Source: Pamphlet published by London Caledonian Press Ltd., for the Russia Today Society, London, 1944.
Transcribed & marked up by Johnny Essex for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive(2021). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
IT is terribly important for democrats in Britain , just because so many of them were stampeded into making a mistake about Finland in 1939‐40, not to go ahead and make another one now.
It is terribly important for them to understand the truth about Finland , that underlies the deceptive façade.
Here is a country whose territory is being used to bomb and torpedo the convoys from Britain and the U.S.A., taking essential goods through to Russia to help save all those values that mean anything to all the civilised people in the world.
Everyone realises that if the people who rule Finland had their way , and achieved the object into winning which they threw all their country's resources, Hitler would be victorious and night would descend, horror and corruption and slavery engulf all our families.
And yet just because —in 1939–40—propaganda succeeded in taking in a lot of people and making them believe that Finland was somehow a peace‐loving little democracy and deserving of sympathy, these same people now try to find excuses for shutting their eyes to what they really cannot help seeing very plainly.
And like suckers they try to invent all kinds of complicated fictions to account for the (supposedly) accidental presence of Finland on the side of wrong against right.
That is why this book by Otto Kuusinen is so terribly important. Otto Kuusinen knows what he is talking about. He is himself a Finn. And he is a very responsible person. He is Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (that is, equivalent to President) of the Karelo‐Finnish Socialist Soviet Republic, one of the sixteen constituent Republics of the U.S.S.R. He is also a Deputy‐Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., that is, one of the Vice‐Presidents of the entire Soviet Union. The four chapters of this little book of his were serialised in August, September and October, by the Moscow Trade Union journal War and the Working Class.
Did you know that though there is a Parliament in Finland every opposition deputy has either been killed or put in prison ?
Did you know that, when the ban was lifted for a few weeks in 1940, a Finnish Society of Peace and Friendship with the Soviet Union obtained in three months more than twice as many members as the largest Finnish political party ?
Did you know that the ties of Finland's rulers with Hitler did not begin with June 22, 1941, but are of very long standing ?
Did you know that the leaders of Finland's “Social Democratic” Party and “ trade unions” maintain their position as a result of the government in which they participate jailing and torturing all the opposition in their party and unions ?
Did you know that Finland received its freedom from Socialist Soviet Russia without firing a shot, but that Finnish soil has since been used–with the help of Finland's rulers– or five invasions of Russia in twenty‐five years ?
Did you know that Finnish “democracy” itself is founded on Finland's rulers having called in German troops to help them exterminate 30,000 men and women of the Finnish working class.
When you know and bear in mind these facts, that will help you to understand that the association of present‐day Finland with Hitler‐ Germany is not at all accidental, that its democratic‐sounding names and propaganda are not all they wish to seem.
Finland represents a serious problem. Finland is a nation, and as such must be free. The Finns are a people, and as such must be happy and prosperous–just like Germany and the Germans.
But a generation of falsehood has built up in Finland very many Finns who are no less dangerous to mankind and civilisation—not only to the Soviet Union—than the fanatics of the Hitler Youth. Somehow they must be tackled; somehow Finnish democracy must be made not fake but real; somehow Finland must become a good neighbour, and the Finns wild shared in Hitler's aggression must be put out of harm's way as thoroughly as his other puppet satellites, That is the problem.
Blinking our eyes to the facts of it won't help. Studying Kuusinen's book will.
Ivor Montagu.
THERE is no other country which has for a quarter of a century so consistently and stubbornly pursued an anti‐Soviet policy as Finland.
There has been many a change in the general orientation of , Finland's foreign policy , but throughout all these changes Finland's ruling clique has ever been drawn – like a compass needle turning to the north—into the embrace of those States and governments which at each given period occupied a position of hostility to the U.S.S.R.
What explains this persistency of Finland's ruling circles in their hostility to the Soviet Union? It is not enough to call this a manifestation of chauvinism. Undeniably the ruling, wealthy circles of Finland are tainted with chauvinism, but their chauvinism is a phenomenon requiring special explanation.
The Finnish chauvinists have always proclaimed themselves representatives of old Finnish Nationalism, preaching an “hereditary” national hatred for all Russians. “Russia is the age‐old enemy of Finland, “ they say. But this is false, demagogic phrasing.
As a matter of historical fact they do not hate all Russians. Finland's ruling circles get along very well with Russian White Guards and White emigrés. They established “collaboration ” with these latter immediately following the October Revolution in 1917 and have harmoniously co‐operated with them ever since.
The nationalist demagogy directed against “all Russians ” was needed by Finland's rulers to inject with their anti‐Soviet chauvinism wider circles of the population, fanning the mistrust of Russians inherited from the period of Russian oppression. And to a certain extent this scheme of the Finnish chauvinists has been successful. In the autumn of 1939, at the start of the three months' hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union, considerable sections of Finland's population fell a prey to chauvinistic poison: not only business owners and landowners, rich peasants and officials, but also a certain section of the working people.
The principal advocate and most active disseminator of this chauvinism has, however, always been the reactionary leadership of the Finnish bourgeoisie, the ruling wealthy circles, together with their agents, these latter including the apparatus and Press of both bourgeois and Social Democratic parties, the Protective Guard (Schutzkorps), the officer corps, etc.
Characteristic of Finnish chauvinism is the fact that its advocates belong precisely to those circles of the Finnish bourgeoisie which, in the period of Tsarist oppression, were distinguished not by nationalism but by betrayal of the national interests. Precisely those Finnish politicians (the so‐called Suoemetarians) who sold the interests of their people to Tsarism, who, more than any others, kowtowed before the Russian Governors‐General, changed their uniform after the October Revolution, and began to appear in the role of the most ostentatious “ patriots.‐ The costume of extreme Finnish Nationalism was donned by Mannerheim and a number of other Tsarist officers who, though born in Finland, had even forgotten the Finnish language, having served their entire lives in Russia as most loyal servants of Tsarism. After the October Revolution cut short their careers in Russia, they moved to Finland to become Finnish chauvinists.
Clearly a chauvinism born as a result of transformations so rapid is chauvinism of a special kind, Let us examine the origins of this chauvinism,
Finland's wealthy ruling circle is a numerically small clique of bitter oppressors of the workers, a reactionary group that would never have been able to retain power without support from without and an emergency apparatus of violence within the country.
Under the Tsardom the leadership of the Finnish bourgeoisie ruled with the support of the bayonets of Russian Tsarism. Tsarism in its policy of repression of the Finnish people similarly relied on the most reactionary section of the Finnish bourgeoisie. The two maintained mutual collaboration with a view to keeping enslaved the Finnish popular masses. There was, it is true, friction between them, but this concerned only questions of secondary importance. In the matter of suppressing the class‐struggle of the proletariat and popular manifestations in Finland, Tsarism and the Finnish wealthy ruling circles always acted as one. There were actually instances in which wealthy Finns demanded of Tsarism greater repressions against the Finnish popular masses. I remember, for example, the political General Strike of November, 1905. Gn that occasion the reactionary leadership of the bourgeoisie in Helsinki officially implored the Tsarist Governor‐General to send Russian troops to deal with the unarmed Finnish Red Guard. The Tsar's satrap did not then dare to take the step requested, for at that moment the Tsar himself was in great fear of the powerful revolutionary moves of the Russian working class. But in most cases Tsarism generously gave the Finnish wealthy ruling caste all the support it needed in its struggle against the working people of Finland.
When, therefore, Tsarism fell under the impact of the February Revolution in 1917, Finland's reactionary bourgeoisie was gripped by “fear of isolation.” It had no troops at its disposal. The Schutzkorps detachments were few and small at that time, and so hateful to the working people that the reactionary rulers of the country had to organise them in secret. Under the influence of events in Russia, Finland's working class was rapidly becoming imbued with the revolutionary spirit. The Finnish Parliament, the Seim, did not afford a sufficiently reliable political bulwark for reaction. All the bourgeois parties taken together had only half the seats in Parliament, even slightly less at that moment; the Social Democratic group in the Seim, despite the fact that its majority consisted of Right‐wing opportunists, was in such a state as the result of the activities of the Left‐wing deputies and the pressure of revolutionary workers from below that the reactionary bourgeoisie could not rely upon it.
The reliable support it needed, the Finnish wealthy ruling caste decided, it could obtain from the Russian Provisional Government. As early as that period a part of the Finnish Nationalists had already established connections with Germany in search of a new support from without, but until this search produced results, the ruling wealthy clique clung desperately to Kerensky's Provisional Government.
