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Published on 29 Dec 2017Signup for your FREE trial to The Great Courses Plus here: http://ow.ly/6YHs30b1QVm
In the midst of WWII, Stalin decided to invade the small nation of Finland. It did not go the way he wanted it to. This is the story of the quagmire of 1939 that often isn’t talked about between the Fins and the Russians.
Music:
Russian Slapstick by Hakan Erikson
Dramatic Orchestral Strings by Gavin Luke
Winds of Winter by Yi Natiro“The Great Courses Plus is currently available to watch through a web browser to almost anyone in the world and optimized for the US market. The Great Courses Plus is currently working to both optimize the product globally and accept credit card payments globally.”
February 4, 2018
The Winter War: A Soviet Failure
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June 29, 2017
[Winter War] Motti Tactics – How The Finns Destroyed Soviet Divisions
Published on 18 Nov 2016
» SOURCES & LINKS «
Mountain Operations FM 3 97.6
https://archive.org/details/Mountain_Operations_FM_3-97.6Chew, Allen F.: Fighting the Russians In Winter – Three Case Studies
https://archive.org/details/FightingTheRussiansInWinter-nsiahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Finland
» CREDITS & SPECIAL THX «
Song: Ethan Meixsell – Demilitarized Zone
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June 13, 2012
John Kay on the Finnish frontier
Finland had a very chancy time over the last hundred years. John Kay is visiting now, and reflects on how Finland survived to today:
The Finnish border is an anomaly. In 1918 the Finns won independence for a state that extended to the gates of St Petersburg. Russia captured territory in the 1939-40 Winter War. Finland then fought on the losing side in the second world war and did not remain neutral in the cold war. So the once thriving Finnish industrial city of Viipuri is today the depressed Russian outpost of Vyborg.
A cynical commentator on 20th-century history might observe that the political ineptitude of Kaiser Wilhelm and subsequently of Adolf Hitler brought America in on the opposite side of Germany’s quarrel with Russia in 1917 and 1941. Only when the democratic politicians of modern Germany made the rational alliance did Finland achieve the favourable political and economic outcomes it now enjoys. To pass the watchtowers and barbed-wire fences on the Finnish-Russian border is to be reminded of how fragile, and how recent, are the stability and security we take for granted today.
[. . .]
That observation is evident on the Finnish-Russian border. The razor wire kept Russian citizens in when the living standards of planned societies and market economies diverged. But now the border is easy to cross and the gap in per capita income has narrowed, though not by much. The very different income distributions of egalitarian Finland and inegalitarian Russia can be seen in the car parks and designer shops of Lappeenranta.
In the Soviet era, Finland produced Marimekko; Russia made no clothes any fashion-conscious woman would want to buy. Post-Communist but still autocratic Russia made surveillance equipment; democratic Finland led the world in mobile phones. Today Russia’s geeks hack into your bank account, while those of Finland develop Angry Birds.
The pristine countryside of Finland contrasts with the degraded physical state of much of Russia: a demonstration of the unexpected finding that regulated democratic capitalism preserves the environment more successfully than any other system of government.
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