Alternate Map Challenge (AMC): Finland

[Pellegrino]

OK folks, I am going to try a new thing here…the AMC (or Alternate Map Challenge). The rules are pretty much identical to the AHC, only with the only guidance to you being that the country in question has to have the borders featured in the map.

Rules:

POD after 1900 (obviously)

Anything outside the map is up for grabs. So any border change outside of the map is permissible as long as the country in question has the borders reflected on the map.

So with that being said…with a POD anytime after 1900, have Finland look like this:

 

[Tom Colton]

Barbarossa succeeds, somehow pushing the Soviets all the way to at least the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line but Hitler chokes on a frankfurter just as they get there. Remaining Russians sue for peace, and Germany decides to let Finland have all of Karelia as they don't want to govern it (as it doesn't quite fit in with Lebensraum objectives) and it'll sweeten the deal for future cooperation.

 

[Hashoosh]

Have Lenin die before his train reaches Russia. This would probably decapitate any eventual Bolshevik revolution from either happening or succeeding in October 1917, maybe the entire Kornilov Affair is butterflied away or altered so as not to be so favourable to the Bolsheviks?

In any event, that could possibly lead to the Whites holding onto power, and therefore continuing the war with Germany. The Finns come out against the Whites as do the other nationalist groups within the old Russian Empire. Germany would undoubtedly support such movements, and the problems that plagued the Republic would persist even without a civil war: little common purpose, conflicting egos and what have you.

This could all combine with the weaker Russian state (weaker than the Bolsheviks in 1917-22 I'd think) that's still plagued by infighting. The Germans may or may not be able to extract a Brest-Litovsk treaty from Russia, but I think enough damage could be done by Russia staying on in the war that the various nationalist movements across the empire are able to make even greater gains.

Maybe the Kerensky government accedes to peace after large scale riots give them too big a scare to press on, and recognizes an enlarged Finland as well as the other terms of B-L.

 

[Lalli]

Bit worse Russian Civil War where Reds and Whites can't hold Karelia and Kola and Finland can conquer and annex these areas. Perhaps even better if there wouldn't be Finnish Civil War.

 

[Maeglin]

Due to extreme disorganisation among the Finnish Whites, the Reds win the Finnish Civil War, and find themselves in a position to lend assistance to their Russian counterparts. Lenin out of gratitude approves Karelia and Kola going to Finland.

 

[Lalli]

Due to extreme disorganisation among the Finnish Whites, the Reds win the Finnish Civil War, and find themselves in a position to lend assistance to their Russian counterparts. Lenin out of gratitude approves Karelia and Kola going to Finland.

Why Lening would give Karelia and Kola for Red Finland? It would give for Finland great strategic and economic position. And victorious Red on Finnish Civil War is very difficult even with 1900 POD.

 

[Maeglin]

Why Lening would give Karelia and Kola for Red Finland? It would give for Finland great strategic and economic position. And victorious Red on Finnish Civil War is very difficult even with 1900 POD.

I was hypothesising a scenario where Red Finland assists the Bolsheviks militarily (perhaps allowing them to repel a White Russian assault on Petrograd or something). Lenin perhaps decides that these areas are best looked after by his good friends in Helsinki (after all, Lenin spent some time living in Finland, and he's hardly a Russian Chauvinist like his successor).

Yes, it's a stretch, and you would need to seriously screw over the White Finns to even get close to this, but I think it's a more likely scenario than a successful Barbarossa ending with those boundaries.

 

[DrakonFin]

Yes, it's a stretch, and you would need to seriously screw over the White Finns to even get close to this, but I think it's a more likely scenario than a successful Barbarossa ending with those boundaries.

I think it is the other way around - if someone can cook up a successful Barbarossa leading to a total Soviet collapse, then that is almost the only possibility for this map to happen with a post-1900 POD. IMHO not a single even barely in-control Russian government (White, Red or any other colour) would allow such a border to the Finns - even if it would be only as a prelude to Finland being annexed by that Russian state (like it would in many options to do with Lenin or Stalin). I am pretty certain that even the Germans in and after 1918, had they after Brest-Litovsk prevailed also in the West to come out of WWI as overall victors, would have said that a Finnish government pushing for these borders is unrealistic and asking for way too much.

This map is what Stalin offered to the Kuusinen government in 1939, and I believe it is very close to what the Bolsheviks would have given to the Finnish Reds in 1918. I think it is very hard to make a better deal than that with a Red Russia - see, for example, how the proposed Finnish border leaves the highly strategically important Murmansk railway on the Russian side. With the Russian Whites, even this map would be a pipe dream.

 

[packmanwiscy]

Would a more successfull Finland in WWII maybe make the Russian give up land. Maybe an intact Scandanavian Union can do better against Russia. It's a fine line because if they join the Axis, then they we have British intervention, which would hurt Finland.