In the light of these facts can be appreciated the significance of the conflict which broke out in the Finnish Seim during the spring and summer of 1917. With Lenin's approval, we, Left workers' deputies, fought for the right of the Finnish people to self‐ determination. The reactionary bourgeois parties stubbornly insisted on the preservation of the traditional suzerainty of the Russian Monarchy over Finland. When we finally succeeded in winning a majority vote in Parliament in favour of a Bill abolishing this traditional suzerainty, the Finnish reactionaries appealed to the Kerensky Government and succeeded in getting the Finnish Parliament dissolved. They were afraid of independence for Finland, they were afraid that with the overlordship of Russia they might lose their own last support.
But Kerensky's Provisional Government fell on November 7, 1917. The people of Finland welcomed the success of the October Revolution as a happy and joyful event. But the reactionary bourgeoisie rc garded it as a frightful calamity. It was quite obvious that the victory of the Socialist Revolution in Russia opened for the Finnish people the possiblity of an independent free existence and a happy voluntary comradesh'p with the Russian people. It is of course well known that the Bolshevik Party has always asserted the right of nations to self‐determination. Immediately after the October Revolution, as representative of the Soviet Government, Peoples' Commissar for National Affairs Stalin, attending the Congress of the Finnish Social Democratic Party in Finland, proclaimed the full freedem of organising their own life for the Finnish as well as all the other peoples of the former Russian State; voluntary and honest union of the Finnish people with the Russian people; no guardianship, no surveillance from above over the Finnish people. Such were guiding principles of the policy of the Council of Peoples' Commissars. Thus there could be no doubt whatever as to the readiness of the Soviet Government to grant Finland the full right of self‐determination. But this, it was only too plain, was the reverse of soothing to the ruling clique of the Finnish bourgeoisie; the latter was afraid of independence for Finland without the outside support necessary to safeguard its reactionary rule.
Accordingly the leaders of the Finnish weaithy ruling caste hastened to appeal to the Government of Imperial Germany, seeking in German imperialism a new master for Finland and the outside support for themselves in the struggle against the working people. Svinhufvud, head of the reactionary Government, sent an ex‐Senator to Germany with the following instructions: “Make arrangements for the Germans to come here or we shall not be able to cope with the situation.”
The German Government readily assumed the role of imperialist guardian of Finland, but nevertheless advised the Finnish rulers to request the Soviet Government to grant Finnish independence. Accordingly, in reply to a request by the Finnish Government, on December 31, 1917, the Soviet Government adopted a decree, signed by Lenin and Stalin, granting full independence to Finland. And in “appreciation” of this magnanimity on the part of the Soviet Government, Finland's ruling clique at once began openly to manifest its hostility towards the Soviet people, joining in the counter‐ revolutionary intrigues of the Russian White Guards against the Soviet power.
It might have been supposed that common sense would have suggested to the gentlemen of independent Finland to refrain from intervention in the affairs of their great neighbour. But this did not happen. Afraid that the power of the Workers' and Peasants' Movement in Finland might rapidly grow under conditions of bourgeois democracy, the Finnish reactionaries regarded the victory of Workers' and Peasants' power in Russia as a “ dangerous example” to the working people of Finland, and hence they regarded it as in their interests to struggle for the restoration of the power of the oppressors in the neighbouring country.
No longer hoping to retain power with the methods of bourgeois democracy, in January, 1918, the reactionary Svinhufvud Government hastily prepared a counter‐revolutionary uprising in the country. In reply to this, the Finnish working class firmly resolved not to surrender without a battle, came out together with the poor peasantry in a revolutionary struggle for power. For three months a Workers' Government held all Southern Finland, and only with the, troops of the German Kaiser did the counter‐revolutionary government succeed at the cost of severe battles in defeating our Red Guard and satiating its lust for blood in an unprecedented mass terror.
As is well known, the Finnish White Guard ruling caste conducted this counter‐revolutionary war against the workers and peasants of Finland under cover of the slogan “ Finland's War of Liberation from Russian Oppression.” But since Russian oppression had been abolished by the October Revolution in the previous year, and at the end of 1917 the Soviet Government had solemnly recognised Finland's independence. Finland obviously had no reason to fight in the following year for its “Liberation from the Russian Yoke.” This completely fictitious slogan directed against the Russian people and the Russian State was necessary to the reactionary rulers of Finland to deceive the Finnish peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie. But at the same time as it served as a demagogic slogan, it also expressed the bellicose hostility of the Finnish White Guards towards the Soviet Government.
For during February and March, Mannerheim openly called upon the Finnish White Guard Army, that he headed, to start a campaign against Petrograd and for the conquest of Soviet Karelia. Two Finnish White Guard expeditions, led by a Captain Utlerius, were actually dispatched to Soviet Karelia in March, 1918, but they were smashed before getting there by Finnish Red Guard detachments with the aid of the local population. For a campaign against Leningrad, Mannerheim was not strong enough; it is true that in autumn the same year Finnish Protective Guard gangs did invade the Leningrad Region via Esthonia, but they were routed there.
Thus already during the first year of the independent existence of the Finnish State, the country's administration emerged as a bitter enemy of the Soviet Union, Its aggressive anti‐Soviet chauvinism was, from the very outset, the expression of a frantic desire, by whatever means, to bring about the elimination of Soviet power from the great neighbouring country.
This insane desire of Finland's ruling clique proceeded from its morbid and panic‐inspired fear lest the example of the Soviet Union encouraged the struggle of the working people of Finland for their liberation from the yoke of the wealthy ruling class. The chauvinism of Finland's rulers base always been, and remains to this day, a manifestation of the anti‐Soviet fury of a counter‐revolutionary gang in mortal fear of its people and constantly concerned with the preservation of its power over the masses of the people oppressed and exploited by it. There lies the primary source of the anti‐Soviet chauvinism of Finland's ruling clique. A terroristic regime in home policy and anti‐Soviet aggression in foreign policy—these are not two policies, but merely two aspects of one and the same policy of the counter‐revolutionary ruling circles.
A second source of the anti‐Soviet policy of Finland's ruling caste lies in its greedy desire to lay its hands on the natural wealth of Soviet Karelia, and above all on the tremendous Soviet Karelian forest land. This tempting wealth, alas, lies on the other side of the border, whence not even a single log may be removed. What therefore was to be done? The ruling circles decided on the fitting out of an …unofficial ” expedition. The Government pretended ignorance of it. Its organisation and finance was undertaken by the big Helsinki banks and the prominent representatives of the timber industry of Eastern Finland constituted into a so‐called Karelian Committee— the unofficial leadership of the expedition. The majority of the Schutz‐ korps was drawn into the expedition, and the armaments included guns supplied from Army stores. The command was undertaken by officers of the Finnish Army with Major von Herzen at their head.
This expedition began in the spring of 1919 and was routed by the end of June in the same year. The following year (October 14, 1920) the Finnish Government signed a Peace Treaty between Finland and the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics, but simultaneously throughout Finland volunteers began to be recruited for a new campaign ‐ against Soviet Karelia. After thorough preparation in November, 1921, numerically strong and well‐armed detachments of the new expedition began their march against Karelia, only to be smashed two or three months later by units of the Red Army. An heroic detach‐ ment of Finnish skiers under Toivo Antikainen, detailed by the Red Army Command to penetrate deep into the enemy rear, smashed up the G.H.Q. of the Finnish Wh.te Guard invaders in the. village of Kimasjaervi in the course of a sweeping surprise raid.
The people of Soviet Karelia did not allow the natural wealth of their country to slip from their hands, Even prior to the predatory campaigns of the Finnish White Guards the Karelo‐Finnish people, who had received under the Soviet system full freedom of economic and cultural development, turned a deaf ear to the nationalist appeals of Finland's rulers, who assumed the role of “Liberators of their Tribal Brethren.” But only in the course of the brigand campaigns did the Karelo‐Finnish people learn the full extent of the rapacious character of their Finnish White Guard self‐styled “Liberators.”
The vulture was forced temporarily to postpone the attempts to carry out its aggressive plans, but it did not abandon the plans themselves.
These are the sources of the anti‐Soviet chauvinism of Finland's rulers. From its very inception it has been in essence a chauvinism of the Fascist variety.
THE hitching of Finland to the war chariot of German imperialism was a lengthy affair, prepared over a number of years by linking Finland with Germany economically and politically.
Ever since the inception of the Finnish State, Finland's rulers boycotted the development of trade with the Soviet Union, although the interests of Finland's national economy clearly demanded extensive trade relations with the U.S.S.R., in the framework of normal good neighbourly relations. The Soviet Union could undoubtedly have purchased at least two‐thirds of Finland's exports and sold to Finland on favourable terms no less than four‐fifths of all the imported goods she required. It is quite obvious that trade relations with the Soviet Union on such a seale could have been of the utmost importance for the development of Finland's national economy. But Finland's wealthy ruling caste did not follow this course, for it would have involved some corresponding benefit to the Soviet Union. Persisting in its anti‐ Soviet position, it prepared to boycott the development of trade in general with the U.S.S.R., and as a result, year in and year out, this trade remained at the insignificant level of no more than 2 to 8 per cent. of Finland's foreign trade total. The earlier econcmiec developments of the Soviet Union was, of course, able to proceed without trade with the Finnish capitalists, but the boycott cost Finland dear.
