БЕЛАРУСКІ ГІСТАРЫЧНЫ АГЛЯД
НАВУКОВЫ ЧАСОПІС

Аlexander Friedman. „Whether it is time to stop aggression in Finland…”

During the bloody Soviet-Finnish war begun by the Kremlin, the Bolshevist propaganda made all possible efforts to present the conflict as „liberation» of the Finnish working class from the oppression of the Finnish „antinational bourgeois government» that unleashed a war against the USSR with support of France and England. The Soviet victory was treated as a triumph in fight against the „English-French imperialism».

In the Soviet Belarus the „Winter War» evoked a wide response. According to the information of the secret police NKVD, local people were indignant about the deterioration of the economical situation in the republic during the war; they were skeptical towards the Soviet official reports on the situation at the front and sometimes put the blame for the war on the Jews. Unintentionally, the agitprop gave a hope to some citizens who were radically ill disposed towards the Soviet rule, believing that the Finns together with England, France and other USSR enemies will really beat the Bolsheviks. These people considered Finland, which resisted the Soviet aggression, with respect; furthermore, at the second half of March 1940 — after the peace treaty between Soviet Union and Finland — some of them even believed that the Finns actually won this war.