsinki.FI) wrote:
: 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 
: 
: 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. 

SU started the Continuous war by bombing  major Finnish cities autumn 1941.
: 
: 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.
 
Yes Finland allied with Germany in order to get back those areas
occupied 1939-41 by SU.
But the the Continuous war was not started by the finnish army.
There your information is invalid.

: 	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). 
: 
According to the same reasons many major european cities are in a similar
"danger" like Leningrad. Wien is very near the Chech border, Copenhagen
is too near Sweden, Geneva too near France... etc.

If a leading colonial power SU wanted more "Lebensraum"  around its
second city it is justified?

Well, just a couple of weeks ago there was published a book in Finland based
on the letters and documents of the Red Army in the Winter War.(Winter
War from the russiean eyes, written by the russians researchers.)

The Red Army had even  a route map to Helsinki and they planned to
march to Helsinki in two weeks. SU even set up a regime for  Finland.
The aim of SU was exactly the same as in the Baltics 1939.

If SU then later on changed its strategy and coals is an other thing
and story. The result of this policy was that 440 000 karelians had
to leave their homes. The second city of Finland Viipuri remained
in SU side etc. It is a fact. Is it forbidden to write somehow?

: 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".
 
So the good guy is actually SU because it generously did not occupy the whole
Finland! Amen!


: 	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"!
: 
So what?

jarmo ryyti

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