Murray N. Rothbard/Winter War

Rothbard and the Winter War

by Tim Starr, September 11, 2002 “Rothbard, Finland, and Soviet Russia”

Rothbard’s Cold War Wackiness: I’ve been asked by Mikko Ellila to comment on Rothbard’s interpretation of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, as he presented it in his libertarian manifesto, For A New Liberty (FANL). It’s been a very long time since I’ve read FANL, and I wasn’t terribly impressed with it at the time since I was already quite familiar with the basics of libertarian theory. However, I wasn’t very familiar with Soviet history at the time, so I didn’t notice how strange many of his claims about it are. Since Mikko is himself Finnish, I thought I’d start with Rothbard’s account of the Winter War, fought between the Soviet Union after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and before the German invasion of Russia:

“ The old pre-World War I Russia had now been restored with the exception of Finland. But Finland was prepared to fight. Here the Russians demanded not the reincorporation of Finland as a whole, but only of parts of the Karelian Isthmus which were ethnically Russian. When the Finns refused this demand, the “Winter War” (1939-1940) between Russia and Finland ensued, which ended with the Finns conceding only Russian Karelia.

— Murray N. Rothbard, For A New Liberty, p. 285

While I’ve read several books which describe the Winter War and its causes, this is the first time I’ve read the claim that there was anyone in Finnish Karelia who was ethnically Russian, much less that Stalin’s demands were intended to incorporate them into Soviet territory. My sources all cite other demands made by Stalin, with other purposes. For example, here’s what the highly-respected British military historian, Sir John Keegan, says about it:

“ Finland had been Russian territory between 1809 and 1917; when it won its independence after fighting against Russian and local Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, it had obtained a frontier demarcation which Stalin decided ran too close for strategic comfort to Leningrad and the Soviet Baltic ports. On 12 October 1940, a week after Latvia had signed its dictated treaty, the Soviet Union confronted the Finnish government with demands for naval basing rights and the cession of a large strip of Finnish territory in the Karelian isthmus leading to Leningrad.

— John Keegan, The Second World War, p. 47

The reason given by Keegan is the closeness of the Finnish border to Leningrad and the Soviet Baltic ports, not the presence of ethnic Russians in Finnish Karelia. Now, let us consult one of my favorite historians of WWII, Richard Overy:

“ Having absorbed half of Poland, and temporarily averted the German threat, Stalin was eager to press on with the fulfilment of the terms set out in the secret German-Soviet protocols. The Baltic states were asked to sign treaties of mutual assistance in the two weeks following the Polish defeat. The treaties gave the Soviet Union the right to station troops in Baltic bases. A few weeks later, on October 5, similar demands were made of Finland: a naval and air base at the mouth of the Baltic at Hanko and cession of the Karelian isthmus north of Leningrad to provide a better defence of that vital city. In return Finland was offered a large area of Soviet territory in Karelia. The Finns refused and on November 13 negotiations were broken off. Stalin almost certainly would have preferred a political solution, but when the Finns refused to be intimidated he tore up the Soviet-Finnish non-aggression treaty and prepared for a military campaign to bring Finland entirely into the Soviet orbit. A puppet Communist government-in-waiting was established for Finland, and Stalin drew up plans to incorporate Finland into the Soviet Union as the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Republic.

— Richard Overy, Russia’s War, pp. 55-56

That quote from Overy puts Stalin’s demands in the context of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and Stalin’s forcible imposition of treaties upon Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The Red Army never left their territory until the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, more than half a century later. Overy also points out that when Stalin’s minimal demands were rejected, he determined to totally annex Finland by military force. This, along with the demands for naval bases, makes a mockery of Rothbard’s claim that Stalin’s demands were limited to the incorporation of territory allegedly inhabited by ethnic Russians into Soviet territory. However, these brief accounts by Keegan and Overy are from books about the Second World War in general, not specifically about the Winter War. As it happens, I also have a book about the Winter War, and here’s what it has to say about Stalin’s demands:

“ At the first high-level meeting in Moscow, on October 12, Stalin wasted no time putting his demands on the table. His main strategic problem, he said, was the vulnerability of the frontiers around Leningrad [ Saint Petersburg ]. In order to improve the city’s security, he needed —indeed, he MUST have—the strongest possible assurances of continued good relations with Finland...

