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RE: Gaining Steem-ipendence

in #thoughts6 years ago

Are you saying that Finland didn't get independence in 1917 because of the winter war 20 years later?

What I find with pedantry is that it is often a focus of a narrow position that rarely covers the practicalities of action required. In some way it is kind of like obsessive compulsive behavior where someone can't leave the home without flicking light switches on and off 52 times for each week of the year.

History is important only in the information it gives to move forward from it in a more successful manner, or at least try. Many seem content in reliving the past over and over without actually learning much from it at all.

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No, I'm saying Finland was given independence at the whim of the bolsheviks at the time - becuse of economic and political pragmatism.

Finland has a history of independent thought and self identity, but geographically, economically, and low population numbers, made it the landscape that it is, and as such, always a pawn in the larger chessboard that was Europe.
Independence was granted by ' a general right of self determination', according to the new bolshevik government. Actions of the communists show it to be just words - as they didn'e extend the same courtesy to millions of other 'Russian peoples elsewhere.

The granting of self determination by Russian peoples, showed how they saw the Finns. (In their eyes, not the Finnish peoples).

When Germany wanted resources form Finland in ww2 ( not really ww2, but WW1 - part 2), the communists had no compunction about invading.

My pedantry doesn't come from narrow focus but of a wider understanding of the historic geo-politics of Europe...

The centuries long self identity of the Finnish people, was never of the concern of the Swedes, or the Russians.
How do you define independence?

'Allowed to be, at the behest of another, (due to lack of funds to maintain control directly), isn't my definition of independence.