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Unsettomatti pretty much nailed it in his first post, just to add..
When Stalin came to power the Soviet Union was a weak country with not much industry to speak of, and surrounded by the very real enemies. Their paranoia was well founded.
By 1941 they built up a strong industry but they were still very much on the defensive mentally. Unlike Hitler they tended to overestimate the military power of Allies. They also knew that despite some advanced equipment the RKKA was still not ready for a massive war.
The Winter War showed them the multiple weaknesses of RKKA. Also even the Finns admit that Stalin was trying hard to push through an agreement to trade the territories before he resorted to an attack, and that he really needed these territories because of Leningrad's precarious position so close to the border. He offered Finland a much larger land mass in exchange for Vyborg. The Finns simply could not accept the deal from political perspective, the Finnish population would see this as an insult to national prestige. While this doesn't make Stalin's subsequent attack on Finland any less illegal, it does show that he was genuinely trying to avoid it.
In 1941, the end of the Russian Civil War was only 20 years ago. All of the destruction, mass hunger, famine, millions of deaths was still very much in people's memory. Stalin and his cohort knew that another huge war would put an equally severe strain on the country and there was no guarantee it will survive. While Stalin's purges are well known and kept the entire country terrified, the total number of people directly impacted (killed or imprisoned) was less than 1% of population. He was not out to destroy or depopulate the country. He was a ruthless dictator but he was no Pol Pot. He was both extremely pragmatic and paranoid. And I don't believe he would risk it all by attacking a country like Poland protected by mutual assistance treaties with Western powers.
The only countries he invaded at will were the countries that nobody at the time gave crap about - the Baltic countries and Romania. And he only did it when the situation in Europe was getting really dangerous and USSR needed a buffer belt between them and Germany. Without the danger of Nazi invasion I don't think he'd try to annex these territories by force. I do agree that there would be a perpetual "soft" Cold War.
Unsettomatti pretty much nailed it in his first post, just to add..
When Stalin came to power the Soviet Union was a weak country with not much industry to speak of, and surrounded by the very real enemies. Their paranoia was well founded.
By 1941 they built up a strong industry but they were still very much on the defensive mentally. Unlike Hitler they tended to overestimate the military power of Allies. They also knew that despite some advanced equipment the RKKA was still not ready for a massive war.
The Winter War showed them the multiple weaknesses of RKKA. Also even the Finns admit that Stalin was trying hard to push through an agreement to trade the territories before he resorted to an attack, and that he really needed these territories because of Leningrad's precarious position so close to the border. He offered Finland a much larger land mass in exchange for Vyborg. The Finns simply could not accept the deal from political perspective, the Finnish population would see this as an insult to national prestige. While this doesn't make Stalin's subsequent attack on Finland any less illegal, it does show that he was genuinely trying to avoid it.
In 1941, the end of the Russian Civil War was only 20 years ago. All of the destruction, mass hunger, famine, millions of deaths was still very much in people's memory. Stalin and his cohort knew that another huge war would put an equally severe strain on the country and there was no guarantee it will survive.
The majority of Americans are aware only of THEIR OWN civil war and its consequences, they seem to be totally oblivious to Russian civil war and ITS CONSEQUENCESand therefore they don't quite understand the real situation Russia was in during Stalin's times;
"At the end of the Civil War the Russian SFSR was exhausted and near ruin. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more also died of widespread starvation, wholesale massacres by both sides and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia. By 1922 there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war.[65
I mean - does it look that the country (with enormous territories to begin with,) in this particular situation would like to "invade Europe"? Even 15-20 years down the road, which is barely enough to recover from the previous devastation?
Quote:
While Stalin's purges are well known and kept the entire country terrified, the total number of people directly impacted (killed or imprisoned) was less than 1% of population. He was not out to destroy or depopulate the country. He was a ruthless dictator but he was no Pol Pot.
Don't even try.
