this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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You've never heard of the Winter War, I see.
Russia had a massive war industry in comparison to Finland, where it was literally non-existent.
Finland had a couple of WWI tanks. And I mean just a couple. When the USSR attacked, we had already placed an order for new tanks from the Brits (Vickers 6 ton tanks) but the first ones were delivered in 1938 and the deliveries weren't complete when the Ruskis attacked.
So they literally had more manpower and more war industry, especially armored vehicles. Tanks.
We found the Russian tanks actually really useful and they helped us keep Vanja at bay. So it wasn't the terrain, it was user error.
Please do elaborate. Yeah we lost Karjala and the NE arm. But that's like saying the US won the Vietnam War. They most certainly didn't. Perhaps people won't say Vietnam or Finland straight up won, but both show just how much determination matters.
Because in both cases the invading force had a lot of people from thousands of kilometres away who had never even seen the land they were invading.
So what do you base this "Finland was much more industrialised" bit? Because we really weren't much of a country until Nokia. Really the only thing Finland made was what you wiped your arse on. As in we had a well growing forest industry, and still do. But other than that, we weren't highly industrialised in the 20th century. That only came in like the 70's.
You know people were on rations right? Like my grandma went on and on about rationing. And my dad still had a booze card, although that wasn't just for rationing because of lack of resources (the Bratt system is what I advocate in unison with legalising drugs).
As if motitus in the woods would be any different with snow or not. We're good at using the forests, no matter the time of the year. You know there was another war, right? The Continuation War which lasted from 1941 to 1944. Where we actually advanced into Russia. As in, we invaded Russia.
That wasn't a guerrilla campaign. It was an open invasion. And a successful one.
It started in June and by September we'd gained all the previously lost ground. It doesn't snow in September.
Seems like you're a bit sore about Ruskis sucking so hard?
In the Winter War Finns lost 20-30 tanks. Russia lost SEVERAL THOUSAND.
But yeah, Ruskis would've deffo had Finland if the snow had only thawed ;>>>>>
Yeah those were the soviets demands prior to the war. They got even more territory then they were demanding in fact. This is more like the Korean war, the US went in with the goal of protecting the south, then they got cocky and thought they could take the whole peninsula and got pushed back by China until they got to the modern border. They achieved there initial war aims but didn't get there maximalist aims.
At the time of the revolution finland was more urbanized then the rest of Russia, the population was more concentrated in Helsinki, like you said involved in paper milling. In order to industrialize you need to get the peasants into the cities to work in factories. To do that you need an efficient agricultural system that can produce the same amount of food with less man power.
Prior to the revolution finlands agricultural production was on similar levels to other Nordic countries with land being consolidated under more efficient middling farmers, which freed up agricultural laborers to go work in the cities.
The rest of Russia was still operating mostly on pseudo-serfdom with a bunch of rich landlords ,who didn't have the knowledge to increase efficiency, driving dirt poor peasants, who didn't have the incentive to increase efficiency as it would all go to the landlord anyway. Because of this Russia had the most backward, inefficient agricultural sector in all of Europe. This meant they needed more peasents working the land instead of moving to the city and working in factories
This changed when Stalin forced the collectivization of the land and the adoption of modern agricultural practices and forced peasents to move to the cities. While this did increase agricultural efficiency, it didn't do so by enough to compensate for all the new people in the cities eating food instead of out in the country making food and caused a massive famine.
This had a huge cost in lives but it did give results as russias industrial capacity increased massively, as shown by there ability to churn out tanks so easily during the war.
This wouldn't have happened under capitalism or market socialism as it took the very heavy hand of the state to do all of this. If it were capitalism the peasents wouldn't have been pushed to the cities as quickly, and there probably also wouldn't have been a famine.
Are you fucking high?
Do you know where paper comes from? What Finland is covered by? What stopped the Ruskis? Forest.
By what inane and/or insane logic do you think that forestry is an urban activity? :DDD
In 1939, Leningrad had 3.1 million people. The entirety of Finland had 3.7 million people. Helsinki had ~250k people.
Most of Finland was just rural. You're spouting complete fantasy.
Hell, I'm from one of the largest cities in Finland and a vast majority of it is still considered very much rural, there's only like a square kilometer or so in the centre that's actually city city.
Zero facts, utter nonsense. The only thing we have is large docks, because we needed large docks for the export for the forest industry. That's why we build the largest cruise ships in the world (fact).
