The Winter War: Who Really Won?

An 18-year-old 12^th grader walks over to the neighboring elementary school and picks a fight with a 10-year-old. Within minutes, the 12^th grader suffers a broken nose and has 2 of his front teeth knocked out. Several minutes after that, some other 12^th graders can be heard discussing intervening to help the younger boy out because of the size difference between the 2 combatants. Before that can happen, the younger boy, due to exhaustion, offers to end the fight, to which the 12^th grader immediately agrees. Afterward, the 12^th grader brags about how he kicked the younger boy’s ass and his classmates regard him as a brave hero. But is he?

I am going to take a contrary opinion to most people and say the Finns won the war. My main argument is NOT going to be the size differential between the two states as alluded to in the preceding paragraph. What I feel counts the most in this debate were the goals of the two parties involved and how close to achieving them each side was.

Let’s look at Finland first as it is the easiest to discuss without controversy. Its goal was simple: Fight as hard as humanly possible to maintain freedom and independence. One has to consider that the Finns had just seen what happened to Poland several months earlier when it was crushed by the combined efforts of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR. Now a similar tag-team match seemed to be in the offing for them as well as Germany cut potential outside help off by controlling access to the Baltic Sea, leaving the Soviet Union the savory prospect of going one-on-one with the Finns, something the Secret Protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (MRP) allowed as Finland was in the USSR’s sphere of influence.

Turning our attention to the USSR (the Russian Empire rebranded), we run into controversy straight away when talking about the war’s goal. Russians today vehemently insist that the only goal was to push the Finnish border back from Leningrad and to obtain some small islands to protect the country’s second largest city from potential attack in the future.

Russian President Vladimir Putin perpetuated this myth in March 2013 when he addressed the Russian Military Historical Society at Novo-Ogaryovo, one of his official residences near Moscow. He said that the war was started to ‘correct mistakes’ made in 1917 when Finland gained its independence from the Russian Empire and stated, ‘The border was just 20 kilometres from St Petersburg and that was a significantly major threat to a city of five million.’ ^[1]

Listed below are the actual demands made to the Finns:

‘I: The frontier between Russia and Finland in the Karelian Isthmus region be moved westward to a point only 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Viipuri, and that all existing fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus be destroyed;

II: The Finns cede to Russia the islands of Suursaari, Lavansaari, Tytarsaari, and Koivisto in the Gulf of Finland, along with most of the Rybachi Peninsula on the Arctic coast. In compensation for this, Stalin was willing to exchange 5500 square kilometers of East Karelia, above Lake Ladoga;

III: The Finns lease to the USSR the peninsula of Hanko, and permit the Russians to establish a base there, manned by 5000 troops and some support units.’ ^[2]

Giving in to these demands would have left Finland virtually defenseless as it would have meant surrendering their main defense line, the Mannerheim Line, that gave the Soviets so much trouble during the war. The Finns were also suspicious that this would be the first of many demands and they were right. Only weeks earlier in September and October, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had been forced to allow Soviet air, army and naval bases onto their territories under so-called ‘Mutual Assistance Treaties.’ That led to 25,000 Soviet troops being deployed to Estonia, 30,000 to Latvia and 20,000 to Lithuania. The Finns fear became reality for the Baltic States in the worst way. With those troops placed within the 3 Baltic States, Stalin was able to force them to be incorporated within the Soviet Union the following year, thus erasing them from the map as independent states.

More ominously, Stalin stated to the Finnish delegation during their multiple negotiations that the above-listed points were his minimum demands. ^[3] What did that mean? The Finns didn’t know but no one doubted that it couldn’t be good for Finland. Still, the Finns rejected the demands.

The die had been cast: The Soviet Union was going to go to war with Finland. Now we have to ask the following the question: ‘What did they intend to accomplish?’ The current revisionist and apologist answer that they wanted enough territory to guarantee the protection of Leningrad is complete nonsense, as I am going to demonstrate. The real reason was the desire for total conquest, to make Finland another SSR in the Soviet Union.

I can already hear the howls of denial and protest, but the facts are quite straightforward.

