you can't make the system better by voting. our rights were taken by force, not given to us willingly. - eviltoast
      • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com
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        2 days ago

        The reason to invade Finland wasn’t sue to Nazi collaborationism, Finland still wasn’t allied with the Nazis. The reason was the need for the USSR to put additional territory between themselves and the Nazis due to the geography of the region, i.e. the Great European Plain, a vast flatland without natural defenses that is very hard to protect from Nazi blitzkrieg. USSR attempted negotiations with Finland to gain terrains to have control over lands further from Moscow, Leningrad and the oil fields at the south of Russia, and only when those negotiations failed did the Soviets invade. This isn’t just explicitly what the Soviets were saying at the time of negotiations, it was openly said so by all western leaders at the time of the Molotov Ribbentrop truce:

        “In those days the Soviet Government had grave reason to fear that they would be left one-on-one to face the Nazi fury. Stalin took measures which no free democracy could regard otherwise than with distaste. Yet I never doubted myself that his cardinal aim had been to hold the German armies off from Russia for as long as might be” (Paraphrased from Churchill’s December 1944 remarks in the House of Commons.)

        “It would be unwise to assume Stalin approves of Hitler’s aggression. Probably the Soviet Government has merely sought a delaying tactic, not wanting to be the next victim. They will have a rude awakening, but they think, at least for now, they can keep the wolf from the door” Franklin D. Roosevelt (President of the United States, 1933–1945), from Harold L. Ickes’s diary entries, early September 1939. Ickes’s diaries are published as The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes.

        "One must suppose that the Soviet Government, seeing no immediate prospect of real support from outside, decided to make its own arrangements for self‑defence, however unpalatable such an agreement might appear. We in this House cannot be astonished that a government acting solely on grounds of power politics should take that course” Neville Chamberlain House of Commons Statement

        • RenLinwood@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 days ago

          Wasn’t openly allied with the nazis yet, was clearly inclined to due so long before it was official, was clearly still a motive for the soviets, fucking duh

          • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com
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            2 days ago

            My point is you don’t need to assume inclination to allying with the Nazis. I personally believe it too, but the motives for the invasion were ultimately different, as explained by the sources I’ve given you.

              • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com
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                2 days ago

                I provided three sourced quotes from contemporary western sources corroborating that the given reason for invading Finland was to put extra Soviet-controlled territory between the USSR and Nazi Germany.

                Additional source, from Wikipedia’s article of the Winter War:

                “In April 1938, NKVD agent Boris Yartsev contacted Finnish Foreign Minister Rudolf Holsti and Finnish Prime Minister Aimo Cajander, stating that the Soviets did not trust Germany and that war was considered possible between the two countries. The Red Army would not wait passively behind the border but would rather “advance to meet the enemy”. Finnish representatives assured Yartsev that Finland was committed to a policy of neutrality and that the country would resist any armed incursion. Yartsev suggested that Finland cede or lease some islands in the Gulf of Finland along the seaward approaches to Leningrad, but Finland refused”

                Your and Soviet gut feelings about Finns collabbing with Nazis, however right they ended up being afterwards, weren’t the official reason to invade Finland’s south, the reason was simply putting extra land on the way, as explicitly said by Soviet officials during negotiations to try and peacefully get that land, and as proven by the fact that the Soviets stopped the war when they got these territories.

                • RenLinwood@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  2 days ago

                  Claiming that a person said something is not even close to the same thing as providing a source that proves they said it, and a handful of quotes from leaders of countries that are not the soviet union would prove absolutely nothing about the motives of the leaders of the soviet union even if they weren’t entirely unsubstantiated. You’re bad at this.

      • Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        They weren’t doing that when Stalin invaded them. Stalin squandered any advantage he could have possibly gotten by collaborating with the Nazis through invading Finland. Which ironically, pushed the Fins to actually ally with the Nazis.

        And why the hell did Stalin invade Poland? The guy sounds less and less competent the more you learn about him, doesn’t he?