CHAPTER THREE

THE FINNISH FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE

`1944–1948`

The development of Soviet-Finnish relations at the end of the war and beginning of the peace is critical in understanding the perspectives of Stalin and Moscow on the evolution of Europe as a whole. It would be misguided to consider Finland—and the eventual “Finlandization” of the country—an anomaly that falls outside the norm of the supposedly predetermined cases of western and eastern Europe. In reality, there were no hard-and-fast models for the development of Moscow’s relations with specific countries, though, to be sure, wartime allies of Nazi Germany, like Finland, could expect to be treated with particular harshness. Although both Great Britain and the United States had made efforts to get Finland out of the war and guarantee her independence afterward, they understood that, by dint of geography and military entanglements with the Third Reich, the country would fall under the influence of the Soviet Union after the defeat.

There was very little difference in the views of the Big Three about the future of Finland. They agreed during their wartime negotiations that Finland would pay reparations and be subject to an Allied Control Commission (ACC) that the Soviet Union—with the acquiescence of the Americans and British—would dominate. Since the Americans had not been in a state of war with Finland, they did not sign the armistice on September 4, 1944, unlike the British, who had declared war on Finland but not engaged in any military operations. The Americans would play no significant role in Finnish affairs, and the British unambiguously acknowledged Soviet dominance in the country as well.¹ Sweden was the only Western country for whom Finland was very important, and Sweden, neutral during the war, had no say in the determination of the peace.²

Moscow’s proconsul in Finland was Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov. A senior politburo ideologist who had been in charge of the defense of Leningrad during the war, Zhdanov had not forgotten Finland’s crucial military role in helping the Wehrmacht encircle the city. He was also an experienced Finnish “hand,” having been deeply involved in the “Winter War” (1939–1940) in his role as head of the Regional Military Council of the Leningrad district, in negotiating with the defiant Finns before the Soviet attack, and in preparing what became a victorious, if catastrophic, military assault. Zhdanov also helped set up a new Finnish “democratic” government, headed by the Finnish communist Otto Kuusinen—the so-called Terijoki government—which was preparing to assume power in a conquered Finland, and participated in the negotiations and signing of the peace treaty of March 12, 1940. Finally, Zhdanov was assigned the task of evaluating the horrendous performance of the Red Army during the war, which was recognized not only by Soviet authorities but, unfortunately for Moscow, by the Nazis as well.³ To the extent that any Soviet leader could hope to earn Stalin’s confidence and trust, Zhdanov seems to have attained that rare, if revocable, status by late 1944 and the end of the war

Zhdanov’s main task was to see to it that Finland would never again become the base for an invasion of the Soviet Union. The Soviets did not tire of reminding the Western Allies and the Finns that Finnish forces had taken part in the murderous siege of Leningrad, and that the prewar Soviet-Finnish border, located just thirty-five kilometers from the city, would of necessity be redrawn according to the 1940 treaty following the Winter War.

The Finns thus held a very weak hand at the end of the war. Still, despite reports of a depressed and deeply anxious public given Soviet control of their destiny, Finnish political life underwent a remarkable revival in the months following the signing of the armistice on September 19, 1944.⁴ After having lost the Winter War (1939–40) and then the “Continuation War” (1941–1944), both of which cost the country dearly in territory, men, and materiel, the Finns nevertheless bolstered their spirits and those of their political leaders by taking active part in the revivification of parliamentary life and supporting the presidency. Like the peoples of many other European countries, the Finns were sometimes overwhelmed by poverty, devastation (especially in the north of the country), refugees (from Karelia), and reparations payments to the Soviets. Yet they tackled their social and economic problems determined to hold on to their sovereignty despite sometimes severe political differences.

The Finnish communists, after years of operating as an illegal party, emerged from the underground at the end of the war with substantial support in segments of the Finnish working class. They turned their back on their traditional “iron proletarian dictatorship” policies and were one of the first parties in Europe to advocate the formation of a “people’s democracy.”⁵ But splits in the party as a consequence of many communists’ support of the Finnish cause in the Winter War weakened the party considerably. Moreover, Finnish communists suffered terribly during Stalin’s purges, leaving only a very few alive in the Soviet Union at the time of the war. Many of those, including the party’s leader Otto Kuusinen, were badly compromised by their participation in the Terijoki government, which had been constituted by Stalin to take over Finland during the Winter War. The more powerful Social Democratic Party, which had a fervent anti-communist streak that dated back to the civil war in Finland in 1918, dominated the politics on the left.⁶ The political landscape at the end of the war was commanded, above all, by the imposing figure of Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, who as field marshal of the Finnish Defence Forces was known since the civil war as a staunch defender of Finnish independence against the Soviet Union.