20,000 000 to 100,000 000 killed by Stalin, period. Everyone likes these figures, because they like them.
Otherwise the evil doesn't look all that impressive.
The Winter War showed them the multiple weaknesses of RKKA. Also even the Finns admit that Stalin was trying hard to push through an agreement to trade the territories before he resorted to an attack, and that he really needed these territories because of Leningrad's precarious position so close to the border. He offered Finland a much larger land mass in exchange for Vyborg. The Finns simply could not accept the deal from political perspective, the Finnish population would see this as an insult to national prestige. While this doesn't make Stalin's subsequent attack on Finland any less illegal, it does show that he was genuinely trying to avoid it.
Sure we admit that Stalin pushed for a peaceful solution, the demands were only totally unacceptable. It was not only about pushing the border forward, the Russians demanded that we dismantle all defensive fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus (why? Finland was aligned towards France and Britain in 1939), lease military bases and free access to Soviet military (no neutral country can accept that from a political perspective) within Finnish soil. To move the border and dismantling fortifications would've made Viipuri, the second largest city in Finland, effectively defenseless.
And for what? To gain Repola and Porajärvi, which were essentially almost worthless and uninhabited but larger land areas. The situation can be compared that the Canadian border would be redrawn to the suburbs of Chicago and some foreign power would get military bases near San Francisco and Baltimore. In "compensation" the US would get some obscure forested areas in Yukon Territory.
You don't have to have to be a Finnish nationalist to say it out loud, and almost all foreign historians agree that without fighting we would've suffered the same fate as the Baltics, and an military occupation would've been inevitable. Fighting also showed Stalin that he cannot just come and take, Finland will fight to the end. That fact might also have saved us in 1944, when the Finnish Army stopped the Soviet offensive before they even got to the 1940 border (the only section of Bagration which was repulsed). Stalin called off the offensive as it would most likely had demanded unreasonable amounts of forces to occupy Finland, forces that were needed instead to push towards Berlin.
Sure we admit that Stalin pushed for a peaceful solution, the demands were only totally unacceptable. It was not only about pushing the border forward, the Russians demanded that we dismantle all defensive fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus (why? Finland was aligned towards France and Britain in 1939), lease military bases and free access to Soviet military (no neutral country can accept that from a political perspective) within Finnish soil. To move the border and dismantling fortifications would've made Viipuri, the second largest city in Finland, effectively defenseless.
And for what? To gain Repola and Porajärvi, which were essentially almost worthless and uninhabited but larger land areas. The situation can be compared that the Canadian border would be redrawn to the suburbs of Chicago and some foreign power would get military bases near San Francisco and Baltimore. In "compensation" the US would get some obscure forested areas in Yukon Territory.
I think the point he was trying to make is, from the Soviet perspective (and given the sheer size differences) they did try to negotiate first. Even though the terms were unworkable from Finnish perspective.
And it's not comparable to Canada vs the US. It's more like the US offering Columbia a land swap. Nobody seriously expected Finland to put up such a strong and impressive resistance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ariete
You don't have to have to be a Finnish nationalist to say it out loud, and almost all foreign historians agree that without fighting we would've suffered the same fate as the Baltics, and an military occupation would've been inevitable. Fighting also showed Stalin that he cannot just come and take, Finland will fight to the end. That fact might also have saved us in 1944, when the Finnish Army stopped the Soviet offensive before they even got to the 1940 border (the only section of Bagration which was repulsed). Stalin called off the offensive as it would most likely had demanded unreasonable amounts of forces to occupy Finland, forces that were needed instead to push towards Berlin.
I think what saved Finland was your behavior during WW2, like refusal to completely seal off St Petersburgh, allowing food relief trucks to come into the city right under the guns of Finnish units that controlled Ladoga shores, refusing to shell the city, refusing to advance any further into Soviet territory despite Hitler's repeat requests. Stalin respected Mannerheim and didn't see Finland as a potential threat after the war, or as a Nazi puppet. He spared no lives squashing resistance in the fascist countries aligned with Hitler, but - from his perspective - he gave Finland one heck of a deal.
