JM Book Blog
2/17/2007
Ruotsila: Churchill & Finland
Markku Ruotsila: Churchill and Finland - A Study in Anticommunism and Geopolitics
Hardcover: 200 pages
Publisher: Routledge 2005
ISBN: 0415349710
Churchill's relation to and interest in Finland was part of a wider anticommunist project. One could've assumed that cooperation between Finland and one of the greatest statesmen in the history of the 20th century would've been smooth and simple. Finland, a small republican democracy, was of course, under challenge from the totalitarian, communist Soviet Union Churchill correctly identified as being an immense threat to the free world.
Events, and more importantly geopolitical necessities / power political realities made the relationship not so smooth. Churchill was, after all, forced to declare war on Finland - one of the few examples of a democracy declaring war on another democracy.
Ruotsila demonstrates with clarity the difficult interplay of ideology and geopolitical necessity in international life. From 1917 and the possibility of a (Churchill-Mannerheim collaboration) military rollback of Bolshevism to the Winter War and early years of the Cold War, Finnish realism was often at odds with the ideological ambitions of a global thinker.
Markku Ruotsila: Churchill and Finland - A Study in Anticommunism and GeopoliticsHardcover: 200 pages
Publisher: Routledge 2005
ISBN: 0415349710
Churchill's relation to and interest in Finland was part of a wider anticommunist project. One could've assumed that cooperation between Finland and one of the greatest statesmen in the history of the 20th century would've been smooth and simple. Finland, a small republican democracy, was of course, under challenge from the totalitarian, communist Soviet Union Churchill correctly identified as being an immense threat to the free world.
Events, and more importantly geopolitical necessities / power political realities made the relationship not so smooth. Churchill was, after all, forced to declare war on Finland - one of the few examples of a democracy declaring war on another democracy.
Ruotsila demonstrates with clarity the difficult interplay of ideology and geopolitical necessity in international life. From 1917 and the possibility of a (Churchill-Mannerheim collaboration) military rollback of Bolshevism to the Winter War and early years of the Cold War, Finnish realism was often at odds with the ideological ambitions of a global thinker.
"Finally, in a gesture typical of his quixotic magnanimity, Churchill decided to donate to the Finnish army his own pair of skis." p. 92Second Opinion: Erkki Tuomioja (in Finnish) ¶ 2/17/2007 07:08:00 ip.