If the Soviets had only intended to gain enough land to protect Leningrad as Putin stated, then their invasion would have been only in that area. Having secured the territory in question, they could have then dug in and negotiated with the Finnish government. However, that was not what the Soviets did at all. Instead, they mounted an all-out invasion with massive forces across the entire border from the Arctic down to the Baltic Sea. In total, the Soviets fielded approximately 1 million soldiers ^[4], along with thousands of tanks and aircraft, to defeat a nation of 3,696,000. ^[5]

Accompanying one of the invading columns was Finnish Communist Otto Wille Kuusinen, Stalin’s handpicked leader for the upcoming Finnish People’s Republic, ^[6] also known as the Terijoki Government, because the village of Terijoki was the first significant settlement to be ‘liberated’ by the advancing Soviets. The Russians were encouraged by the belief (much as Putin was in 2022 before invading Ukraine) that the Finnish workers would rise up against their landowners, the bourgeoise and government the moment the Red Army crossed the border. ^[7] This was borne out during the interrogation of one Russian POW when he told his captors he was sent to ‘liberate our [Finnish] worker friends from capitalism.’ He added later that ‘I can feel in my own skin how we were welcomed by those we came to ‘free.” ^[8]

Kuusinen was installed as the head of the new government. A ‘Declaration of the People’s Government of Finland’ was issued in Terijoki on 1 December, only one day after the invasion began, and a ‘Treaty of Mutual Assistance and Friendship Between the Soviet Union and the Democratic Republic of Finland’ was signed by Molotov and Kuusinen in Moscow the next day.

The Treaty began with the following: ‘…being persuaded that now, through the heroic efforts of the Red Army…there is to be liquidated that true focus of war-infection which the former plutocratic government of Finland had created on the borders of the Soviet Union for the benefit of the Imperialist Powers; And, since the Finnish people have created their own democratic government, which derives its support entirely from the people, the time has come to establish good relations between our countries and, with united forces, to protect the security and inviolability of our nations.’ ^[9]

For the history revisionists out there, notice how Kuusinen wasn’t appointed to be the leader of the tiny buffer territory near Leningrad, but of the entirety of Finland. Also notice how the internationally recognized government of Finland was de-legitimized by the Soviets in the Treaty and ‘replaced’ by their artificial, puppet Finnish People’s Republic. In fact, the word ‘liquidated’ was used, a word the Soviets employed in the meaning to kill or destroy.

Further proof that Stalin intended to pull off an official regime change of the country is what happened on 31 January 1940. During the initial moves towards a diplomatic solution to the war, Molotov sent a note through Swedish diplomatic channels that ‘tacitly recognized both the existence and the legitimacy of the Ryti-Tanner government.’ ^[10] That message simultaneously killed off the Terijoki Government of Kuusinen, while re-legitimizing the actual regime in power.

Again, this is evidence that Stalin intended to conquer the country instead of just taking a small percentage of it as a buffer zone. In fact, Leningrad District boss Andrei Zhdanov promised to present Stalin with Finland’s signed surrender papers for his birthday on 18 December. As one can imagine, Stalin was not amused at not getting his anticipated ‘present.’ ^[11] Zhdanov must have counted himself damn lucky to have survived producing such a disappointment for his murderous boss.

Returning to the original question of who won the Winter War, we have to look at the goals of both parties and assess how far each was successful in achieving them. The Soviets, as demonstrated above, sought a total takeover of the country. Towards that end, they assembled a massive amount of military power; invaded along the entire border, not just in the south to establish a buffer zone; and picked and publicly announced the leader of the new government with which they attempted to replace the legitimate and internationally recognized one. Did they conquer all of Finland? No. Were they successful in their efforts at regime change? No. Did Stalin bring Finland into the Soviet fold? Again, no. With these three ‘No’s,’ we can safely conclude that the USSR lost the war.

Looking at Finland, were they successful at maintaining their freedom and independence? The answer is a resounding yes. Even though they lost 11% of their territory in the following peace treaty (‘We have won just about enough ground to bury our dead,’ commented one Russia general) ^[12], the Finns remained a free people who avoided the fate that befell so many others during and after the war: To be conquered, absorbed or dominated by Moscow. For this reason, we can confidently state that Finland won the war. They achieved their war goal while the Soviets failed to realize theirs.

The final word goes to Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, who would later recall that, for a different reason than the one I have presented here, all the senior officials at the time didn’t see their win as much of a win, saying, ‘All of us — and Stalin first and foremost — sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies’ conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay.’ ^[13]

Sources

https://www.britannica.com/event/Russo-Finnish-War

https://www.rferl.org/a/finlands-winter-war-with-the-soviet-union/30280490.html

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009145/total-population-finland-1750-2020/

https://yle.fi/a/3-6539940

Trotter, William R. Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1991.

Pictures/Map

Map retrieved from https://www.ww2-weapons.com/red-army-1939/

Destroyed Soviet Column retrieved from https://www.sabaton.net/historical-facts/start-of-finnish-winter-war/

Finnish Soldiers retrieved from http://everydaynormalguy1.blogspot.com/2011/04/this-time-you-will-hear-story-about.html Tank column picture retrieved from http://www.secondworldwarhistory.com/winter-war.asp