“Russia needs to finally admit its crimes,” demand in Finland. In Finnish society, a myth has been created about the genocide of the Finns in the Stalinist Soviet Union. The goal is to denigrate the USSR-Russia. They say that the Russians will repent, and then they can demand compensation, reparations and the return of the "occupied territories".
The myth of the genocide of the Finns in the USSR
The book "Killed by Stalin" tells the stories of the repressed Finns who lived in Murmansk. Finnish researcher Tarja Lappalainen believes that on the eve of and during the Soviet-Finnish wars of 1939-1940. and 1941-1944. the genocide of the Finns took place in the USSR.
The stories of the repressed are typical. We have heard this more than once from Russian democrats and liberals when we talked about the fate of the "innocently repressed" small nations or the "progressive" intelligentsia. They say that the Finns were expelled from their homes and settlements, their property was plundered, tortured and shot in the camps, they were dying of disease, most of the deported Finns were “starved to death by Stalin's order”.
In this way, the property and the future were taken away from the Finns. The conclusion is appropriate:
"Russia needs to finally admit its crimes - the complete destruction of the prosperous Finnish community, which consisted of the Finns who settled on the coast of Murmansk in the middle of the 19th century and their descendants."
This is not the first such work. Earlier a book by the Finnish historian Ossi Kamppinen was published: “Fear and death as a reward. Finnish builders of Soviet Karelia”. In it, the author writes about the fate of the Finns in Karelia, who fled Finland or came to build a new world and were destroyed in the “Stalinist meat grinder”. It is also noted that this became one of the reasons for the fear and hatred of the Russians and the creation of a "right-wing" (in fact, fascist. - Auth.) Finland, which allegedly withstood the Winter War with the USSR.
From the history of Finns in Russia
The colonization of the Kola Peninsula by the Finns, Norwegians, Sami and Karelians dates back to the middle of the 19th century. It was associated with hunger and other unfavorable factors in Finland and the policy of the local and central authorities in Russia, interested in the development of the remote territory. The government of Alexander II provided privileges to immigrants. The settlers led an isolated lifestyle and preferred not to mingle with the Russians; in the overwhelming majority they did not undergo assimilation, they preserved their culture, language and religion. Therefore, already at this time in Russia there was an opinion about the "Finnish threat" in the northern part of the empire.
After the 1917 revolution, most of the Finnish colonists remained on the Kola Peninsula, and the influx of Finns continued. For example, the "Red Finns" fled to the Murmansk region, who became victims of the White Terror in Finland. At the same time, Lenin's government provided full support to national minorities, mainly at the expense of the "Great Russian chauvinists". As the future showed - the collapse of the USSR in 1985-1991, this policy was erroneous or deliberately laid a “mine” for the future of the USSR-Russia. A convinced statesman, Stalin was right when he proposed to limit ourselves to the "autonomy" of small nations, and to create a Soviet state as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, where all the others were to enter on the basis of autonomy rights.
In total in the Leningrad-Karelian region (Leningrad, Murmansk, Novgorod, Pskov, Cherepovets provinces and Karelia) in 1926 there were more than 15, 5 thousand Finns. The main part of the Finnish community (71%) lived in the Leningrad province and Leningrad 15% (2327 people), the rest in Karelia and the Murmansk province. As part of the policy of encouraging small peoples in 1930, the Finnish National Region was formed in the Murmansk District. Finns, along with the Sami, Norwegians and Swedes, constituted the overwhelming majority of the area's population. The official languages in the area were Finnish and Russian. Finnish communists held leading positions in this territorial unit.