The Finnish ruling magnates sought compensation for the loss of the Russian market primarily in Germany. With what result? Firstly, the Germans demanded as payment for military aid to the Finnish counter‐revolutionaries Finland's economic and political subordination to Imperialist Germany. In 1918 they agreed to send German troops to serve as executioners in Finland only after an enslaving “Trade and Peace Treaty ” had been signed on behalf of Finland in Berlin. Even a Conservative bourgeois historian such as Schuebergson could not do other than estimate this Treaty as an act of blackmail that “made Finland politically and economically dependent upon Germany.” Only the defeat of German imperialism in the World War half a year later delivered Finland from this enslaving agreement.
Secondly, the search for a market for Finnish exports in Germany in the subsequent period proved futile. Instead of increasing, Finland's exports to Germany declined with the pre‐war period. Instead, Finland was flooded with German commodities, chiefly of types unnecessary for the development of Finland's national economy. For example, in 1929 imports from Germany comprised 38 per cent. of Finland's import total, while her exports to Germany comprised not more than 14 per cent. of her export total. This added to the difficulties in the way of the development of industry in Finland. The machine‐building industry especially suffered from German competition and the total lack of foreign markets for its product. With difficulty Finland found purchasers for timber, paper and cellulose in remote countries, including the U.S.A., but naturally the U.S.A. did not buy Finnish machinery.
Thus Finland in the main became a market for Germany. Matters reached such a ridiculous stage that Finland, in need of grain and not wishing to buy grain from the Soviet Union, purchased from Germany grain that had been exported from the Soviet Union, paying the German middlemen an extra 30 pfennigs per kilogram (510 marks a ton), and, of course, permitted the Finnish merchants to reap abundant profits on top of that at the expense of the Finnish consumers. This was a typical economic expression of the dull‐witted anti‐Soviet bitterness of the Finnish wealthy ruling caste.
The German Fascist movement was widely popularised in Finland, especially among the Schutzkorps members, the students, and the rural bourgeoisie, and soon a special Hitlerite agency, the so‐called “Lappo Movement, ” was organised there. In June, 1930, the Lappo, the Schutzkorps, and the police began joint raids on the Left‐wing Labour Movement under the slogan “ The Destruction of Communism.” The Fascist gangsters smashed newspaper print shops and the premises of workers' organisations, kidnapped hundreds of the most active workers of the Socialist Movement and trade union officials, beat and brutally humiliated them, murdered many of them, and took many others of them to Finland's eastern frontier, expelling them into Soviet territory. The Left deputies in Parliament—the members of the Socialist Workers' and Poor Peasants' Parliamentary Group— were arrested and sentenced to many years' imprisonment. The Fascists succeeded in rounding up many members of the outlawed Communist Party as well; but the majority of their victims were leading members of the legal Labour Movement—Left Socialists, supporters of or workers for the United Front.
In connection with the bandit actions of the Fascists, the Government disbanded all the old trade union organisations of Finland. This, directly, was the principal aim of the ruling reactionary big business circles. Having achieved this in circumstances of nation‐wide Fascist terror, they could immediately effect a drastic cut in wages in all branches of industry. In the majority of branches of industry wages dropped by 30 per cent., and in some by even 60. Hundreds of millions of marks were pocketed by the wealthy Finnish ruling caste, with the aid of Fascist terror, in this way in 1930.
Subsequently, in 1932, the Lappo Fascists tried to seize power. But the “ rebellion” they staged was liquidated by the Government without a single shot being fired. This demonstrated the fact that the Finnish Fascists were strong only when acting on the instructions of the wealthy ruling clique, and that when acting without its sanction they were quite powerless,
After this, the Fascist Lappo group was renamed the I.K.L. Party (“ The Patriotic People's Movement”) and began to participate in Parliamentary elections, at first together with the Coalition Party and later independently. Both within and without the Seim the I.K.L. Party conducted undermining activities directed against all surviving Parliamentary rights and demanding the establishment of total Fascist dictatorship. The I.K.L. Party never concealed its political kinship with German Fascism. Of course, the “ Fifth Column ” of German Fascism in Finland is more widespread than the I.K.L. Party. But the I.K.L. serves as a direct party agency of the Hitlerites in Finland. It not only conducted consistent propaganda for the programmatic principles of German Fascism, it not only imitated the methods of violence practised by the Hitlerites, but also in the field of foreign policy it did its utmost to serve German imperialism in the latter's aim of drawing Finland into the military adventures prepared by Hitler to conquer world dominion for Germany.
It is hardly necessary to explain that the I.K.L. conducted an exceedingly bitter campaign against the Soviet Union. It openly advocated the seizure of U.S.S.R. territory (“ up to the Urals, ” even “up to the Yenisei ”) for a “ Greater Finland.”
Throughout the period 1933‐1939 Finland's ruling circles made use of the Fascist 1.K.L. Party as a political and military battering ram, but refrained from yielding it the reins of government as they did not fully understand its political position. In home policy the wealthy reactionary ruling circles pursued a course of further Fascistiation of the regime, but they no longer needed the drastic change called for by the Fascist adventurers of the I.K.L. In foreign policy, following Hitler's advent to power in Germany, they steered a course of close collaboration with the Hitlerite Government, but did not refuse a similar collaboration with the then governments of Britain and France, for they did not desire to rely on Germany alone as the agents of Hitler, as the I.K.L. Party demanded.
The main party of Finland's wealthy reactionary rulers was the Coalition Party, headed by the thorough‐going reactionaries Svinhufvud, Walden, Linkomies, Paasikivi, and others, who as far back as 1918 had helped the German imperialists to shed the blood of Finland's working people. Despite the fact that the Coalition Party never received extensive support in any election, it invariably played the leading role in Parliament and the Government, using for the purpose the whole network of influential sympathisers that it possessed in other Government parties.
There came a time, however, when the Fascist brigandage, and the obvious desire of President Svinhufvud and his henchmen in the Government (especially the then Premier Kivimaeki, now Finland's envoy in Berlin) to take Finland along the Fascist road, evoked indignation among wide masses of the working people. These masses were in any case dissatisfied with the miserable wages, the tremendous unemployment, and the ruinous policy of the wealthy ruling circles regarding the peasantry. Added to this there was the uneasiness of the people evoked by the bellicose aggressiveness of Fascist Germany in Central Europe and the close relations of Finland's rulers with the Hitlerite imperialists.
Recovering from the Fascist blow it had received in 1930, the underground Communist Party of Finland regained mass influence by its struggle against Fascism and the encroachments of the capitalists. Appealing to the working‐class masses, under the slogan of “The United Proletarian Front, ” to join the Social Democratic trade unions (the only trade unions legally allowed to exist in the country), the Communist Party achieved the transformation of the majority of local trade union branches into organs of economic class struggle, which frequently organised strikes despite the bans of the Social Democratic apparatus. Within the ranks of the Social Democratic Party a Left Wing was formed (Mauri Ryemi and others), which, favouring a United Front of the working class, fought against the reactionary clique of Tanner. Under the slogan, “ The People's United Front against Fascism, ” the Communist Party organised a number of successful campaigns which met with a wide response from the masses, for example, the campaign in defence of political prisoners and against the death sentence.
The anti‐Fascist sentiments among wide masses of the working people resulted in temporary vacillations even in the ranks of such governmental parties as the Agrarian Union and the Progressive Party. At the Presidential elections of 1936 those who supported the re‐election of Svinhufvud as President were left in a munority. This was the only case when even the agents of the Coalition Party in the ranks of the other governmental parties, fearing to lose their mass influence, refused to follow the dictates of the Coalition Party. Another nominee of the wealthy reactionary ruling caste, Kallio, of the Agrarian Union, was elected. As a result of the differences that had arisen on this question the Coalition Party was for the moment no longer able to continue speeding, as it had been doing, along the Fascist road. But the change of President effected by the elections made no difference at all to Finland's war‐mongering foreign policy.
The Communists and other anti‐Fascists repeatedly warned the people of the imperialist aspirations of Fascist Germany and of the danger of war as a result of the machinations behind the scenes on the part of militarists and the I.K.L. Party with the German Fascists, and urged a change in foreign policy in the direction of restoring sincere and friendly relations with the Soviet Union. But this had no effect upon the Government, It was once again confirmed that, regardless of the personal composition of the Government, the bellicose foreign policy of big‐business Finland remained ever the same hostile anti‐Soviet policy.