`Soviet Strategic Thinking and Finland`

As early as December 1941, Solomon Lozovskii, deputy foreign minister and senior specialist on Scandinavian questions in the Soviet foreign ministry, wrote to Stalin and Molotov about the importance of the Baltic and Black Sea regions for Soviet security. He underlined the fact that “the questions about our land and sea borders need to be thought through in the context of [our] security and freedom of communications.”⁷

Lozovskii articulated what occupied many Soviet military and strategic thinkers during the war, Stalin included: the need for the Soviet Union to extend its European security zone beyond what they considered the narrow and excessively constricted lines of the interwar period. The Soviets’ desire to reduce their territorial vulnerability, which the Nazi attack had brutally exposed; to counter potential postwar British imperialism; and to exploit opportunities for expanding their political influence in Europe as a whole all required a much firmer network of secure sea lanes and land bases. In the Black Sea this meant unimpeded egress through the Dardanelles, guaranteed by a Soviet military base in the region. The Bornholm adventure, described in Chapter 1, was part of a plan to keep the Danish Belts and Sound open to the Soviet Baltic fleet and defensible against British domination, and negotiations with the Norwegians about Spitsbergen and Bear Island aimed at securing sea lanes between Murmansk and the North Sea.

The policies toward Finland, including the securing of a base at Porkkala on the Gulf of Finland and the acquisition of Petsamo in the north, which created a common border with Norway, reflected these same larger strategic goals. For the Soviets, control of the eastern Baltic region was also important for preventing resistance groups in Estonia and Latvia from using the sea lanes for moving men and materiel in and out of their forest redoubts, mostly to and from Sweden. Finland, in Maxim Litvinov’s optimistic wartime scheme for the future, was to be part of the “security zone” of the Soviet Union, along with Norway and Sweden, while Denmark was to be in the neutral zone.⁸ In Ivan Maiskii’s notes on the future peace, Finland would cede Petsamo to the Soviet Union and, like Romania, would be tied to the Soviets through a long-term agreement on mutual help, which would include the establishment of Soviet army, air force, and navy bases. The Soviet Union and Finland would also be linked by a series of strategic and economically beneficial railway lines and roads.⁹

The Western Allies consistently supported Soviet territorial demands on Finland, while emphasizing the importance of the reconstitution of Finnish independence, much as they did with Poland at the conferences at Teheran (November–December 1943) and Yalta (February 1945). In December 1941, British foreign secretary Anthony Eden noted in a conversation with Stalin in Moscow that the Finns could not expect better terms for a settlement than those concluding the Winter War in March 1940, meaning the loss of Karelian territory and the Soviet right “to maintain naval and military bases on Finnish territory.”¹⁰ Even in their spirited defense of Finnish independence at the conference in Teheran in December 1943, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt challenged Stalin’s territorial claims.¹¹ In his curiously worded reply to Roosevelt’s speech, which would have surely unnerved the Finns, the Soviet leader cited a wartime communication from Moscow “to the effect that Russia had no designs on the independence of Finland, and Finland, by its behavior, did not force the Russians to do so.”¹²

Since the United States had not declared war on Finland, Washington was more restrained in dealing with Finnish questions during and after the war. Both Roosevelt and Truman were aware of the popularity of the Finns in the West after their dramatic struggle against the Soviets in the “Winter War,” which had been played up in the press, and both leaders were lobbied by Finnish-Americans to support Finnish independence, which they did. But beyond this, there was not much they could do. In the Allied Control Commission, the Americans would, according to the State Department, play “a passive role and avoid as much as possible being involved in Finnish politics.”¹³

