The Russian Security Council has published an article by First Deputy Secretary Rashid Nurgaliyev, which is an attempt to throw new light on Finland’s role in World War II. The context for the article is Finland’s membership in NATO today. TASS coverage of the article begins with the allegation that, during World War II, Finnish forces set up concentration camps in parts of Russian territory that it occupied for those deemed “not Finnish enough.” The theme throughout is that the Finns were not much better than the German Nazis they were allied with.
“More than 100 different places of forced detention were created on the territory occupied by the Finnish troops. For the Russian population of Karelia, as well as for the inhabitants of the Vologda and Leningrad Regions, 14 concentration camps were created: 6 concentration camps in Petrozavodsk, as well as in the villages of Vidlitsa, Svyatnavolok, Paalu, Kolvasozero, Koropa, Luzhma, Kindasovo and the settlement of Ilyinsky,” Nurgaliyev wrote. The new available accounts of atrocities by Finnish forces comes from recently declassified documents that were transferred by the Karelian branch of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to the republican archive.
“Thousands of eyewitnesses of those tragedies, including residents of the occupied territories, former concentration camp inmates, fighters that liberated the Karelia land, confirm that the Finnish authorities imposed a regime in Karelia, as harsh as the one that was imposed by the Nazi Germany in the occupied part of the U.S.S.R. Official Finnish papers from 1940-1941 confirm that an unprecedented act of genocide was planned against the Russian people,” Nurgaliyev said. He pointed out that, on July 8, 1941, one day before the beginning of the Finnish offensive north of Lake Ladoga, Finnish military commander Carl Gustaf Mannerheim issued the order number 132, its fourth clause reading: “capture the Russian population and send it to concentration camps.”
Nurgaliyev charged that the West is facilitating the turn of Finland today against Russia by playing up it’s desire for revenge. He reiterated that Helsinki, “looking for revenge, is joining anti-Russian alliances,” while Western propaganda is “spinning the Finnish sense of superiority over Slavs, at the same time trying to revive the idea of a ‘Greater Finland'.”
“Washington, ‘under NATO’s umbrella,’ has turned Finland into a dependent semi-vassal and is trying to make another anti-Russia out of it yet again, forcing it to sacrifice its own well-being for the sake of alien geopolitical goals,” Nurgaliyev pointed out.
