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Historical borders of Finland

Discussion in 'The Stump' started by Karjala, Nov 5, 2013.

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  1. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    Tamino


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    Posted Yesterday, 07:39 PM

    Whatever we talk you always end-up talking about the Russian Republic of Karelia. Good, I will try to learn something about the subject. Below is a map indicating historical border between Russia and Finland in the 19th century.

    Questions:

    1. Could you please explain me why was Karelia then located at the "wrong" side of the Russo-Finish border?

    2. Why you are so pedantic when Republic of Karelia is just 1% of the entire Russia?


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    Aut viam inv
     
  2. green slime

    green slime Member

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    Interesting topic Karjala. I'm sure there was something worth reading you were going to say, but it appears completely blank to me...

    Ah, now it's there! Excellent!
     
  3. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    To Tamino:


    Well - if you don't want to discuss about it why do you start it in the beginning?

    Actually that map you showed is the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland 1809-1812, after which the so called "Old Finland" was returned to the rest of Finland.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Finland

    Here's the map of the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland 1812-1917:

    [​IMG]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Finland

    1. Which Karelia do you mean? Please be specific, since you have showed that you don't know what you are talking about.

    2. Once again: I'm NOT talking about the "Republic" of Karelia - i.e. East Karelia. And what does the size of Russia have to do with anything?
     
  4. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    Got there - kind of... ;-)
     
  5. green slime

    green slime Member

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    1812? Why 1812? It was all so much better in 1658....

    [​IMG]

    (joking, joking!)
     
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  6. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    Of course you're right - except in 1658 Finland was part of Sweden and the only official language was Swedish... ;-/

    From 1812 onward it was the first time, when Finland as a nation was governed by the Finns and in Finland.
     
  7. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    Then why not give it all back to Sweden?

    It isn't that I'm not sympathetic to Finnish claims in Karelia, because I am. It's just that you can't turn back the clock on history. Germany has legitimate claims to parts of France, Belgium and Poland, do we give all that back as well? All of history is nothing but waves of people taking and losing territories and you can't just pick a date and declare that situation as the one showing legitimate ownership.

    Land belongs to the people or nation holding it right now.
     
  8. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    Neither the Finns nor the Swedes want it. The Swedes live in Sweden, the Finns in Finland.



    As I have written before, Germany started the war (with the USSR), Finland was attacked.

    The loss of areas of Germany can be seen as a "punishment", although personally I can't understand why to punish the ordinary citizens, who had been living in their home areas for hundred of years. Also the fact that the USSR was not punished makes punishing only Germany unfair and illogical. Also much of the areas Germany lost had been inhabited by several nationalities - not only by Germans.

    The area Finland lost had been inhabited by the Finns for thousands of years. No Russians had ever lived there - apart of few individuals in 1809-1917.



    This have been discussed before too. It is different to talk about ancient history hundreds of years ago, or about possessions which cannot be detailed, than talk about the modern times - "our" times, when every individual person is known and every piece of land ownership is documented.

    The difference is, that now there're are international organizations - like the UN - with commonly accepted laws of dos and don'ts for countries. In ancient times international robbery was the norm but not any more - at least it shouldn't be.

    FYI - the USA has never acknowledged the annexation of the Finnish Karelia to the USSR...

    That's not what the UN says - nor the USA for that matter.

    Land belongs to the people who had lived there for hundreds of years - not to the militaristic dictatorships.

    BTW - did you know that there was a plan by the USA to house the escaping Finns to Alaska if Finland had lost the Winter War and had been occupied...?
     
  9. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    Not really, since the USSR won the war, while Germany lost. That's the implacable logic of history.

    Well, of course they'd be welcome. Many Finns have settled in Michigan's upper peninsula. They call themselves Yoopers now.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50IgzksUqpQ
     
  10. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    Gentlemen, this is a continuation of a thread that was closed, in part because it was veering into turbulent waters (as well as off topic). How long it remains open depends on how civil its participants.

    As Jeff says, keep it out of the ditch's.
     
  11. A-58

    A-58 Cool Dude

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    Weren't the people in the areas the Soviet's occupied and annexed forcibly removed and resettled in Finland's interior after the end of the Continuation War and the expulsion of German troops?
     