In fact, the United States held no position in the ACC in Finland. Anthony Eden returned to the theme of Finland’s dependence on the Soviet Union in August 1944: “Although we shall no doubt hope that Finland will be left some real degree of at least cultural and commercial independence and a parliamentary regime, Russian influence will in any event be predominant in Finland and we shall not be able, nor would it serve any important British interests to concede that influence.”¹⁴ Thus, even though the British were a signatory of the armistice, there was no reason to expect that they would do anything to impede the Soviets from running the ACC for Finland. British instructions to their representative in the commission, F. M. Shepherd, were unambiguous in this regard: “It is recognized that during the war Finland falls with the Soviet sphere of military operations, and that the Soviet government must therefore be allowed to play the principal role in enforcing the Armistice.… As members of the commission you will be under his [Zhdanov’s] control.”¹⁵

Not least because of the long border it shared with the Soviet Union, Finland could expect to receive from Moscow the same kind of close attention to its internal political developments as Poland and Romania, and given Prague’s concession to Stalin of the Carpatho-Ukraine, as Czechoslovakia and Hungary. As a neighbor that had fought against the Soviet Union during World War II, Finland was frequently considered by Moscow in tandem with Romania, especially since both countries pulled out of the Axis effort before being overrun by the Soviet armed forces. But for the Soviets Finland did not have the same critical strategic military value as Romania. While the latter would serve as a staging area for further Soviet operations in the Balkans, Finland bordered on neutral Sweden, and with only a few remaining German divisions in the north of the country, which could be handled by the Finnish forces themselves, there was little reason, either military or political, for the Soviets to occupy the country during the war.¹⁶

The Swedish factor was particularly important. As long as Sweden remained neutral, the Soviets could afford to allow Finland its independence. This logic also included Stockholm’s calculations: if the Soviets abrogated Finnish independence, the Swedes might feel compelled to abandon neutrality and join the Western camp.¹⁷ Still, the Soviet Union counted Finland within “her immediate defensive orbit,” wrote British intelligence. Her coastal defenses east of Porkkala would be limited, while the gun emplacements on the Gulf of Bothnia that faced Sweden and the West would be strengthened and reorganized.¹⁸

Finland’s domestic political trajectory also remained a matter of intense debate in Moscow during the war. There were those Soviet leaders, especially in the military (Kliment Voroshilov and Boris Shaposhnikov), who advocated the occupation of Finland and the use of Finnish forces to join the attack on Germany. There were others, mostly among the Finnish communists, who suggested the incorporation of Finland into the Soviet Union as the 16th Republic.¹⁹ In a remarkably frank admission to Zhdanov, one of their leaders, Yrjö Leino, declared on May 10, 1945, that their ultimate goal was “the inclusion of Finland in the body of the Soviet Union,” while the immediate task was to follow a course like that of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Historically, such ideas were not so far-fetched: the precedent of the absorption of the Grand Duchy of Finland into the Russian empire in 1809 and the relatively harmonious history of Russian-Finnish relations in the imperial period were on everyone’s mind, Soviets’ and Finns’. Yet in the end Stalin and Molotov determined the outcome with their notion that Finland should and could proceed down the path of a “new democracy,” a people’s democracy dominated by anti-fascists and democrats with Soviet sympathies, just like the other countries of eastern Europe. Stalin had specifically noted that these new democracies would be implemented in different countries at different stages and with a variety of individual economic and social factors at work. Finland would follow its own distinct path in this direction. The hope in Moscow was that the Finnish Communist Party would emerge from the catastrophic war with greater strength given the fact that the nationalist and conservative forces had incited and prosecuted the war in the first place. That Finland’s road would turn out differently than anticipated by the Soviets depended on a number of factors. The most important of these were the acuity and determination of Finnish political leaders, on the one hand, and Zhdanov’s and Stalin’s political flexibility on the other.

`The Armistice`

The Finns joined Nazi Germany in its all-out assault on the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, helping to encircle Leningrad in the winter of 1941–1942, starving the city and causing immense suffering and mass death to its inhabitants. When Soviet troops finally succeeded in ending the stalemate on the northeastern front—and the agony of Leningrad—in the early summer of 1944, they did so by breaking through Finnish defense lines on the Karelian Isthmus. Initially, the Soviets had insisted on the unconditional surrender of the Finns, planning to occupy Helsinki and its surroundings. Along with unconditional surrender would have come the imposition of a Soviet military administration, not unlike what was planned for Germany or Austria, including the arrest of Finnish political leaders and of paramilitary civilian bands.²⁰ But after the fall of Vyborg on June 20, 1944, the Soviets withdrew half of the fifty-five divisions they had concentrated in Finland. These troops were needed for the assault on Berlin, and Stalin did not seem intent on occupying Finland, except for those Karelian territories that Moscow determined would be annexed to the Soviet Union. The Soviets ordered six or seven divisions north to Petsamo to continue the offensive against the Germans in Norway. When this task was completed by September 1944, Moscow was ready to accept a negotiated armistice with the Finns.