The Social Democratic henchmen of the wealthy ruling circles represented the matter hypocritically in their statements, as though the Finnish Government's policy differed radically from the open anti‐Soviet policy proclaimed by the I.K.L. They insisted that no one in Finland save a few “ irresponsible persons, ” various individual “crazy adventurers ” entirely devoid of influence, supported a policy of hostility and war against the Soviet Union, and that among “responsible circles” in Finland no one approved such anti‐Soviet hostility or ever thought of anything but peaceful and good neighbourly relations with the land of the Soviets. This was a deliberate lie. The respective policies of both “ responsible ” and “ irresponsible ” circles in Finland towards the Soviet Union were equally hostile and equally aggressive. The oniy difference consisted in the fact that the “‘responsible‐ ones did not shout their desire for an anti‐Soviet war out loud but energetically pursued practical preparations for it instead.
Thus, to this end, the General Staff of the Finnish Army developed intensive activity in close contact with representatives of the German General Staff and other foreign “ specialists." Especially noteworthy were the frequent visits to Helsinki in 1937 of all sorts of emissaries of Hitler Germany, Whenever any Finn publicly expressed apprehensions regarding the unrestricted meddling of German spies in the affairs of the Finnish Army, one Coalition Party newspaper forthrightly countered: “We have no military secrets from the Germans.”
The military preparations of the Finnish General Staff were not confined to strengthening the armaments of the Finnish Army and the development of the country's war industry. For example, ten times more aerodromes were built in Finland than were required for the Finnish Air Force ( and these included forty large aerodromes constructed chiefly along the Soviet Border ). Contrary to the existing international convention for the demilitarisation of the Aaland Islands, construction was secretly begun there in preparation of a base for German submarines and aircraft. Strategic highways and railways leading to the Soviet frontier were built in Eastern Finland. And, above all, hundreds of fortifications of the strongest type were built on the Karelian Isthmus under the guidance of German and other foreign specialists, with design thereby to create a springboard for a sudden attack on Leningrad. In the summer of 1939 the Chief of the German Army General Staff, General Halder, visited Finland to inspect this “ Mannerheim Line.” By the autumn of 1939 Finland, and the Karelian Isthmus primarily, had been converted into a perfect military arena for an attack on the Soviet Union.
In their military plans, Finland's rulers had calculated particularly on an attack by Germany, and not by Germany alone, against the U.S.S.R. They had anticipated a joint anti‐Soviet war carried out by Germany, Poland and a number of other States with the support or even participation of the British and French Governments.
Especially after the Munich deal between Hitler, Chamberlain, and Daladier (in the autumn of 1938) did Finland's rulers believe that exactly that kind of war was on the way, and they made energetic preparations to take part in it. But in the autumn of 1939 matters took a different course. Germany attacked Poland, and war began between Germany on one side and Britain and France on the other.
The situation in which a great European War had thus arisen was pregnant with dangers for the U.S.S.R. as well, and the Soviet Government could not but pay attention to strengthening the security of its European frontiers. Especially unfavourable, of course, in this respect were matters in regard to the security of Leningrad, within a score of miles of which hostile authorities obsessed by anti‐Soviet chauvinism had built a base for an attack by the imperialists on the city of Lenin. In view of this, the Soviet Government proposed to Finland an adjustment of the frontier on the Karelian isthmus with a more than ample territorial compensation at a different place. The Finnish Government, however, disinclined to make any departure from its consistently hostile attitude, rejected this proposal, broke off negotiations, actually set the country on a war footing, and brazenly provoked war.
That Winter War is, of course, still fresh in everyone's mind. Despite the strength of the numerous Finnish ferro‐concrete fortifications in the Karelian Isthmus, units of the Red Army crushed the so‐called “ Mannerheim Line ” in a comparatively brief space of time and dealt a decisive defeat to the Finnish Army. This outcome of the war was not that which Finland's rulers had expected, and it obliged them hastily to ask the Soviet Government for peace. The results of the conflict were the reverse of that which Finland's rulers had so often attempted to achieve by force of arms ‐ instead of the incorporation of Soviet Karelia in White Guard Finland, it resulted in the liberation of Finnish Karelia from the rule of the wealthy Finnish dominating clique and its incorporation in Soviet Karelia, which was thereupon transformed into the Karelo‐Finnish Socialist Soviet Republic.
In some instances a severe lesson of this kind might perhaps have brought an enemy to his senses. But the Finnish Government, it turned out, only became more fixed in its insanity. It assumed an outward guise of loyalty, it professed the intention ever to preserve friendly relations with the Seviet Union. In the Peace Treaty also it solemnly pledged itself to refrain from any attack upon the Soviet Union and to take no part in any coalition hostile to the U.S.S.R. But the ink with which the representatives of the Finnish Government signed this Peace Treaty on March 12, 1940, had hardly had time to dry when it began a behind‐the‐scenes search for some back door of entry into an imperialist coalition for an anti‐Soviet war.
During the 1939‐40 war the Finnish Government had succeeded in paralysing every form of opposition on the part of conscientious workers who regarded the anti‐Soviet war as criminal and hoped for a victory of the Red Army. The Central Committee of the Finnish Communist Party called on the people to rise against their criminal government, and an insurrectionary *” People's Government of Finland“ with a democratic programme of action was set up in Eastern Finland. It is today even more clear than it was then that tremendous calamities would have been spared the Finnish people had they at that time supported the programme of action of our “ People's Government.” But by ruthless terror and deafening chauvinist cries Finland's rulers, together with their Social Democratic assistants, succeeded in nipping the developing anti‐war movement in the country in the bud and isolating its supporters.
But immediately following the end of the war, as soon as the Government terror temporarily even slightly slackened, the hitherto mullled voice of large sections of the working masses was raised in condemnation of the Government of war and against anti‐Soviet chauvinism. The Society for Peace and Friendship with the U.S.5.R. founded in the spring, 1940, developed within the space of two or three months into a huge mass organisation, which by autumn of that year already had 50 to 60,000 members compared with the mere 25,000 counted by the Social Democratic Party, the largest Party in the country. The newspaper issued by the Society, the Kansan Sanomat obtained 27,000 subscribers, compared with the circulation of the central organ of the Social Democratie Party, which within the same period dropped from 25,000 to 9,000. The Society and its paper conducted an active campaign for a sincere policy of peace and the establishment of friendly relations with the Soviet Union. And around the same issue a new split took place within Finnish Social Democracy ; not only the Left Wing, whose leaders had been expelled from the Social Democratic Party even before the war, but also the former Centre deputies of the Party (Vijk Rajsanen and others) began a frank struggle against the Social Chauvinist leadership clique with Minister Tanner at its head
In August and September, 1940, the Finnish Government, having mobilised its entire police force, launched an attack on the Society for Peace and Friendship with the U.S.S.R.,smashed its organisations and restored throughout the country the savage war‐time terror. The wealthy ruling caste felt that it had once again found support outside the country and so at once it showed its teeth again at the mass movement of opposition. This backing, moreover, was once again found in German imperialism. During the winter war of Finland against the U.S.S.R., Fascist‐Germany's hands had been tied, and she did not risk interference.But as soon as Hitler had succeeded in smashing France in the summer of 1940, he joined at once in a plot with Finland's rulers. As subsequently revealed, this was a plot for military attack on the U.S.S.R.
As far back as autumn, 1940, the shipment of German troops to Finland began, and in the months that followed a number of German divisions complete with tanks, aircraft, artillery and other arms concentrated on Finnish territory. At the same time, in the winter of 1940-41, the recruitment began in Finland of “reliable” cut-throats for dispatch to Germany and formation there into so-called “ Finnish battalions” for inclusion in the ranks of the German Army in the latter's offensive against the U.S.S.R. It is now known that the Finnish Government, deeming it necessary for diplomatic reasons at the time to organise the recruitment and dispatch of these persons in strict secrecy, set up a special body in Helsinki with a signboard on its office “ Ratas Engineering Agency.”Through this agency more than 10,000 Schutzkorps members or similar individuals were recruited in different parts of Finland and sent to Germany during spring 1941. (During the war the Red Army encountered and defeated part of the Schutzkorps battations on the Central Front and part in the Caucasus.)
All these preparations for a joint war by Germany and Finland against the U.S.S.R. were taking place at a time when the German and Finnish Governments were publicly making assurance of their absolute fidelity to the agreements each had concluded with the Soviet Union. Both in the event revealed themselves as equally treacherous. But in hypocritical double-dealing the Finnish accomplices of Hitler before long broke even the records set up by the Fuhrer himself. When these secret war preparations were followed by the joint attack on the U.S.S.R., Hitler on launching the offensive (June 22, 1941) especially emphasised that the operations were conducted jointly with the Finnish Army.The Finnish Government, which most plainly refrained from denying Hitler's statement, but pretended that it had not heard it, began to assert that Finland had not attacked the U.S.S.R. but, on the contrary, the U.S.S.R., had attacked Finland. Since this lie is being circulated by the Finnish Government to this day, it is in place to recall here the following generally known facts :
In the first place, long prior to Germany's attack on the Soviet ‐ Union, the Finnish rulers carried out a general mobilisation of all reservists up to the age of 42, and a mobilisation of motor transport, horses, etc., dispatching numerous troops eastward to the Soviet border.
