Finland, under the secret protocol of August 23, 1939, was included in the Soviet sphere of influence. On October 2, when the Finnish ambassador to Germany, Wuorimaa, tried to find out the intentions of Germany and the Soviet Union toward his country, German deputy foreign minister Weiz- saecker made it clear that Germany would not interfere in relations between Finland and the Soviet Union.111
Annexation was not initially part of the Soviet plan; Stalin hoped to bring Finland into his orbit through political pressure alone. He had no intention of going to war against a country that would have the support of Britain, possibly Germany, the Scandinavian countries, and the United States as well. Essentially his aim was to move the border, which ran across the Karelian isthmus only thirty-two kilometers from Leningrad, farther to the north, away from this Soviet industrial center. The city was too easily exposed to heavy artillery fire. He also wished to block access to Leningrad from the Gulf of Finland and to guarantee the security of the rail line from Murmansk. Of course, Finland itself was not a threat to the Soviet Union.
On October 5 the Soviet government presented its demands to Finland. If Finland would cede the Karelian isthmus, the USSR would in exchange give it a vast territory, twice the size of the isthmus, from Soviet Karelia, along the Finnish border. (The Soviet territory was sparsely populated and of very little value.) In addition, the Soviet Union demanded the right to lease the Finnish peninsula of Hanko (Hango), at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, and the ice-free port of Petsamo on the northern coast west of Murmansk, in order to build Soviet naval and air bases. The Finns were naturally reluctant to give up Hanko, since this could mean placing Finland's fate in the hands of its powerful neighbor. No resolution of the issue could be found, and talks between the two countries were broken off on November 13. Both sides began to mobilize their forces and strengthen their defenses.
The Finns had the well-equipped Mannerheim Line of fortifications stretching across the Karelian isthmus for about 125 kilometers, quite a strong position, although not the very last word in military technology. In his haste to wring the desired concessions from Finland, Stalin organized a provocation. He ordered the military command in Leningrad to shell the Soviet village of Mainila, about 800 meters from the Finnish border, then blamed it on the Finns. The Soviet press was immediately filled with calls for retaliation: "Wipe out the Wretched Gang" was one.112
Stalin's hope that he could intimidate Finland into accepting the Soviet terms and thus avoid an armed conflict was not borne out. Finland would not yield its territory and compromise its independence. The Finnish people wholeheartedly supported their government, which was led by the Social Democrat Wajno Tanner. Stalin, infuriated, ordered that Finland be issued an ultimatum and, if it did not accept, that shelling of its border positions begin. On November 28 the Soviet Union tore up its nonaggression pact with Finland. Stalin was confident that the artillery attack would be enough to force Finland to capitulate and accept his conditions. However, just in case, he ordered the formation of a puppet government headed by Otto Kuusinen, a Comintern leader and veteran of the Finnish Communist party. A so-called people's government of the (nonexistent) Finnish Democratic Republic was established at Terioki, and the Soviet government immediately concluded a friendship and mutual assistance treaty with this fictional entity.113 He planned to create a Karelo-Finnish Soviet Republic as part of the USSR, by merging Finland with the existing Karelian Autonomous Republic.
Events, however, did not conform with Stalin's expectations. The Finns were not intimidated by his ultimatum. Advancing Soviet divisions encountered fierce resistance, and it soon turned out that the Soviet troops were not at all ready for a war under winter conditions. They were not trained to fight on skis; there were shortages of automatic weapons; many did not have winter uniforms; and cases of frostbite were numerous. Surprise attacks by elite Finnish sharpshooters inflicted heavy casualties. In an attempt to overcome the Red Army's deficiences, Soviet professional skiers were inducted, and many met inglorious deaths. Soviet transport equipment was likewise unfit for the harsh winter. All attempts to crack the Finnish defenses by a frontal assault on the Mannerheim Line were repelled, with heavy casualties.114 The Red Army leaders in charge of the Finnish operations proved incompetent. General G. M. Shtern had to be called from the Far East, and General Meretskov, head of the Leningrad military command, was replaced by Marshal Timoshenko. To raise morale, volunteers from the Communist youth of Leningrad and Moscow were brought in. Many of them had only rudimentary military training. Hastily thrown into battle, they suffered enormous losses. The two largest Soviet cities, Moscow and Leningrad, were soon suffering from food shortages. The particularly cold winter of 1939—40 caused chaos in transportation. For the people the war against tiny Finland proved a terrible bloodletting. Only in February 1940, after twenty-seven divisions and thousands of guns and tanks were concentrated, did the troops under Marshal Timoshenko manage to break through the Mannerheim Line. At that point Finland's only recourse was to call for a truce.115
During this ignominious campaign, the Soviet Union's military weakness was glaringly revealed. To this day the Soviet government has not told its people the truth about the losses suffered in that war. According to recent Finnish figures, 100,000 Soviet soldiers were killed, while the Finns lost 20,000.
The war with Finland cost the Soviet Union more than just physical losses. It was discredited internationally. The League of Nations formally condemned the USSR for aggression in December 1939, expelling it from the organization. Three other states had been branded aggressors by the League of Nations: militarist Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany. Now the socialist Soviet Union joined the list.
The British and French governments were preparing to take advantage of the indignation of world public opinion to shift the center of military activity from Western to Northeastern Europe. An expeditionary corps of 50,000 volunteers was quickly organized, but the Finnish government chose not to let its territory become a testing ground for the great powers, as Spain had been. It decided, after some hesitation, to sign a peace treaty with the USSR. The agreement was signed in Moscow on March 12. The Soviet Union received the Karelian isthmus, including Vyborg (Viipuri) and the Gulf of Vyborg with its islands, the western and northern shores of Lake Ladoga, including the towns of Keksholm, Sortavala, and Suojarvi, a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland, some territory east of Merkjarvi, including the town of Kuolajarvi, and the western parts of the Rybachy and Sredny peninsulas. It was also granted the right to lease the Hanko peninsula and surrounding islands to install naval and air bases and garrisons.116
The so-called people's government was never supported by the people of Finland; it disappeared as quickly as it had arisen. Kuusinen, the head of this rump government, soon became the president of the Presidium of
the Supreme Soviet of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Republic, a new component of the USSR made up of the former autonomous republic of Karelia and the new regions acquired from Finland under the 1940 agreement. The new republic reminded freedom-loving Finns that their country could be annexed at any time. Only in 1956, when the Soviet government became convinced that Finland was firmly under its influence, did the Karelo- Finnish Republic once again become the Karelian autonomous republic within the RSFSR.
One negative result of the war with Finland was that it further convinced Germany that, in military respects, the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay, that it could easily be defeated.
The war exposed serious shortcomings in the Soviet military organization, especially in the Commissariat of Defense. It was revealed, for example, that information from Soviet intelligence on the positions of gun emplacements in the Mannerheim Line had not been marked on the field maps of front-line units, resulting in needlessly heavy Soviet losses inflicted by the Finnish batteries.