The Soviet Union therefore demanded:

• that the frontier between Russia and Finland in the Karelian Isthmus region be moved westward to a point only 20 miles east of Viipuri, and that all existing fortifications on the Karelian isthmus be destroyed;
• that the Finns cede to Russia the islands of Suursaari, Lavansaari, Tytarsaari, and Koivisto in the Gulf of Finland, along with most of the Rybachi Peninsula on the Arctic coast. In compensation for this, Stalin was willing to exchange 5,500 square kilometers of East Karelia, above Lake Ladoga;
• that the Finns lease to the USSR the peninsula of Hanko, and permit the Russians to establish a base there, manned by 5,000 troops and some support units.”

— William R. Trotter, A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940, pp. 15-16

Trotter also confirms that Stalin set up his own puppet government for Finland, which promptly signed a treaty ceding all Finnish territory to the Soviet Union. But he doesn’t mention any ethnic Russians inhabiting Finnish Karelia or any demands by Stalin for the incorporation of the territory on which they were living into the Soviet Union. Rothbard’s only footnote was to a book by the Finnish foreign minister at the time, which also said nothing about any ethnic Russians in Karelia. Frankly, I’m at a loss as to where Rothbard got this argument and what factual evidence there is to support it. Rothbard’s argument doesn’t even square with the usual line taken by pro-Soviet revisionists, which is that Russian foreign policy was basically the same as Tsarist Russian foreign policy. But, as even Rothbard’s quote above makes clear, restoration of the Tsarist Empire would mean the total reincorporation of Finland, since Finland was part of the Tsar’s territory before the Bolshevik Revolution.

That’s not all Rothbard had to say about Finland, however:

“ The cold warriors find it difficult to explain Russian actions in Finland. If Russia is always hell-bent to impose Communist rule wherever it can, why the ”soft line“ in Finland? The only plausible explanation is that its motivation is security for the Russian nation-state against attack, with the success of world communism playing a very minor role in its scale of priorities.

— Murray N. Rothbard, For A New Liberty, p. 287

The “soft line” Rothbard’s referring to is the limited territorial concessions Finland made to Russia after WWII, along with neutrality in the Cold War, in exchange for Russia letting Finland keep most of its territory. Actually, this is not so difficult to explain: the Red Army never successfully conquered and occupied Finland, thanks to the valiant defense the Finns made against the Soviets at the Mannerheim Line in the Winter War. By the end of World War II, the Soviets did have the military capability to defeat Finland, thanks to the improvements that had been made since their defeat by Finland in 1940 - improvements which were partly motivated by the Finnish victory. However, these improvements were made in large part because of supplies and equipment the Soviets had gotten from the Western Allies, mainly the USA, and the Soviets were only able to defeat Germany thanks to the support of the Western Allies. This put a constraint upon Soviet actions that hadn’t been present in 1940: In order to keep getting support from the Western Allies, Stalin had to refrain from acting in ways of which the Western Allies would disapprove. Stalin even promised to hold free elections in the countries that had been occupied by the Red Army, to maintain a united front with the Western Allies. It was only after none of those elections resulted in victory for any of Stalin’s Communist parties that he proceeded to puppetize those countries by force. But, by that time, the West was opposing any extension of the Soviet sphere of influence by military invasion, so it was too late for Stalin to invade Finland and puppetize it without risking military resistance by the West, which Stalin wanted to avoid above all else.

So, Rothbard’s description of the Cold War view of Soviet foreign policy is in need of a bit of modification, or clarification: the Soviet Union WAS hell-bent on imposing Communist rule wherever it could, but it couldn’t do it when facing resistance by military forces capable of resisting the Red Army, either the Finns at the time of the Winter War, or the Western Allies in post-war era. By using the case of Finland the way he does, Rothbard is trying to use an example of successful military resistance to Soviet expansionism to argue that there was no such thing as Soviet expansionism by military means.

[ once again, Mises was right: “The fortunate circumstance that saved civilization from being destroyed by the Russians was the fact that the nations of Europe were strong enough to be able successfully to stand off the onslaught of the hordes of Russian barbarians. The experiences of the Russians in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, and the Turkish campaign of 1877-78 showed them that, in spite of the great number of their soldiers, their army is unable to seize the offensive against Europe. The World War merely confirmed this.” —Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism —Ed.]

