Soviet demands on Finland

On 12 October 1939 talks opened in the Kremlin that set Finland on the road to the Winter War. The Finnish delegation was led by Juho Kusti Paasikivi, the Finnish minister in Stockholm, while on the Soviet side sat Joseph Stalin in person and Vyacheslav Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and at the same time People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. The Finns were first offered a pact of mutual assistance of the kind that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had been forced to accept a few days earlier. When Paasikivi turned it down, Stalin moved on to territorial demands: the lease of the port of Hanko as a naval base, several islands in the Gulf of Finland and the shifting of the border on the Karelian Isthmus further away from Leningrad, in exchange for an area of Soviet Karelia twice as large. On 14 October the Finns received these demands in writing.

The invitation to Moscow

Finland had been placed in the Soviet sphere of interest by the secret protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, although Helsinki knew nothing of this. On 1 September the Finnish government, together with the other Nordic states, declared strict neutrality, and on 17 September, the day the Red Army entered Poland, Molotov assured the Finnish minister in Moscow, Aarno Yrjö-Koskinen, that the Soviet Union would observe neutrality towards Finland. The Foreign Minister, Eljas Erkko, received this declaration “with great satisfaction”. Only a few days later it became clear what Moscow meant by neutrality. On 24 September Molotov presented demands to Estonia, and on 28 September Tallinn signed a pact of mutual assistance granting the right to Soviet bases. On 5 October Latvia was forced to conclude a similar agreement.

On the afternoon of that same day, 5 October, Molotov summoned Yrjö-Koskinen to the Kremlin and announced that, in view of the changed international situation, the Soviet government wished to exchange views with the Finnish government on “certain concrete questions of a political nature”. He asked that Minister Erkko or another plenipotentiary come to Moscow and expected an answer by the day after next at the latest. Asked what questions were meant, he gave no answer. He did, however, mention of his own accord that the negotiations with Latvia and Lithuania would probably be concluded within two or three days.

Helsinki was in less of a hurry than Tallinn had been. On 8 October the Soviet minister, Vladimir Derevyansky, called on Erkko to complain that there was irritation in Moscow because the reply had come late, and that Finland was behaving quite differently from the Baltic states, which “might have a bad effect on the course of affairs”. He asked why the minister himself was not coming and whether Paasikivi had broad powers. Erkko replied that Finland had chosen a negotiator of the greatest possible authority – the head of the delegation that in 1920 had concluded the Treaty of Tartu with Soviet Russia, and a former prime minister. He added that no delegate could decide anything without the consent of the government and parliament. When Derevyansky cited the example of the Baltic states, which had shown that negotiations could succeed, Erkko retorted that Finland could not even imagine a similar arrangement.

Instructions and mobilisation

The choice of Paasikivi rather than the Foreign Minister was deliberate. The government of Prime Minister Aimo Cajander wanted to limit the delegate’s room for manoeuvre: a negotiator without ministerial rank could always say that he had to seek instructions. Those that Paasikivi received on 9 October were very tough. He was to point out that Finland’s borders were long established and that all questions between the two states had been settled by the Treaty of Tartu and the non-aggression pact of 1932, and he was to reject from the outset any proposals that infringed the country’s neutrality. He was not allowed to discuss Soviet bases on the Finnish mainland or on the Åland Islands, the transfer of any port, or a change of the border on the Karelian Isthmus. He was to reject a pact of mutual assistance as incompatible with neutrality. As an “extreme concession” he could agree to talks about three small islands in the Gulf of Finland – Seiskari, Lavansaari and Tytärsaari – but not about the largest of them, Suursaari (Gogland), and only in exchange for greater territorial compensation in Eastern Karelia or on the Arctic Ocean. According to accounts cited by historians, Erkko saw Paasikivi off with the advice that he should “forget that Russia is a great power”.

Finland, unlike the Baltic states, also prepared for the worst. From 10 October reservists were called up for “extraordinary reserve exercises”, which in practice amounted to a covert mobilisation, and troops were sent to the Karelian Isthmus. A voluntary evacuation of the population from Helsinki and the border towns began. On the evening of 9 October Paasikivi, with his advisers Colonel Aladár Paasonen and Johan Nykopp, an official of the Foreign Ministry, left for Moscow by train. According to eyewitnesses, the crowd seeing him off at the station sang the Lutheran hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”.

