Ackshually the swastika was a gift to the Finnish Air Force from a Herman Goring’s brother-in-law who later founded the Swedish Nazi party so it can’t represent the same beliefs.
It’s still dubious to imply that the Finns adopted it as a direct or indirect result of Finns espousing Nazism. I mean both can be true, that there has been Finnish sympathy for Nazis, and that this specific usage of the swastika is pretty surely a coincidence. At least with the info available it’s pretty weak when there are so many stronger examples of Finns sympathizing with Nazis.
It's more that the symbol was created by a Fascist and Goering decided to steal it. It's really hard today to understand that Air Forces of the day were hotbeds of Fascism due to their aristocratic membership and futurist aesthetics.
Were doing contacts with nazis in 1938, stalin decided its too close to leningrad for comfort and that working people of finland will greet them as liberators. Half assed government, didn't go that well, decided just to take territory too close to leningrad. Finns then actively helped siege of leningrad and were allied to nazis.
Then they decided to chill out after germany was defeated.
It's not gonna surprise you but the reddit narrative seems to be that both USSR and Germany wanted to colonize them so they chose the lesser evil which was the side that committed the holocaust.
Finnish behavior during 1921-1928 was ... very questionable in karelia. So even they weren't actively allied to nazis, it was still dodgy.
But stalin also fucked up by creating puppet government without even doing anything, its like "hello, this is your new government, also we bomb you now".
If only ussr had high tech cia infiltration methods
If you took a random Finn, any single one, and put them in a room with Hitler, Mussolini (or some other fascist, I dunno), and a random Russian, plus a gun with two bullets, they'd double-tap the random Russian and ask for more ammo.
The only people with a more deep hatred and revanchism against Russia is Poland.
Once I was walking alongside an acquaintance and we stopped by a "Free Library", a little one where you can put any book you want inside and take any books you'd like.
And inside was a book for children to learn Russian.
Oh cute, this could be useful but shame it's in such a bad condition...
"Why would you want to know the enemies tounge?"
This fucking shook me. The anti-russian is so strong that even considering learning Russian is frowned upon by some. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. And even then, my best response in the moment after being flabbergasted was to say "And what? You think not knowing German during the Nazi occupation was better than knowing it?"
It drives me nuts. I have a slava-brained coworker whos refers to anything the soviets did as "Russia", despite the fact that i have repeatedly told him that the Soviet Union had many nationalities inside of it, including the brave Ukrainians that he says he supports. He also wholeheartedly believes that Russia will balkanize when the conflict ends, so there's no hope, really.
I think Estonia might be more anti-Russia than Finland. Not sure about Lithuania and Latvia but they’re up there, too. But hey it’s not a competition 🤠
I'm from St Petersburg Russia and have been to Finland a few times (granted, before 2022), and at least back then this was not my experience. to put it mildly