Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 1: a podcast that usually isn't about shooting people. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Margaret Kiljoy, and that is the sketchiest introduction that I
Speaker 1: will probably ever do for this show. My guest today
Speaker 1: is also not sketchy, and his name's Carl. Hi, Carl.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's so good to be here, and it's good
Speaker 2: to see you again. It's been a little while and
Speaker 2: it's a real treat to be on the show today. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, shooting people is a sketchy thing. Sadly,
Speaker 2: within history sometimes it's been less sketchy to shoot them
Speaker 2: than to not. But that's a different topic.
Speaker 1: That's the main topic we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1: Cool and Carl is the host of in Range TV,
Speaker 1: which is a not just YouTube show where you can
Speaker 1: learn about firearms. Is that a decent way to send
Speaker 1: that up.
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so. It's a firearms channel at sensibly,
Speaker 2: but I think it's much more a cultural historical channel
Speaker 2: that deals with the topic of firearms through a different lens,
Speaker 2: is kind of the way I put it. So we
Speaker 2: try to deal with these topics in a way that
Speaker 2: frequently other people who deal with firearms, don't approach them
Speaker 2: from and I think that's part of the reason maybe
Speaker 2: I'm here today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. I think the audience knows. I don't
Speaker 1: tell my guests what they're going to be on to
Speaker 1: talk about, but Sophie knows. Sophie is our producer, Hig.
Speaker 3: Sophie, Hi, I do know. And then I liked that
Speaker 3: description of your channel, Carl. I feel like that, really
Speaker 3: like that. That really sums it up.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, folks have it.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, I am here though, and we
Speaker 3: are here, and.
Speaker 1: And who else is?
Speaker 3: But it's it's our editor, Ian, That's where.
Speaker 1: You're going for right It is. Ian isn't here with
Speaker 1: us on the zoom, but here's what Ian is with
Speaker 1: us spiritually always yes present. So everyone has to say
Speaker 1: Hi Ian Hi Ian, Hi Ian Hi Ian. Well, and
Speaker 1: our theme music was written for us by unwoman. So
Speaker 1: this week and next week, because we're going to do
Speaker 1: a four part we're going to talk about two extraordinary
Speaker 1: people who had a lot in common and an awful
Speaker 1: lot not in common, who are more or less on
Speaker 1: opposite sides of a war. Carl, have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of the Great War? The World War It's sometimes called.
Speaker 2: Oh the first you need Part one of World War Two. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've heard of that.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what I was going to get to is
Speaker 1: actually it has a lesser known sequel called World War
Speaker 1: two Electric Boogaloo, which is like a straight to DVD
Speaker 1: thing that not too many people have heard of.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's kind of one of those niche hipster wars.
Speaker 2: Yeah we should probably. Yeah, you hear about the Great
Speaker 2: War all the time, but that that hipster stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: you got to go to special niche war markets for
Speaker 2: that kind of content exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's what we are this week because today, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of curious when you figure out what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. One of the people that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about was a five foot three Finnish farmer
Speaker 1: with a Mosin Nagant, which is an old bolt action
Speaker 1: rifle in the Peri skis, who didn't want anyone to
Speaker 1: invade and conquer his country. The other person we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about was two inches shorter, still, a five
Speaker 1: foot one Ukrainian gun manufacturer lady who also had a
Speaker 1: Moson Neagaunt, who also didn't want anyone to invade and
Speaker 1: conquer her country. Both of them, by strange accidents of history,
Speaker 1: were working counter to Hitler's plans. Although the Ukrainian woman
Speaker 1: was absolutely the more anti fascist of the two. The
Speaker 1: finn Simohuha is sometimes credited as the most successful sniper
Speaker 1: in history. The Ukrainian Ludmila Pavlchenko is universally considered the
Speaker 1: most successful woman sniper in history. It's actually completely possible.
Speaker 1: The numbers and all this stuff is really blurry. It's
Speaker 1: only possible she has more confirmed sniper kills with a
Speaker 1: rifle than Simo because his count also includes his prolific
Speaker 1: submachine gunning. You ever heard of these folks.
Speaker 2: I've heard of both of them. I'm more familiar with Simo.
Speaker 2: Although I'm familiar with both of them, I'm excited to
Speaker 2: learn more about them. It is true about Simo, though,
Speaker 2: I do know this, Like when you said about his
Speaker 2: submachine gun kills, the Finns during the Winter War and
Speaker 2: the Continuation War were greatly armed with submachine guns, and
Speaker 2: it was part of what educated the Soviet army, let's say,
Speaker 2: on the value of those those types of weapons. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it's interesting because it seems like the rifle they
Speaker 1: used was a Russian design, and then the submachine gun
Speaker 1: that everyone used was a finished design.
Speaker 2: Or at least a derivative thereof. Yeah, so the finish
Speaker 2: was the Saomi, and then you later see the PPSh
Speaker 2: forty one and the forty three, and they the forty
Speaker 2: one is definitely similar the drum magazine. In fact, in
Speaker 2: the Soviet weapon is nearly identical to the finish one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. So first we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about Simo, which means we're going to
Speaker 1: get to talk about my second favorite country to nerd
Speaker 1: out about. The first one, as any listeners probably caught
Speaker 1: on as Ireland. But the first country that I nerded
Speaker 1: out about when I was a kid, it is Finland.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I mean, I do know why,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a weird story.
Speaker 3: Okay, what is it?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: When I was fourteen years old, I was at a
Speaker 1: very large concert in Washington, DC, and I was crowdsurfing
Speaker 1: to Blondie and I fell on top of a very
Speaker 1: cute fourteen year old girl who was from Finland, and
Speaker 1: we dated for many years, and I went and visitor
Speaker 1: in Finland. See some of the more interesting parts of
Speaker 1: that story I have to cut out because it would
Speaker 1: show who her family is.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that is a meat cute.
Speaker 2: That seems like such a sweet story actually, and that
Speaker 2: and that gets you to Finland, which is a place
Speaker 2: that I feel like so many people don't even know exists,
Speaker 2: which is a weird statement, you know how that works? Like, no,
Speaker 2: it is one of those countries that's kind of like
Speaker 2: off the radar for lack of a better term, although
Speaker 2: a little more so recently with everything going on with Russia.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. I guess the whole
Speaker 1: NATO thing. Have you ever been to Finland?
Speaker 2: Either of you? A number of times? Three, three or
Speaker 2: four times?
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, Sophy never Well, it's nice. The sun either
Speaker 1: doesn't go down or it doesn't come up, depending on
Speaker 1: your timing, which I think for most people means the
Speaker 1: sun never goes down, because I don't know a lot
Speaker 1: of people who travel to Finland in the winter unless
Speaker 1: they live in Finland. You ever gone in the winter.
Speaker 1: I've only gone in the summer.
Speaker 2: But the one time I went in the winter, it
Speaker 2: was one of those incredibly mild winters, so I did
Speaker 2: not experience like true Finnish winter. Yeah, so I got,
Speaker 2: I got the real, the real, simple taste of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Finland.
Speaker 1: I think you're absolutely right. Finland is a sort of
Speaker 1: overlooked country. And I think what a lot of people
Speaker 1: assume that they know about Finland is not true. Finland
Speaker 1: is not the country that people might assume it is.
