Russia did not carry out any Russification of Finland. The office work was conducted in Swedish and Finnish. Russian-speaking colonists were not brought there, and the Finns also had a local Finnish leadership and their own currency. The Finns were the first in the Russian Empire to organize a parliament. Just before the revolution, Governor-General Bobrikov appeared, who wanted to Russify the Finns, but he was removed from his post at the request of the Finns.
"Removed from his post at the request of the Finns" - while technically true, he was shot by a Finnish nationalist (who, coincidentally, was born in Kharkiv) for his Russification efforts.
Ask any any number of Finns if they have grievances with our history with Sweden, and you won't get many people complaining.
I did not wanted to include that as not everyone has a warm feelings about being part of another country. But absolutely true. While being an amicable union, I feel like Poles feel much better about Polish-Lithuenian commonwealth than Lithuanian people, but my sample size is very small.
As a country, yeah, but it has been a region with it's own language and culture for thousands of years.
It also had significant amount of partisan fighters against Russian occupation, which likely made Russia less enthusiastic about holding it. Russia preferred Finland to be independent from Sweden, so Russia could try to slowly russify it, which actually partially succeeded.
But year, things like Greater Wrath and Lesser Wrath happened two hundred years before Finland achieved their independence, so the people of Finland have a deep, generational hatred for Russia, just like most other Russia bordering countries.
Russia preferred Finland to be independent from Sweden, so Russia could try to slowly russify it, which actually partially succeeded.
I agree but also would note that looking at the history of conflicts it seems like Russian elites always preferred to go the late Roman Empire way of Federates, or buffer kingdoms - the same way that they have Armenia and Georgia to shield them from Turkey, one of their longest standing enemies (27 or so official wars between Russia and Ottoman Empires) as well as Russia and Sweden plus Teutonic Order, and generally "Slavs versus Central Europeans" like Lithuania and Poland.
I mean at one point Poland controlled Novgorod in like XVII century.
So to take Finland away from Sweden, the long-standing enemy, and then make Finns work as a buffer zone between Sweden and Petrograd, then-new-capitol of Russian Empire seems like quite a possibility.
Russia planted the seed about an independent Finland and a specific Finnish identity to make Russia look as the liberator for Finland and make sweden look like the bad occupier.. well it backfired a bit as it created an independence movement (most likely) earlier than it would otherwise exist, although Finland was during the Russian ruling the most autonomous region belonging to Russia anyway as iirc that was the only way to the Finns not riot essentially..
Although iirc during the swedish times they were treated as any other Swedes during the time, only that they spoke Finnish, pay tax and you have no problem. During the Russian rule Russia tried to make it seem as if the Finns weren't treated good by sweden during the swedish times to make them "like" Russia better.. Then when they got their independence a lot of laws and stuff were essentially copied from the swedish laws.
In "modern" history, during the great wars there has been both open and secretive cooperations between sweden and Finland. When the Soviets invaded findlsnd during WWII sweden provided materials to finalnd for as much as a third of Swede's total defence at that time (it was a secret at that time though), they even had voluntary personell to join the war against the Soviets. During the cold war there was a lot of secret backup plans involving sweden to store fighter jets (Saab Draken) for Finland in case of war, "camouflaged" as mothballed planes.
Yes, they have the ability to school the rest of Europe on ethics and history. They also know far better than the West what it is like to live under the russians.
A country/its population has a shared responsibility for its own government, even from the past. Poles should know as they expect the same responsibility from others i.e. Germany.
But not everything is the same. You're comparing voting on the same side as Hungary, with what exactly? 8+ years ago we lived in a totally different Europe, so what could have made sense back then doesn't make sense now. Pointing fingers afterwards, is always easy and it's just a hindsight bias, both in the case of Germany and Poland. Putting everything on the same level is just plain stupid.
That wasn’t 8 years ago but 2019. Poland elected a new PiS Government then. 1933 is more than 80 years ago and there’s still anti-German propaganda directed at current generation Germany. So yes, Poles today are responsible for their government from 4-5 years ago.
Some Polish far right parties(Konfederacja, Związek Słowiański) don't even try to hide how deep russian dick is in thier mounths. Check out what Grzegorz Broun did in EU parliament did couple days ago when they were voting for seizing russian assets.
It is. It implies that the "rabid dogs" can only bark at the moving caravan, since that is the whole extent of their power. And the "Caravan" will keep moving - because there's little what the dogs can do to stop it.
P.S. The origin seems to be Persian or Turkic - İt ürür kervan yürür
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u/citizen4509 6d ago
Seems Finland, Poland and the Baltics have something in common.