Finest Moment or Blackest Page

People of all natios are seldom hesitant to point out their country's finest moments in history, but are far more reluctant to remember, let alone discuss, the not-so-great events of the past.

For Finland, the finest hour, militarily, was undoubtedly the series of defensive victories over the vastly superior Soviet war machine at the height of the Winter War (1939-1940). Socially, I would say, our finest hour came later in 1952, when Finland completed the gruelling reparation payments in money and goods that the Soviet Union had claimed as part of the 1944 peace agreement (after Finland lost the Continuation War, 1941-1944, but retained its independence). Despite the ravages of three wars (lest we forget the Lapland War (1944-1945), forced upon us by the Soviets and Germans, who laid waste to the entire province of Lapland), considerable loss of territory (over 10 percent) and resources, not to mention manpower, the population got together and worked to pay what everybody saw as the price of freedom under the Soviet cloud, 300 million dollars (at a time when dollars were still worth something and small countries' budgets were counted in millions and not in billions).

So much for the chest-beating. Can't claim any of it, since I was born way after the events, but it created in part the Finnish national identity of which I am, a sometimes reluctant, part.

As for the darker moments: as always in wars, especially when dealing with a totalitarian enemy, bad things happen. One of the darkest pages in our history was right after independence when the country was torn apart by a civil war between whites and reds that led to much suffering and split the population for decades (in fact, until the Soviet invasion attempt of 1939).
However, what most people consider a bigger trauma (since it does not agree with the idea we have of ourselves as the good guys, and as the victims of Soviet aggression) was the existence of Finnish concentration camps (not like the German kind, more like internment camps, but still not nice) for Russian civillians rounded up in the areas "liberated" by the Finnish army during the continuation war. Conditions in those camps were bad and hundreds of people died. (Still, any Finn will tell you that the inmates of those camps got the same amount of food and medical aid as the average Finnish citizen and that it was in any case a paradise compared to the German or Russian concentration camps, which may be true, but it doesn't excuse the fact.)
Finally, what I consider the blackest page in our history is the forced return of Ingrian-Finns to the Soviet Union, after the war. These were people who had fled to Finland from Soviet controlled areas during Stalin's terror in the 1930s and during the war. Many of them had fought on the Finnish side during the Continuation War and were either directly executed or sent linea recta to Siberia. The Soviets even demanded that Ingrian orphans who had been adopted by Finns be returned, even years after the war. I believe giving in to those demands was an unforgivable act of cowardice that ruined the lives of over 50.000 Ingrian refugees (although thousands were helped by Finnish friends to escape to Sweden and onward (there is a plaque in the church of Tornio from Ingrian Finns thanking the population for helping them across the border). This sad fact alone explains why Finland accepted in 1990 the moral duty to take in the descendants of the Ingrian Finns, now often completely russified, who were free to migrate to Finland after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

So, now that I have gotten this off my chest, what are your best and worst historical moments? (We are fortunate in the fact that Finland has not existed as an independent nation for more than 100 years, so luckily we do not have so many black pages to choose from, unlike you older nations)