Finland is a land whose original population was neither Germanic nor Slavic, but whose history has been marked by its two powerful neighbours: Sweden and Russia. Finland had been an integral part of the Swedish Kingdom since medieval times, but Russia became the master of the region after 1809. The Grand Duchy of Finland was technically an autonomous part of the Russian Empire, but the Czar himself was the titular Grand-Duke and there were attempts at russification of the population. This led to an increase in the support for independence in the last years of the 19th Century. The Soviet Revolution allowed the Finns to formally declare independence in 1917, although a bitter civil war between pro- and anti-Soviet factions ensued. The defeat of the pro-Soviet camp led to the establishment of a democratic regime, which lasted throughout the interwar period.
The years before the War saw a great deal of tension in the region, as the Soviet Union was nervous about a country whose border was only a few miles from its second largest city, Leningrad. The Soviets attacked Finland in the Winter of 1940 and were able to push the border further West. But the 1941 war between Germany and the USSR led the Finns to form an alliance with Nazi Germany and gain substantial territory, including Karelia, a region populated with ethnic Finns that had been part of Russia proper for many centuries. By 1944, the Soviet Union regained the upper hand and moved westward again. The Finns requested a ceasefire in which they were able to maintain their sovereignty while relinquishing more territory to the USSR and accepting a treaty that tied them economically to the Soviet Union. This agreement in which the USSR let one of its satellite states maintain their democratic institutions while observing a treaty of friendship was unique, and became known as Finlandization.
More on Finland.
Finland in WW2