Speaker 1: Finland has only been a country for less than half
Speaker 1: the time that the US has been a country. And
Speaker 1: it's not Scandinavian. That is the one big thing that
Speaker 1: I think people misunderstand about Finland, or at least Americans
Speaker 1: misunderstand about Finland. It's a far northern country. It is
Speaker 1: not on the Scandinavian peninsula. It is I mean neither
Speaker 1: Iceland or Denmark. But those are Scandinavian countries because they're
Speaker 1: culturally Scandinavian. All of these like whenever I talk about
Speaker 1: like what counts as what and like lines on a map,
Speaker 1: it's all bullshit. And this whole story is about how
Speaker 1: all that stuff's bullshit, but also how it matters. So
Speaker 1: the rest of Scandinavia, they're all Germanic pagans like fore
Speaker 1: and Odin and Lokian shit. Well, I mean not now,
Speaker 1: but historically some of them still are. Finland is considered Nordic,
Speaker 1: but it is not considered Scandinavian. It has always had
Speaker 1: its own thing going on, like really had its own
Speaker 1: thing going on. There are only a few other places
Speaker 1: like Estonia and Hungary that are linguistically related to Finland
Speaker 1: to any appreciable degree. And it's an odd man out
Speaker 1: from Europe, just part of why it's so fucking cool, frankly,
Speaker 1: although it is also part of why it has suffered
Speaker 1: at the hands of other countries so many times. Finnish
Speaker 1: paganism is a combination of polytheistic, like it has lots
Speaker 1: of gods, but it's also animistic in that there are
Speaker 1: spirits and everything in the world. Animals are considered sacred,
Speaker 1: and each type of animal has its own like animal mother,
Speaker 1: a sort of guardian spirit for all of that animal
Speaker 1: that is distinct from the gods themselves. As best I
Speaker 1: can tell, and I'm not actually an expert on Finnished paganism,
Speaker 1: as best as I can tell, it's actually because there's
Speaker 1: like multiple religions that are all kind of like trying
Speaker 1: to share the same and like some of them are
Speaker 1: more animistic, and some of them are more polytheistic. That's
Speaker 1: my like, that's my best inference based on what I've read.
Speaker 1: But I haven't had as many conversations with Finns about
Speaker 1: their paganism.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of the finish afterlife? The pagan afterlife?
Speaker 2: Actually, that's not something I'm familiar with. I'm familiar with
Speaker 2: some of the similarities of Greater European paganism in Finnish paganism,
Speaker 2: for example, like thor and Percle, which is one of
Speaker 2: their curse words, which is the lightning god. That's interesting,
Speaker 2: but not about the afterlife.
Speaker 1: So no bed was the first finished word I learned
Speaker 1: after kitos, which means thank you. The word for like
Speaker 1: basically goddamn. It is the word for the old. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: one of their old gods. The afterlife is called Twanala,
Speaker 1: which is and the reason it's my favorite is because
Speaker 1: it's when you die, you're dead, like more or less.
Speaker 1: Like it's not technically that when you die you go
Speaker 1: to a dark underground and you sleep without dreaming forever.
Speaker 1: So like when you die, you're dead, and there's like
Speaker 1: some gods that look over it, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's all the stories about people like going there and
Speaker 1: getting stuck there and retrieving wisdom and all that shit.
Speaker 1: But like, good bad, it doesn't matter. When you die,
Speaker 1: you are fucking dead. I love it.
Speaker 2: It's the strongest spiritual form of ambient.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Finnish is a Uralic language, which the only
Speaker 1: real relations to it being Estonian and Hungarian. And the
Speaker 1: way that a finn once told me, because I was like,
Speaker 1: I went there and people were like, oh, Finish is
Speaker 1: like nothing like any other language. And then I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: I read a book it says it's like Hungarian, and
Speaker 1: this old Finnish man was like, yeah, it was. Actually
Speaker 1: my partner's dad was like, if you're on one mountaintop
Speaker 1: and a Hungarian is on the other mountaintop like yelling,
Speaker 1: I guess you could maybe think it was finish. That
Speaker 1: was the way to describe the difference. Uralic language is
Speaker 1: come from a language called proto Uralic, which was spoken
Speaker 1: in the Ural Mountains, which is a mountain range that
Speaker 1: runs through chunk of Russia. Basically because actually everyone moves
Speaker 1: around all the time and nationalism is garbage, Finnish wasn't
Speaker 1: a written language for a long ass time. In the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century, folks were like, well, what if we want
Speaker 1: to write the Bible? And they were like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: I guess we need a written language, right, So it
Speaker 1: started being written, but only in religious context. They didn't
Speaker 1: really the modern written Finish was not developed until the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Everyone was writing Swedish. It wasn't that people
Speaker 1: weren't I mean, I'm sure a lot of people weren't literate,
Speaker 1: but it was all ruled by Sweden at this point.
Speaker 1: So the modern written Finish was developed in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century as part of this urge to create a Finnish
Speaker 1: nationalism to escape centuries of Swedish and Russian colonization. I know,
Speaker 1: I just talked shit on nationalism, but it means different
Speaker 1: things in different contexts. It's a different thing when you're
Speaker 1: talking about colonized people versus anyway whatever. People probably heard
Speaker 1: me rant about that before. If not, yep, okay, great, And.
Speaker 2: Still to this day in Finland the two national languages
Speaker 2: are Finnish and Swedish. Yeah, those are the ones you're
Speaker 2: supposed to learn in school. Although everyone knows.
Speaker 1: English, yeah, and only six percent of people have finishes
Speaker 1: I mean as Swedish as their like first language. It's
Speaker 1: pretty much a leftover. There's like class shit in there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all on the street signs though, So when
Speaker 2: you're like, when you're wandering around, you'll see Finnish and
Speaker 2: Swedish right next to each other, and Swedish is easier
Speaker 2: as an English speaker to try and figure out, so
Speaker 2: I can sort of decipher things through Swedish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's actually that's a really good point I learned.
Speaker 1: One of the things I learned, I've been a Finland
Speaker 1: bunch of times, and one of the times, people will
Speaker 1: come up to me and they would like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get this all wrong. It's been a while
Speaker 1: since I've been there, and they if people come up
Speaker 1: to me and talk to me, And so for longest time,
Speaker 1: I was saying enpoo sumalainen, which I thought meant I
Speaker 1: don't speak Finnish. Eventually, and everyone as soon as I
Speaker 1: said that, people would turn around and walk away. And
Speaker 1: then eventually I learned I was saying, and I don't
Speaker 1: speak Finnish people. But then I learned that if I
Speaker 1: just said I don't speak Finnish in English, they would
Speaker 1: talk to me, whereas if I didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: to them, I would say I don't speak Finnish and
Speaker 1: Finnish and then they would turn around and leave, especially
Speaker 1: if I said I don't talk Finnish people anyway. Right,
Speaker 1: So is a fucking cool language. I am not good
Speaker 1: at speaking it, as we have discovered. I know how
Speaker 1: to say beer and thank you and cuss. There are
Speaker 1: no gendered pronouns in Finnish. The same word is used
Speaker 1: for men and women. Lots of languages do this, actually,
Speaker 1: probably the majority of languages in the world do this,
Speaker 1: but almost no Western languages. The only exceptions that I've
Speaker 1: ever been able to find of Western languages that have
Speaker 1: no gendered pronouns are Finnish and Hungarian and Bosque and
Speaker 1: except Have you ever heard about the secret gendered pronoun
Speaker 1: in Finnish?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, One time a drunk Finn told me that there's
Speaker 1: a secret, and I'm going to tell you the secret,
Speaker 1: but can't tell anyone. There's one gendered pronoun in Finish.
Speaker 1: It is rarely used, and it is used for the
Speaker 1: gender my useless piece of shit husband. And whenever I
Speaker 1: and I've checked this by talking to Finns about it,
Speaker 1: and they always start off by saying no, there's no
Speaker 1: gender pronouns and finish, and I'm like, well, what about
Speaker 1: my useless piece of shit husband pronoun? And then, especially
Speaker 1: if they're drunk, they'll admit it that there is this
Speaker 1: secret gender pronoun. I can't remember what it is. And
Speaker 1: I tried googling this and I did not come up
Speaker 1: with success. And I wrote my finish friend, and I
Speaker 1: think my finished friend is sick of me asking this
Speaker 1: kind of question and didn't get back to me before
Speaker 1: the time of recording.