Secondly, several days prior to the war against the U.S.S.R., the Finnish Government carried out mass arrests throughout the country of all friends of the Soviet Union and active figures in the Labour Movement known to the police as opponents of an anti‐Soviet war.
Thirdly, on June 17, 18 and 19, German ships arrived from Germany and hastily unloaded war supplies, including artillery, in Helsinki,
Fourthly, as early as June 20 and 21, German troops hitherto stationed in Finland at a certain distance from the Soviet border were brought up nearer to the frontier ready for the attack on the Soviet Union.
Fifthly, during the night of June 21 and 22, German military authorities and the Finnish police, together raided the Soviet Consulate in Petsamo, looted it and took its personnel to Kirkenes.
Sixthly, that same night an attempt was made by a large group of planes to raid Kronstadt from Finnish territory. On June 23 planes taking off from Finnish territory again attempted to bomb Kronstadt, one plane was shot down and four German officers on board taken prisoner. At once thereafter German and Finnish infantry units launched an offensive at a number of points on the Finnish frontier, embarking upon an invasion of the U.S.S.R.
All these indisputable facts completely expose the falsehoods of the Finnish Government when it endeavours to cover up the vile crime it perpetrated in attacking the U.S.S.R. together with the Fascists.
In his speech of November 19, 1941, Hitler, boastfully enumerating the measures he had taken in advance to transform the countries bordering the U.S.S.R. into armed jumping‐off grounds for his attack on the Soviet Union, again repeated that Finland had declared its readiness to come out on the side of Germany prior to June 22. Listening to this declaration by Hitler, the Finnish Government once again became deaf, admitting by its eloquent silence the fact that during the second half of 1940 and the first half of 1941 it had completely lined up with German Fascism as a subordinate but energetic associate in its imperialist war gamble.
This implied a complete switch of Finland's foreign policy to the position of the home‐grown Fascists the “ Quislings” of the I.K.L, Party. During the earlier period (1933‐39) as we have seen those who pressed for Finland to orientate itself only on Germany and subordinate itself entirely to Hitler's will had been only the direct agents of German Fascism then called “irresponsibles” and “crazy adventurers.” But now it was the “ responsible” Government of Finland which having vainly tried to embark on two boats simultaneously, the German and the Anglo-French, plunged headlong into Hitler's pirate ship; prostrated itself before him and sold the independence of its country.
This gambler's leap was made during Hitler's war for world domination. This means that Finland's rulers must have been perfectly aware that, in hitching their country to Hitler's war chariot, they were thereby involving Finland in a clash not only with the Soviet Union but with all freedom‐loving countries; including Britain and the U.S.A.
The adventurist nature of such a leap was obvious. Yet upon this adventure they embarked. Plunging. into war by the side of Hitler the Finnish White Guard blackguards dreamed not only of territorial conquests, they dreamed also of the “ destruction of Bolshevism ,” the destruction of the Soviet State, no more and no less. In telling this to the Swedes they explained it as motivated by desire for the “security of Finland, ” that is, the security of their reactionary power in Finland. The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter wrote about it as follows; “The principle thesis of Finland” (i.e. of her ruling clique) “ is well known; Finland, it is claimed, cannot solve the problem of her 'security ' unless the Soviet Union suffers catastrophe.”
This “main thesis ” of Finland's rulers recalls at once to mind the imbecility of those German Fascists whom Stalin, in his report on the Constitution of the U.S.S.R., compared to the obstinate bureaucrat depicted by Shchedrin who decided to “ Shut America up again.” Only the obstinate Finnish rulers are still more afraid of the “dangerous example ” constituted by the existence of a State whose people are free, and hence they went to war to “Shut the Soviet Union up again.” They imagined and believed that tomorrow or the day after the Soviet Union might be “shut up” or, as the Finnish newspaper Uajala screamed at the start of the war: “the Soviet Union will be crushed and annihilated.”
Thus the leadership of the Finnish State was plunged into Hitler's gamble by the same motive that characterised its anti‐Soviet chauvinism from the very beginning ; lust for conquest, hatred of the people, and the counter‐revolutionary fury of its ruling clique.
THE fact that there are considerable numbers of German troops stationed in Finland is in itself sufficient evidence that the Germans are today masters of the country. Is there then no difference between the Fascist position of Finland and that of the countries occupied by Hitler Germany ? The answer to this question must be that there is a difference, though not a very vital one.
Like the German‐occupied countries, Finland has been deprived of her independence. But she is not only in a position of subjection to Germany, she is also subservient to her. Finland is a vassal of Hitler Germany, aiding her—above all, by fighting and acting as her confederate in pursuit of interests which are those of Hitler Germany though of no advantage to the Finnish people.
For the part now being played by the rulers of Finland is a new role, a development of the old. Finland's rulers are now no more than the flunkeys of the German masters of Finland. The Finnish people are being starved no less than the people of the occupied countries. Germany has plundered Finland no less thoroughly than she has the occupied countries, but all this has been accomplished through the agency of the Finnish authorities.
The working people of Finland are being brutally exploited and oppressed in the interests of the German imperialists. Thousands of Finns are being arrested, tortured and killed at the German bidding. But all this is being carried out directly by the Finnish authorities.
And these instruments of the German oppression of Finland are not newcomers, upstarts only now invested with powers for the purpose like the German‐appointed gendarmes in Norway, Holland, and Belgium. No, in Finland the function of Quisling has been undertaken by the old rulers, the clique that has ruled the country continuously for a quarter of a century or more.
Having sold Finland to Hitler Germany and assumed the function of flunkeys to Hitler, the Finnish rulers at once singled themselves out from all his agents in the various countries by an unparalleled, unsurpassable hypocrisy. They do not tell their people, as Quisling does in Norway, for example, that they must submit to the will of the Germans, although to no less a degree than Quisling they force the people to obey their German masters. They keep reiterating, as ever, that Finland is an entirely “independent nation, ‐ and they represent themselves as some sort of “ patriots, ” claiming to be “ championing ” Finland's independence. In general they pretend to notice no encroachments whatsoever on Finland's independence by Germany. When the Germans plunder Finland, extorting material without the least ceremony, the Finnish rulers call this “economic collaboration” between Finland and Germany, and the Finnish President expresses to Germany his “appreciation of Germany's aid.”
When the Germans require Finland to join the so‐called “anti- Comintern bloc, ” or demand Gestapo control over the functioning of the Finnish Secret Service, or when Berlin simply decides on the suitability of one or other Finnish gentleman for the post of Finnish Prime Minister, then from Helsinki comes ever one and the same servile reply: “ Yes, sir.” This is called “ political collaboration.”
And when Hitler insists on more and more consignments of cannon fodder, then the flunkeys of the Government of Finland beat their breasts and proclaim that in this matter they are first among all Germany's vassals, in other words, that in proportion to the population they have now sent more man‐power to the war than any other vassal country. This is called “ military collaboration” with Germany.
In actual fact, the German masters have among all their flunkeys none more obsequious than the rulers of Finland.
Finland is not the only country which has a military alliance with Hitler Germany. What is characteristic is that the Finnish Government is the only ally of Hitler which attempts to deny and “ explain ” its military and political alliance with Hitler. It is true that not everywhere or always do the Finnish rulers deny that they are fighting together with Hitler Germany or for an identical war aim. When Hitler visited Finland in the summer of 1942, for example, and on a number of other occasions, the Finnish rulers made open parade of assurances of loyalty to Hitler Germany in prosecution of the common war. Cabinet Minister Tanner, in the course of his war‐time visits to Berlin and Vienna, solemnly proclaimed that: “ Finland would wage together with Germany and other friendly Powers ” (i.e., Italy, Hungary, and Rumania) “ the war for European culture ” (i.e., Hitler's New Order in Europe) “until victory is won.” But no sooner had Tanner returned to Finland than, in obedience to a diplomatic prompting, he switched the tune to “Finland is not fighting on either side in this war of the Great Powers.”
Thus for the Finnish rulers the “ truth” appears to vary according to the locality where their speeches happen to be made. It also appears to depend upon the situation at the fronts. When the German forces are advancing, every Finnish Government spokesman clamours about “the war to a victorious finish by Germany's side.” When, on the contrary, the German forces are retreating and suffering defeats, then some Cabinet Minister, or even the Finnish President himself, comes out with an explanation that, “ while in a certain sense Finland is, it is true, a belligerent nation, yet, more strictly speaking, Finland is actually all but neutral... .”