  12. Ken The Kanuck

    Ken The Kanuck Member

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    These threads are hard to finnish.

    :0)

    KTK
     
  13. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    Obviously we won't ever agree with this. Your logic unfortunately is quite similar to Stalin's...



    And in Minnesota too, as well as on the other side of the Lake Superior in Canada.

    "Yoopers" is unknown to me. Is this supposed to be a joke?
     
  14. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    No. Nobody wanted to stay (except 19 individuals). The Finnish people living next to the soviet border knew well the soviet purges, which hit the hardest the ethnic Finns living in the soviet areas close to Finland.
     
  15. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    It's the logic of history.

    No, it comes from U P (Upper Peninsula) - YooPee - Yoopers. People who live there call themselves Yoopers. They aren't all Finns, but Finnish culture predominates. Many people have a banya, eat pickled or salted herring, use a lot of Finnish words and phrases and speak with a Finnish accent. I'm from the lower peninsula of Michigan, but used to spend most of my summers in the YooPee. In that region, everybody likes a Yooper - good folks.

    Also, "Da Yoopers" is a band with a fanatical, almost cult following in the UP. That's them in the video above. It's a kind of a polka/folk/country sound.
     
  16. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    As I wrote, I disagree.

    OK, thanks for the info - interesting to know.

    No Finn EVER has a "banya", since that is a Russian word and slightly different. All Finns bathe in SAUNA!
     
  17. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    You might find this interesting:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yooper_dialect

    When I was a kid, it was very difficult to understand what people were saying there until you spent some time and began to understand the strange grammar and odd words for common things. It's changing now; at least they've adopted English grammar rules, but there's still an accent that identifies a Yooper. Also, back then, and maybe still today, the only strong radio station in the western UP was entirely in Finnish.
     
  18. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    History isn't about right or wrong, it's about winning and losing. When the Karelian's fled or were pushed out by the Russians, it was of course a great wrong. But to try it and reverse that today and push out the current people, would be just as wrong.

    In a perfect world, there would be no war and no movement of people from their current homes. Yet, it's not a perfect world and history repeats itself every day. It's happening right now in parts of Africa and Syria, where non-Islamic peoples are being pushed out by Islamic radicals. Many of those people will perish and all of them will suffer.
     
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  19. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    You are right, I do find that very interesting! I hadn't heard of Yooper before.

    However a known language for us Finns is "Finglish", which is Finnish influenced by English language.

    "The term Finglish was introduced by professor Martti Nisonen in 1920s in Hancock, Michigan, to describe a linguistic phenomenon he encountered in America. As the term describes, Finglish is a mixture of English and Finnish. In Finglish the English lexical items are nativized and inserted into the framework of Finnish morphology and syntax. The Finnish immigrants to USA and Canada are one group that speak Finglish, but Finglish is also found in any place in Finland, where international contacts and popular culture exists, including Finnish language learners. The history of Finglish may be divided between Old Finglish and New Finglish."

    "Old Finglish originated amongst the first and second generation Finnish immigrants in US and Canada. Since few of them had any higher education or language skills, many of them ended up in menial and industrial jobs, where they learned English through practice. The language skills of the first generation American Finns remained always limited; second and third-generation American Finns usually were more or less bilingual. Finglish emerged as a pidgin with something they already knew (Finnish) and something they were bound to learn (English)."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finglish
     
  20. Karjala

    Karjala Don Quijote

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    History IS about right and wrong - as well as about winning and losing. Your country especially has advertised many times doing things, because they are right. Of course normally there's more than just that, but anyway the sense of doing right is very much part of making history.

    I cannot see how moving out the strangers occupying somebody else's land would be wrong. After all hundreds of thousands/millions of Russians - for example - have moved back to their own country after 1990 from countries, where they have stayed for decades - just like in Finnish Karelia. How would this be so very different? And as I wrote before, we would prefer to get our land back without the overstayed guests but could settle for a some kind of compromise.


    So - are you saying that that's just ok and let's watch it happen? I don't think your country agrees with you - neither do the other civilized countries.
     
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