Speaker 2: So just be a couple little things like this. For example,
Speaker 2: there's another word that's just one word that means sitting
Speaker 2: at home drunk in your underwear. Yeah, it's just one word.
Speaker 2: So you say that one word and everyone knows what
Speaker 2: you're doing that night, for example. So there's like little
Speaker 2: secret like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, spoon theory is written into the finish. This
Speaker 1: is going to turn into a weird Margaret or whatever
Speaker 1: spoon theory has written into it, though like, I don't
Speaker 1: have the spoons to do it. I'm too tired. You
Speaker 1: can say anyoxa, which again I might be completely butchering.
Speaker 1: I learned this when I was sixteen years old and
Speaker 1: have not checked since but this, you know, this idea
Speaker 1: of like I don't have the energy, and you can
Speaker 1: say it in a way that like, if you say
Speaker 1: it in English, I don't have the energy, people are like, ah,
Speaker 1: you lazy bum get up. At least in the nineties,
Speaker 1: I think that culture is caught on to the fact
Speaker 1: that sometimes people literally don't have the energy to do
Speaker 1: things anyway. Fins historically were wild and scary to the Scandinavians.
Speaker 1: Fins were seen as wizards by the Norse. If a
Speaker 1: fin shows up in a story, you know that something
Speaker 1: spooky is about to happen. But this is also a
Speaker 1: conflation of the Fins with the Sami people, which is
Speaker 1: an indigenous group in the northern in like Lopland. Right
Speaker 1: that the Scandinavians weren't really good at making these distinctions,
Speaker 1: and neither is anyone else, because the samiyear and oppressed
Speaker 1: people who get complated with the Finns. Finnish also only
Speaker 1: became one culture really recently, and it's still in many
Speaker 1: ways not necessarily one culture. The indigenous Sami of the
Speaker 1: north exist, and then even in southern Finland there are
Speaker 1: multiple regions with their own ethnicities and languages. Even if
Speaker 1: most of them are Finnic, right, like you have the Karelians,
Speaker 1: the Ingredians, and the Ingreans were almost completely genocided by
Speaker 1: Stalin and we're going to talk about that, and that
Speaker 1: is going to be a really major factor in understanding
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about, which is clearly Finland
Speaker 1: and World War Two. We've clearly painted at that. But
Speaker 1: you know what isn't Finland in World War two? Any ideas?
Speaker 2: But it's the sponsors that support this podcast.
Speaker 1: That's right, all of them. Actually, I don't know what
Speaker 1: Nokia is doing in Finland back then. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Kia might not have started till later. There actually could
Speaker 1: be sponsors that were on World War Two. I just
Speaker 1: did that annoying thing where it's like I knew I
Speaker 1: pronounced it like fins and that's not true. I just
Speaker 1: fucked it up. I should just say no Kia. Uh,
Speaker 1: but that's not who we're sponsored by, unless it is.
Speaker 2: I don't fucking know.
Speaker 1: Here's some ads that let me feed my dog.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 1: They were a tire manufact o Kia was, Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think they did other shit too, But I remember one
Speaker 1: time I was at this like squat and I was
Speaker 1: like standing on this tire and I said no Ken.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's funny. That's a phone, and they're like,
Speaker 1: it's not a phone, it's a tire, and I was
Speaker 1: like that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Like Mitsubishi's used to be used to make zeros, used
Speaker 2: to make wet talk about that anymore. The zero aircraft
Speaker 2: from the Japanese. Oh shit, yeah, they made they made
Speaker 2: the zeros. If you if you email them about they
Speaker 2: just don't reply.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of World War two stuff that
Speaker 1: people don't like to admit that they were making, including
Speaker 1: if you ask Finland what it was doing during World
Speaker 1: War Two, they don't like talking about it for some
Speaker 1: weird reason.
Speaker 2: But it's an interesting situation and they were. They were
Speaker 2: in a tenuous place that put them in a really
Speaker 2: interesting predicament.
Speaker 1: That is the main subject of today. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: actual areas of what includes Finnish culture doesn't really line
Speaker 1: up with a modern map. You've got folks speaking Miankili
Speaker 1: in northeastern Swedish in Sweden, which is a Finnish dialect
Speaker 1: sort of another Finnic language, and then in Karealia, which
Speaker 1: is now mostly part of Russia, and then Ingria is
Speaker 1: entirely in Russia, so lines on maps don't define culture
Speaker 1: very successfully, right, But in the nineteenth century, Finland is
Speaker 1: trying to become Finland, and so a poet whose name
Speaker 1: I forgot to write down goes around and collects the Kalabala,
Speaker 1: which is the Finnish great epic of all their myths
Speaker 1: and shit, and it kind of turns it into a
Speaker 1: single narrative. So in some weird ways, it's like, oh
Speaker 1: the like all the traditional mythology is actually only from
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, but it draws on oral tradition before that.
Speaker 1: These days, Finland is probably known for being happy, except
Speaker 1: that it has a really high suicide rate, although lower
Speaker 1: than the US is. And it's known for being a great,
Speaker 1: great social democracy, except that the social democracy is falling
Speaker 1: apart and fascists are gaining more and more power. It's
Speaker 1: also known for producing very great black metal, no notes
Speaker 1: this is true, and for being the place that gives
Speaker 1: the world, gives the world the sauna, and for having
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty thousand lakes a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: The times that I spent there, I came to actually
Speaker 2: appreciate the suna. The sound is a really nice thing.
Speaker 2: So there's a real something there. The going from the
Speaker 2: cold water to the hot sana and back and forth
Speaker 2: again really is invigorating. Whether it is just a chemical
Speaker 2: inducing moment or really healthy for you, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it's nice and there's just a public element to it.
Speaker 2: There's a fact there's a public sauna in Helsinki that
Speaker 2: you can go to and like, for example, they don't
Speaker 2: have hang ups like about like public nudity like we
Speaker 2: would in the US, where people just all body types
Speaker 2: and everyone's together in one space. Yeah, and nobody really
Speaker 2: looks at each other and it's not but if it
Speaker 2: was here it would be weird. So that's an example
Speaker 2: of our culture does form things.
Speaker 1: No totally, that is a yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I agree. So Finland started off through most of the
Speaker 1: medieval era and stuff. It was like fairly tribal. The
Speaker 1: southern folks started becoming more sedentary and agricultural, but were
Speaker 1: still like theoretically divided into what gets called tribal as
Speaker 1: a really blurry word that gets used a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways. Whereas the northern Sami we're like we're good,
Speaker 1: We're just gonna keep hunting, fishing, like I don't know
Speaker 1: about agriculture shit. And then in the thirteenth century, the
Speaker 1: Christians were like, well, we don't want cool, pluralistic religious systems,
Speaker 1: so we're going to kill you all until you join
Speaker 1: our blood drinking cult. So they had the Northern Crusades,
Speaker 1: the lesser known Crusades, and they conquered Finland for Sweden,
Speaker 1: and basically Finland became European at this point, and it
Speaker 1: also became Catholic. Then the Protestant Reformation hit the North hard,
Speaker 1: and Finland went Lutheran because the Swedish king went Lutheran
Speaker 1: during the nineteen forties when most of our story takes place,
Speaker 1: Like ninety six percent of Finns are Lutheran, which I
Speaker 1: do not know a ton about. But it's not anti
Speaker 1: science or anti abortion, so okay.
