as Molotov had said, and this could primarily refer only to a potential danger from Nazi Germany. Nevertheless there was a widespread feeling in the country that "neutrality"
paid; that as a result of the Soviet-German Pact the Soviet Union had become bigger and, as yet without too much bloodshed, more secure.
Following the partition of Poland, the western frontier of the Soviet Union had been moved several hundred miles further west; the Baltic States had been "neutralised"
through the establishment of Soviet military bases there. There was, of course, that threat to Leningrad left which had now to be dealt with.
The "liberation" of Eastern Poland, with its 700 Russian dead, had been one of the cheapest wars ever fought and gave the pleasant illusion of the Red Army's invincibility.
The Finnish war, with its enormous casualties (48,000 Russian dead alone) was to raise some highly awkward questions about the Red Army's overwhelming power and
efficiency. Politically, the Finnish war could not, as we shall see, have been handled—at least in its initial stages—more ineptly than it was.
Chapter IV FROM THE FINNISH WAR TO THE GERMAN
INVASION OF FRANCE
The Russians considered the Finnish frontier, running only twenty miles north-west of Leningrad, a potential threat to Russia's second largest city. The Russians, as Molotov said in his speech of October 31, were "only" asking that the frontier be pushed back "a few dozen kilometres", while a much larger area was to be given to Finland further north in return for this concession. Moreover, the Russians, anxious to control the Gulf of Finland and so to protect Leningrad and its sea route, had asked for a naval base, i.e. for the port of Hangö on the north side of the Gulf.
[ In 1945, Paasikivi and Kekkonen, both future presidents of Finland, who had favoured accommodation with the Russians, told me that they had considered the Russian
proposals moderate and understandable, and maintained that the war could have been
avoided had their policy prevailed.]
The negotiations continued for two months, until at the end of November there was a
frontier incident, real or imaginary. Despite Finnish denials the Russians claimed that the Finns had shelled the Soviet border killing several Russian soldiers. The Russians
demanded that the Finnish Army withdraw twenty or twenty-five kilometres from the
frontier. The Finnish Government denied that the incident had occurred and refused to comply. On November 29 Molotov sent a note to Irje Koskinen, the Finnish Minister in Moscow, in which he declared:
Having refused to withdraw their troops from the Soviet border by even twenty or
twenty-five kilometres after the wicked shelling of Soviet troops by Finnish troops, the Government of Finland has shown that it continues to maintain a hostile attitude to the Soviet Union. Since it has violated the non-aggression pact... we now also consider ourselves free of the obligations arising from this pact.
On the same day Molotov made a radio announcement in which he said, in effect, that
war had been declared on Finland since the two months' negotiations had only led to the shelling by the Finns of Soviet troops in the Leningrad area. He announced that the
Soviet political and economic representatives in Finland had been recalled. At the same time Molotov also went out of his way to state that the Soviet Union "regarded Finland, no matter what its régime was, as an independent and sovereign State". This statement was all the more curious since, three days later, the Russians set up the "Finnish People's Government" of Terijoki under Otto Kuusinen.
"Spontaneous" mass demonstrations of anger were reported from all over the Soviet Union in Pravda of November 30, alongside the text of the Molotov broadcast. Here are a few headlines:
"Let us Strike Mercilessly at the Enemy!" (Mass meeting at the Bolshevik Plant in Leningrad).
Moscow: "We Shall Answer Fire with Fire!"
Kronstadt: "Our Patience is at an End!"
The People's Wrath: "Wipe the Finnish Adventurers off the Face of the Earth."
Kiev: "The Fate of Beck and Moscicki Awaits Them!"
On the following day, the Soviet press briefly reported "clashes between Soviet and Finnish troops".
More startling, however, was the "monitoring report, translated from the Finnish" of an alleged "Address by the Central Committee of the Finnish Communist Party to the Labouring People of Finland". And then on December 2, the Soviet press published this TASS report from Leningrad:
FORMATION OF A PEOPLE'S GOVERNMENT OF FINLAND
By agreement with the representatives of a number of Left-wing parties and with
Finnish soldiers who had rebelled, a new government of Finland—the People's
Government of the Finnish Democratic Republic—was formed at Terijoki today.
[Terijoki is on the Gulf of Finland only a few miles across the Finnish border. It used to be a favourite seaside resort with Petro-graders before the Revolution.]
The premier and foreign minister of this government was Otto Kuusinen, one of the most active members of the Comintern for many years past, and he had six ministers—
somebody called Mauri Rosenberg, the Minister of Finance, Axel Anttila, Minister of
Defence, Taure Lechin, Minister of the Interior and three others. No one knew who
exactly, with the exception of Kuusinen, these people were. On the same day it was
announced that diplomatic relations had been established between the Soviet Union and the Finnish Democratic Government.
The news of the formation of the new Finnish Government was not only received "with jubilant enthusiasm by the people of Leningrad" but—already on the very day of its formation—"The kolkhoz-niks of Tataria 'heartily welcomed' the People's Government of Finland ".
[Pravda, December 2,1939. ]
Kuusinen was going from strength to strength. On the following day (December 3)
Pravda published a front-page picture showing Molotov signing the Mutual Assistance and Friendship Pact between the USSR and the Finnish Democratic Republic. Standing
behind him were Zhdanov, Voroshilov, Stalin and Kuusinen. It was not quite clear what had happened to the other members of the new Finnish Government. The Pact provided
that the "ratification papers" would be "exchanged by the two governments at Helsinki".
The same issue of Pravda published a map showing the new Soviet-Finnish frontier agreed upon between Molotov and Kuusinen: apart from a lease by Russia of Hangö,
only a small area of Finnish territory north-west of Leningrad—less than half-way
towards Viborg [Viipuri in Finnish (see map).]—was to be ceded to the Soviet Union. In return, Finland received large stretches of Karelia, including the whole Olonetz area, east of Lake Ladoga.
It is more than doubtful whether these terms did indeed impress the Finns by their show of "generosity". Be that as it may, the clause stipulating that the ratification papers were to be "exchanged" at Helsinki between the Russians and Kuusinen was quite another matter. It suggested that the "liberation" of Finland by the Red Army, accompanied by the Terijoki Government, would only be a matter of a few days, at most of weeks.
Both militarily and politically, Stalin's and Molotov's miscalculations could not have been worse. The "Terijoki Government" was set up two or three days after Molotov had explicitly declared his continued recognition of the Finnish Government at Helsinki, and, except for the capture of Petsamo in the far north in the middle of December, the Red Army's advance on either the Karelian Isthmus or in Central Finland was extremely slow and arduous. The "Mannerheim Line" was much stronger than the Russian command had anticipated, and Finnish resistance was extremely tough. Indeed, casualties were rapidly mounting. Anyone who lived in Leningrad knew that the hospitals had difficulties in