Yeah, you guys have the Winter War and Continuation War relatively fresh in cultural memory, which probably limits the reach of Russian propaganda. Over here, we remember the Soviet Union primarily as our Cold War rival, and neither side of that conflict came out of it with clean hands. For a certain kind of person, the sins of the American CIA and State Department during the Cold War don't just reflect badly on our government; they somehow also make the Soviet Union, and therefore Russia as its successor state, the Good Guys of the last century of global geopolitics.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, my mother is an evacuaee from Karelia (though she was a small kid back then), so definitely relatively fresh - at least for my generation.

I've seen some of that America bad so Russia good - line of thinking in Finnish Internet forums too. But from what I've gathered, in our left wing it's usually more "both suck", which was certainly visible in our NATO discussion, but even then most of the Left Alliance (our most leftist party that isn't a complete joke, we have communist party too, but they've never held seats in parliament) supported joining NATO. When it comes to financing Ukraine I'd say it's way more unanimous "yeah, fuck Russia with this one".

Of course, the commie party is pretty much "yea, surely Russia not that bad, we need peace" from what I've seen, but well, they hardly have enough people to be able to keep the party an official party (requires 5000 signatures every 2 elections with no seats).