4 ms·

> Finland was not nearly as traumatized by the war as the Soviet Union was. I'm not sure how you'd measure that. The Soviet Union was the aggressor against Fin

> Finland was not nearly as traumatized by the war as the Soviet Union was. I'm not sure how you'd measure that. The Soviet Union was the aggressor against Finland, and Finland was able to defeat them at great cost. I suppose there's the old saying about one of them fighting for more land and the other fighting for their life. > For one, without the forced industrialization instituted under communism would Russia have survived the Nazi invasion? Without Stalin at the helm, would they have entered into the Hitler-Stalin pact? That is, without the Soviet Union's support for Nazi Germany, would the war have happened as it did? Somewhat unlikely.

syops 6y ago
Yes, they fought a war with the Soviet Union but the country didn’t suffer the sort of devastation Nazi occupied Soviet territory did. Finland’s experience since 1918 is sufficiently different than Russia’s that I don’t think one can conclude what Russia would be like today had it had the type of government that Finland had. To your last point, maybe and maybe not. Who knows what the prevailing thought would have been in the alternate scenario. Would Russians have been more like the war weary French in this scenario? One thing I think is for certain. The claims of OP are not justified.
the_af 6y ago
> Without Stalin at the helm, would they have entered into the Hitler-Stalin pact? That is, without the Soviet Union's support for Nazi Germany, would the war have happened as it did? Somewhat unlikely. The pact was just about gaining time, for both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Both sides knew war was inevitable, they just didn't know exactly when. The war wouldn't have happened "as it did" -- that's a tautology: "if you changed something, things would have been different". But if your question is "would war have happened at all?" then the answer is "yes". The Nazi political system required war, couldn't function without it, and it was spelled out in Hitler's writings from way before the war. Lebensraum, reparations/vengeance for WWI, extermination of inferior races, all of that requires war. And given the conditions of the world at that time, almost inevitably a highly destructive war.

syops 6y ago

Yes, they fought a war with the Soviet Union but the country didn’t suffer the sort of devastation Nazi occupied Soviet territory did. Finland’s experience since 1918 is sufficiently different than Russia’s that I don’t think one can conclude what Russia would be like today had it had the type of government that Finland had. To your last point, maybe and maybe not. Who knows what the prevailing thought would have been in the alternate scenario. Would Russians have been more like the war weary French in this scenario? One thing I think is for certain. The claims of OP are not justified.

the_af 6y ago

> Without Stalin at the helm, would they have entered into the Hitler-Stalin pact? That is, without the Soviet Union's support for Nazi Germany, would the war have happened as it did? Somewhat unlikely. The pact was just about gaining time, for both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Both sides knew war was inevitable, they just didn't know exactly when. The war wouldn't have happened "as it did" -- that's a tautology: "if you changed something, things would have been different". But if your question is "would war have happened at all?" then the answer is "yes". The Nazi political system required war, couldn't function without it, and it was spelled out in Hitler's writings from way before the war. Lebensraum, reparations/vengeance for WWI, extermination of inferior races, all of that requires war. And given the conditions of the world at that time, almost inevitably a highly destructive war.