[inglor_cz]

I can see we are talking past each other.

Nazi Germany was stronger and could plausibly plan continent domination, true. But the USSR was an active, albeit smaller participant. Why precisely did they attack Finland and attack and conquer the Baltic States? Hitler made them do it again?

No, that was pure imperial expansion, finding some weaker and richer states to loot and control.

I will not defend the Western powers on Munich, they betrayed us completely and reaped the whirlwind.

"I do think you should be thankful to the USSR for saving you and your country from annihilation and extermination."

Intent behind your action matters and if the intent is to enslave you, that is a very bad, criminal intent. I noticed that you didn't address my analogy with a rapist that saves you from a murderer in order to chain you down in their dungeon. This is why I will not be thankful to the USSR as a country and a system. Immediately after the front units, "SMERSH" secret police units murdered and abducted people who were on Stalins hit list, should I be thankful for that as well? Should their families be thankful for such "liberation"?

"They sacrificed millions of people"

Stalin sacrificed millions of people. He also did so on other occasions, like the mad purges of the 1930s, destroying kulaks by artificial famines or deporting various minorities into barely survivable deserts and polar regions.

Death of millions was Stalin's thing, in peace or war.

"to do so."

Again, our survival mattered to Moscow only to the extent that most rational slave masters are interested in keeping their slaves alive and productive. (The Nazis were irrational in this regard.)

The Soviet Union did not see Central Europe as sovereign nations, but as a bounty to be conquered and abused, basically colonies for extraction. This view survives today in Russia. Visit any Russian-language forum where discussion turns to Ukraine and plenty of people will express the idea that we are their escaped property that, through negligence of Gorbachev, could find itself a new "master" (voluntary alignment between countries just does not register in this worldview) and now are being used as "pawns" against "the Russian civilization".

The view that smaller nations hate their previous subjugation by Moscow and don't want to repeat it is just incomprehensible to them. In their view, we should be thankful for being liberated from Hitler, and nothing else that happened afterwards counts.

You also seem to be of the idea that nothing else that happened afterwards counts... why?

I can at least see an argument to be thankful to individual Soviet soldiers who fought Hitler. They were often driven so by the threat of penal batallions, but still. But the USSR as a system was an evil totalitarian entity intent on occupying, looting and terrorizing everyone within their reach. Only the extent of their effective reach varied, from very weak in the 1930s to rather large by 1950. No thankfulness to this abomination, ever, that is what I will die upon.

[DiogenesKynikos]

They attacked Finland for the same reason the British invaded Iceland: they knew it would not be able to remain neutral, and they wanted to ensure that the Germans could not use it. The Germans were invading neutral states left and right, and the Soviets were not about to let a country whose border was just a few kilometers from Leningrad fall under Nazi control.

Just like the Western Allies, the Soviets were acting in reaction to the insanely aggressive moves that Germany was taking. They viewed it as a life-or-death issue. Germany, the strongest state in Europe, had conducted a massive military buildup and was bent on conquering the continent.

[mopsi]

> They attacked Finland for the same reason the British invaded Iceland

Demonstrably false. The British aim was never to annex Iceland into the UK. The British did not establish a puppet government like the Soviets tried with the Finnish Democratic Republic. Nor did they start murdering Icelandic political and societal leaders to make it unselfgovernable, like the USSR did everywhere across Eastern Europe, nor did the British start resettling people to wipe out Icelandic culture and identity. Iceland's government continued to operate independently until the British forces withdrew in 1941. Russia still hold on to the ~11% of pre-war Finland that they grabbed and they've wiped out the native population.

The talking point about threat from Germany is also hollow, to put it mildly. The USSR and Germany were allies at the time, and their secret protocol had assigned Finland to the USSR for conquest. To support Germany's invasions under their agreement, the USSR supplied massive quantities of raw resources (such as oil, cotton and grains) to bypass the economic blockade of Germany and bolster the German war machine in 1939-1941. The USSR was delivering 140 000 tons of oil each month as Luftwaffe was bombing London and was short on fuel.

[inglor_cz]

Thanks for having the patience to debunk this load of Stalinist apologia, I really can't anymore.

I will never understand why people living in free countries become apologists for the worst murderous regimes in history, but it is, as it is.

[inglor_cz]

"They attacked Finland for the same reason the British invaded Iceland: they knew it would not be able to remain neutral, and they wanted to ensure that the Germans could not use it."

Given that this forum has some rules about being polite, I will just stop here without saying something awful.

It is very unfortunate that Stalinist apologia is still somehow acceptable in the West. It is a direct consequence of the fact that Stalin's concentration camps were never liberated by an external force that would forever document their horrors.

But at least I know whom I was talking to.

[mcv]

This is completely bullshit. Sweden stayed neutral. Finland is a lot further from Germany than Sweden is. If Russia hadn't invaded, Finland could easily have remained neutral. It was Russia's invasion that drove Finland into German arms.

You need to quit your revisionism and Soviet apologia. The USSR was oppressive and expansionist. Not quite as much as the Nazis, but they weren't that far behind. You painting them as friendly liberators who really had no other choice but to invade and conquer, is exactly the kind of propaganda that Putin uses today to justify his wars.