How Finland’s conflicted history with Russia influenced decision to join Nato
Apr 05, 2023
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Finland’s decision to join Nato marked a decisive shift in the country’s long indecision towards joining western institutions while adopting a more appeasing attitude towards its neighbor Russia, security experts have told The National.
Its Nato membership was confirmed last month — but the Nordic country has long feared being drawn into great power politics, due partly to the lingering trauma of the so-called 1939-1940 Winter War, said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, leading researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
The former Soviet Union, which had a population 45 times larger than Finland’s at the time, attacked its neighbor, which was left largely alone as it fought back in what became viewed widely as a heroic national struggle akin to Ukraine’s current resistance to Russia’s invasion.
Finnish soldiers on skis counter-attacked in blizzard conditions, inflicting substantial losses on the Soviet Union, which ultimately made territorial gains in what was previously southern and north-eastern Finland.
Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday referred to the conflict as one of the reasons that had prompted Finland to join the alliance, drawing parallels between the Winter War and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Finland also has a history that tells them about the brutality that a war can afflict on a country like you now see in Ukraine, and like Finland saw during the Winter War,” he said.
Finnish public opinion started to shift after Russia in December 2021 issued a list of demands to Nato, which would have barred Finland from becoming a member of the alliance. The subsequent invasion of Ukraine further galvanized Finland’s NATO ambitions.
“Freedom of choice was very important for Finland,” said Nicholas Lokker, research assistant for the Transatlantic Programme at the Washington-based Centre for a New American Security.
Despite a lingering fear of a Russian attack, many Finns for a long time thought that their country could juggle between the West and Russia.
They viewed NATO membership as a US imperialist tool that could draw them into larger conflicts in which they feared they would be left isolated — as they were during the Winter War, explained Mr Salonius-Pasternak.
So, what is this Winter War that they keep referring to and why have the Finns been hesitant to join the resistance against Russia?
A little history.
By Arnold Blumberg
The Russo-Finnish War: Why Stalin Tried to Invade Finland
Following the fall of Poland to the Nazis in 1939, an amazed world watched tiny Finland, a nation of less than four million people, fight off 26 Russian divisions.
Prior to the Russo-Finnish War, problems were already setting in for Russia and Germany. The hugely cynical German-Soviet nonaggression pact, concluded in August 1939, assigned the Baltic region of eastern Europe to the exclusive sphere of influence of Communist Russia.
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin immediately embarked on a program to annex traditionally Russian-dominated territory in the area, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, to serve as an obstacle to any potential German invasion of the Soviet Union.
With good reason, Stalin did not trust Nazi strongman Adolf Hitler to keep his word one second longer than Hitler thought expedient.
The Soviet leader feared that his pro-German—or at least anti-Russian—neighbor to the north, Finland, would join Germany in an assault on Russia.
As a result, he demanded that the Russians be allowed to station troops in certain key areas of Finland, and that the Russo-Finnish border on the Karelian Isthmus between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga be moved 20 miles northwest to create a buffer zone to better protect the Russian city of Leningrad on the extreme eastern edge of the gulf.
In return, the Soviets would give up some worthless wilderness land in eastern Karelia.
The Finns understandably resisted. The consequence of such concessions by the Helsinki government would have forced them to dismantle their defenses in the territory forfeited to the Soviets, leaving them without the ability to defend themselves against future Russian aggression.
Determined to preserve their hard-won independence, achieved from Russia in 1918, and misled by the delusion that the Western democracies would step in to deter any Communist attack, the fiercely patriotic Finns rejected all Soviet demands.
Responding to the unexpected rebuff from Helsinki of Soviet demands, which he viewed as urgent and reasonable, Stalin ordered the Red Army on November 13, 1939, to prepare for an invasion of Russia’s northern neighbor, prompting the beginning of the Russo-Finnish War.
Like the country it represented, the Red Army was a colossus on paper, with hundreds of divisions and thousands of aircraft and tanks. A war with Finland involving merely mathematical equations would be a short one indeed.
But much of the Russian strength was more apparent than real. In 1939, the Red Army was still an unknown quantity.
Born in the Russian civil war of 1918-1920, a conflict made up of scattered large-scale partisan operations, the Army was untried in conventional warfare, except for a short, sharp conflict with the Japanese in Manchuria in the spring and summer of 1939.