What prompted this turn to compromise? It may well be that Stalin and the Soviets still felt the sting of the Finnish fighting spirit they had experienced both during the Winter War of 1939–1940 and during July 1944, even after the fall of Vyborg. The British archives contain a revealing document from October 10, 1945, in which Stalin, in conversation with the leaders of the Finnish Communist Party, compared the Finns favorably to the Belgians. If the Finns had been located where Belgium was, they would have fought the Nazis to the end, claimed Stalin, instead of giving in, like the Belgians. “We like the Finnish people,” Stalin stated, “because it is a capable and hard-working and intelligent people. You live the Lord knows where. You have built a country out of a marsh.”²¹ He might well have reasoned after engaging in two wars with the Finns within the previous five years that this was a people who fought harder and more effectively than their numbers and resources might indicate; it was best not to put too much pressure on them. Given the Soviets’ priority to push into central Europe, it would have been completely unacceptable, especially after the Allied invasion of Normandy, to prolong the war in the northeastern Baltic region.²² At any event, it would have been understandable if the Soviets had had no desire to fight the Finns again.

On their side, the Finns were anxious to strike a deal with the Soviets. Marshal Mannerheim, leader of the Finnish armed forces and first president of the reconstituted Finland after the war, had hoped that the armistice and the Finns’ subsequent entrance into the war against Germany would gain his country some leverage with the Allies and enable it to sign a regional defense treaty with the Soviet Union.²³ But while Zhdanov, as head of the ACC, was interested, though with some serious concessions from the Finns, Soviet foreign minister Molotov discouraged any developments of the kind and scolded Zhdanov for overstepping his competence: “Your main task at this stage consists of elucidating Mannerheim’s position, and not in scaring him off with radical proposals.”²⁴ Finland would first have to be subjected to the conditions of the armistice, and only afterward to those of a formal peace treaty. At this point, the Soviets were still punctilious about following prearranged Allied procedures for securing peace treaties.

Mannerheim and his prime minister Juho Kusti Paasikivi were both convinced that the Finns had no other choice but to try to convince the Soviets of their good will and their readiness to protect Soviet strategic interests in their own way. Mannerheim detested Bolshevism and mistrusted Soviet intentions; Paasikivi, a former banker, focused on making a virtue out of necessity.²⁵ Despite their personal and political differences, both were at heart monarchists, yet both were ready nevertheless to devote their energies to rebuilding Finnish parliamentary democracy and shoring up the morale of Finnish society. Both were “Old Finns” who knew the Russian empire well and felt they understood the mentality of the “Russians.” (The “Old Finns” were a political grouping of conservative Finnish patriots who believed that the best way to preserve Finnish sovereignty in the Russian empire was to promote Finnish culture and language rights, while accommodating to the demands of the St. Petersburg bureaucracy.²⁶) From this background, they saw their task in convincing Moscow that it had nothing to fear from Finland; that the Finns would protect the Soviets’ northwestern flank and not allow any enemies to gain foothold in their country.²⁷

In October 1944, Mannerheim explained their position to his confederates: “Finland can no longer assume the role of a Western fortress against the East. We must leave all such talk behind. We cannot lend ourselves to any such policies. Our army will never again fight a war against Russia.”²⁸ In the view of Finnish leaders, the vulnerability of Leningrad during the war justified Soviet demands for security guarantees from Helsinki. At the same time, they, and Paasikivi in particular, had the model of the Grand Duchy of Finland on their minds, which had enabled the Finns to live in relative harmony with the Russians, at least until the turn of the century.²⁹ The so-called “Paasikivi line”—a Finnish “good neighbor policy”—underlays Finnish foreign policy considerations toward the Soviets even up to today.³⁰ In order for Finland to survive as an independent state, Moscow had to be convinced, through a delicate combination of Finnish acquiescence to Soviet interests and Finnish political determination, that no foreign power would be able to use Finland to invade the Soviet Union.

