Hacker News Reader

Comment by java-man | Hacker News Reader

I was shocked when, as a kid, I learned that the official justification for this war was "the border is too close to Leningrad".

View on HN

They build the city too close to Finland and then complain Finland is too close to their city.

Not defending the Soviets in any way here, but St. Petersburg was founded in 1703, and Finland became an independent country in 1917.

True it became independent there, but the country had been settled for a long time before that.

Of course Finnish history is complex, when you consider how it was initially Swedish-owned, then became an autonomous (remarkably so) part of the Russian empire between 1809-1917. The brief outline here is presents a good summary:

https://finland.fi/life-society/main-outlines-of-finnish-his...

For more details I enjoyed reading "A Concise history of Finland" :

https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Finland-Cambridge-His...

(I moved to Finland a couple of years ago, and have spent a fair bit of time learning of local-history.)

Finland was there, however, already long before that, as an eastern province of Sweden.

It should be noted, though, that if Finland had stayed as a part of Sweden, it might not exist as a country today; Sweden has had a policy of forced assimilation which is shown in how the traditionally Finnish (and Sami) culture in contemporary northern Sweden has been largely replaced.

Tsar Alexander I ended war against Sweden (1808-1809) with a pact with the local nobility, if we may call it so, where Finland would be "lifted to be a nation among nations", and as a result, Finland indeed did become an autonomous nation.

This is why the "faithful Tsars" have statues in Finland. Finland did not see itself as a part of Russia, but as a separate nation which just has Russian emperor as the ruler (Grand Duke). Swedish legislation was preserved (some laws in law book still date from 1734).

Weaker, pan-Slavic Tsars (Alexander III and Nicholas II) then tried to reverse this development, and suppress Finnish nationalism, and as a result of this, Nicholas II was called "the oathbreaker", and due to this and many other similar bad policies elsewhere in his empire he lost his crown and his life.

That was in 1703. and yes, the intent was to fight the dominance of Swedes in the Baltic. If Peter only knew about IKEA...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg

Yes, that was definitely over the line for the Soviet Union to demand that Finland hand over a buffer zone. But in fairness the soviets did have some reason for concern. Finland had historic ties with Germany. Germany had helped the non-communist side of the Finnish War, notably by training the Jaeger troops.

Still, I expect Finland would have been only too happy to sit out the war as a neutral, like Sweden did. But the Soviets didn't give them that option.

Russia seems generally content to invade its neighbors with the rationale "the border is too close to Russia."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com