Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1943, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, the Far East, Volume III

760D.61/1674: Telegram

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley) to the Secretary of State

Moscow, September 9, 1943—4 p.m.
[Received September 10—1:27 p.m.]

1316. The September issue of War and the Working Class publishes the first chapter of a forthcoming book by O. Kuusinen²⁴ the Finnish Communist which will be called Finland Unmasked. In the first chapter entitled “Sources of Finland’s Anti-Soviet Policy” Kuusinen follows the orthodox Soviet line regarding Finland. Finnish foreign policy he writes has been consistently anti-Soviet and Finland has always cultivated those countries which were most hostile to the Soviet Union. Finland’s enmity to the Soviet Union results from a special brand of chauvinism which was carefully inculcated after the Bolshevik revolution. The leading advocates of this chauvinism including reactionary bourgeois circles and the ruling plutocratic classes and their agents, the bourgeois press, the Schutz Corps, and Army officers professed to be opposed to everything Russian but in fact had been loyal subjects of the Tsar and continued to cooperate with White Guardists after the revolution.

Finnish chauvinism was based on the desire of the ruling plutocracy to oppress and exploit the working masses and its realization that this could only be accomplished with foreign aid. This assistance was; first obtained from the Tsarist Government and the Kerensky Government. The Bolsheviks advocated the independence of Finland (Stalin’s statement in November 1917 to this effect is quoted)²⁵ but the Finnish bourgeoisie fearing a people’s movement sought German support and embarked on an adventurous policy toward the Soviet Union under the slogan “Finland’s war of liberation against the Russian yoke”. The second source of Finnish chauvinism was the greed of the Finnish plutocrats particularly the lumber, paper and pulp interests and the Helsinki banks who cast envious eyes on the natural timber reserves of Soviet Karelia and finances freebooting expeditions organized by Mannerheim to seize this territory. “These are the sources of the anti-Soviet chauvinism of the Finnish Government.” The chapter concludes, “From the very beginning it was in reality chauvinism of the Fascist stamp”.

Unlike most articles now appearing in the Soviet press Kuusinen employs the old anti-capitalistic jargon of the Comintern and draws liberally on the rich invective of the Russian language to describe ruling circles in Finland.

Standley

24. Kuusinen was at the time a member of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee; he had been a member of the Presidium, Executive Committee of the Communist International, until the announcement of the Comintern’s dissolution on May 22, 1943.
25. In a speech to a meeting of members of the Finnish Social Democratic Party held in Helsinki on November 14, 1917, Iosif V. Stalin, then People’s Commissar of Nationalities in the Soviet Russian Government, called for “self-determination” and “freedom” for the Finnish people. See I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya [Works], vol. iv, pp. 3–4.