(Negotiate with a bully/dictator? Finland. 1939...an "honest answer.)
The Gangster Pact of 1939 (Molotov-Ribbentrop) provided not merely for the division of Poland between Hitler and Stalin but put the Baltic countries, plus Finland, in Stalin’s “sphere of influence.” Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were rolled over peremptorily by Stalin, but little Finland (pop. 3.5 million to Russia’s 180 +) balked even though Stalin offered to give them a larger area in the barren Artic in return for the coastal area immediately in front of Helsinki. Of course if the Finns agreed, they woud be helpless IF Stalin made laterdemands. The Finns who had experienced a brutal civil war in 1921- 22 with communists (because it had been part of the Russian Empire for a hundred years and there were many Russian people in the country) the Finns flatly refused though they were cut off fron any effective outside aid as Britain and France were already at war with Hitler.
The Russians were shocked. Khrushchev recalled the politburo’s mood as “all we had to do was raise our voice a little bit and the Finns would obey. If that didn’t work, we could fire one shot and the Finns would put up their hands and surrender.”
Thus, it was that on November 30, 1939, exactly like this year’s invasion of the Ukraine, with no declaration of war, Russia sent one million soldiers across the border against Finland’s 150,000, more than 20,000 tanks, against a country that lacked even a single modern anti-tank gun, and thousands of warplanes which immediately began bombing Finnish cities.
SOME PEOPLES CONSIDER NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THEIR OWN PERSONAL SAFETY |
