Stalin is the reason we don't live under a flag with a swastika under it today. Perhaps you would not even be alive typing this if it weren't for Stalin. The war industry of the USSR in this time is well understood. The USSR was not ready for a war with Germany, but they could be in a few years time. This is evidenced by the fact that the Nazis made it all the way to Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, before the growing war industry of the Soviet Union was able to catch up and supercede the Nazis'.

Without the M-R pact, Barbarossa would have begun much more to the east. Perhaps that would have given the Nazis the upper hand enough to have defeated the USSR. With hindsight, the M-R pact was strategically the right decision.

So do we call this Nazi collaboration? That would be narrow-sighted, because they took the correct strategy to beat the Nazis. In Finland's case, they never had the goal of defeating the Nazis. Even after signing a peace with the USSR, they never turned on the Nazis like other eastern european countries did.

No, Finland's goals were to take territory, and not just the territory they had lost, they wanted to annex all of Karelia we know. A Finish historian even, Lauri Hannikainen writes:

Finnish forces did not stop at the old border but occupied Eastern (Soviet) Karelia with a desire eventually to annex it. By that measure, Finland joined as Germany’s ally in its war of aggression against the Soviet Union in violation of international law. In their strong reliance on Germany, the Finnish leaders made some very questionable decisions without listening to warnings from Western States about possible negative consequences.

So the viewpoint you are espousing in this thread is historical revisionism even by western academic standards.

Of Nazi Germany, sure. Not of Finland.

What a pointless distinction. It's not like they contributed to Operation Barbarossa or anything and that a number of those 25 million deaths came at the hands of Finish troops.

You say that like they were okay with it.

No, I say that like it is an objective fact.

Soviet Union invaded first

Finland took soviet territory, Soviets wanted the unjustly occupied territory back. I say its fair. They didn't invade all of finland.

You say that like they were okay with it. From what I hear, it’s a source of considerable bitterness, especially given that all the Finnish people in the area were forced out.

good for them, its war, they lost. Finland shouldn't have gone for a greedy land grab.