 

[Pellegrino]

To be honest what I was thinking was a less successful Finland. Basically a scenario where Finland is overrun by the Soviet Union during World War II. It is subsequently annexed by the Soviet Union and becomes a SSR. Then, being a republic of the USSR, Stalin expands the borders of the Finnish SSR since the conventional wisdom is the USSR will never dissolve (sort of like what happened in 1956 with Crimea and Ukraine). Finland then becomes independent in 1991 upon the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 

[Maeglin]

To be honest what I was thinking was a less successful Finland. Basically a scenario where Finland is overrun by the Soviet Union during World War II. It is subsequently annexed by the Soviet Union and becomes a SSR. Then, being a republic of the USSR, Stalin expands the borders of the Finnish SSR since the conventional wisdom is the USSR will never dissolve (sort of like what happened in 1956 with Crimea and Ukraine). Finland then becomes independent in 1991 upon the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The difficulty with a Soviet Finland is the butterfly issue: does the Soviet Union still break-up on schedule? Does the world face WWIII due to an Åland Islands Missile Crisis?

 

[Lalli]

The difficulty with a Soviet Finland is the butterfly issue: does the Soviet Union still break-up on schedule? Does the world face WWIII due to an Åland Islands Missile Crisis?

Collapsing of USSR is still possible. But this surely cause Nato Sweden and perhaps some kind of Åland crisis, but hardly WWIII.

But would Stalin or any his successor give whole Karelia and Kola to Finland SSR? Some areas perhaps, but whole Karelia and Kola?

 

[DrakonFin]

To be honest what I was thinking was a less successful Finland. Basically a scenario where Finland is overrun by the Soviet Union during World War II. It is subsequently annexed by the Soviet Union and becomes a SSR. Then, being a republic of the USSR, Stalin expands the borders of the Finnish SSR since the conventional wisdom is the USSR will never dissolve (sort of like what happened in 1956 with Crimea and Ukraine). Finland then becomes independent in 1991 upon the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I pointed out the problem in this line of thinking above, namely that the Finland on that map is too big for that. The OTL examples of such offers from 1918 and 1939 are smaller and restricted to almost fully Finnic areas, even if they look like a "Greater Finland" in comparison to any OTL borders. The map in the OP would include both majority-Russian areas as well as several strategic areas and assets the Russians would be very likely to keep as parts of Russia, like the Murmansk railway and Murmansk and the Kola peninsula itself with its great mineral wealth and the long Arctic coast.

In comparison, IOTL the Estonian SSR, say, actually lost areas to the Russian SFSR post-WWII because they had a ethnic Russian majority.

I think the realistic upper limit for a Finnish SSR might be for it to be OTL Finland with its 1920 borders joined with the Karelian ASSR with its 1923 borders, with the Karelian isthmus nearly up to Viipuri and possibly Åland given to the Russian SFSR "in perpetuity".

In the context of the USSR, the main "hope" for getting such a Finland we see in the map above would IMO be if it was, past the 1950s, a "Finland" in name only, with a lot of Finns leaving the country through emigration to West and through mass population transfers into other parts of the USSR, and with a lot of Russians (and Belarusians and Ukrainians, say) brought into "Finland" so that it finally has a clear non-Finnish majority. Only then, I think, the Russian leadership might consider it "safe" enough to build up the "Finnish" SSR to such a behemoth.

 

[Pellegrino]

I pointed out the problem in this line of thinking above, namely that the Finland on that map is too big for that. The OTL examples of such offers from 1918 and 1939 are smaller and restricted to almost fully Finnic areas, even if they look like a "Greater Finland" in comparison to any OTL borders. The map in the OP would include both majority-Russian areas as well as several strategic areas and assets the Russians would be very likely to keep as parts of Russia, like the Murmansk railway and Murmansk and the Kola peninsula itself with its great mineral wealth and the long Arctic coast.

In comparison, IOTL the Estonian SSR, say, actually lost areas to the Russian SFSR post-WWII because they had a ethnic Russian majority.

I think the realistic upper limit for a Finnish SSR might be for it to be OTL Finland with its 1920 borders joined with the Karelian ASSR with its 1923 borders, with the Karelian isthmus nearly up to Viipuri and possibly Åland given to the Russian SFSR "in perpetuity".

In the context of the USSR, the main "hope" for getting such a Finland we see in the map above would IMO be if it was, past the 1950s, a "Finland" in name only, with a lot of Finns leaving the country through emigration to West and through mass population transfers into other parts of the USSR, and with a lot of Russians (and Belarusians and Ukrainians, say) brought into "Finland" so that it finally has a clear non-Finnish majority. Only then, I think, the Russian leadership might consider it "safe" enough to build up the "Finnish" SSR to such a behemoth.

Valid points. I figured if Finland was an SSR the Soviets would be be more willing to hand over some Russian territory since the assumption would be that Finland would never leave the USSR. But this would create a Finland in name only situation.