Word: russian
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Navy, operating out of Russian and Estonian bases, first seized the four small, unfortified islands-Hogland, Seiskari, Tytär, Lavas-which had figured in Russia's pre-war demands on Finland. Farther west, to protect the vital Aland
Islands by which Russia could bottle up the Bothnian Sea, Finland revealed that it had laid mines-illegally, but without eliciting complaint from the only legally interested party, Sweden. Russian ships shelled Viipuri and moved out through the Gulf past Helsinki to attack Hangö, "The Baltic Gibraltar." Finland's little fleet, centred around the shallow-draft pocket-battleships Vainamoinen and Ilmarinen moved cautiously to meet them. An attempted landing was repelled at Porvoo. When the Red ships came within range, the fortress at Russarö guarding Hangö opened fire. One Soviet destroyer was reported sunk, one damaged...
...long could the Finns hold out? Would anyone go to their assistance? Answer to the last of these uppermost questions seemed to be: No one. Sweden and Norway, though next in line if the Russian march was really a march to the North Sea, evinced great sympathy, mobilized men on their eastern borders, but were accounted unlikely to fight. Answer to the first question seemed to reside in the iron-hard souls and bodies of the Finns. Their Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, struck their battle note as follows...
Well and truly do Finns know their tall (6 ft. 2 in.) Baron Mannerheim. Two years ago they threw a tremendous party in Helsinki to honor his 70th birthday. He is verily their George Washington. After serving in the Russian Army for nearly 30 years (he was a lieutenant colonel in the Russo-Japanese War, later commanded the 6th Russian Cavalry as Lieutenant General in World War I), he went home in 1917 to command the armies which won Finnish independence (with German help) from the Bolsheviki. After his White Guards had run the Red Guards out of Finland...
...plot for this drama might well have been concocted by Heinrich Himmler in one of his duller moments; the scenery could have been done by Painter Adolf Hitler suddenly turned Cubist; the dialogue could have been written by a slightly tipsy Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. All in all, the Russian act that led up to its invasion of Finland last week was a weird parody, rather than a Slavish plagiarism, of Nazi methods...