This hypocrisy is one of the basic laws governing the conduct of the present rulers of Finland. They have not the slightest intention of breaking their guilty connections with Hitler Germany—but they are anxious to disguise them, Why? Is it because they are ashamed ? Are they worried by traces of a twinge of conscience ? No, they are not actuated by ethical considerations ; their consciences do not function. The explanation is: quite different. They are afraid that things may not turn out as they expected. They are afraid that their alliance with Hitler may result: in their complete isolation, in both home and foreign policy.
Inside Finland no one disputes the existence of the German alliance. No one in Finland takes seriously the official diplomatic versions that there is no such thing as a military alliance with Fascist Germany. The people have eyes and they see. They realise that, in the view of all civilised countries; the alliance with Hitler disgraces Finland, and that it endangers and prejudices Finland's future.
There is no doubt at all that the Finnish people would like to shake off the hold of Fascist Germany. The Finnish rulers, knowing this, try to persuade them that “ military considerations ” require that Finland engage at least in a temporary collaboration with Hitler Germany. “For us, ” they claim with characteristic distortion, “ the present war is a sequel to the Winter War of 1940. At that time Finland could not cope with the task confronting her because she was obliged to fight with only her own forces. Today things are different. Today we are being helped by Germany with all her military strength. How could we dare refuse such vital and necessary aid. It is not we who are helping Germany, but Germany that is helping Finland.” This is the kind of demagogy with which they try to dupe the Finnish people, representing the situation not as though Finland were in the clutches of the German imperialists and furnishing cannon fodder to Hitler but as though, on the contrary, Hitler's bandits had come north like so many knights‐errant hastening to shed their blood to rescue Finland, the damsel in distress, from fearful peril.
Internationally also Finland's rulers fear that they may find themselves completely isolated. The peoples of all the German‐ occupied countries turn away in disgust from Hitler's Finnish accomplices. Britain has declared war on Finland. In Sweden public opinion is beginning to turn against the war of conquest being waged both by Germany and her Finnish confederate. In the U.S.A., the Government has closed all the Finnish consulates and cut short the subversive activities of the Finnish “ Information Bureau” in New York.
It is because of these unmistakable signs of increasing isolation that the Finnish Government cannot afford openly and without equivocation to admit that Finland has been harnessed by it to the war chariot of German. imperialism and is fighting for Hitler's dictatorship in Europe. The line of reasoning followed by the Finnish Cabinet is that, since no one can tell how the war will end, it would be taking an unnecessary risk to provoke public opinion in the democratic countries by frank avowal of the alliance with Hitler, particularly with that public opinion hostile to them as it now is.
The wealthy Finnish ruling circles still have friends and patrons among the most reactionary circles of the bourgeois democratic countries. The Finnish Government also has paid agents in these countries with the job of influencing local public opinion. And the apologists of both these sorts are severely handicapped in their efforts by the fact that Finland's complicity in Hitler's predatory war is plain to all, and almost as generally abhorred. It is to help these agents that the Finnish Government declares that it is “ not fighting on either side in this war of the Great Powers.” But murder will out, and so will the roar of cannon. And since the newspapers of the democratic countries have nothing but derision for the broad claim that Finland is “ not participating in Hitler's war, ” the rulers of Finland have had to cast about for some way of making their alibi more plausible.
Hence, a new explanation of their position is now being circulated by their agents in the bourgeois democratic countries. “We are not fighting for Hitler's New Order in Europe, ” this version runs, “Finland is not a German vassal as Rumania and Hungary are, as Italy was. This war we are fighting is a private war of our own against the U.S.S.R. Germany's entirely separate war against the U.S.S.R. began at the same time, and this pure coincidence is what has led, don't you see, to our temporary and coincidental collaboration with Hitler Germany.”
This subterfuge, of course, is not believed abroad any more than its eruder predecessors. But the Finnish Government hopes that some more gullible foreigners, even though not crediting such explanations, may accept them at some future date as a sign of Finland's “good will” and readiness to repudiate its conspiracy with the Germans.
In Finland itself, of course, every child understands that all this talk about a “ private war of our own” is only intended to throw dust in the eyes of the simpletons abroad. And some of Hitler's Finnish stooges, abandoning all diplomatic scruples, quite cheerfully declare outright, as, for example, the Ajan Suunta recently, that “ Any separate Finnish war is out of the question.” While Hitler himself, who obtains no advantage from the diplomatic sophistry so clung to by the Finnish rulers, has time and again spiked their guns by declaring that, long before Germany's attack on the U.S.S.R., the Finnish Government had pledged itself to take the field on his side. Yet even in the face of these repeated statements, the Finnish Government's agents and apologists in the democratic countries keep right on insisting that Finland is fighting on no side but her own and that, if she be at the moment fighting by the side of Germany, this is purely coincidental and quite temporary.
The U.S. State Department called the bluff of the Helsinki gentry by proposing in October, 1941, that the Finnish Government cease pursuing hostilities against the U.S.S.R., and thus prove its desire to discontinue a foreign policy which, as the U.S. Government made clear in its memorandum, must inevitably entail complete subjection of Finland to Hitler Germany. The Finnish Government at first endeavoured to evade making an answer, but later was obliged to admit—indirectly—that its connection with Hitler and his war was, after all, by no means accidental or temporary.
As time has gone on the Finnish Government has exposed itself more and more palpably in the eyes of the American public. This is evident from numerous instances, including not only editorial comment in the American Press but also statements made by influential U.S. public figures.
For example, when it became known in the U.S.A. that the Finnish Government was employing the slave labour of Poles recruited by the Hitlerites, the American paper P.M. wrote that this voluntary participation of Finland in Hitler's enslavement of the European peoples exposed Helsinki's denial of a union between Finland ahd the Fascist axis as nothing but a swindle. Finland was shown up in the guise of a hypocrite, not only a participant in Hitler's blood thirsty war but a receiver of stolen goods. While yet at the same time, as the paper noted, unscrupulously assuring the world that it slipped into its present company only accidentally and against its will' P.M. called openly on the Finnish people to overthrow their pro‐Fascist Government and replace it by a government prepared to secure them peace.
Thus, we see, the swindlers in power in Finland are finding it difficult any longer to deceive the American public. In Sweden they are now finding their job nearly as hard, Lately many Swedes who supported Finland's anti‐Soviet war policy up to only a couple of years ago have changed their view. Even such a public figure as Professor Andreas Lindblom, who during the war of 1939‐40 headed the notorious Finnish Relief Committee, has recently frankly condemned the war of conquest being waged by Finland against the U.S.S.R., and, yet more, has acknowledged that the Finnish Government was also in the wrong during the earlier conflict, the Winter War against the U.S.S.R.
All this goes to show how hard it is becoming for the swindlers of Finland to lead public opinion up the garden these days.
IN Finland, the German Fascists did not need to stamp out democracy themselves, as they had to in so many occupied countries. The Finnish Government saw to it for them. The main part of the job of depriving the Finnish people of all democratic rights had been effected long before the war, particularly during the years of the White Terror in 1918‐1930 and during the winter of 1939‐1940.
Actually, throughout the last quarter of a century, Finland has had no system of democracy comparable even to the conservative order existing in, for example, Sweden, Britain or America. Apologists for the Finnish Government may object that Finland has a Parliament. It is true that Finland has an institution that goes by the name of Parliament (the Seim). But, in the first place, this Parliament is maintained by the domination of the Schutzkorps.
Secondly, anyone who campaigns for a candidate other than those of the six Government parties—which include the Hitlerite I.K.L. Party—anyone who collects signatures for the nomination of any other candidate, or who even gives his own signature for the purpose, is liable to arrest.
Thirdly, it is only on paper that a member of the Finnish Parliament enjoys the right to his own opinion and immunity from arrest. In actual fact, every opposition member elected to the Finnish Parliament during the past quarter of a century—excepting, of course, only the Fascists—has subsequently been arrested and imprisoned. Two members of the Constitutional Committee of Parliament were kidnapped by the Fascist thugs at a meeting of the Committee. When the crime was dealt with, it was the kidnapped members, not the kidnappers, who were confined in prison.
And lastly, this so‐called Parliament is not permitted to decide the major issues facing the country, such as, in particular, those of war and peace. It was only from Hitler's speech of June 22, 1941, that the members of the Finnish Parliament: learned that Finland was to take part in the present war. And when Finland joined the “ anti‐Comintern bloc” in the autumn of 1941, Parliament learned of it only after the pact had been signed in Berlin.
Legislation involving new taxation is still submitted by the Government to Parliament for endorsement, but even in this matter the functions of Parliament have been so completely reduced to a formality that many members—as indicated by complaints on the subject in the Finnish Press—refuse to attend the sessions. Thus, the Finnish Parliament has almost attained the condition to which the German Reichstag has been reduced under Hitler, which circumstance scarcely entitles it to be called a Parliamentary move.
The last vestiges of civil liberty, freedom of the Press, freedom of association and right of assembly have been stamped out in Finland, and today this applies not only to the labouring population but to the ranks of the bourgeoisie as well. A tyrannical terror reigns in the country.
