MOSCOW, September 8. /TASS/. In 1941, the military and political authorities of Finland declared their desire to occupy the territories from the Gulf of Finland to the Kola Peninsula and even move beyond the Urals to the Ob River, Deputy Head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev wrote in a column for TASS titled "The New Finnish Doctrine: Stupidity, Lies, Ingratitude."
According to him, these territorial claims were "the strongest in Europe at that time."
"Ultra-nationalist propaganda narratives reigned in Finnish society at the time, and with the approval of their Nazi patrons the powers that be in Helsinki contemplated the idea of Finnlands Lebensraum - "living space for Finland" in full seriousness. The country’s military-political authorities intended not only to lay hands again on the territories that had been transferred to the USSR under the Moscow Peace Treaty of March 12, 1940, but also to reach what they described as the "natural borders of Greater Finland," stretching from the Gulf of Finland to the Barents Sea, including Eastern Karelia, Leningrad and its environs, and the Kola Peninsula. As well as to rid these lands of the presence of so much hated Russians. In their boldest fantasies some hoped to advance beyond the Urals to the Ob River," Medvedev wrote.