Although one of the largest military machines in the world, the Red Army was hard-pressed to adequately equip and maintain such a huge force.
By the end of 1939, much of its equipment was obsolete, but the need to arm newly activated formations prevented the replacement of old infantry weapons, tanks, and planes.
Even had all the combat weapons been perfectly up to date, the level of training of Russian troops in their usage was below par, as was the expertise and experience to put in place a logistical system that could properly support large-scale military operations.
The rank-and-file Russian soldier was not all that bad. Some units were better trained than others, but none was adequately prepared for the challenge of extreme winter warfare.
Only a quarter of the Soviet Army’s entire strength could be devoted to the Finnish war effort, at least at the start. Garrisons in Poland, Romania, the Baltic States, and the Far East tied up some of its finest fighting formations. Initial Soviet forces committed to battle would be around half a million men.
By far the most serious and crippling blow to the effectiveness of the Red Army at the brink of the Russo-Finnish War was the lingering effects of Stalin’s cold-blooded purge of its officer corps during the previous two years.
The paranoid dictator, seeing plots against him at every turn, had decimated the Red Army leadership in an attempt to quash any potential obstacles to his absolute control of the country. (Many fear this is what we are seeing happen to our own military today).
Internal threats were always seen as the most immediate threat to his power. The existing Army, led by numerous ex-czarist officers, was considered by Stalin to be the primary menace to his regime. Hundreds of officers were systemically liquidated during the ensuing Great Purge. Stalin’s aim was the utter destruction of the Red Army’s leadership.
In this he succeeded totally. Anyone who demonstrated the least amount of initiative or creative thought was disposed of in a Soviet prison cellar by a bullet to the back of the head.
Marshals, generals, colonels, and even junior officers and NCOs were shot by the dozens. To fill the gaps, officers were rapidly promoted before they were properly trained for their new and higher responsibilities. It was not uncommon to find colonels in charge of divisions, majors heading up regiments. (Yes, Stalin destroyed his entire officer corps just as WWII was starting. Sound familiar?).
To help the new, inexperienced leaders, a dual system of command was implemented. Political commissars were appointed at the regimental level to assure the reliability of field-grade officers. This also allowed for divided command, which would help control potential enemies inside the Army.
But the commissars were more than mere political advisers; they had real authority over the conduct of military operations. Consequently, planning for military missions was secondary on everyone’s agenda, power and control being the primary goals.
Much of the rigidity and snail-like pace of Soviet battle schemes could be attributed to the lack of unity of command, which permeated down to battalion level.
The Red Army’s opponent in late 1939 was a Finnish National Army of 33,000 men grouped in three infantry divisions, a light infantry and a cavalry brigade supported by about 15 artillery battalions, fewer than 70 aircraft, and a dozen French World War I-era Renault tanks.
The regular army was backed up by territorial and home guard units. The most important of these was the territorial force, which when mobilized increased the Finnish Army to 127,000 men in nine infantry divisions.
The Army Reserve had another 100,000 men, as did the paramilitary Civic Guard, allowing the Finns to field an army of more than 400,000 troops in 12 divisions of 14,200 men each. (A typical Russian division was over 17,000 men strong.)
In support of frontline forces were 100,000 women of the Women’s Auxiliary Army.
In addition, small numbers of cavalry and hunters, acting as elite light infantry, the latter moving by bicycle, could be employed. Field artillery was chiefly 77mm field guns supplemented by 122mm howitzers. Heavy artillery consisted of 105mm and 107mm pieces, but there were few of these in the Finns’ arsenal. All artillery was horse drawn, and each battery held between four and six pieces.
In contrast to their Russian counterparts, many Finnish officers were veterans of World War I and the Finnish War of Independence. They were drawn from the aristocracy and thus were very anti-communist, and they typically led from the front.
Finnish enlisted men were also very capable. Most were comfortable in winter conditions, could navigate through thick forests, and were crack marksmen.
Along with an experienced, dedicated officer corps and committed frontline troops, the Finns were fortunate to have an Army commander who inspired confidence as well as providing unity of command.
Born in 1867, Baron Carl Gustav Mannerheim was a Swedish-Finnish nobleman and career soldier who at the age of 19 had gone AWOL from a Finnish cadet program and joined the Imperial Russian Army, where he served with distinction during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I.
