Word: sovietize
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Some of the World could understand why the Soviet Government might be apprehensive. Leningrad, industrial and railroad centre of North Russia, birthplace of the Soviet State, with nearly as many inhabitants as all of Finland together, was within artillery range of a country which 20 years ago swarmed with enemy Germans threatening invasion. But most of the World could not forgive the crude cynical fabrication of incidents, lame excuses and low-comedy lies to prove how the mighty but peace-loving Union of Soviet...
While Comrade Arkhipov, in Leningrad, was inveighing to his fellow workers against the "bankrupt political cardplayers" ruling Finland, at Kiev factory workers declared they "love to fight," and aboard the Soviet battleship October Revolution sailors met and decided: "The time has come to end the criminal game of the Finns." An interesting aberration came from the Kirov plant workers: "The ruling clique of Finland has reached the limits of madness and has, at the orders of its imperialist masters, declared war on our Soviet Union...
More specific if scarcely more credible was the Soviet radio's description of the start of hostilities. Finnish soldiers, the radio reported, "invaded" the Soviet Union three times on the night of Nov. 29-30. After the third attempt the Red Army lost its patience and at 8 a.m. the war was on (see p. 23). It was notable that the war was 16 hours old before any Soviet newspaper or radio got around to giving communiques...
First Pressure was applied on Sunday, when the Red Army reported an incident-on the border which, the Soviet Union claimed, killed or wounded 13 soldiers. Premier-Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov dispatched a note to Finland immediately demanding that Finnish troops be moved from twelve to 15 miles back of the border. On Monday the Finns formally disavowed the incident, replied with a refusal to move their troops unless the Soviet Union did likewise. After that the Finnish-Soviet timetable was crowded with angry notes, inflammatory speeches, useless diplomatic parleys...
Tuesday Comrade Molotov handed to Baron Aano Yrjo-Koskinen, Finnish Minister in Moscow, an emphatic reply to Finland's reply. The Finnish note, he said, reflected the "profound hostility on the part of the Government of Finland toward the Soviet Union and carries to the extreme the crisis in relations between the two countries." The Finnish denial of the border incident, said Mr. Molotov, showed a "desire to deride the victims of the shooting" ; refusal to move troops back "betrays a hostile desire by the Government of Finland to keep Leningrad under threat...