Finland, NATO, and Finland’s History of Wars With Russia

In mid-May of 2022, as the Russia-Ukraine war continued, the government of Finland made a profound decision.  Finland will seek membership in NATO.  This is a watershed moment in Finnish and European history, because, since World War Two, Finland has avoided any alliances that may provoke her huge neighbor, Russia.

Map of Modern Finland

Given Finland’s long history of wars with Russia, the Finns have ample reason to be concerned about the intentions of Russia’s authoritarian ruler, Vladimir Putin.  The Russian President has not been shy about saying that he wants to revive Russian power and restore the old territories lost by both the old Czarist regime and the former Soviet Communist regime.  

In December, 1917, in the midst of the three huge conflicts engulfing the old Russian Empire, (World War One, the Russian Revolution, and its followup, the Russian Civil War), Finland declared her independence from Russia.  After being annexed into the old Czarist Russian Empire in 1809, the Finns had endured Russian rule for over a century.

Along with other captive nations such as Ukraine, the Baltic States, Armenia, and others, Finland declared independence and almost immediatley fell into a White vs. Red Civil War.  The non-Communist White forces, with help from Imperial Germany, defeated the Finnish Red forces, who had assistance from Soviet Russian troops.

As World War Two began, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Russia made a deal, the  Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which the two totalitarian powers agreed to divide Eastern Europe among them.  Germany then had a free hand in invading Poland (joined a couple weeks later by the Soviets, who seized eastern Poland), while the Soviets gobbled up the Baltic States, part of Romania, and then tried to bully the Finns into surrendering territory.  Finland refused, sparking a Soviet attack and the start of the Winter War.

This led to Finland’s involvement in World War Two, in which this small Nordic nation fought first against Russia, and later, in the Lapland War, against Germany.

Since the end of World War Two, Finland walked a fine line between being a Western-style democracy while also not antagonizing her huge Communist neighbor. Finland did not join NATO, nor did it join the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact.  Tiny Finland stayed non-aligned throughout the Cold War.  Safety seemed best found in avoiding both sides in that conflict

The fall of the Soviet system in the early 1990s, proved a brief respite from potential Russian aggression, as, with the rise of Vladimir Putin in the late 1990s, Russia once again began interfering and intervening in the affairs of nearby nations.

Now, in 2022, both Finland and Sweden (which also hewed to a non-aligned status), see that the best protection from potential Russian (i.e. Putin) aggression is in the mutual defense protections offered by membership in NATO. It would seem that, if one of Putin’s goals in invading Ukraine was to frighten other nations into staying away from NATO, it appears that his plan has backfired.  

Finland joining NATO, especially given the long history of wars between Finland and Russia, seems to be a logical step for tiny plucky Finland as a new Cold War between East and West develops.