Details very rarely emerge from the torture chambers of the Finnish prisons: According to official statistics the number of prisoners in 1942 was 40 per cents above “normal.” Yet the officially announced number of prisoners in 1941 was 17, 300, while in normal years it had been approximately 6, 000. The proportion of political prisoners is not specified. In March this year, a Stockholm newspaper wrote that many things happen in Finland of which the Finnish general public is not aware. Persons have been left under “preventive arrest” as penalty for their Socialist convictions for over 21⁄2 years, and are still held. If they were tried at all, this took place in camera. The death penalty, abolished a hundred years ago, has been reintroduced for political as well as criminal offences. The fact was published that a Communist M.P. was executed a year ago. Other such cases are known, but the Press neither desires nor would be allowed to speak of them.
The treatment of political prisoners in the prisons is brutal in the extreme, for the jailers are their political opponents. Arns Pekurinen, a famous Finnish Pacifist, was secretly removed from the prison in which he had been confined since the start of the Winter War of 1939‐40, and soon after his wife was notified that he had been “ killed at the front.” Swedish newspapers have described the starvation conditions under which Finnish political prisoners are confined. Many have died of under‐nourishment. The survivors are terribly emaciated, but none the less obliged to do heavy labours. Many are so hungry that they seize opportunities to eat discarded garbage.
Finnish jailers and police have in the past been notorious for their barbarous treatment of political prisoners, but since the Gestapo took over the supervision of police and prison administration in Finland, the tortures to which political prisoners are subjected have become still more diabolical. Information in my possession, for example, shows that one political prisoner confined in Rikinjaki prison was so viciously manhandled as to be unconscious for two days. Another political prisoner was shot through the head ; the jailers “explained ” this was an “ accident.” According to statements published in the Swedish Press, Dr. Naori Vuemier, prominent Finnish Socialist leader, has been subjected to such ill‐treatment and tortures in prison that last year he attempted to commit suicide. In 1940 Dr. Vuemier was Chairman of the Society for Peace and Friendship between Finland and the U.S.S.R. For this he was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. Now, apparently, characteristic Fascist methods are being used in the attempt to get rid of him for good.
About three hundred leading members of the Society for Peace and Friendship with the U.S.S.R., confined in the Kadyulia Concentration Camp when the war started, were thereupon removed and taken to the front, “ to dance in the minefields, ” as the Fascist officers in charge of their escorts took great delight in telling them. Twenty‐five of the more prominent Labour and Trade Union leaders amongst them were singled out on the way, led off, and killed by the roadside. Some of those who actually reached the front succeeded in coming to the Soviet lines. The fate of the rest is unknown.
Such is the barbarous face of present‐day “ democracy ” in Finland. If we gaze not upon the mask, but at what that mask conceals, we can readily perceive that such a brand of democracy is found neither unsafe nor incongruous by the German Fascists.
In general, as we know, the German Fascists proclaim the principle of the abolition of democracy and of its replacement everywhere by their authoritarian and terrorist reg'me. But the German Fascists, naturally, raise no objection to the brand of democracy that obtains in Finland. The Berliner Boersenzeitung, a leading publication of the Hitlerite State, made exactly this point recently, when it wrote “The example of Finland shows that there can exist quite practically community of fortune between leading authoritarian States and small democratic countries.” The Fascists are in no wise disconcerted by the fact that Finland, their sister‐in‐arms, is a land of “ genuine democracy.”
In what particular this “ genuine democracy” after the Finnish model differs in substance from a Fascist regime, no one ean specify. For it differs not in substance, but in outward appearance only. The sole difference is that the wealthy Finnish reactionary rulers still endeavour to cover the nakedness of this terrorist dictatorship with tag‐ends of old democratic draperies. Should the war end successfully for them, of course, they would be able to shed even these wretched rags, which include “ Parliament ” and the “ Finnish Social Democratic Party.” But this they can only do if Fascist Germany emerges the victor in the war, and since this prospect no longer exists, the ragged tag‐ends will be mobilised to play their part if the designs of the wealthy Fascist ruling caste do not miscarry.
As regards the Finnish Social Democratic leaders their political position is adequately characterised by their participation in the Finnish Fascist organisation “ The Union of Brothers‐in‐Arms, ” as well as by the formal pact executed between the Social Democratic Party and the Schutzkorps.
There are two features particularly characteristic of the Social Democratie leaders of Finland. one is their political duplicity. On any question you care to examine you will find that between their works and their deeds there lies a yawning gulf.
These men co‐operated with the Fascists, the Schutzkorps, the police and the Secret Service in brutally strangling the, last vestiges of independence of the Finnish working class. But in their May Day 1942 manifesto they declared : “ The working class desires to champion independence, liberty and democratic social order.”
These men shared in selling to Hitler the independence, liberty and democratic rights of the Finnish people. In the manifesto they state: “ We cannot allow these possessions of such vital importance to our people to be bought or sold.”
These men—Tanner and his associates—shared in throwing into prison even those deputies of their own Party who did not choose to join with them in their intrigues for the abolition of democracy in Finland. And in the same manifesto they have the effrontery to proclaim; “ An end must be put to intrigues against the democratic way of Government.”
These are only brief examples of this unparalleled duplicity.
The other particulars characteristic, in respect to which, again, they have broken all records, is their servility towards Fascists in general and Hitler in particular.
If they were not masters of this art, the Social Democratic leaders would not be occupying ministerial positions in the Finnish Cabinet conducting the present war. That is obvious and incontrovertible. It is not, after all, accidental, that the Finnish Social Democratic Party is the only Social Democratic Party in the world that participates in a government of Hitler's gendarmes, openly supports Hitler's war of conquest, and hence works to secure the victory of the sworn enemy of the liberty of all nations.
This circumstance is sufficiently indicative, not only of the quality of the Finnish Social Democratic Party at the present stage in its history, but of the festering ulcer into which “ Finnish democracy ” in general has now developed. For the Hitlerised Social Democratic Party in Finland is part and parcel of the Hitlerised “democracy ” that now prevails there.
ALL the war plans of the Finnish rulers were based on the illusions of an anticipated victory of Hitler Germany over the peoples of the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, and other freedom‐loving countries. In the course of the war, however, these illusions have been shattered one after the other.
In August and September, 1941, the hopes of the Finnish ruling circles soared.The Helsinken Sanomat, a Government organ, wrote : “The last remnants of the Soviet forces are now threatened with encirclemente and annihilation.” Another Government organ, the Uusi Suomi declared : “One thing is certain, that the war will end before the onset of winter, ” and the chief commentator of the Finnish radio stated (September, 1941); “ The final score with the Russians will be settled in the immediate future.“
But in December, 1941, after the first powerful counter‐blows of the Red Army, the tone of the Helsinki spokesmen became for a time decidedly more subdued. Even Mannerheim had no better consolation to offer his troops than “ If we hold out until spring we shall win through.”
In the spring and summer of 1942 a new wave of illusions engulfed Helsinki, this time concerning the anticipated irresistibility of the Germans on the southern front. Every report of a temporary success by the German Army emanating from Berlin acquired an added boastfulness in the course of its journey through the ether to Helsinki and was splashed in big type in the Finnish Press. According to these newspapers by September Stalingrad had already been finally captured by the Germans, the Soviet Union had already been deprived of the Caucasus oil, and so forth. “As far as human reason can judge, ” wrote the military correspondent of the Helsinken Sanomat on September 15, 1942, “the last hour of the Bolsheviks has already struck.” Blinded by the boastings of the Germans and their own illusions, Hitler's Helsinki flunkeys forgot all they knew of the striking force of the Red Army, the power of which they had learned previously, in the course of the winter battles of 1940.
It may well be imagined that when the bubble of these ill‐founded illusions suddenly burst several weeks later, the effect was:more than stunning. In the phrase of one observer, when the Red Army took the offensive in the Stalingrad area, it was as though all the main government buildings in Helsinki had been shaken by an earthquake, The usual truculent barking of President Ryti over the Finnish radio changed all at once to a pusillanimous whine: “Today Finland is living through a period of hardship and suffering. But we had no other choice. The logic of fate governs the course of events.” And again: “Surprises in the further course of the war are not excluded. The tremendous events now taking place will affect Finland also. The fortunes of war may betray us.” It took Mr, Ryti a whole month to get over his fright and even then he did not recover entirely.
The Government, alarmed at Finland's growing isolation in. the foreign political arena, set about dispatching one Finnish Cabinet Minister after another to Sweden to deny, in interviews and speeches, the “ Greater Finland” plans of the Government.
