The Red Army “will be in Helsinki in 3 days”. Ukraine's Surrender in the Name of Mannerheim: Is It Possible to Return to the Europe of 85 Years Ago?
Articles | | 490 | Author: Olena Zelenina
A collage by Olena Zelenina.
“Times are such that even a holy man needs a gun more often than a prayer.” Carl Gustaf Mannerheim became famous for this saying, and he is not just a national hero of Finland. He is a symbol of resistance against the insatiable Soviet Russia. And in this connection, analogies with the Russian-Ukrainian war are gaining popularity today. There are even proposals for a kind of “Finnish option” for Ukraine. What does this mean?
For Ukrainians, Mannerheim's figure is interesting because he began his service in the army in the same regiment as a famous Ukrainian historical figure, Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky. They kept in touch epistolarily until the 1940s.
But today we are not talking about that. We are talking about what the experience of Mannerheim, whose personality is certainly impressive, teaches and does not teach our contemporaries!
This year, by the way, marks the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Soviet-Finnish war, which went down in history as the “Winter War.”
In total, the Soviet government tried to absorb Finland three times (to return the originally “Russian lands”) in 1918, 1939, and 1944. And three times Mannerheim managed to defend it, inflicting a crushing defeat on the superior Soviet forces.
Read more in the Ukrainian edition....
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