"Stalin, Molotov and the Finns" Topic

"A brief post to celebrate a WIBT (wish I'd been there) moment from the margins of the Second World War. November 1939 and western Europe has plunged into internecine conflict. However, the non-combatant Soviet Union is enjoying itself. Indeed, it has decided to use this precious period to put the record straight with some of its smaller neighbours. The class bully, in short, has just got out the knuckle dusters and, God help, those little boys with glasses while the teachers are not around.

Part of Poland had already been gobbled up in the September War: the crimes at Katyn have been committed. The Soviets are planning for the ‘incorporation' of the Batlic Republics: something that will be carried out in the Summer of 1940. And then there is also that annoying little country somewhere up near Sweden – the Soviet planners can never remember its name.

Pity Finland. From anschluss and with more urgency from the beginning of the Second World War Soviet communiqués were sent threatening and coaxing by turns. The Soviets wanted bases on Finnish territory. They wanted Finnish islands. They wanted the Finnish border to be moved backwards. They wanted defensive lines to be abandoned. True, by the normal standards of Soviet negotiations this was tame stuff – the Soviets even offered a land exchange: but Finland was in the ‘western sphere' and it was not of any particularly strategic importance bar its southern approaches…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

What a deeply stupid article. As my grad school roommate said, having written a paper on this diplomatic incident, "That was the end of Mr. Nice Stalin."

"3 November Molotov lost his patience: ‘Since we civilians don't seem to be making any progress, perhaps it's the soldiers' turn to speak'. However, still the Finns smiled and refused to take the Soviet demands seriously: the fact that the Soviet army was bigger than the Finnish population seems to have escaped them."

The Finnish delegates were stupider than that--the memoir stats that they didn't know what he meant and thought that he needed more consultations with his military experts.

Keep in mind that the Soviets were offering a huge land swap, offering up swaths of Karelia. Many have dismissed it as unoccupied, undeveloped forest, but it had been a target of Finnish irredentist claims. Semi-official Finnish forces had invaded the area at least twice (sorry, "tried to liberate it") and there had been some … well, terrorist attacks. The Soviets certainly had reason to believe that the Finns would see some value in their offer!

Meanwhile, the Finns were conducting sham negotiations. The delegates sent to Moscow had orders to agree to nothing. They didn't stand up bravely to the nasty Reds, they just led them on.

Finnish intransigence left everyone convinced that the Finns had a security guarantee from another great power. Von Ribbentrop wrote just this in his diary, opining that it was obviously Britain. Britain believe that it was Germany. The Soviets weren't sure who it was, but the only reason to give Finland a security guarantee was if you wanted to use Finland as a base for an attack on Leningrad.

My history recollection is not the best but wasn't Finland an independent country conquered by Russian in the 1800s. Finland then took advantage of WWI and the Russian Civil Wars to regain independence. What then was Finland negotiating with Russia? A treaty of reconquest?

"My history recollection is not the best but wasn't Finland an independent country conquered by Russian in the 1800s."

No. Finland had been part of Sweden (under ethnic Swedish domination) until Sweden finally lost it to Russia in the 1808-1809 war. Because Finland had repeatedly been a battlefield between Sweden and Russia, some Finns had been trying to break away and achieve autonomy. By being taken over by Russia, this is effectively what happened.

Wait, what? They were liberated by the Russians from Swedish oppression???

Well, Finland did not become part of the Russian Empire and was not run by the Russian bureaucracy. Instead, the Grand Duchy of Finland was directly ruled by the Russian Czar in his role as the Grand Duke of Finland. The Finns had almost total internal self-government, were exempt from conscription (a huge deal, since being conscripted into the Russian army was considered about the same as dying, if for no other reason than that the term was so long), and I can't remember the exact details of taxation, but it was either zero internal taxes or truly minimal. Finland had a really good deal under Russian rule.

(Yes, I have overstated some of the "Swedish oppression" part, just to play up how light the hand of the Czar was. There was definite tension, though.)