At the same time the Finnish Press started a discussion on the question of the possibility of Finland withdrawing from the war. It at once became clear, however, that this was merely an attempt to hoodwink the Finnish people and foreign observers, and that there was not the slightest sincere intention of putting an end to Finland's participation in Hitler's war of conquest. The idea of the rulers of Finland was simply to wave the white flag a little, in order to stave off the people's growing discontent with the war and to furnish their apologists in Britain and the U.S.A. with something to make use of, in the case of Germany's defeat, to diminish the blame resting on the Finnish Government for its collaboration in Hitler's war.
How far the Finnish rulers were ready to go in their collaboration in Hitler's bloody shambles may be judged from the following circumstance : In the spring of 1943 the pitiable remnants of the Finnish battalions routed in the North Caucasus while fighting there in collaboration with the German Army got back to Finland. Out of more than 10, 000 picked butchers of the Finnish S.S.—only 800 returned, and these were probably first‐class long‐distance runners. They were accorded a triumphant welcome at Tampere. But it turned out that the so‐called heroes were themselves fed up with war, or at least with the war on the eastern front, They were urged to go back to Germany when their leave was finished. But this most of them refused to be persuaded to do. Meanwhile Hitler, as the Swedish Press reported, was imperatively demanding that the Finnish Government replace ‘the Finnish battalions which had disappeared from the southern front, that it furnish the same quantity of cannon‐fodder as before. Did the Finnish Government refuse ? Certainly not. It was decided on a new draft of volunteers for the Berlin butchers' mincing machine—and was ready, if the volunteers could not be found in Finland, to dispatch the necessary number of Finnish heads by force, in chains if need be, to the German slaughter‐house.
The most recent reorganisation of the Finnish Government is an event more patent proof of the absence of any intention on the part of Finland's rulers to change their course in the Fascist war.
Rangell's place as Premier was taken by Linkomies, the head of the Coalition Party. Even among the other political bosses of the Finnish wealth ruling caste, Linkomies has always been outstanding as an extreme chauvinist and particularly rabid reactionary. He invariably protected the toughs of the Lappo which gave rise to the I.K.L. Party, and behind the scenes directed their deeds of violence along the lines desired by the wealthy ruling caste. He has always been one of Hitler's most trusted Finnish cronies and is one of those most responsible for instigating Finland's part in the war. The change in Prime Minister thus simply meant that a small Fascist has been replaced by a big Fascist. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Witting, the German agent, who had too obviously compromised himself as such, was replaced by Ramsay, the craftier diplomat of the two. ‘The job assigned to him is to continue the same game but open up his cards less. The Ministry of Internal Affairs was handed to the arch‐ reactionary Ehnrovth, for a long time Secretary of the Finnish Employers' Association and subsequently active plotter of anti‐Soviet intrigues at the League of Nations. Walden, paper king of Finland, was retained as War Minister, and Tanner, who also enjoys Hitler's unchanging confidence, was left as Finance Minister
It is hardly necessary to say that Berlin was pleased with this kind of reorganisation of the Finnish Government, and the rulers of Finland, Hitler's flunkeys, who in December and January had been frightened and crestfallen, once more began to crow. But this time it was with a lessened bravado, for now it was without confidence in victory. All their efforts are now directed towards trying to relieve themselves of the responsibilities for their crimes, preserve power in their own hands, and keep some part at least of the Soviet territory they have seized. To this end they continue to fight as an auxiliary of Hitler Germany, while at the same time making every possible effort to deceive public opinion in the U.S.A., Great Britain, and Sweden.
There appear to be internal dissensions in Finland between the two largest Government parties: the Agrarian Alliance, which incites against the workers, and the Social Democratic Party, which incites against the peasants. This much is at least clear: both the one and the other dissentient desire to divert the growing dissatisfaction of the masses from its most dangerous objective, that is, from becoming directed against the wealthy ruling circles and their Government.
Not only is unity among the people beyond the power of the present Government to achieve but, as we have illustrated, the groups comprising the Government are obliged to destroy whatever national unity there is, for it is bound to become directed against the Government. It is precisely the unity of the people that they fear.
The adherents of the Finnish Government exemplify also more serious differences of opinion than the above. Regarding these differences of opinion the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter wrote: “ Everyone who knows the situation in Finland will agree that the relations between the adherents of the programme calling for the conquest of Greater Karelia and those who favour a prudent defensive are strained, and may easily become more strained.” This Swedish paper in speaking of the adherents of the so‐called “prudent ” defensive appears to be thinking primarily of certain circles of the Finnish‐Swedish Party, who are constantly being intimidated by the threats of the Hitlerite L.K.L. Party. On November 29, 1942, for example, the Ajan Suunta wrote: “The Swedish—Jewish Press issues the orders, and the Finnish Swedes at once obey. It may be taken for granted that they are collaborating with certain outside interests in matters relating to the present war and with the design of weakening Russia's enemy, Finland, by means of the help of those outside interests.” This is the sort of insolence with which Hitler's Finnish agents are accustomed to browbeat the Swedish opposition into silence.
In addition to the Swedes there are persons among the Government parties who understand clearly enough the dangerous and adventurist nature of the Government's course in continuing the Fascist war but do : nothing to deflect that course. Political cowardice characterises the entire “ opposition ” in the camp of the Government parties. When, for example, in February, 1943, the powers of the President expired, only twenty ‐ three of the electors objected to the re ‐ election of Ryti, the Hitlerite lackey, and even then they did not dare vote against bis re ‐ election but merely abstained . This so ‐ called “ opposition ” is afraid of its own shadow. True, it is afraid of the consequences of the military adventure undertaken by the Ryti ‐ Linkomies ‐ Mannerheim clique. But it is even more afraid of attempts to hinder these Hitler agents in the pursuit of their adventure , for what it fears most of all is the breakdown of the internal front , that is , its own united front with the ruling clique . This “ opposition ” does not even dream of seeking the support of the popular masses so as to launch a serious struggle against the criminal policy of the Government , for it itself fears the people and therefore shuns any step that could possibly encourage the growth of the existing dissatisfaction among the Finnish people and also their activity.
In May, 1943, the Social Democratic trade union leaders came out similarly with a special “ loyal opposition ” platform of their own. But that is no genuine opposition. It is merely a swindle. Concern at the growing indignation of the working masses against the war and the Hitlerite policy of the Government obliges the trade union leadership to resort to verbal repudiation of this policy in an endeavour to cover up its actual collaboration with the authorities in carrying out this policy. It acted in this matter completely on the instructions of the Government, particularly of Tanner, who had sold out completely to Hitler and the wealthy Finnish Fascist clique or as a certain Swedish paper put it more politely, “ who has devoted himself to the cause of the war policy and its camouflaging.”
The internal demoralisation of the Finnish ruling clique is bound to grow. But at the same time it is plain that Fascist rule in Finland will not collapse as a result of its own internal discord or the economic difficulties confronting it. It is rotten and decomposing but it will not collapse unless it is overthrown. It is only by decisive struggle that the Finnish people can save themselves from the plague of Hitlerism.
For two years and more now Finland has been fighting as the auxiliary of Fascist Germany, fighting for the establishment of Hitlerite tyranny over the peoples of Europe. In the course of these two years the relationship of forces between the belligerent sides has changed to such an extent that today the inevitability of the ultimate collapse of the robber war of the Hitlerites and their associates is already plain. The heroism of the Red Army and the strategie genius of its Supreme Command have foiled the predatory plans ot those who embarked on the invasion of the U.S.S.R. and the day is not far off when the Sovict Union, together with the other freedom ‐loving countries, will utterly crush these most vicious enemies of mankind.
In the autumn of 1941, when the Finnish Government signed in Berlin the pact affirming Finland's adherence to the so ‐ called “ anti ‐ Comintern bloc ”, the Finnish Press commented that Finland had become the hub of the Axis. There is now no longer any question about whether this hub will hold out. The only question is how long the whole Axis will hold out. And every sensible person in the world knows that the answer is , “ Not long.”
One year later, in the autumn of 1942, one of the Hitlerite Finnish papers wrote that, so long as the leaders of Finland maintained their collaboration with Germany, there would be nothing to fear. They have maintained that collaboration. But, as we have seen, a host of grave trials and worries have descended upon them. Their whole policy is bankrupt. They shall answer for their crimes with their heads .
Finland's participation in Hitler's robber war is the greatest misfortune that has ever befallen the Finnish people and the greatest disgrace in their history. Let us hope that the Finnish people will presently find the requisite strength and courage to rid themselves of this disgrace, incurred by the anti ‐ Soviet war, by a decisive struggle to overthrow the power of the criminal agents of Hitler Fascism. It is a question of the Finnish people's honour.
And this brings us to the main question, namely, that the vital interests of the Finnish people themselves no less than those of the Soviet people require a secure guarantee that never again shall there be a repetition of Finland's treacherous attack on Soviet territory, so that in time to come the Finnish people shall be able to dwell not in enmity but in peaceful collaboration with the great Soviet people.
Last updated on 3 January 2021