The Soviet Union, Finland, and the Baltic StatesSoviet Information Bureau

This monograph, published in 1941, details the Stalinist version of the history of Soviet-Baltic/Finnish relations. Based on its concluding section, it was apparently published while the Soviets still occupied the Baltic States. The Soviets accuse the Baltic States and Finland as the originators of all strife, accusing them of forming places d’armes for the purpose of “anti-Soviet attacks, expeditions, political combinations, alliances and coalitions—all directed against the Soviet Union.”

As Dawisha and Parrott write in Russia and the New States of Eurasia: The Politics of Upheaval:

… the consolidation of Stalin’s dictatorship produced especially egregious omissions and falsifications in accounts of the fate of various nationalities repressed during the period of Communist rule.

For now, official Russia increasingly views aspersions cast on the Soviet Union as attacks on itself, per President Medvedev’s establishment of the “Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia’s Interests” (комиссия при президенте Российской Федерации по противодействию попыткам фальсификации истории в ущерб интересам России) created to “defend Russia against falsifiers of history and those who would deny Soviet contribution to the victory in World War II.” One of the core tenets of that position is that the Soviet Union was a victim only in World War II—including its victimization at the hands of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—never the naked aggressor. After half a century of Soviet occupation, two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this historical monograph is essential reading for anyone interested in the Stalinist account of Baltic relations and how that account continues to frame Russia’s official position.

We do not endorse the Soviet account of historical events and their circumstances contained herein.