The first deportations of Finns from the Murmansk region began in connection with the collectivization policy and had class motives. Further migrations of the Finns were associated with military and political reasons - the hostility of the Finnish state, wars with Finland and the approaching world war. In 1936, on the Karelian Isthmus, on the initiative of the command of the Leningrad Military District, the entire civilian population was resettled from the foreground and the nearest rear of the Karelian fortified area under construction. And in the Murmansk region, the bases of the Northern Fleet were built. In addition, under the Stalin government, national policy changed. Dangerous flirting with national minorities (at the expense of the Russians) is over. Stalin, as an expert in this matter, perfectly saw the threat in the development of national autonomies, republics and intelligentsia, in nationalism. All national autonomies and republics developed to the detriment of Russian statehood, at the expense of the Russian people. At the same time, the threat of the collapse of the state along ethnic lines was created, which would certainly be taken advantage of by the enemies of Russia (as happened later, in 1991).
Resettlement is a common practice in world history
Ever since the time of Khrushchev, and then Gorbachev's "perestroika" and Yeltsin's "democratization" of Stalin, they began to accuse of forced deportation, genocide of small peoples. Like, Joseph Vissarionovich acted as a Great Russian chauvinist or just a sadist and a maniac, repressing and destroying national minorities in the USSR.
At the same time, professional denunciators and humanists are silent about the fact that forced, forced relocation is a standard method in world history. Deportations on ethnic and religious grounds were carried out in the ancient (Assyria, Babylon) and the Middle Ages (reconquest in Spain, deportations and genocide of the Moors, Moriscos, Marrans), in the new (genocide, eviction and replacement of the indigenous population by the Anglo-Saxons in North America or Australia) and recent history. Stalin is not an innovator here. Nothing has changed at the present time. Only deportations in modern history are usually kept silent, since there was no command "face". For example, right now, the Turkish army is conducting a military operation in Syria and creating a buffer zone on its border, evicting Kurds who will be replaced by Arab refugees who have accumulated in Turkish camps. A similar policy is being pursued by Iran in the controlled territories in Iraq and Syria, where Shiites are being resettled, replacing the Sunnis. Several years ago, when the "black caliphate" arose, its Sunni builders destroyed, expelled and replaced representatives of other peoples and religions in Iraq and Syria - Shiites, Kurds, Druze, Christians, etc.
In modern Europe, under the mantras of "humanism", "human rights", "multiculturalism" and "tolerance", globalists and liberals replace the dying and aging indigenous population with immigrants from Asia and Africa. At the same time, given the current rate of extinction of native Europeans and the growing wave of migration from South to North, a radical change in the national and religious composition of the population of Western Europe will occur very quickly by the standards of historical processes, in just one or two generations.
And the deportation of peoples and national communities during the First and Second World Wars (as well as in the pre-war period and after the wars) is generally a common practice. Austria-Hungary deported Rusyns-Russians to the western Russian regions, many died in concentration camps. The Ottoman Empire under the guise of resettlement is a real genocide of Armenians and other Christians. After the First World War, hundreds of thousands of Turks were deported from Greece, from Asia Minor (Turkey) to Greece. Mass deportations were carried out on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Balkans. About a million Germans were evicted and expelled from the new Baltic states.
The most "free" country in the world in 1942 forcibly displaced (interned) the entire Japanese community - about 120 thousand people, when Japan attacked the United States. The Japanese, most of whom were American citizens, were relocated from the west coast of the United States to concentration camps. The motive is a military threat. The American authorities did not believe in the loyalty of the ethnic Japanese. They say that they are loyal to the imperial throne and a "dangerous element", and can support the landing of the Japanese army on the west coast of the United States. Italian and German immigrants were also declared "hostile foreigners". A similar situation was in Canada, where 22 thousand people of Japanese origin were interned. They were evicted from British Columbia (on the Pacific coast) and housed in 10 camps. The West prefers not to mention the "American and Canadian Gulag".
After the defeat of the Third Reich, the Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia. And in the "civilized" Czech Republic over the Germans (they were mostly ordinary peaceful people) mocked, robbed and killed. And the "enlightened" European, the Czech president and the organizer of the deportation Benes urged: "Take everything from the Germans, leave them only handkerchiefs to cry in them." In 1945-1946 more than 3 million people were deported from Czechoslovakia. Thousands of Germans were killed, maimed and raped. Apart from the huge material damage.