Speaker 2: It tends to be more chill.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, that seems to be the Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like seems like in the like Catholic light kind of category.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. It's a high church with a lot of
Speaker 2: pomp and circumstance, but a lot what seems like a
Speaker 2: lot less awfulness in it. I mean not that there isn't,
Speaker 2: but it's less right, and so yeah, I think we
Speaker 2: forget because it was long ago. But like in Europe,
Speaker 2: just like in so many other places in the world,
Speaker 2: Christianity was spread by sword and gun, and Finland and
Speaker 2: Norway and Sweden, all those places were crushed under that
Speaker 2: similar type of the theocratical war.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, totally, and I mean and then even the
Speaker 1: places that were each doing the conquering are then going out,
Speaker 1: like like Sweden conquering them, but Sweden had just been
Speaker 1: conquered by Christianity. And then I don't actually know who
Speaker 1: conquered Sweden with Christianity. I assume it was the English,
Speaker 1: but I haven't. I don't know, but it's like it
Speaker 1: happened to them too. It's this gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 2: What's super interesting about that. I don't know if when
Speaker 2: you were there, if you went to Helsinki and saw
Speaker 2: the history museum, But when you go through, at the
Speaker 2: bottom floor is like the oldest elements, and then it
Speaker 2: goes up and as you go up, different floor, as
Speaker 2: it goes to more modern and closer to a current time. Okay,
Speaker 2: when you get to the floor, When you get to
Speaker 2: the floor, it's like it says the Christian era, and
Speaker 2: then when you go to the floor above it, it's interesting,
Speaker 2: it's a word phrase that would never be used here.
Speaker 2: They refer to it in the museum as the post
Speaker 2: Christian era. I thought that was something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I I guess when I was younger, I
Speaker 1: probably I went to some like museums and shit. When
Speaker 1: I went there as an adult, I was a fucking
Speaker 1: crusty piece of shit, and I was like, I have
Speaker 1: more memories of being passed out drunk and a gutter
Speaker 1: outside a gay bar in Helsinki has some good conversations
Speaker 1: with folks. Well passed out drunk and a gutter. I
Speaker 1: know that passed out and talking don't whatever. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: Finland kept having it rough. It was a poor outpost
Speaker 1: of an empire, and that tends to go rough. About
Speaker 1: a third of the population died two years in two
Speaker 1: years during a famine from sixteen ninety five to sixteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven. It was a really cold summer followed by
Speaker 1: a really hot winter that just fucked everything up, plus
Speaker 1: snowing and floods and the combo move of the little
Speaker 1: ice age happening, and then a whole bunch of volcanoes
Speaker 1: had gone off all around the world, and it was
Speaker 1: bad and people were like eating each other and shit,
Speaker 1: not the majority of people, but that was the thing
Speaker 1: that happened and it was really bad.
Speaker 2: But don't worry.
Speaker 1: It stayed really bad for Finland because Russia kept invading
Speaker 1: and conquering in the eighteenth century in two events known
Speaker 1: as the Greater Wrath and the Lesser Wrath.
Speaker 2: I had never heard of that. That's yeah, that's fun,
Speaker 2: as though Lesser Wrath is any somehow not any worse.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like how the
Speaker 1: Great War it doesn't actually seem that bad when you
Speaker 1: hold it up to World War Two, but it was
Speaker 1: absolutely an completely horrendous thing, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think you could argue in some ways, I
Speaker 2: mean obviously.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 2: I don't know if those worse are good or better
Speaker 2: in terms of war, but the Great War in some
Speaker 2: ways was even more horrific in certain instances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, fair enough. So the Greater and Lesser Wraths
Speaker 1: involved Russians going around with axes murdering hundreds of peasants
Speaker 1: that ago like they would just like walk up to
Speaker 1: a village and kill everyone with axes with a plague
Speaker 1: happening at the same time. Then in eighteen oh nine
Speaker 1: Russia got Finland and held it the wraths. They didn't
Speaker 1: really successfully hold it, and Russia held Finland for more
Speaker 1: than one hundred years. During this time, you start getting
Speaker 1: finished nationalism though, like let's be free idea, and a
Speaker 1: big part of the like leftist and labor thing for
Speaker 1: decades was fighting against Russification. So the very idea of
Speaker 1: making a Finland was a worker's idea and a socialist idea,
Speaker 1: especially social democracy that was like always the most common
Speaker 1: wave of like I'll talk sometimes about how overall socialism
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century had like three sides. There was anarchism,
Speaker 1: there was authoritarian communism, there's social democracy, and the dominant
Speaker 1: strain in Finland I think the entire time has been
Speaker 1: social democracy. So in their own internal elections before Finland
Speaker 1: becomes free, they become the first European power to give
Speaker 1: women the right to vote. Literally, women have had the
Speaker 1: right to vote in Finland since before there was a Finland.
Speaker 1: And nineteen seventeen is a year that comes up a
Speaker 1: lot for some weird reason, was a good year for
Speaker 1: leaving Russia. Finland was torn between the Social Democrats and
Speaker 1: right wing parties as Communists took control of Russia. The
Speaker 1: right wing of Finland recently. Previously, the right wing of
Speaker 1: Finland was the like we love Russia part right, but
Speaker 1: then when the Communie to control of the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: they were like, we're not so sure about Russia anymore. Actually,
Speaker 1: we want to be free too, So they like show
Speaker 1: up in the Social Democrats like, wait, you want to
Speaker 1: be free too, We actually, like finally fucking agree that
Speaker 1: we want to be Finland, and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we totally want to be Finland totally. This is an
Speaker 1: employ to join the German Empire. I swear we're not
Speaker 1: just looking for a different boot to lick. And they
Speaker 1: were like, sweet, I don't know why you brought that
Speaker 1: up about the German Empire. It seems completely unrelated, but sure,
Speaker 1: let's be free. So Finland declared it's independence. And this
Speaker 1: was before the Bolsheviks were like we want all power forever,
Speaker 1: fuck everyone, right, or kind of before they had conquered
Speaker 1: all power. So Lenin was like, chill, you can go
Speaker 1: your own way. It's cool. It helped I think this
Speaker 1: is my inference a really large chunk of the Soviet
Speaker 1: forces in the northwestern Russia where the sailors who skewed
Speaker 1: heavily anarchist, and anarchists tend to be a little bit less,
Speaker 1: making everyone be Bolsheviks kind of one of their things.
Speaker 1: So you have a newly through free Finland and they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: are we a socialist workers republic in a social democratic
Speaker 1: form or are we a puppet state of the German monarchy?
Speaker 1: And they had a war about it. The Reds were
Speaker 1: mostly social Democrats and only a minority of them wanted
Speaker 1: to join the Bolshevik thing going on next door. They
Speaker 1: wanted no dictatorship of the proletariat. They only wanted democracy.
Speaker 1: They kind of they specifically were like, basically, we want
Speaker 1: like a France or USA without private property, like with
Speaker 1: where where workers own the means of production instead of
Speaker 1: like one dude owns everything.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, you could. You can still see bullet
Speaker 2: holes in buildings in Helsinki from the Reds in the
Speaker 2: White Civil War.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe it.
Speaker 2: And it's another thing that I thought was super interesting
Speaker 2: was in Helsinki is that while it's no longer necessarily
Speaker 2: that same level of direct conflict the areas that were
Speaker 2: quote white in the areas that were quite red in
Speaker 2: terms of like in terms of possession of the city
Speaker 2: still have a different vibe when you're in them even now.
Speaker 2: That makes architecturally, yeah, yeah, like restaurants, even down to basics,
Speaker 2: like just the general let's put it this way. Some
Speaker 2: places are just way more bohemian feeling and they still
Speaker 2: feel that way. Yeah, and it's leftovers that resonate from
Speaker 2: like that long ago. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that that makes all of sense to me.
