History often seems like a mirror in which current events are reflected. When the crises and wars of the past seem to repeat themselves in another time, it is because certain cultural and political traits are repeating themselves. If main aspects of a war from another historical moment appear in a later war, the political or ideological matrix that produced the first conflict is also present in the current one. In that case, it is possible to find in the previous event keys to the interpretation of what is happening, to elucidate its outcome.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine looks like a “déjà vu” from “The Winter War”. Therefore, what the Soviet invasion of Finland left in 1939 could be signaling what Russia’s military onslaught against the Ukrainians will leave. In November 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, launching an invasion. The argument that the Kremlin gave then seems to be an echo of the one that Vladimir Putin repeats these days to justify the invasion of Ukraine: to protect Russia’s security.
Moscow had demanded that Finland exchange territories it needed to protect Saint Petersburg, then called Leningrad, from a possible attack from outside. The strategic city that Peter the Great had created in the 18th century was thirty kilometers from the Finnish border and, for the Kremlin, that made it vulnerable.
But Helsinki rejected the proposal, among other things, because the lands offered in exchange for Karelia ceding it did not have the value of the isthmus claimed by the Soviets. Stalin, who was the most Tsar-like Soviet leader, lost patience and, denouncing that the Finnish government ignored his demands for security, launched the invasion to seize the required territories and turn Finland into a satellite country of the USSR. As with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe and the United States were outraged and applied sanctions to the aggressor power, which was expelled from the League of Nations, but did not send troops to defend the attacked country.
The Soviet Union was actually Russia with a geographic shield of fourteen countries. And his vision of the surrounding neighborhood was the continuation of the expansionist nationalism of the czars. Although Stalin was born in Georgia, he expressed Russian nationalism and it was among the Soviet leaders that he best embodied the Tsarist conception of power: absolutism.
That power was disconcerted not to be feared. Above all, that he was not afraid of the government of a new country, sparsely populated and with an army still in formation, like Finland. That is why a fury similar to the one that explodes in Putin erupted in Stalin when the young president of Ukraine, a state of barely three decades of independent existence, shows that he is not afraid of him.
In the Winter War, the Soviets were surprised by the resistance of the Finns and suffered heavy losses in the first weeks of the invasion. The local fighters managed to contain their advance for a month and a half, but finally, three months after the conflict began, the Soviets imposed their superiority in terms of troops and weapons, breaking down the stiff resistance.
The USSR won on the battlefields and seized Karelia, which was equivalent to more than ten percent of the territory of Finland. But he could not convert occupy the attacked country or put a puppet regime in Helsinki. Finland had to commit to neutrality, but it saved its sovereignty and was free from Soviet interference in its internal politics, in addition to gaining international prestige for its fight against the powerful invader, while military victory did not prevent Soviet Russia from seeing its image torn apart. and its credibility internationally, especially in the West.
Finland had been part of the Kingdom of Sweden until it was occupied by the Russian Empire in the early 19th century. In this, too, his case seems to be a reflection of the Ukrainian case in the mirror of history. In that reflection may be the keys to glimpse the end of the conflict. Ukraine was part of other empires until it was occupied by the Russian Empire, and the invasion that Russia is carrying out, Vladimir Putin, justifies it for security reasons, such as the one the Soviet Union alluded to regarding the city that is about thirty kilometers from the border with Finland.
This time, Russia’s security argument is the need to stop NATO’s expansion towards its borders. As it was in 1939 the refusal of the Finnish government to accede to the Soviet territorial claim, now it is the refusal of the United States and its European allies to sign a commitment not to incorporate Ukraine into the Atlantic alliance, which outraged the secretive ruler of Russia. .
Vladimir Putin feels that his country is treated by the West according to the size of its economy. With this invasion, the head of the Kremlin is shouting at the West that Russia must be treated according to its military might and not its economic vigor. As during the Winter War, the Western powers did not send troops to defend the attacked country, but rather repudiated and sanctioned the aggressor power.
They are kept at bay by the fear that Putin will resort to his nuclear weapons to face a war with NATO. But the conjunction between the tenacious resistance that the Ukrainians have shown so far and the suffocating economic sanctions with which the Western powers seek to paralyze Russia, could prevent Putin from fully achieving his objective: to conquer and control all of Ukraine. A goal that he could achieve if China decided to give him the economic and military lung that the Russian president is asking for.
Even without the level of Chinese help it needs and without being able to fully achieve its objective, it is possible that, as the Soviet army in February 1940 broke the heroic resistance of Finland, the Russian army will end up breaking the stiff resistance of the Ukrainians. It is also possible that, just as Finland lost Karelia and was forced to neutrality, Ukraine will end up losing the separatist territories of Donbass as well as the Crimean Peninsula, and will have to give up its claim to join NATO. But the criminal decision to invade a country that had not attacked it and the cruel bombing of cities have already torn Russia’s image in the world.
Putin criminalizes his country while Ukraine’s image grows. And even if it ends with their territory amputated, if they manage to preserve their sovereignty and their democracy, the Ukrainians will have obtained a victory that will mark history.