But you'd be very silly indeed to think that only logging was done on-site, instead of actually making the paper mills and cellulose factories where the logging happens to save driving through half the country.
Most of the country is still empty. Not as empty as Russia, because we just don't have the space, but it's not far. Russia is the largest country in the world with vaaaast empty spaces. Finland is quite small. Yet we still only have double the population density. (For comparison the US has almost 10x that, Germany 25x, UK ~29x).
We also had double the population density in 1939.
According to this site
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/rus/russia/urban-population
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/fin/finland/urban-population
The urbanisation for both countries in 1960 was very similar at ~55%. However Russia urbanised quicker and then baselined, whereas Finland grew slowly. Ofc that doesn't tell us much of the 40s but they didn't have the data and I was loathe to waste time
So yeah, what goals did Russia achieve, if we put away the land claims. Which by the way wasn't in any way comparable to the splitting of the Koreas. Finland didn't split in half.
By the end of WWII, Finland lost roughly 12% of our pre-war territory. Korea literally split in half, 48% to 52%. Not comparable. There isn't an active Finnic population on the Russian side claiming to be the "real Finland". We lost 0% of our national unity.
My grandma was a refugee thanks to Russkis. She's still my grandma, spoke Finnish, lived in Finland and I'm Finnish as well. I don't think the same thing happened in Korea.
So what "initial aims" did the USSR achieve? Their initial aim at invading Finland was to take a tenth of it?
Russia was operating on planned economies, which just don't function yet. Perhaps in the 24th century, but not yet. For instance they didn't want to label products like screws, so that people and factories are equal. But that also meant no culpability for the factories or workers for shoddy quality. Which very soon led to them having to actually label the products, ie sort of branding them. Ofc "factory 141 of the worker's paradise" or smth isn't exactly unique branding, but to anyone who's been in the military, numbers can be as much branded as the Coke Santa. For instance a lot of people will know the 101st Airborne Division. That's just a number.
So despite their ideals with the planed economy, the USSR actually ended up doing a lot of market economy things, because they're not in market economies "just because" but because they have functionality. Capitalism might take those things too far and pervert them, but Soviet communism didn't see any value in any of them and failed.
Anyway, eagerly waiting your response on how forestry is an urban activity lololol
I never said forestry was an urban industry, I said milling was, just like mining coal and iron aren't urban but they're indictive of the urban industry of steel production.
I'm also not saying that Finland is a dense country, just that its population was more concentrated then Russia at 1917.
The point I'm trying to make is that Russia on the eve of the revolution was less urbanized and industrialized then Finland. By the 1960s they had caught up, as you have shown, and I am saying that it was communism that allowed them to catch up.
On the eve of the revolution / independence 66% of Finns were working in agriculture/forestry while 12% were working in industry while in 1914 Russia was 80% agriculture and 2% industrial
Then, as you've shown, by the war Russia had caught up to Finland. I am saying this is because of communism and Stalin's five year plans. Since Finland had the lead and lost it that means they progressed/developed/urbanized/industrialized at a slower rate under market socialism then the soviets did under a planned economy.
As for the goals, prior to the war the soviets demanded:
Finland refused, the Soviets invaded and in the peace treaty the soviets got:
So they achieved there original goals and then some. They didn't conquer finland, but it's debatable whether that was a goal in the first place.
My comparison to korea wasn't about scale or dividing the country, it was about setting an initial goal, getting ambitious and trying to go for it all, then pulling back and still achieving the initial goal.
Not saying a planned economy is always the right path to development, by the 1960s the soviets had stalled out due to lack of innovation. I'm saying that it can lead to rapid development when catching up, as innovation isn't required so much as organizing to copy existing systems. In the 1930s the Soviet union did that and developed the country faster then even capitalism could've done.
Yeah and you have zero sources for that. Everything points the other way.
The article also says that Finland was (and is) an agrarian society. You're just trying to defend USSR losses, clearly.
"Noo noo USSR had it worse and less industry and Finns were all in cities, doing forestry."
Fucking insane man stop the brain rot propaganda
Edit also Hanko military base wasn't achieved in WWII. The Ruskis had it for like two years. Like I said, the invasion into Russia was successful. But you already forgot about your "if the snow had thawed Ruskis would've taken all of Finland"-bit?