I just finished listening to a radio podcast where they interviewed several important Finnish historians and gave me much new info, also about Stalin's mentality. It was called "Could the Winter War have been avoided?"
When the negotiations began in early 1939 about redrawing the border, many, like Mannerheim and the leader of the delegation J. K. Paasikivi were genuinely of the opinion that a war may be avoided, or at least buys time to rearm. Though Stalin had toyed with the idea of recovering all the Imperial Russian territories, he would take absolutely no risks in achieving them. The initial demands were reasonable, and included suggestions for areas for the USSR to lease. Lease, not hand over permanently. As we know, Stalin's demands grew unreasonable only after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and decided to take all of Finland.
Then again in 1940 when the French intervention force already had started packing, Stalin quickly changed his mind and was ready for peace. As the war had gone poorly, Stalin cringed about how his soldiers would fare against Anglo-French elite troops, not to mention that he could never risk a war with Britain and France.
So Stalin agreed to cease hostilities and continue sometime later at a better time. That time came in November 1940 when Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to decide the "Finnish question" once and for all. Berlin refused categorically, and nothing came out of it. So even with France defeated, Britain alone and Germany having Denmark and Norway, Stalin still didn't have the guts to make a move without Germany's unconditional consent.
Judging by this constant ebb and flow regarding small Finland, how on earth could've Stalin have the stomach to get involved in a big offensive war against multiple European countries? Let's hypothetically assume that he would be in the North against a Nordic alliance, an Polish-led alliance in Central Europe and the Little Entente in the South. No way. Stalin would've still have been isolated and alone, but would have all the attention of every great power, all hostile to communism.
Also the myth that the Soviet Union is strong and eternal was born only during the Cold War. For example in the 20's the Finnish authorities openly supported White Russian terrorist cells in sabotage and intelligence. This might sound ridiculous today, but in the 1920's the mindset in many countries was that if the USSR was born quickly, it may fall quickly too. Still in the early 1930's the Soviet Union was rather weak, not the mechanised juggernaut in Berlin in 1945.
Once again, this reinforces the points mentioned by many in this thread. Stalin would take no risks at any time. I knew he was cautious, but not that cautious.
edit: Oh, and how could I forget? The ebb and flow didn't stop here. The period from 1944-1948 is called in Finnish "the years of danger", when there was a real threat of an communist coup. The state/secret police was temporarily in the hands of the reds, the communists got a landslire victory in the 1945 elections, and some Finnish radicals cried to Stalin to aid them in a "peoples' revolution". Stalin asked Zdanov are the Finnish communists able to actually independently pull off something like this. Zdanov replied that no way in hell, and Stalin denied any possibility of an Red Army intervention.
Additionally, the Soviets found out in 1945 that Finnish nationalists had secretly hid weapons for a guerrilla war in a possible invasion, in total conflict of the disarmament treaties, so he would've had at least a partly acceptable casus belli.
So now with Germany defeated he was presented with one more opportunity to resolve the Finnish question. And did nothing.
"At the end of the Civil War the Russian SFSR was exhausted and near ruin. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more also died of widespread starvation, wholesale massacres by both sides and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia. By 1922 there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war.[65
And still, the Red Army found strength to fight Poland in the early 1920s, the Japanese Empire in the mid 1930s, and the Finland in the late 1930s. The Soviets prioritized the Red Army and it was rebounding faster than the rest of Soviet Society. The Soviet leadership also envisioned bringing break away provinces of the former Russian empire into the red fold. The suffering and war weariness of the Soviet people did not matter a lot to the Soviet leadership.
