Talk:Ryti–Ribbentrop Agreement

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Ryti–Ribbentrop Agreement article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Ryti–Ribbentrop Agreement has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
October 20, 2022	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 5, 2022.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the United States severed diplomatic ties with Finland in 1944 because of a personal letter sent to Hitler?

Finland Mid‑importance

	Finland portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Finland, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Finland on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FinlandWikipedia:WikiProject FinlandTemplate:WikiProject FinlandFinland articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Germany Low‑importance

	Germany portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Germany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GermanyWikipedia:WikiProject GermanyTemplate:WikiProject GermanyGermany articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Military history: European / German / Nordic / World War II

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles

Associated task forces:
/
	European military history task force
	German military history task force
	Nordic military history task force
	World War II task force

Politics Low‑importance

	Politics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Untitled

Wow! Thanks, Johan Magnus! 8-} --Whiskey 22:37, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This is a joint venture. :-) Now I've laid a foundation, and others can carry on with the improvements and corrections. --Johan Magnus 06:27, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Deleted some uncorrect statements in the "controversy" section, among other things it was stated that "a Finnish peculiarity was - and still is - that Social Democratic and Socialist groups dominated the working-class political movements, and Communists always were a fringe phenomenon" This is factually wrong, and the opposite can in some ways be said to be true, it is rather a Finnish pecularity that in the post-war period the Finnish communist party at times polled more votes than the social democratic party, in 1958 even becoming the largest party in Finland with 23%.Finnish parliamentary election, 1958. The strength of the communists during the Cold War in Finland is unique compared with the other Nordic countries where the communist parties indeed were fringe phenomenons in the labour movement, in other Western European democracies it can only be matched by the succeses of the Italian and French communist parties.

These gross inaccuracies lead me to suspect that the whole of the controversy section is a result of original research, hope someone with more knowledge than me about the actual Ryti-Ribbentrop agreement can look into that. Kjetor 10:40, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

comments

this looks like original research to me, perhaps the result of a lecture by the man referred to as a reference....? No inline citations, no documentation (other than the vague reference to the doctoral dissertation), no wiki structure, poor links.... This has a B class from Finland group, but I'm going to flag it for some attention. The whole thing looks dubious to me. Auntieruth55 (talk) 17:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

B class review

I confirm that this article is B class. In my opinion, this article would be improved if there were an "infobox treaty" at the beginning. Please note that "infobox agreement" redirects to "infobox treaty". Djmaschek (talk) 02:25, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Request for change

"as Finland had already contacted the Soviet Union in secret, seeking to exit the war" -> I changed to "as Finland had already contacted the Soviet Union seeking to exit the war in secret."

A comma is not necessary, so my wording is better. The two phrases are equivalent. User Jon698 reverted my edit with a rationale, "the wording implies that the Soviet Union would enter the war secretly rather than secretly meeting with the Soviets."

How does my wording imply that the Soviet Union would enter the war secretly? I just don't see it. Let's break down my phrase. Finland was seeking to exit the war in secret, and they had contacted the Soviet Union to achieve that. 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:D5F7:A00B:1D83:C3FF (talk) 20:54, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

They didn't exit the war in secret, though; they contacted the USSR in secret, to exit the war. ■ ∃ Madeline ⇔ ∃ Part of me ; 21:28, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It is implied in the original sentence that Finland wanted to exit the war in secret (without letting the Nazi know), so they met the Soviet Union secretly. Why did they have to meet the Soviet Union in secret? Because they wanted to exit the war in secret. This is a game of semantics. Either way is correct. 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:D5F7:A00B:1D83:C3FF (talk) 22:35, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree: the proposed version could be understood to mean that the goal was to exit the war in secret, while the current phrasing is unambiguous that "secret" modifies "contacted the Soviet Union" and not "exit the war". Ljleppan (talk) 21:40, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"The goal was to exit the war in secret" -> that was exactly Finland's goal. 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:D5F7:A00B:1D83:C3FF (talk) 22:49, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The actual armistice was in no way secret, though, only the negotiations leading up to it. ■ ∃ Madeline ⇔ ∃ Part of me ; 22:55, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The armistice is irrelevant to the matter being discussed here. Fact: Finland wanted to exit the war in secret (without alerting the Nazi), so of course, meeting with the Soviet Union had to be in secret as well. Maybe, they were afraid that the Nazi could have turned on them if they knew. They wanted to exit the war "before" the Nazi could have turned on them. When the armistice was announced, they were prepared to expel the Nazi. You can't prove my sentence is incorrect. 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:D5F7:A00B:1D83:C3FF (talk) 23:11, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, Finland wanted to exit the war in secret. However, when an agreement was reached, the armistice of course would have been public. 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:D5F7:A00B:1D83:C3FF (talk) 23:21, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We're playing a semantics game here. They're pretty much equivalent as far as a reader is concerned. Here are the 2 facts: Finland met the Soviet Union in secret and wanted to exit the war. "Finland wanted to exit the war in secret, so they had met the Soviet Union secretly" + "Finland wanted to exit the war, so they had met the Soviet Union secretly" -> these two sentences are saying the same things. 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:D5F7:A00B:1D83:C3FF (talk) 22:26, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Finland wanted to exit the war in secret, so they had met the Soviet Union secretly" + "Finland wanted to exit the war, so they had met the Soviet Union secretly" -> these two sentences are saying the same things. I don't think they are. "Exit the war in secret" doesn't make sense to me, conjuring up images of pretending to continue fighting while in reality already being at peace with the "opponent". At the best, it's confusing and ambiguous wording, while the current wording is extremely clear at what was secret. Ljleppan (talk) 08:08, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your reasoning doesn't make sense to me. It's impossible to be at peace and pretending to fight at the same time. There is no reason for the deception. Peace and fighting are contradicting each other. You're playing a semantics game. "Exit the war in secret" simply just means that they wanted to negotiate secretly, which Finland did. If Finland didn't want to exit the war in secret, they could have made an announcement regarding peace deals with the Soviet Union. 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:2D5E:4EB:3BAB:AC96 (talk) 17:00, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

user:PizzaKing13 We're looking for a third opinion. What do you think? Thanks! 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:2D5E:4EB:3BAB:AC96 (talk) 17:21, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's fine/correct how it is: "[...] as Finland had already contacted the Soviet Union in secret, seeking to exit the war." They wanted to contact the Soviets in secret so the Germans wouldn't see what's happening and invade Finland. See the 4th paragraph of the Negotiations section of the article: "Concurrently with these discussions [the ones with Germany], the Finnish leadership was privately discussing a need to exit the war [among themselves, not with the Soviet Union], and decided to send out further peace feelers in secret. [to the Soviet Union]" (Jokisipilä 2004, pp. 290–292.). Then later, when the secret negotiations with the Soviets came to an agreement, they left the war, and it was most definitely not secret since Finland went to war with Germany. PizzaKing13 ^¡Hablame! 20:40, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]