Speaker 1: This was a nasty civil war and the way it
Speaker 1: used to get explained to me was like, well, some
Speaker 1: Finns were capitalists and some were Soviets, and they had
Speaker 1: a war, and the capitalist one. This is not a
Speaker 1: very good way of understanding the civil war. It was Bolsheviks. Sorry,
Speaker 1: it was not Bolsheviks as social democrats. And then the
Speaker 1: capitalists who won militarily were heavily supported by Germany. Basically,
Speaker 1: Germany conquered Finland at the behest of the upper classes
Speaker 1: of Finland. Then the whites were like, hey, Germany, do
Speaker 1: you want to help us get rid of this red problem?
Speaker 1: And they're like, yeah, as long as our prince gets
Speaker 1: to be whatever anyway. So the Reds were volunteered, the
Speaker 1: Whites were conscripts. The Reds included thousands of women fighting
Speaker 1: in the army the Soviets. The Soviets off to the side,
Speaker 1: were split. I actually had just assumed that they basically
Speaker 1: were the main Red Army in supporting the Red Army.
Speaker 1: They mostly kind of stayed out of it. Some supported
Speaker 1: the Reds, some worked against the Reds and effectively sided
Speaker 1: with the Whites. The Soviet soldier station in Finland who
Speaker 1: sided with the Reds were buying large these anarchists two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty anarchists sailors in the Battle of RUSSOVESI was,
Speaker 1: I don't know, the main largest force of Soviet forces
Speaker 1: I found fighting in the Civil War. I'm sure there's others.
Speaker 1: And this is while the anarchists were still sometimes part
Speaker 1: of the Red Army. That changes, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: it in the next week's episodes. I don't know if
Speaker 1: anyone on the show has picked up that I'm not
Speaker 1: really excited about Bolshevism, that they tend to kill everyone
Speaker 1: that they disagree with. But if you're ever in the
Speaker 1: middle of a revolution and you're like man, I wish it.
Speaker 1: I hope someone betrayed, Like I hope someone uses this
Speaker 1: as an opportunity to just like kill everyone who disagrees
Speaker 1: with them. Well, then you should befriend the Bolsheviks, the
Speaker 1: group that won the Civil War. You would think it
Speaker 1: would be the Finns because they were both sides of
Speaker 1: the fight. But it was not the Finns who won
Speaker 1: the Civil War. It was the Germans. The conquering Whites
Speaker 1: rounded up the Reds and their families and just fucking
Speaker 1: murdered them or just left them to starve. More than
Speaker 1: ten thousand Red prisoners were left to starve to death
Speaker 1: in prison camps, and the White Field commanders got shot
Speaker 1: the shoot on the spot declaration, which was fairly literal,
Speaker 1: and it told them to execute anyone they wanted. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had this moment where I didn't really know about
Speaker 1: this right when I was when I you know, went
Speaker 1: to Finland and until like some of the more recent times,
Speaker 1: I went to this anarchist festival called Most of Pispola,
Speaker 1: and Pistola is a working class suburb of Tampaday, and
Speaker 1: at one night I was like walking home from the
Speaker 1: party at two in the morning and like the sun's
Speaker 1: still on the horizon because it's fucking Finland and it's
Speaker 1: cool as shit. And there's this big hill that runs
Speaker 1: to the middle of town and I walk up to
Speaker 1: the top of it by myself, and there's just this
Speaker 1: big monument and it's just a monument to the murdered Reds,
Speaker 1: and I just had this, like, I don't know, introspective
Speaker 1: moment thinking about that war and thinking about how, as
Speaker 1: likely as not, I would have been fucking one of
Speaker 1: those dead people.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, it makes the things like that make
Speaker 2: this palpable, don't it doesn't It It's like when you
Speaker 2: see it and you, like I said, you can see
Speaker 2: the bullet hole and the glass of the building, or
Speaker 2: the vibe of just different neighborhoods in the city that
Speaker 2: is still still resonate from one hundred years ago, really,
Speaker 2: but it still has that effect indelible fingerprint on the
Speaker 2: on the society in it. Yeah, and I don't I
Speaker 2: don't know, like you mentioned earlier, like how things are
Speaker 2: sometimes devolving there in terms of authoritarianism, and it's it
Speaker 2: doesn't really go away. It just it just gets quiet
Speaker 2: for a little while and then it comes.
Speaker 1: Back totally and The only positive thing is so, does
Speaker 1: you know all the social Democrats have just been murdered
Speaker 1: and all their families have got murdered, right, And it
Speaker 1: actually doesn't even take a generation before social democracy is
Speaker 1: a major force in Finland again, you know. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Whites win, and since they were boot liquor fox didn't
Speaker 1: actually believe in a free Finland, they elected the parliament
Speaker 1: elected a German prince as the King of Finland. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: Germany then immediately lost World War One and the German
Speaker 1: Empire collapsed. Finland became a republic and kind of in
Speaker 1: the weird way, like the moderates won the war, like
Speaker 1: the side that wasn't one of the sides won the
Speaker 1: war because the Whites and the Reds kind of both
Speaker 1: lost bootlocking the Germans and the atrocities that the Whites
Speaker 1: had committed lost the Whites a lot of popular support,
Speaker 1: and the Reds had lost all their popular support because
Speaker 1: they were dead or in exile. And so you get
Speaker 1: the moderates, the center and the center left, who more
Speaker 1: less have traded Finland off between each other ever since.
Speaker 1: So Finland messy place, beautiful place, lots of lakes between
Speaker 1: the wars, World War one and World War Two. In
Speaker 1: case anyone forgot what the two wars were, they're numerically named.
Speaker 1: It's easier to remember which one came first, which one
Speaker 1: came second. Wouldn't it be awful if they were a
Speaker 1: countdown instead, like we'd started off with like World War
Speaker 1: nine or something.
Speaker 2: You know, well, then you know how many are left.
Speaker 2: That's true, which is kind of nice until you get
Speaker 2: to zero, and then you just don't know what's going
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: I believe Fenris Fenrier is going to eat the sun.
Speaker 2: And then oh yes.
Speaker 1: So between the two wars, two things of importance to
Speaker 1: our story happened. First, Finland actually managed a kind of reconciliation.
Speaker 1: I first, when I first started reading about Simo, I
Speaker 1: was like, I thought this reconciliation thing was a lie,
Speaker 1: and so I kept reading more and more about it,
Speaker 1: and I actually don't think it's a lie. I think
Speaker 1: it's true. By nineteen thirty seven, the centrist and often
Speaker 1: center right Agrarians and then the center left Social Democrats
Speaker 1: were running the government in coalition. The far right is
Speaker 1: on the decline, as is authoritarianism on both sides of
Speaker 1: the spectrum. The far right parties aren't officially banned, even
Speaker 1: though they just try to stage a coup in like
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two or something like that. But the Communist Party,
Speaker 1: the Bolshevik Control Party, is officially banned, and so the
Speaker 1: Center is holding stuff. But the other thing that happened
Speaker 1: that I think is really important to understand for this story,
Speaker 1: so Finnish culture and language extends beyond the borders of
Speaker 1: what managed to carve itself out of Finland. You've got
Speaker 1: some Finns in northeast Sweden, and more importantly, you've got
Speaker 1: all these Fins over in Russia, and not just like
Speaker 1: Finns who showed up there, but like Finns who've been
Speaker 1: there for ever or at least hundreds of years, right,
Speaker 1: the Angrian Finns who are mostly Lutheran, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell you their average politics. And also in Russia you
Speaker 1: do have all of these Reds who were fleeing the
Speaker 1: White terr and most of these Reds that start off
Speaker 1: actually fairly moderate. There are social Democrats who want to
Speaker 1: use democratic state focused means to a chief workers control,
Speaker 1: but they'd just been fucking massacred by the landowners, and
Speaker 1: so for a lot of them Bolshevik had a sudden
Speaker 1: and new appeal.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: They were like, oh, maybe this thing that won and
Speaker 1: has a bunch of power sounds good to us, Right,
Speaker 1: So a lot of the Reds went over and became Bolsheviks.