My guess is that even with out Hitler, the Soviets were going to move on the Baltics, Finland and Poland. Since Poland did have mutual defense treaties with the West, the Soviets may have attempted to destabilize Poland internally, then intervene at the request of Polish communists as opposed to out right invasion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ariete
Judging by this constant ebb and flow regarding small Finland, how on earth could've Stalin have the stomach to get involved in a big offensive war against multiple European countries? Let's hypothetically assume that he would be in the North against a Nordic alliance, an Polish-led alliance in Central Europe and the Little Entente in the South. No way. Stalin would've still have been isolated and alone, but would have all the attention of every great power, all hostile to communism.
Still in the early 1930's the Soviet Union was rather weak, not the mechanised juggernaut in Berlin in 1945.
The Soviets were rebuilding the Red Army fast and selected Red Army units led by their super star general badly beat the Japanese in Mongolia. After WWI, the British and French empires were also exhausted and were democracies. That meant the leadership fo the UK and France could not order large scale military actions with out considering the feelings of their people. I doubt many of the people supported another large sale war. Some even sympathized with the Soviets. My guess is that the West would not send consripts to fight in Poland. Rather token numbers of elite troops would be sent and then only deployed to areas where they could fall back into Germany when needed.
And still, the Red Army found strength to fight Poland in the early 1920s, the Japanese Empire in the mid 1930s, and the Finland in the late 1930s. The Soviets prioritized the Red Army and it was rebounding faster than the rest of Soviet Society. The Soviet leadership also envisioned bringing break away provinces of the former Russian empire into the red fold. The suffering and war weariness of the Soviet people did not matter a lot to the Soviet leadership.
My guess is that even with out Hitler, the Soviets were going to move on the Baltics, Finland and Poland. Since Poland did have mutual defense treaties with the West, the Soviets may have attempted to destabilize Poland internally, then intervene at the request of Polish communists as opposed to out right invasion.
The Soviets were rebuilding the Red Army fast and selected Red Army units led by their super star general badly beat the Japanese in Mongolia. After WWI, the British and French empires were also exhausted and were democracies. That meant the leadership fo the UK and France could not order large scale military actions with out considering the feelings of their people. I doubt many of the people supported another large sale war. Some even sympathized with the Soviets. My guess is that the West would not send consripts to fight in Poland. Rather token numbers of elite troops would be sent and then only deployed to areas where they could fall back into Germany when needed.
So, let's say it's 1939, there's no Hitler, and Germany is militarily weak, or at least not likely to engage - say it's a surviving Weimar Republic.
This would naturally make France and Britain the top powers in Europe, and USSR and Italy their top adversaries.
I don't think the Soviets of 1939 would take on Poland without Hitler. Taking on Poland would mean a certain war with France and Britain. Even the way it was done in 1939, Stalin waited for Hitler to strike first (which was contrary to their secret agreement that they would both invade Poland at the same time), and only invaded after it was obvious that Poland was falling - not because he was afraid of the Poles, but because it put all the blame on Hitler the Invader, and made USSR look as if it was simply picking up the pieces before the Germans gobbled up the rest of the country. Hence, Germany was the only country officially declared an invader by the Allies.
Finland was taken on, and we all know how this ended.
Baltic states, yes most likely they would suffer the same fate as it historically happened.
I just finished listening to a radio podcast where they interviewed several important Finnish historians and gave me much new info, also about Stalin's mentality. It was called "Could the Winter War have been avoided?"
When the negotiations began in early 1939 about redrawing the border, many, like Mannerheim and the leader of the delegation J. K. Paasikivi were genuinely of the opinion that a war may be avoided, or at least buys time to rearm. Though Stalin had toyed with the idea of recovering all the Imperial Russian territories, he would take absolutely no risks in achieving them. The initial demands were reasonable, and included suggestions for areas for the USSR to lease. Lease, not hand over permanently. As we know, Stalin's demands grew unreasonable only after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and decided to take all of Finland.
Then again in 1940 when the French intervention force already had started packing, Stalin quickly changed his mind and was ready for peace. As the war had gone poorly, Stalin cringed about how his soldiers would fare against Anglo-French elite troops, not to mention that he could never risk a war with Britain and France.