In the Kremlin

The first meeting took place on 12 October. As in the talks with the Estonians, Stalin himself took part, although formally he was neither head of government nor a minister. The General Secretary of the party explained the Soviet position by concern for the security of Leningrad. He recalled that in 1919 General Nikolai Yudenich had advanced on Petrograd by way of the Gulf of Finland, and that a British fleet had later sailed into it, and he argued that in the present war Britain or Germany might attempt the same. The border on the Karelian Isthmus ran a mere 32 kilometres from Leningrad, within range of long-range artillery. According to the Finnish participants, Stalin summed this up in words that became famous: “We can do nothing about geography, nor can you. Since Leningrad cannot be moved, the border must be moved further away from it.”

First the Soviet side proposed a pact of mutual assistance. Paasikivi replied, as instructed, that Finland, as a neutral state, could not enter into alliances. Unlike in the talks with the Estonians, Stalin did not insist and withdrew the proposal, which Moscow later presented as a concession. What remained were the territorial demands, which Paasikivi had no authority to discuss. He heard them out and declared that he had to report to his government.

According to the historian David Spring, who drew on Paasikivi’s memoirs, Stalin warned on the very first day that the Soviet Union, like Finland, had sent troops to the border. Some chronologies attribute to Stalin, under the date of 14 October, a remark that if the negotiations dragged on, an “accident” might occur between Finnish and Soviet troops, but they give no source. The exact wording cannot be confirmed. Their sense, however, is consistent with what Paasikivi reported: mobilised troops stood on both sides of the border, and Moscow was making it clear that time was working against Finland.

The memorandum of 14 October

At the second meeting, on 14 October, Stalin and Molotov handed Paasikivi a memorandum from the Soviet government. It stated that the Soviet Union was concerned with two matters: the security of Leningrad, and the certainty that Finland would maintain “firm friendly relations” with it. Both aims were meant to protect against external aggression the Soviet coast of the Gulf of Finland, as well as the coast of Estonia, whose independence the USSR had “undertaken to defend”. To this end Moscow wanted to be able to close the entrance to the gulf with artillery fire from both shores, to keep the enemy away from the islands lying west and north-west of the approaches to Leningrad, and to move the border on the Karelian Isthmus further to the north and north-west.

The specific demands were as follows:

• a 30-year lease of the port of Hanko with the surrounding area, in order to build a naval base there with coastal artillery which, together with the base at Paldiski in Estonia, would close the entrance to the Gulf of Finland; the base was to be held by a garrison of one infantry regiment, two anti-aircraft artillery battalions, two air regiments and a battalion of armoured cars, no more than 5,000 men in all;
• the right of the Soviet fleet to use Lappohja Bay as an anchorage;
• the cession of the islands of Suursaari, Seiskari, Lavansaari, Tytärsaari and Koivisto, of part of the Karelian Isthmus from the village of Lipola to the southern boundary of the town of Koivisto, and of the western part of the Rybachy Peninsula on the Arctic Ocean, 2,761 km² in all;
• in exchange the Soviet Union would cede to Finland 5,529 km² of territory in the Repola (Rebol) and Porajärvi districts of Soviet Karelia;
• the addition to the non-aggression pact of a clause that neither party would join groupings or alliances hostile to the other;
• the dismantling of fortifications on both sides of the border on the Karelian Isthmus;
• Soviet consent to the fortification of the Åland Islands, but only by Finland itself, without Swedish participation.

At first sight the offer looked generous, since Finland would receive twice as much land as it gave up. According to Finnish notes, Stalin himself stressed the point. But the Repola and Porajärvi districts were sparsely populated forests and swamps of no economic or military importance. Finland, on the other hand, was to give up densely populated land on the Karelian Isthmus and dismantle the belt of fortifications that barred the shortest route from Leningrad to Viipuri and Helsinki. The new border was to run about 30 kilometres from Viipuri (Vyborg), the country’s second city. A Soviet base at Hanko, at the south-western tip of Finland, lay more than a hundred kilometres from Helsinki and could cut the capital off from Sweden and from the sea. In the eyes of the Finnish government the demands were the first step towards the fate that was just then befalling Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where Soviet garrisons were already stationed or soon would be.