Speaker 1: But there's a problem with Bolshevism, a problem made worse
Speaker 1: by repeat villain of the pod, the Man of Steel himself,
Speaker 1: Joseph fucking Stalin. So if he was the first behind
Speaker 1: the bastards about Stalin, No, but it was like the
Speaker 1: one of the first five. Okay, it's the maybe the
Speaker 1: furthest back I ever listened to was the like Stalin's
Speaker 1: drinking party thing.
Speaker 3: Hey, for Solomon's like a like a like a like
Speaker 3: what you would equival it to, like the worst frack
Speaker 3: guy you ever met.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he was like, what if what if I
Speaker 1: just kill all the fins and then destroy their culture?
Speaker 1: And so he did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's the FRACKI equivalent to, Eh, like, oh,
Speaker 3: what if we're just like go throw toilet paper at
Speaker 3: their house?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah. His sociopathy seemed to be his hobby, did it not?
Speaker 2: In a recurring theme?
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much, And he's good at coming up with
Speaker 1: excuses for it. That he comes up with I think later,
Speaker 1: so he decides to kill all the Fins and destroy
Speaker 1: their culture, including the Finnish communist in exile, the like
Speaker 1: loyal Bolsheviks. I suspect that no ideology has killed more
Speaker 1: Communists than authoritary communism. Specifically, I was just there's gonna
Speaker 1: be so many times in this note whatever I think
Speaker 1: people have caught on my position on all of this.
Speaker 1: Stalin was like, we've got to destroy Finnish culture, language traditions.
Speaker 1: And while we're at at people the Ingri and Finns
Speaker 1: who lived in the area that's now Saint Petersburg, since
Speaker 1: they've lived there since before there was a Saint Petersburg,
Speaker 1: they're like, I want to say, seventeenth century migrants to
Speaker 1: that area, and then Saint Petersburg came like the next
Speaker 1: century or some shit. In nineteen twenty six, there's one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen thousand of these Angryan Fins living in
Speaker 1: this area where they have lived for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: They have their own Finnic language, in their own culture.
Speaker 1: Nine years later, there's only seven thousand of them left.
Speaker 1: So this is a pretty successful genocide. This genocide was
Speaker 1: centrally managed and considered with the specific goal of assassinating
Speaker 1: the male population and destroying them utterly. Those who weren't
Speaker 1: killed were usually deported since Stalin was like, well, we
Speaker 1: need this buffer zone. Russia's obsessed with these buffer zones,
Speaker 1: and they were like, we need this buffer zone between
Speaker 1: US and Finland where there's no Fins because they might
Speaker 1: be loyal to Finland, right, and so he sent folks
Speaker 1: to Siberia Kazakistan. If he didn't just fucking kill them,
Speaker 1: Settlers from elsewhere in Russia took their homes and farms
Speaker 1: and shit. All the Lutheran churches and the Finnish language schools, radio,
Speaker 1: and newspapers were all shut down. Today, the population of
Speaker 1: Angrian Finns is about twenty five thousand. There are only
Speaker 1: seventy living speakers of the Angrian language. Left and the
Speaker 1: communist exiles. I think that they had started off helping
Speaker 1: all of this happen, right, to like prove that they're
Speaker 1: good and loyal. They got purged after they helped purge
Speaker 1: the other Fins.
Speaker 2: Weirdly, it doesn't seem like there's an authoritarian movement or
Speaker 2: government in this world that doesn't result in genocide. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if it's colonial Spain invading what is now
Speaker 2: New Mexico, or Russia with Finland, it always is the
Speaker 2: same thing over and over again. Yeah, whether it's killing
Speaker 2: people or cutting their hands off or their feet off,
Speaker 2: or taking away their language or putting them in camps,
Speaker 2: it's the same thing. It doesn't matter if it's called
Speaker 2: Stalinism or communism or Nazism or whatever. Always results in
Speaker 2: the same shit.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think I really absorbed. I like when when
Speaker 3: you're I have the script, when you were saying seventy
Speaker 3: seven zero living speakers left of that of language, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you said, yeah, that is that is that is so sad.
Speaker 1: I know, and most of them are older. And that
Speaker 1: mean you know that happens to so many languages. But
Speaker 1: it's just like it's it happens to those languages because
Speaker 1: of combinations of colonization and genocide, and like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know we have two lingo Is that one of
Speaker 1: our sponsors?
Speaker 3: No, Robert and I got an ad who was it
Speaker 3: for it? Well, we did do it. We just did
Speaker 3: do an ad on by the bastards for some language thing.
Speaker 1: It might have been Rosetta Stone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was Rosetta Stone.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Rosetta s don't can put out a series
Speaker 2: of saving the languages of genocide.
Speaker 1: Yeah cool?
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 3: Yeah, also Rosetta Stone paycral for that idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually that could actually sell. Yeah they should. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I trademarking that you should.
Speaker 3: I think you should be free car last to go
Speaker 3: to the trademark.
Speaker 1: We'll be back after that. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: A word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our only sponsor, mosen Nagaunt. If you want a
Speaker 1: bolt action rifle that you can think is more useful
Speaker 1: in the modern world than actually is that is we
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't be sponsored by firearms. Never mind, We'll just
Speaker 1: use whatever ads come up randomly. Here you go, and
Speaker 1: we're back. So you know, it's nineteen thirty nine. War
Speaker 1: is brewing. Hitler is in power. He's looking for allies.
Speaker 1: Who does he find. No, not the Fins. That's going
Speaker 1: to come later. Spoiler alert. Joseph fucking Stalin. We have
Speaker 1: talked about the Molotov ribbon Trump packed before on this podcast.
Speaker 1: You can cross it off your BINGO cards now because
Speaker 1: we're talking about it now. It is the Stalin and
Speaker 1: Hitler are allies for a while packed. It was signed
Speaker 1: on August twenty third, nineteen thirty nine, between Ribin Trump,
Speaker 1: who was a Nazi, and Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister.
Speaker 1: To the public eye, this was a non aggression pact,
Speaker 1: but secretly it was more than that. It was an
Speaker 1: agreement of how the two powers were going to carve
Speaker 1: up Eastern Europe, like who gets what when they start
Speaker 1: conquering shit. This secret element wasn't revealed until after the war.
Speaker 1: Hitler's big weakness. As far as I understand, I'm not
Speaker 1: a huge World War two understander in the way that
Speaker 1: there are many people who that is their life's blood.
Speaker 1: Hiller didn't have oil and Russia had oil. Sort did
Speaker 1: a remania. I think it was his ally, but he
Speaker 1: wanted more fucking oil, right. Russia had sent so much
Speaker 1: material assistance to Hitler's war machine, just running trains across
Speaker 1: the whole their massive country to make sure Hitler at
Speaker 1: everything he needed to start World War two. A week later,
Speaker 1: Hitler invaded Poland. Two weeks after that, Russia was like, sick,
Speaker 1: me too, and they also invaded Poland and the Polish defenses,
Speaker 1: who initially thought the Bolsheviks were gonna come and help them.
Speaker 1: We're like, hooray, the Soviets are here. We're like, wait,
Speaker 1: why are you shooting at us? We're not the Nazis.
Speaker 1: And then the Soviet Union invaded Poland and conquered it
Speaker 1: alongside their allies Hitler and held joint military parades and shit.