More Rothbardian Lies about the Winter War

by Tim Starr, July 3, 2003 [1]

Having caught Rothbard before in some lies about the Winter War (Soviet Russia vs. Finland, 1939-1940), I thought it only fitting that I should point it out when I caught him in some more, brought to us courtesy of Lew Rockwell, the pseudo-libertarian crypto-fascist I love to hate:

“ All this, of course, is a beautiful way of vindicating a “hard-line” policy against the Enemy regardless of what actually happens. Two particularly neat examples are the policy of Finland toward Russia in 1940, and of Poland toward Germany and Russia in 1939. The Finns (Poles) insisted up to the moment of outbreak of a war that could only be disastrous for them that the Russians (Germans) were only “bluffing,” and that a rigid, inflexible, hard-line, no-negotiation policy would force Russia (Germany) to back down and cease their demands. After adamantly proclaiming this view throughout, the ruling Finnish (Polish) hard-liners suddenly found that the reverse had happened, that the Enemy had not been “bluffing,” and that war had indeed broken out. Was their reaction an abject admission of error and a turn toward peace and negotiation? Certainly not; on the contrary, the hard-liners immediately proclaimed that no negotiations were now possible until every single Russian (German) soldier had been driven off every square inch of holy Finnish (Polish) soil. The rest is history; the difference in ultimate outcome is only due to Finland’s having the luck to find leaders willing to abandon a hard-line policy before it was too late.

— Murray N. Rothbard, “Harry Elmer Barnes as Revisionist of the Cold War”

Did the Finns think that the Soviets were bluffing? Not unanimously:

“ …it was the opinion of nearly everyone in the Finnish government that these [Stalin’s] demands, as stunning as they were, were only the prelude to other, more severe demands–demands that the Finns would be powerless to reject because they would have already lost their strongest line of defense.

Foreign Minister Erkko in particular was convinced that Stalin was bluffing and that Finland needed only to stand fast and the Russians would back down. There were acrimonious discussions in helsinki between Erkko, those who thought as he did, and Marshal Mannerheim, who kept insisting that the Russians meant what they said, would not hesitate to take what they wanted by force, and could not be stopped by Finland’s armed forces.”

— William R. Trotter, A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940, p. 16

Rothbard clearly misrepresents the Finnish response to Stalin’s demands by presenting only the side of Finnish Foreign Minister Erkko, and not the side led by Marshal Mannerheim, the architect of Finland’s military defense.

Were the Finns unwilling to negotiate?

“ All through the rest of October and into November, negotiations continued. The Finns were willing to compromise slightly on the Isthmus border and were willing to cede some, but not all, of the gulf islands. As for giving the Russians a base at Hanko, on the Finnish mainland, that was quite unacceptable.”

— William R. Trotter, A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940, p. 16

So, once again, Rothbard’s account proves false: the Finns weren’t entirely unwilling to negotiate and compromise, although they were far less willing than the Soviets had expected. The Finns had good reasons for the position they took, too, as demonstrated by the subsequent Soviet invasion & attempted annexation of the whole of Finland.

Finally, the Finns did hold to a hard-line policy of refusing to negotiate with the Soviets right after the war began, because it would be wrong for them to appease Soviet aggression, and because the Finns were winning the war in the battlefields. However, the Soviets were equally unwilling to negotiate because they only recognized their puppet government as the legitimate government of Finland. It took some doing for the new Finnish Foreign Minister, Vaino Tanner, to get negotiations started with Molotov.

The Finns were induced to resume negotiations with the Soviets because the Soviets finally managed to improve the quality of their forces enough to start winning the war on the battlefield, but by that time pressure was being brought to bear upon the Soviets, too, by the Western Allies, who had condemned the Soviet aggression against Finland and were threatening to intervene on Finland’s behalf. So, shortly after the Red Army’s honor was restored on the battlefield, Stalin was willing to negotiate with the Finns and compromise for much less than total annexation and Sovietization of Finland.

That greatly differs from Rothbard’s account of the factors explaining the different outcome to the Soviet invasion of Finland and the German invasion of Poland. It wasn’t that Finland acquired enlightened leaders who were willing to appease Soviet aggression and thus end the hostilities, while Poland’s leaders remained intransigent. It was that, first of all, Finland’s armed forces killed enough Red Army soldiers to give Stalin pause. Secondly, the Red Army eventually was successful enough on the battlefield to make the Finns more willing to compromise. Thirdly, the threat of Western intervention made Stalin willing to settle for less than his maximum demands.

Unfortunately, Poland had none of these advantages with regards to Germany. The Polish Army proved no match on the battlefield for the Wehrmacht, the Poles didn’t have enough time to change their minds about Hitler’s demands, and there wasn’t enough of a credible threat of Western intervention to make Hitler back off from his maximum demands.

Thus, Rothbard’s falsification of history in defense of appeasing totalitarian aggression isn’t confined to the Winter War, but extends to the German invasion of Poland, too.

See also

• Murray N. Rothbard#Rothbard and Soviet foreign policy