Greentext

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:

• A border shift on the Karelian Isthmus, pushing it back from Leningrad (the USSR wanted roughly 25-30 km more buffer)
• A lease on Hanko (a peninsula) for a naval base
• Several islands in the Gulf of Finland
• Parts of the Rybachi Peninsula in the Arctic north
• In exchange, the USSR offered Finland a larger but less valuable swath of territory in Karelia further north

Finland refused, the Soviets invaded and in the peace treaty the soviets got:

• The entire Karelian Isthmus, including Viipuri (Finland's second-largest city)
• Significant additional territory around Lake Ladoga
• Parts of the Salla region and Rybachi Peninsula
• A lease on Hanko (not just the original ask, but now as a full military base)

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.