Speaker 1: This does not undermine the bravery of the people in
Speaker 1: the Red Army, who later are the people who bled
Speaker 1: the most to destroy Nazism. But it is a thing
Speaker 1: that's worth fucking understanding about their leader. So Stalin stopped
Speaker 1: putting anti fascism into the party jargon. The new enemy
Speaker 1: was Western Powers, as like France and England, and in
Speaker 1: their secret pact they decided something that's gonna have a
Speaker 1: lot of importance to today's story. They said, Russia, you
Speaker 1: can have Finland as well as Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania.
Speaker 1: But those aren't as involved in the story. And even
Speaker 1: before the secret part of it, it was known just that
Speaker 1: the Stalin was siding with the fucking Nazis. Pushed a
Speaker 1: lot of the Finnish communists over to the social democrat
Speaker 1: side of things. Already there's not a ton of Bolsheviks
Speaker 1: or like communists like Communist party communists in Finland. But
Speaker 1: seeing all this happened, like the Finns are like, oh,
Speaker 1: actually maybe this like powermonger is not our friend. So
Speaker 1: on October fifth, only a couple weeks after they'd invaded Poland,
Speaker 1: the USSR was like, hey, Finland, can we like, can
Speaker 1: we have party you just we want to set up
Speaker 1: some military bases all your neighbors. Let us do it,
Speaker 1: just give us control of huge trunks of Finland. And
Speaker 1: even the Finnish communists were like, oh, this is Russia
Speaker 1: doing an imperialism. This is the part that I like,
Speaker 1: I wasn't certain about this whole, like the communists actually
Speaker 1: were against Russia thing, because I like, it's not usually
Speaker 1: the way things go. But I read this like thirty
Speaker 1: fucking page academic paper about communism in Finland during this era,
Speaker 1: because that's whatever. I can't complain. I do it for work.
Speaker 1: It is the best job anyone has ever had in
Speaker 1: the history of this world. Thank you, Sophie. So the
Speaker 1: communists are like, this is Russia doing an imperialism. There
Speaker 1: was a few tankies, there's a few holdouts who are like, actually,
Speaker 1: the Finnish government, including the Social Democrats are the same
Speaker 1: as the fascists, since they won't just turn Finland over
Speaker 1: to Stalin, who is allied with the fascists. But don't
Speaker 1: pay attention to that part. Finland said no to the
Speaker 1: Russians and so and then they started mobilizing for war
Speaker 1: because they were like, oh, fuck, this is going to
Speaker 1: go really bad. We just told Stalin no, that's like
Speaker 1: not a he's like more like a yes man guy,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Stalin's not known for his his tolerance of no.
Speaker 2: He's not really into consent, never was.
Speaker 1: No, he's a free thinker. He's a strong whatever, fucking
Speaker 1: piece of shit. So Finns. So the Fins are like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna mobilize for war. And the first
Speaker 1: thing they do, just whatever, they arrest a couple hundred
Speaker 1: Communist leaders, finished communist leaders on suspicion they'd sided with Russia,
Speaker 1: but even the police reported quote, the will to defend
Speaker 1: the country, or at least loyalty towards the government has
Speaker 1: gained a footing even among the communists. And so then
Speaker 1: they let them all go except like one guy. I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's like probably one guy who was like,
Speaker 1: fuck you, I love Stalin. You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Even a bunch of Communist officers who had received training
Speaker 1: in the USSR were like, no, we are fucking defending Finland.
Speaker 1: Fuck the USSR. They just purged all my friends. And
Speaker 1: I really didn't expect this part. I really thought that
Speaker 1: the Reds of Finland were like in a roll and
Speaker 1: help the Soviets in the coming war. They didn't. They
Speaker 1: were really principal. Russia was like, all right, give us
Speaker 1: some Finland. And then it was like what the fuck. No, And.
Speaker 3: I love when you summarized history in like such a
Speaker 3: casual way. They're like they're like, nah, nah, we're doing that.
Speaker 2: Noah, bro' I'm not into that. How about you keep
Speaker 2: your Russian hands off of my Finland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. The first time I ever like had someone
Speaker 1: get mad at me about this. I used to do this.
Speaker 1: I did this tour talking about anarchism and fiction and
Speaker 1: I had ended up giving a conversation about Louise Michelle,
Speaker 1: who we've covered on this and just part of the
Speaker 1: Paris Commune. And I referred to the Paris Commune like
Speaker 1: really quickly and haphazardly, where I was like, and the
Speaker 1: government was out of town, so people were like, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a party, but then they weren't sure it
Speaker 1: was a be a communist party or socialist party, and
Speaker 1: then they kind of got into some arguments about it,
Speaker 1: and then the Germans invaded, and someone was like, really
Speaker 1: mad that that was the way I summed up the
Speaker 1: Paaris Commune. Someone listening is really mad about how I
Speaker 1: just summed up the start of the Winter War, And
Speaker 1: I don't it's cool.
Speaker 3: What's cool as you're no longer on Twitter?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, the Winter's gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's x dot com. Now everyone knows that.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, it sounds like something you can't
Speaker 1: go to in a library.
Speaker 2: No, you just now, you just now, you just z
Speaker 2: your authoritarian dreams. Oh my god, you to become Z.
Speaker 1: Yes, Sophie, I think it's a Yeah.
Speaker 3: Margaret, that was such a good joke and I just
Speaker 3: want to compliment you on it. Thank you so.
Speaker 1: Much, thank you. I appreciate it. So have you ever
Speaker 1: thought about the comparisons between the Winter War and the
Speaker 1: modern Ukrainian War?
Speaker 2: Actually, I have to admit I have. Yes, there's there's
Speaker 2: a lot going on.
Speaker 1: Huh, they're so fucking but what I've got. If I'm
Speaker 1: missing anything, please let me know if you want to
Speaker 1: expound upon any of it. What I've got is that
Speaker 1: Russia's main justification for this war was your border is
Speaker 1: too close to our cities, and we don't want the
Speaker 1: West to come attack us. And then a little bit
Speaker 1: of a but come on, we used to that part
Speaker 1: used to belong to us anyway, And then also a
Speaker 1: bunch of complete nonsense about how you're actually a fascist country,
Speaker 1: so we should have to denazify you. And in this case,
Speaker 1: in the Winter War, this was based on how seven
Speaker 1: years earlier some far right people tried to stage a
Speaker 1: coup and they lost, and then they stopped being particularly
Speaker 1: politically relevant. God, that's even the same fuck number, almost
Speaker 1: the same number of years as the Madden Euromaidan, whatever
Speaker 1: the protests in Ukraine. I'm not as good at modern
Speaker 1: history current events. Is that what you call modern history
Speaker 1: current events? I'm not as good at current events. Also,
Speaker 1: the people who are going to take up arms to
Speaker 1: defend Finland include people from every part of the political spectrum,
Speaker 1: the far right, the far left, the center right, the
Speaker 1: center left and the center all about to pick up
Speaker 1: guns and fight alongside of each other, which is like
Speaker 1: fucking Ukraine also Russia. Things is going to be easy,
Speaker 1: and then they meet an intensely fierce defense and their
Speaker 1: first attack is going to be utterly defeated.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like like when you put that into modern you
Speaker 2: have essentially you have Zelensky commanding Azov Battalion. How bizarre
Speaker 2: is that fighting against the Wagner Group? Yeah, from Russia? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: what a mix of political ideologies, all sorts of things
Speaker 2: mixed together for Ukrainian defense. It's it isn't that different,
Speaker 2: You're right, it's spot on.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's like I did an interview with a friend
Speaker 1: who was delivering an aid and to the front lines
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, and you know, and they're queer, and they
Speaker 1: were talking to a queer army commander and they were
Speaker 1: like they came out to the to the guy and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh good, I usually have to hide who
Speaker 1: I am. And they're like, that's great. When you deliver
Speaker 1: to the next place, don't tell them this. They're bad,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it's fucking weird.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, and I'm not giving them
Speaker 2: any difference because that ideology doesn't was deserve any difference. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but at the same time, they've been crack troops to
Speaker 2: defending eastern Ukraine, which is a weird problem to think about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it Yeah, And so the comparisons to this
Speaker 1: because one of the things I really like about today's
Speaker 1: story is that it's fucking messy. It is not politically simple,
Speaker 1: and the reason I love context anyway, that's like the
Speaker 1: fucking fun of this. But like, and also I think
Speaker 1: the thing that you can get other than just listening
Speaker 1: to another podcast bestimo or something, right, but I think
Speaker 1: you have to like get a sense of all this
Speaker 1: stuff in order to like figure out who these people
Speaker 1: were and why they were fighting, and like what it
Speaker 1: meant to different people to be fighting at different times
Speaker 1: in different ways. So Russia is gearing up for war
Speaker 1: after Finland says no to their demands, and then one
Speaker 1: of the problems that they run into as they have
Speaker 1: to be like, wait, hold on, stop purging all the Fins.