3.1 Andrei Zhdanov, in military uniform, and Juha Kusti Paasikivi at the signing of the reparations agreement, December 17, 1944. AMANITA OY, LTD.

With the threat of Soviet occupation constantly in the air, the Finns, fearing the worst but hoping to maintain their independence, accepted the Soviets’ terms for the armistice. First of all, they would surrender the territories on the Karelian Isthmus that the Soviets had gained in the war of 1940, as already assumed by the Finnish political leadership. The Soviet Union would also gain control of Petsamo in the north, which gave it both important access to the Arctic Ocean, especially in winter when Murmansk was closed due to ice, and a common border with Norway. (This meant, of course, the elimination of “Finland’s window to the Arctic Sea.”)³¹ Moreover, the nickel mines in the Petsamo region were of intense interest to Moscow. The Soviets also insisted on a long-term lease-holding arrangement on Porkkala (Porkkalanniemi), situated directly across the Gulf of Finland from Tallinn in Estonia, for maintaining a military and naval base. British ambassador to Moscow Sir Clark Kerr commented that the Russian “vision of a ‘New Gibraltar’ is spacious, including as it does the whole of the Peninsula and a cluster of islands south of it.”³² As Molotov told Kerr, the purpose of controlling Porkkala was “to cork up the Gulf of Finland,” which at this narrow point measures less than twenty-five nautical miles in width.³³

Perhaps equally important, a base at Porkkala would put a significant concentration of Soviet military power only twenty-five kilometers west of Helsinki, a threat that made the Finns exceptionally nervous. Located between Vyborg and Porkkala, where the Soviets would station some ten thousand soldiers and sailors, the Finnish capital would be very hard to defend if the Soviets decided to occupy.³⁴ There was even some talk in Finnish circles of moving the capital from Helsinki.³⁵ The Porkkala lease was to be for fifty years, which seemed like an eternity at the time. (Hardly anyone would have predicted that the post-Stalin Soviet leadership would make a concession to the Finns by returning Porkkala in 1956.)

The Soviets placed other demands on the Finns as well. If the Finns did not want Soviet troops on their territory, then they would have to agree to disarm and expel all German troops from the north of the country, where the Wehrmacht’s 20th Mountain Army, two hundred thousand strong, was still stationed in late 1944. Some sources suggest that the Soviet demand for the Finns to fight the Germans was a way to break Finnish-German ties for the foreseeable future.³⁶ After several delays and feints, sometimes coordinated with the German army as it retreated toward northern Norway, the Finns faced a Soviet ultimatum to either engage the enemy or be prepared for a Soviet military attack on the Germans in Finland.³⁷

So the Finns did the job asked of them, at the cost of some one thousand men killed. Under Mannerheim’s command, the Finns fought hard and well to dislodge the Germans from Lapland, which was accomplished in the main by January 1, 1945, and entirely at the end of April 1945. The terrain was difficult and the dark winter hard to deal with.³⁸ Retreating toward Norway, the Germans also engaged in a typically fearsome scorched-earth policy, destroying buildings and stores of food and blowing up bridges and road junctions to hinder the potential pursuit of Soviet troops.

The combined Soviet demands for the demobilization of the Finnish army and continued Finnish military involvement against the Germans in Lapland, essentially the third war for the Finns within five years, were difficult to reconcile. Demobilization was accomplished but not until the ACC brought considerable pressure to bear on the Finns, who actively attempted to evade the Soviets’ restrictions. Units not involved in the Lapland war with the Germans were the first to be demobilized. The Finns also agreed to the Soviets’ demand for $300 million in reparations payments (since the sum was calculated in 1938 dollars, the actual worth in postwar dollars came closer to $600 million).³⁹ The reparations payments, mostly in food products and timber, which Molotov insisted had to commence immediately, were complicated by the need of the Finnish government to deal with nearly a half million refugees, mostly Karelians, from the territories ceded to the Soviet Union. Moreover, the devastation caused by the Lapland war in the north would require a great deal of rebuilding.⁴⁰ The Finns had their work cut out for them. But any attempts by the Finns to find relief from the burden placed on their people and economy were rejected outright by Moscow, which was, in Clark Kerr’s terms, “stern and unyielding.”⁴¹