"Finland then took advantage of WWI and the Russian Civil Wars to regain independence."

Again, no. Finland hadn't been independent. The Finnish Civil War that broke out at about the same time as the Russian Civil War was horrible, bloody, and brutal. The Finnish Reds wanted to establish a Soviet republic. Whether it would have been an independent ally of the USSR or would have been reabsorbed is an open question.

In any case, from the Soviet perspective, the Whites had managed to take over one Russian province and were holding out there. I don't hold with that view, but it's consistent with many of the events, and if you start from the point of view of the Soviets, it's perfectly sensible.

"What then was Finland negotiating with Russia? A treaty of reconquest?"

Defensive measures against foreign invasion, which had been proven necessary by the Royal Navy during the Crimean War and by the Germans during the First World War. The British naval campaign in the Baltic during the Crimean War is almost unknown in the West; I suspect that it is rather better known in Russia. Oddly, the Royal Navy managed to trigger a burst of pro-Russian patriotism in Finland through wanton destruction. (The RN expedition carried no one who spoke Finnish and it appears that they didn't even know that the inhabitants of Finland weren't Russians. A little people in a far-off land of whom we know nothing, indeed.)

In any case, the ultimate objective of the British was St. Petersburg (Leningrad). The inadequate defenses in the Baltic and at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland allowed the Royal Navy to easily penetrate all the way to the bay before St. Petersburg. The Kronstadt defenses were impossible to the British to pass, though not in the least because they were utterly unprepared to fight serious fortifications. By the end of the Crimean War, though, the French and British navies had hundreds of bomb ketches completed and under construction and were preparing an assault on Kronstadt in the spring. With Krondstadt removed, St. Petersburg, Russian second city, would lie helpless under the guns of the allied fleets. Not a pretty picture …

In 1939, the situation for Leningrad was even worse. Artillery had grown vastly more powerful, and the Finnish frontier was so close to Leningrad that long-range artillery could nearly hit the city from Finnish territory. An advance of 10 miles would put the city in terrible peril. (Of course, aircraft could already hit the city, but fighters and AA guns are useless against artillery shells …). The Soviets no longer had the fortress on Aland and couldn't base aircraft, torpedo boats, and submarines there. They didn't have the fortress on the Hanko peninsula whose heavy guns, in conjunction with Estonia's heavy guns, could cover the entire breadth of the mouth of the Gulf. They did have the Moon Sounds islands off of Estonia and other bases in Estonia because they were forcing Estonia to allow Soviet forces to set up bases. (Note that Estonia wasn't actually occupied until after the fall of Paris. The link in the timing there is an interesting topic.) In short, the Soviets were lacking a lot of the forward defenses for Leningrad that it had enjoyed as recently as the First World War. Nor could they depend on any great power using Finland a base for attacks on the Soviet Union being as unprepared to defeat fortifications as the Royal Navy was in the first two years of the Crimean War.

Now, it may be that Stalin and company had decided to conquer Finland before any negotiations started. To say that this is a point of controversy is to put it mildly. I simply argue that the General Staff of a non-Communist Russian government in 1939 would have been really worried about their ability to defend St. Petersburg and probably would have pushed to do something about it. Remember, they still would have been facing Hitler, who had written about how the Russians were ubermenschen, and how the German people had to expand to the east. (In our history, long, long sections of Mein Kampf had been read aloud at the Congress of Soviets to make sure that everyone knew exactly how existential the Nazi threat really was.)

Was Finland negotiating a treaty of reconquest with Russia? Based on the negotiations, it does not appear so. The Soviets were asking for limited concessions and were offering both money and land in return. This is entirely different from how the Soviets handled the Baltic States and pretty well all other situations. Their attitude and demeanor during the negotiations was friendly and respectful. The contrast to the handling of the governments of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia could not have been more striking.

I have more to say, but it's late and I've typed far too much already.

Excellent threads my friend!.

Amicalement
Armand