Reactions

Paasikivi considered the demands so far-reaching that he immediately returned to Helsinki for new instructions. The government kept their content strictly secret. The German minister in Helsinki, Wipert von Blücher, reported to Berlin on 19 October that the public was calm but determined to defend the country’s independence and territorial integrity, arms in hand if necessary, and that this attitude would tie the Finnish negotiator’s hands. Mobilisation had by then been completed and the concentration of troops was in place.

Finland could count on sympathy, but not on help. On 12 October the governments of Denmark, Norway and Sweden delivered identical notes in Moscow concerning Finland, and on 11 October President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent a personal message to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Mikhail Kalinin, expressing the hope that the Soviet Union would make no demands incompatible with Finland’s independence. Kalinin replied that the negotiations were intended solely to strengthen friendly relations between the two states. In the second half of October the monarchs and presidents of the Nordic states met in Stockholm, among them President Kyösti Kallio, accompanied by Erkko. They resolved to adhere to strict neutrality, and the Swedish Prime Minister, Per Albin Hansson, refused Erkko even a joint defence of the Åland Islands. Germany, bound by its pact with Stalin, advised Helsinki to give way.

The Finnish government was divided. Erkko and the Defence Minister, Juho Niukkanen, backed by President Kallio, believed that the Soviet Union was bluffing and that firmness would be enough. Paasikivi and Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, chairman of the Defence Council, thought that more had to be conceded, because the army would not hold out for long in a war with the USSR. Paasikivi demanded that a member of the government accompany him to the next round of talks. The choice fell on the Finance Minister, Väinö Tanner, leader of the Social Democrats. Tanner is sometimes named as a participant in the talks of 12 October, but Finnish diplomatic documents show that he joined the delegation only in the second round.

Place in the war

On 21 October Paasikivi and Tanner left for Moscow with new instructions. On 23 October they handed over a memorandum in which Finland agreed to cede four islands and to move the border on the Karelian Isthmus by a dozen or so kilometres, so as to eliminate the so-called Kuokkala “knee”, but rejected the base at Hanko and any further concessions. According to the Finnish account, Molotov then asked whether the Finns wanted to bring about a conflict. Stalin reduced his demands regarding the Hanko garrison and the line of the border, but Helsinki did not give way. On 31 October Molotov made the Soviet demands public in a speech to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The third round, on 3–9 November, ended in failure, although Stalin even offered to buy Hanko or to exchange the base for nearby islands. On 3 November Molotov declared that the civilians had achieved nothing and that it was now the soldiers’ turn to speak. On 13 November the delegation left Moscow convinced that the talks had merely been broken off.

On 26 November Soviet artillery shelled its own positions at the village of Mainila near the border, and Moscow blamed the Finns for the incident. On 28 November the USSR renounced the non-aggression pact, and on 30 November the Red Army attacked Finland without a declaration of war. In the captured border town of Terijoki a puppet government of the Finnish Democratic Republic was set up under Otto Kuusinen, and on 14 December the League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union. The Winter War lasted until March 1940. Under the Peace of Moscow of 12 March Finland lost far more than had been demanded of it in October: the whole of the Karelian Isthmus with Viipuri, the shores of Lake Ladoga and territory in the north, and it was forced to lease Hanko to the Soviet Union. Bitterness over this peace drove Helsinki towards Germany, at whose side Finland entered the Continuation War in June 1941.

Historians still argue about the meaning of the October talks. Some, following Paasikivi, believe that Stalin genuinely wanted an agreement, since he conducted the negotiations in person for so long and softened his demands several times, and that Erkko’s hard line threw away the chance of a compromise. Others, pointing to Soviet operational plans prepared from 1939 onwards and to the fate of the Baltic states, occupied in June 1940, argue that the bases were meant to be only the first step towards subjugating Finland. What is certain is that the talks of 12 and 14 October confronted a small country with the choice that Estonia had faced a few weeks earlier. Finland was the only one of the states to which Moscow presented such demands in the autumn of 1939 that refused. It paid for this with a war, but it kept its independence.