In Russia, the deportations of Stalin are often remembered, but at the same time one rarely hears about forced migrations during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II. The main motive for the eviction of people was the military. Even before the outbreak of World War II, the General Staff Academy believed that the ideal environment for the enemy was an ethnically homogeneous population speaking the same language. The high command adhered to the same point of view (the same point of view was shared by the military-political circles in the other belligerent powers as well). In particular, Germans and Jews were considered the "enemy's reserve". With the outbreak of war, the Russian authorities began to arrest and deport citizens of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. They were evicted from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Novorossiya, Volyn, Poland and the Baltic states to the distant inner provinces. A new wave of evictions began in 1915, during the successful offensive of the Austro-German army.
Thus, the main reason for the deportation was the military threat, “politically unreliable” citizens were resettled. There was also an economic factor - they fought against the "German dominance" in the agricultural sector of the economy in the western part of the empire.
Why the Finns were deported
The answer lies in the politics and military threat to the USSR from Western Europe and Finland. It is worth remembering that when Finland gained independence, nationalists ("white Finns") seized power. They immediately began to build "Greater Finland" at the expense of Russia. Finland claimed Karelia, the Kola Peninsula. Finnish radicals dreamed of Ingermanlandia (Leningrad region) and reach the White Sea and even the Northern Urals. In the First Soviet-Finnish War of 1918-1920. the Finns acted as aggressors. As a result, under the Treaty of Tartu, Finland annexed the strategically important territory belonging to Russia in the Pechenga region.
Second Soviet-Finnish war 1921-1922 was organized by the Finns with the aim of seizing Russian lands. In the future, the fascization of Finland took place. The Finnish elite was preparing for a war with the USSR on the side of the West (England and France, or Germany). The third Soviet-Finnish war took place in 1939-1940. In the conditions of the impending world war, Moscow has been conducting multi-stage secret negotiations with Finland since 1938 in order to improve the defense capability of the northwestern borders of Leningrad, which was geographically in an extremely vulnerable position. It was necessary to move the border away from the second capital of the Union. The Soviet government offered the Finns in exchange twice as much territory in Karelia (the very territory that the Finns unsuccessfully tried to seize in the first two wars) and economic compensation. After Finland's refusal, the Winter War began. Moscow resolved the issue by military means. During the Great Patriotic War, Finland fought on the side of the Third Reich and was defeated.
Thus, Moscow's actions to evict the Finnish community from the dangerous border region, where important military facilities are located, is a common world practice. Various national "autonomies", as the experience of the collapse of the USSR and the development of the national issue in the Russian Federation show, is a threat to the existence of a single power. This threat is especially growing with the approach of a major war. And Moscow has resolved this issue. It is also worth noting that under Stalin, deportations were carried out at a high level: organization and provision of everything necessary (often already in war conditions), minimal losses. And how were the deportations going “in a European way”? In the same Czech Republic: disorganization, which kills even more people than a bayonet or a bullet, atrocities, bullying of representatives of other nations, robberies.
Also, Finland should remember its crimes more often than look for a "straw" in Russia. Helsinki should remember about the repressions and terror of the White Finns against the Red Finns and the Russian community of Finland after the revolution. On attempts to create "Greater Finland" at the expense of Russian lands, which led to four wars. On the rule of Finnish radicals, nationalists and fascists. About the war on the side of Hitler and the Finnish concentration camps.
The essence of the current informational stuffing about "Russian barbarians" and the Stalinist meat grinder "going through different channels and directions is obvious. This is a continuation of the information war against Russia and the Russians. Hence the demands to "confess their crimes." In the future, they will require an official revision of the results of the Great Patriotic War with reparations and indemnities, territorial changes in favor of the "innocent victims" of Russian (Soviet) aggression. That is, there is information preparation for the final future solution of the "Russian question".
