Is Finland in Danger from Russia?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian 

Last month, neutral Finland told one million reservists that they might be called up for military service. The country is concerned about Russian activity in the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia.  

For the past year, Russian aircraft have entered Finnish airspace, and a suspected Russian submarine was detected in its coastal waters near Helsinki in April. 

In turn the five Nordic countries – Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland -- issued a statement on cooperating on defence and cited the Russian “challenge” as their reason.

Finland shares a 1,340 kilometre border with Russia -- the longest of any European nation apart from Ukraine -- and its relations with its giant neighbour have never been happy. 

The country was part of the Russian Empire after tsar Alexander I wrested it from Sweden in a war in 1808-1809. That ended when Finland declared its independence in December 1917, following the Bolshevik takeover of Russia.

In August 1939, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact, which included a secret protocol relegating Finland to the Soviet sphere of interest. When Finland refused to allow the Soviet Union to build military bases on its territory, in order to safeguard Leningrad, the latter invaded on Nov. 30, 1939. 

The “Winter War” surprised the Soviets, as the Finns fought valiantly for months. Among the weapons they used against tanks was the so-called Molotov cocktail, which consists of a glass bottle semi-filled with flammable liquid, usually gasoline. The name was coined as an insulting reference to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

But the war ended with Stalin obtaining 12 per cent of Finland’s total area. In a peace treaty signed on March 13, 1940, the Soviets acquired the Karelian Isthmus as well as a swath of land north of Lake Ladoga, providing a buffer for Leningrad. They also obtained four islands in the Gulf of Finland and part of the Salla region in northern Finland. 

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Finland joined in, to regain its lost territory. The “Continuation War” saw the Finnish army, under Marshal Baron Gustaf Mannerheim, advance to the outskirts of Leningrad by December 1941.

But in June 1944 the Soviets opened a powerful offensive against Finnish positions. The second war ended in an armistice in September 1944. In addition to the areas already lost, Finland also ceded Petsamo on the Arctic Ocean. This was confirmed by the peace treaty signed between Finland and the USSR in 1947.

But the Finns were lucky: they had managed to escape occupation by the Soviets and Mannerheim avoided trial as a war criminal.

During the Cold War, Finland was officially neutral, but remained under the influence of its larger neighbour during the long tenure of Urho Kekkonen as its leader between 1950 and 1982, a policy known as “Finlandization.” Even today, though members of the European Union, the Finns remain outside the NATO alliance.