Speaker 1: We need enough Finns who are loyal to us to
Speaker 1: shore up some political legitimacy for when we try to
Speaker 1: take over Finland. So then they like stop purging the
Speaker 1: rest of the Fins, and then there's this whole thing
Speaker 1: with a false flag attack that isn't as interesting to me. Basically,
Speaker 1: Russia shells itself and it's like the Fins did it,
Speaker 1: and then attacks. November thirtieth, nineteen thirty nine, the USSR
Speaker 1: attacks Finland and their plan is to set up a
Speaker 1: puppet government, and they do right. Whenever they're conquering places,
Speaker 1: they're like, aha, this is now though I didn't even
Speaker 1: write down the name of it, because this puppet government
Speaker 1: is so irrelevant. It didn't last. But the Red Fins
Speaker 1: didn't rush to join the puppet puppet government, and the
Speaker 1: Soviets scarcely had enough Fins left to manage this puppet government. Instead,
Speaker 1: the communists and the socialists, the workers and intellectuals alike,
Speaker 1: they rush to the front lines to defend Finland from
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. At least one Spanish Civil War veteran
Speaker 1: who was finished came back and told everyone what he
Speaker 1: had seen in the war and seen what a piece
Speaker 1: of shit Stalin was firsthand, and how he'd betrayed the revolution.
Speaker 1: So the puppet government had no fucking support or very
Speaker 1: little support. There were a couple of the communists who
Speaker 1: went off to it or whatever. The US star doesn't care.
Speaker 1: They're not actually trying to set up a red government
Speaker 1: in Finland. They're trying to fucking conquer. And so I
Speaker 1: can't get into the mind of Stalin on this one.
Speaker 1: At the start of one of the harshest winters in years,
Speaker 1: he invades Finland. It fucking winter. The Finns, there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of things. They're known for, skiing, snow hunting,
Speaker 1: and fucking pure and raw emotionless heartiness and maybe saunas.
Speaker 1: That's what Finland's known for, which.
Speaker 2: I think you just summed up the word a Finnish
Speaker 2: word sea su, which doesn't really translate into English, but
Speaker 2: that's kind of like they're oh yeah, sea sue is
Speaker 2: this weird untranslatable form of Finish fortitude based on all
Speaker 2: those things you just brought up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not gonna go well, Okay, wait, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you my favorite Finish joke. There's two
Speaker 1: brothers they haven't seen each other in twenty years, and
Speaker 1: they decide to go ice fishing. Have you heard this? Okay,
Speaker 1: So they show up, they cut a hole in the
Speaker 1: ice and they start fishing. They haven't said a word,
Speaker 1: you know. Finally, a couple hours go by, and one
Speaker 1: I was like, he passed me a beer, passing the beer.
Speaker 1: A couple hours go by, Hey pass me beer, passing
Speaker 1: the beer. A couple hours go by, and he's like,
Speaker 1: how you been, And the other brother looks and says,
Speaker 1: christ did we come here to talk or did we
Speaker 1: come here to fish?
Speaker 2: That's so finish. Yeah, you can sit at a table
Speaker 2: with a fin for an hour and not say a
Speaker 2: thing and that's totally normal and fine. It's just how
Speaker 2: it works, like that's that's awesome that if you've been
Speaker 2: there and around Finnish people, that is spot off.
Speaker 3: And like America needs that.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm not trying to talk shit here, like, no.
Speaker 2: This isn't a negative at all. No, I don't think
Speaker 2: it's neat.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I was there. I was there having lunch one time
Speaker 2: with a bunch of my finn friends and and I
Speaker 2: just wasn't having the spoons as we were discussing, and
Speaker 2: I just picked up my plate and went to another
Speaker 2: table and sat by myself. Yeah, and all the finish
Speaker 2: there was one other person that was America like what's
Speaker 2: wrong with him? And the Fins are like, that's fine,
Speaker 2: leave them alone. That's that's not a problem at all.
Speaker 2: Over there. That's how it works. Yeah, that's he that's
Speaker 2: that's not a problem. And that's how that's how it
Speaker 2: vibes there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And obviously all cultural norms are exaggerations and bell
Speaker 1: curves and all that sh and like you know.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 1: The most presented as the archetype of this style of behavior,
Speaker 1: the shootiest, huntiest moose, huntiest skiest, heartiest of all, the
Speaker 1: five foot three farmer and hunter named Simo Howe, who
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about on Wednesday. Eh, eh, a
Speaker 1: whole episode of context.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited. I mean, I know the basics of
Speaker 2: this guy, but I don't know what the depth you're
Speaker 2: going to go into. But what I can do is
Speaker 2: as a as a just a preview as for sure,
Speaker 2: is how do you describe this person other than badass? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, if people want to see badass shooty stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you have any skiing content, but I
Speaker 1: would bet money there's videos of you shooting in the snow.
Speaker 1: How can people look up what you do?
Speaker 2: Ah, that's pretty easy. You can just go to nrange
Speaker 2: dot tv, which is a little website and All of
Speaker 2: my decentralized distribution points are there, although all of you
Speaker 2: will click on YouTube because that's what we do as
Speaker 2: consumers there. But I am decentralized and also completely demonetize,
Speaker 2: completely crowdfunded and crowd supported, so I really don't have
Speaker 2: any overlords besides viewers hopefully that want to support my work.
Speaker 2: So in range dot tv is where you can find
Speaker 2: my stuff.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, Sophie. What about you to see pictures of
Speaker 1: your dog?
Speaker 3: Oh, they can see it on Instagram. But I want
Speaker 3: to plug specifically a series that Garrison Davis just did
Speaker 3: on It could happen here, updating folks and what's been
Speaker 3: going on since cop City got approved to be built
Speaker 3: in Atlanta. Three episodes are out as of last week.
Speaker 3: If you're listening to this in modern times, If not,
Speaker 3: go back and listen to it. Gear has been covering
Speaker 3: cop City for I don't know two years now, and
Speaker 3: they've done a really good job of making you feel
Speaker 3: like you're there and giving a clear visual understanding of
Speaker 3: what's going on. So check it out.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, And if you want to follow me, you
Speaker 1: can google my name and I do too many different
Speaker 1: things and so you'll find a lot of them. My
Speaker 1: most recent book is called Escape from Inseill Island, and
Speaker 1: it is aner story in which protagonists have to escape
Speaker 1: an eyelid. It's full of in cells You on Wednesday by.
Speaker 3: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 3: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 3: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
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Speaker 3: your podcasts.