The city of Viipuri some time after being liberated from Soviet rule by Finnish forces, 1941

https://i.redd.it/b7jg751ywm2e1.jpeg

by cattitanic

12 comments
  1. Viipuri is the age-old trading center of Finnish Karelians and used to be the cultural center, capital and most populous city of Finnish Karelia. Even though it’s been under the rule of many different nations, its inhabitants had always been Finns – until WW2.

    As a result of Soviet aggression and the Winter War, the city was forcibly ceded to the USSR in 1940 and all of its 75 000 inhabitants had to be evacuated. Losing the city was an absurd concept at the time, as it hadn’t been included in any earlier Soviet demands, was the second biggest city of Finland, and the Red Army never even conquered it.

    Viipuri was one of the cities damaged the most during the Winter War. After being annexed by the USSR, it became part of the newly formed Karelo-Finnish SSR. All of the original Finnish inhabitants were evacuated, so Soviet peoples from the inlands moved in instead.

    During the Continuation War, the city was liberated by the Finnish Army in 1941 and the Finns quickly restorated the city to a livable condition. Many of the evacuees moved back in, and all of the areas ceded to the USSR were annexed by Finland on 6.12.1941.

    Though, in 1944, with the ‘Vyborg-Petrozavodsk-offensive’, the Red army pushed Finnish forces back. Viipuri was completely evacuated and this time the Red Army occupied the city, without battle. With the Moscow Armistice, the city was again ceded to the USSR. The oblast of Leningrad had been requesting the K-FSSR for land in the Finnish-ceded areas, and the whole Karelian Isthmus, with Viipuri, became part of the oblast in 1944.

    In 1943, to get Finland to agree to a peace more easily, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had proposed to Stalin that Viipuri be left to Finland. However, Stalin was stubborn, demanded that the city would stay in Soviet hands, and refused to even discuss the matter.

    Since then, Viipuri has been part of the USSR/Russia. It retains some of its Finnish aspects and looks like a Finnish city, but is Russificated and in a bad condition. In 2010, it was granted the status of “City of Military Glory” by president Medvedev. Recently the city has been used as a subject in Russian propaganda against the Finns.

  2. may i remind the finish army was armed by nazi germany and invaded during barbarossa, the allies were also at war with finland

  3. I’ve always wondered what the integration process would look like if Finland was to somehow regain control of Karelia and other lost territories. Obviously it’s a morally questionable idea since it would almost certainly require military conquest against Russia, but setting that aside and just focussing on the practical implications is quite interesting imo.

    What would happen to the Russian residents if they don’t willingly evacuate? If they did evacuate (or were driven out) then the region would be almost entirely unpopulated. This would present opportunities for Finns and possibly foreign immigrants to settle in the region, but would also create problems as Finnish cities experience population decline.

    Would the territory ever reach the same level of development as the rest of Finland? It would require a huge investment of time and resources to improve the infrastructure to the same level as Finland. Also, the region’s economy has been deeply integrated into Russia for nearly a century. Severing those supply chains would essentially set back the regional economy to square one.

    It’s interesting to compare this hypothetical to other similar situations. The integration of East and West Germany produced many disparities that still linger today. The situation with Finland and Karelia would be even worse because the economic disparity is far greater than it was in Germany.

    Another comparable situation is North and South Korea. The question of Korean unification is quite controversial in South Korea. Many people argue that the countries will inevitably reunite for cultural and geopolitical reasons, but others argue that unification would be a huge drain on the South Korean economy.

  4. “Liberated” in 1941. Why so many nazis here ?

  5. >Sellanen ol’ Viipuri

    >Sellanen ol’ Viipuri

    >Karjalaisten kaupunki

  6. It’s like seeing the warning from the past about Russia and forgetting about it… it’s really true, history should be more present in our museums.

  7. They couldn’t find any after pictures so they just used one from before./s

  8. We know this trick, to call the capture of a city with the propaganda-tinged word “liberation”. Then the capture of Mariupol and is also a “liberation”, because before the war the population was predominantly Russian-speaking.

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