WI: Greater Finland?

Wikipedia has an interesting article on the Finnish nationalist idea of a 'Greater Finland,' encompassing most of the regions bordering Finland, including Finnmark, Karelia, the Kola peninsula, Ingria and Estonia.

With a POD post-1900, is it possible for a Finnish state to control roughly the borders given in this image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...uomen_kartta.png/150px-Suur-Suomen_kartta.png?
What would be the most likely event to allow these borders to be reached?
Is it possible for them to be held until the modern day, perhaps even being mostly/completely Finnizied (is that a word)?
 
So a Nazi victory is probably easiest?

I just had the thought, what if the Soviets managed to overpower and conquer Finland, and with a worse breakup then OTL, the Finns manage to leave, taking Kola, Karelia, Ingria, and Estonia with them? Would that be at all possible? Such a state would exclude Finnmark/Northern Sweden, tho.
 
As long as Mannerheim's alive and there's some sort of rump Russian (not necessarily Soviet) state they're not pushing their southern borders any further south than they did in OTL. East Karelia's a given, but how about the Kola Peninsula? Protectorate or full annexation?
 
I'm sure someone will remember more accurately but Finland was asked by Berlin about our wishes for future borders and Ryti commissioned a group of historians (Jutikkala, Renvall perhaps?) that prepared a few alternatives depending on the exact outcome of the war. The maximum line I think would have included Neva-Ladoga-Onega-White Sea. Luckily Germany didn't win though - I doubt how long we would have survived as a Western democracy in a Reich controlled Europe.

Another interesting possibility would have been a total occupation by the Soviets - Stalin seemed to have had some plans of reuniting Soviet Karelia with Finland as a new SSR, which would have made any re-independence in the 90's rather interesting. But luckily we escaped that option too...
 
Any significant "Greater Finland" scenario needs to be a Russia-screw, and to a smaller extent a Sweden- and Norway-screw (considering the Tornio River valley and Finnmark). I think it is very unlikely to screw Russia/USSR, etc, as hard as to make the maximum Greater Finland mentioned in the OP possible after 1900.

The closest to this, like Baron Bizarre and hwyl say, would be Nazi victory. My rationale for Hitler being as "generous" to Finland as to allow it to take all of East Karelia, Ingria and Kola besides is that the Nazi machine would be so heavily overstretched trying to control European Russia, on top of all other conquests, that it would be a practical necessity for Finns (an Finnic auxiliaries) to police large swathes of the former USSR for the hard pressed "master race".

Even in this case, Estonia would be off the table, as this is "old Germanic land". I have suggested the idea of some of the Estonians being relocated to East Karelia to build an "Estonian homeland" (reservation, really) there while historical Estonia itself is Germanized. This is just my personal conjecture, I don't think there is anything in the actual sources to suggest this would have been planned - it is something that might have suited both German and Finnish interests, that is all.

Needless to say, this sort of Greater Finland is not really in anyone's interest and it would be very unlikely anyway as it hinges on Nazi victory in WWII.


hwyl said:
Another interesting possibility would have been a total occupation by the Soviets - Stalin seemed to have had some plans of reuniting Soviet Karelia with Finland as a new SSR, which would have made any re-independence in the 90's rather interesting. But luckily we escaped that option too...

Agreed. A Finnish SSR would have been bigger than OTL Finland, as it would have included most of the Karelian ASSR, too. But even if the USSR would fall in the end and such a bigger Finland would regain independence, this would still not be preferable to the OTL. It would be a much poorer nation, with a lot of ecological damage all around and a large Russian minority (up to 30-40% of the population, possibly) to boot. This Finland would include some of the Karelian isthmus (with still a large Leningrad hinterland annexed to the Russian SFSR), all of Ladoga Karelia and much of Eastern Karelia. Kola would be off limits, probably, due to strategic and economic reasons.

I have linked this before, but let's do it again - here is a (rather large) 1939 map depicting what the USSR would have, ostensibly, offered to O.W. Kuusinen's Finnish Democratic Republic during the Winter War. It is an actual OTL map held by the Finnish National Archives. Notice that it would have given Finland most of Eastern Karelia while still leaving Kola and the Murmansk Railway on the Soviet side, as well as removing some land from Finland on the Isthmus.


Never Down said:
I just had the thought, what if the Soviets managed to overpower and conquer Finland, and with a worse breakup then OTL, the Finns manage to leave, taking Kola, Karelia, Ingria, and Estonia with them? Would that be at all possible? Such a state would exclude Finnmark/Northern Sweden, tho.

The problem here is that of these areas, at least Kola, Ingria and Estonia would not have a Finnish majority. A newly independent Finland after a Soviet breakup would do well to avoid claiming majority-Russian areas, especially, as those would definitely cause it problems down the line. And anyway, like I pointed out above, many of the areas you listed would not have been parts of a Finnish SSR anyway as the Russians would not have allowed that on strategic, demographic and nationalist grounds.
 
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I had a TL a long time ago (back when ah was a newsgroup) in which the USSR promoting Karelia to a full SSR, and then come the Soviet collapse, Karelia petitioning Finland for integration.
 
Most likely not. I don't see Finland getting any territory south of the Neva in a Nazi win scenario (which is the necessary requirements for the other territorial gains in Russia). Gaining Finnmark or the Tornio valley is completely out of the question (well, the former might be possible if the Nazis are particularly generous, but still very likely).

So a Nazi victory is probably easiest?

I just had the thought, what if the Soviets managed to overpower and conquer Finland, and with a worse breakup then OTL, the Finns manage to leave, taking Kola, Karelia, Ingria, and Estonia with them? Would that be at all possible? Such a state would exclude Finnmark/Northern Sweden, tho.
Kola, Ingria and Estonia are completely out of the question since they don't have a Finnish or Karelian majority. Karelia might work, since it had actually been converted into the Finno-Karelian SSR with the probable intention of eventually unifying it with Finland. But I suspect that if this were actually to happen, only the Karelian majority areas would be annexed to Finland, as happened with the Moldavian ASSR where the Moldavian majority areas were joined up with the territories annexed from Romania, while the rest remained part of Romania. So this would mean Finland only gaining most of the districts west of the railway to Murmansk (see map).
 
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