When Russia fell into revolutionary chaos in November 1917, Mannerheim returned to Finland and assumed leadership of the Finnish anti-Bolshevik military forces.
Under his command, the Finnish Communists and their Russian supporters were crushed, and Finland obtained her independence from Russia.
At the outset of the war, the biggest threat to the Finns was the Russians’ tanks. The defenders had few antitank weapons and little training in using them. Although Russian tank tactics were crude, straight-ahead charges, they proved effective in driving the Finns back from the border to the Mannerheim Line during the first days of the war.
But by the end of the first week, the Finns had discovered ways to counter the enemy armor: logs and crowbars jammed into the wheels of the steel monsters, Molotov cocktails (gasoline- and chloride potassium-filled bottles), and bunches of stick grenades or satchel charges placed on tank treads all proved effective armor killers.
Eighty Russian tanks were destroyed by such methods during the border fighting. Although as many as 70 percent of the tank-busting squads became casualties, there was never a lack of volunteers for the extremely hazardous, close-quarter duty.
By December 6, the Finns had withdrawn to the Mannerheim Line, a series of 109 reinforced concrete positions covering 80 miles. Fronting the line were vast fields of barbed-wire entanglements, thousands of mines planted on all likely avenues of approach, and five to seven rows of granite rocks sunk into the ground to serve as antitank obstacles.
The line’s principal weakness was the fact that its pillboxes were too far apart to provide mutual fire support for each other. More critical was that the Finns did not have enough artillery or ammunition to support the line. Regardless, when defended by stubborn troops and attacked by poorly led Russian soldiers not properly supported by artillery or tanks, the Mannerheim Line proved formidable and effective.
By December 20, the first Soviet offensive on the Karelian Isthmus had failed. Seven infantry divisions and two armored brigades supported by 600 guns and 1,000 planes had not made a dent in the Mannerheim Line. The cost to the Russians was enormous—thousands killed, many more wounded or unable to function in the bitter winter conditions that even the Soviets were not equipped to contend with. More than 250 Russian tanks were destroyed.
The new Soviet attack on the Mannerheim Line commenced on February 1, 1940, with more than 300,000 artillery shells smashing into Finnish positions around Summa on the first day. The Russian ground attack was directed toward the city of Viipuri.
Despite the new and improved tactics and better morale, one aspect remained the same: the Russians were still willing to accept massive losses in order to gain their objectives.
These attacks, made by massed columns of closely packed men, were supported by air bombardment and artillery fire, followed by strong tank and infantry assaults.
No matter how many men and vehicles were lost, the attacks would be repeated in each division’s assigned sector, up to five times a day, with fresh units thrown into the cauldron of battle.
The Russian advance on February 2 and 3 repeated the pattern of the first day, but was even more powerful. Fighting was fierce around Summa, with the Finns knocking out 90 tanks while laboring under artillery shelling of 400 rounds per minute. As the days passed, the Finnish strongpoints fell to the Soviet attackers.
Finally, on February 11, the inevitable occurred—the Russians broke through the Mannerheim Line northeast of Summa.
By mid-March, the loss of territory and of men—75,000 killed or wounded since the start of the war—had exhausted the Finnish nation. It was also obvious that no help would be coming from the Western powers. The Helsinki government requested and was granted a cease- fire on March 13. There was nothing left to do but count the cost: 25,000 Finns killed (about 2.6 million in 1939 American terms), with another 44,000 wounded. The Russians claimed 215,000 died or wounded. (Modern authorities speculate that the real number of Russian dead was 230,000 to 270,000, with an additional 200,000 to 300,000 wounded.) The Finns also destroyed 2,300 armored vehicles and 700 Russian planes.
In the end, Finland lost the Karelian Isthmus and had to allow Soviet basing rights at the port of Hango. More than 420,000 Finnish civilians were displaced as a result of the political settlement. But the most amazing result of the savage war was that the Finns retained their independence.
For Stalin and the Soviet Union, the victory was bittersweet. The Winter War had cost them enormous national prestige and encouraged Adolf Hitler to look ever more closely at an eastward invasion of Mother Russia—an invasion that would begin in June 1941, code-named Barbarossa.
So, folks, you can see, based on the history I have shared, that Finland joining NATO is adding fuel to the fire and why, Finland has every reason to be cautious when it comes to joining with the west in opposing Russia.