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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   26543 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Observe that the conclusion of the Winter War was Finland losing all the land that the Russians demanded and more.

The result of the Winter War was that Finland did not become a Soviet puppet state and suffer under communism for half a century. I consider that a victory and worth the blood that was shed, and I am guessing most Finns would as well, even if from a tactical point of view it was a guaranteed defeat.

Why are starting from the assumption that the Soviet intent was to annex the whole of Finland?

I was not. My assumption was that Finland would have become a Warsaw Pact member under a nominally independent communist government if they had lost the war more completely.

Of course retaining independence is valuable but if you're giving up significant amounts of territory where much of the population lived, then it has to be considered a defeat. Finland was probably wise to fight and lose. But they still lost. That should be the expected outcome.

There is a possibility of an unarmed man inflicting significant harm on a big, strong attacker.

But this is not a general rule, it's a special exception.

Many, many, many Ukrainians would be alive if this principle was fully understood by leading figures in their government. Russia is not a totalitarian communist regime. It's not significantly more corrupt than Ukraine.

Finland was probably wise to fight and lose.

This is an interesting perspective, particularly when contrasted with Ukraine's repeated statements that Crimea needs to be returned (which to be fair could be part of a bargaining maneuver but it's...not very persuasive.)

Of course it's significantly more corrupt than Ukraine. Just look at the openness of Ukrainian elections versus Putin murdering his rivals.

They’ve had precisely two elections since the revolution in 2014, and the winner of the latter election has suspended elections until further notice. At this point it is impossible to tell the difference between ‘Ukraine is less corrupt than Russia’ and ‘the only other post-revolution president didn’t have enough of a power-base to pull it off’.

Yeltsin didn’t murder his rivals either.

‘the only other post-revolution president didn’t have enough of a power-base to pull it off‘

Or, you know, a war of conquest being waged on his country and half of it being occupied territory at the moment of supposed elections.

Sure, that’s what I’m saying. It’s too early to tell.

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