So Stalin agreed to cease hostilities and continue sometime later at a better time. That time came in November 1940 when Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to decide the "Finnish question" once and for all. Berlin refused categorically, and nothing came out of it. So even with France defeated, Britain alone and Germany having Denmark and Norway, Stalin still didn't have the guts to make a move without Germany's unconditional consent.
Judging by this constant ebb and flow regarding small Finland, how on earth could've Stalin have the stomach to get involved in a big offensive war against multiple European countries? Let's hypothetically assume that he would be in the North against a Nordic alliance, an Polish-led alliance in Central Europe and the Little Entente in the South. No way. Stalin would've still have been isolated and alone, but would have all the attention of every great power, all hostile to communism.
Also the myth that the Soviet Union is strong and eternal was born only during the Cold War. For example in the 20's the Finnish authorities openly supported White Russian terrorist cells in sabotage and intelligence. This might sound ridiculous today, but in the 1920's the mindset in many countries was that if the USSR was born quickly, it may fall quickly too. Still in the early 1930's the Soviet Union was rather weak, not the mechanised juggernaut in Berlin in 1945.
Once again, this reinforces the points mentioned by many in this thread. Stalin would take no risks at any time. I knew he was cautious, but not that cautious.
edit: Oh, and how could I forget? The ebb and flow didn't stop here. The period from 1944-1948 is called in Finnish "the years of danger", when there was a real threat of an communist coup. The state/secret police was temporarily in the hands of the reds, the communists got a landslire victory in the 1945 elections, and some Finnish radicals cried to Stalin to aid them in a "peoples' revolution". Stalin asked Zdanov are the Finnish communists able to actually independently pull off something like this. Zdanov replied that no way in hell, and Stalin denied any possibility of an Red Army intervention.
Additionally, the Soviets found out in 1945 that Finnish nationalists had secretly hid weapons for a guerrilla war in a possible invasion, in total conflict of the disarmament treaties, so he would've had at least a partly acceptable casus belli. So now with Germany defeated he was presented with one more opportunity to resolve the Finnish question. And did nothing.
Which only proves that there was never really "Finnish question" to begin with.
There was only "St. Petersburg" question and its safety in the face of looming danger.
Once that was over, no one really cared about Finland - there was no importance to that country, the kind you are trying to ascribe to it - sorry Ariete.
Which only proves that there was never really "Finnish question" to begin with.
There was only "St. Petersburg" question and its safety in the face of looming danger.
Once that was over, no one really cared about Finland - there was no importance to that country, the kind you are trying to ascribe to it - sorry Ariete.
If there was no Finnish question, how can you explain the Winter War? Stop the Leningrad mumbo jumbo already, there was no threat to it.
Miraculously, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia were important. Why wasn't Finland then? Because we stopped Stalin at Tali-Ihantala, and conquering Finland would've been too costful.
Stop this Soviet revisionism already. The USSR brutally invaded an innocent country which posed no fear to it. Deal with it.
I don't think the Soviets of 1939 would take on Poland without Hitler. Taking on Poland would mean a certain war with France and Britain.
How big a war were the British and French public willing to support after 970,000 and 1.2 million respective deaths in WWI? Then factor in that they would be fighting yet another war when their existence as independent nations was not under direct threat.
The Soviets could also launch a pretty effective propaganda campaign: "We are not going to invade Poland proper (at least not yet). Instead, we only want to "liberate" Ukrainian and Belarusan territory that is currently occupied by Poland. The people in these territories are not Polish and many don't want to live in Poland (we wont mention that fact that they don't want to live in the USSR either)"
That propaganda would have some basis in truth. Now, the exhausted British and French public would be asked to (democratic societies) take sides in a complex ethnic dispute involving people whose names they cannot pronounce. This could well lead to Britain and France honoring their treaty commitments in a token manner.
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