Besides demanding that the Finns demobilize their army and disband allegedly fascist organizations, including the important paramilitary Civil Guards, the Soviets insisted that the Finns arrest and try as war criminals the major figures of their wartime government. This proved extremely problematic, especially for General Mannerheim, who, after all, was the leading political figure of wartime Finland associated with the alliance with Berlin and thus could have been arrested and brought to trial himself. Paasikivi, on his part, took issue with Zhdanov’s demands for immediate and conclusive judicial processes. As a principled conservative committed to preserving the integrity of Finnish institutions, he repeatedly reminded his Soviet interlocutors about constraints imposed by the Finnish legal code, although without particular success.⁴² In any case, whether as a matter of conscience or personal interest, the problem of postwar justice became one of the most contentious issues in the relationship between the Soviets and the Finns.

`Zhdanov and the Finns`

Zhdanov’s appointment as head of the Allied Control Commission in Finland in October 1944 was logical given his recent experiences in Finnish issues. Other commissions—in Hungary, Romania, Austria, or Germany—were headed by Soviet officers with less political standing than Zhdanov, who was an important member of Stalin’s inner circle. It seems likely that Stalin understood that Finland would require greater political skills than those countries where Red Army troops were stationed or which the Soviets occupied outright. Some historians believe that Stalin sent Zhdanov to Helsinki in order to get him out of Moscow and away from the center of power, given his growing reputation, resented by the Soviet dictator, for successfully leading the resistance to the Germans as head of the party organization in Leningrad during the blockade.⁴³ Others believe that the importance and sensitivity of the job was the main reason for this decision.⁴⁴ Still others think that Zhdanov’s assignment to Finland was an ominous indication that the country would be Sovietized, as had happened to Estonia under Zhdanov’s supervision in 1940–1941.⁴⁵

In any case, Zhdanov was not known for his special sympathies for Finland. On the contrary, he had been a strong advocate of going to war in 1939 in the Winter War; had supported the communist-dominated government in the Karelian-Finnish republic, led by Otto Kuusinen, that was to serve as the new center of Finnish communist power during the “Continuation War”; and he unquestionably adopted the Leningraders’ resentment of the Finns because of their participation in the Blockade. Later on he even expressed some regret that the Soviets had not occupied Finland. “We made a mistake in not occupying Finland,” he told Milovan Djilas in January 1948. “Everything would have been set up if we had.” Molotov responded, “Oh (well,) Finland … that’s a peanut [a small matter].”⁴⁶

Zhdanov came to Helsinki cognizant that shaping Finnish affairs according to Moscow’s needs required more flexibility and give-and-take than his earlier missions.⁴⁷ He was convinced that the building of a people’s democracy in Finland could take place only slowly and carefully, and that he was capable of managing this process because of his knowledge of Finnish affairs, Finnish politicians, and the Finnish national character. The work of the Allied Control Commission in Finland was also different than in other Soviet-dominated countries. For example, there were no provisions for commission (meaning Soviet) censorship over Finnish publications, theater performances, film, or literature.⁴⁸ Hence Zhdanov had to use persuasion and veiled threats to get the Finns to show restraint on sensitive issues. There were frequent clashes between Zhdanov and various members of the Finnish government over censorship, trials of alleged Finnish war criminals, irregularities in Finnish demobilization, and the payment of Finnish reparations, among other issues. But, in general, Zhdanov’s time in Finland was judged a success by Stalin, since he was made head of the renamed and revamped Department of Foreign Affairs of the Central Committee when he was recalled to Moscow in early 1946. Even before his important new position, Zhdanov spent only a fraction of his time on Finnish affairs. For all practical purposes he was replaced during his frequent and long absences from Helsinki by his deputy Grigorii Savonenkov, who formally became head of the ACC in February 1947 with the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty.

Yet Zhdanov remained closely involved in Finnish affairs at least until the Soviet ratification of the Friendship Treaty in July 1948. (He died of a heart attack in August.) His intentions were consistent, and that was to create in Finland a “new democracy,” a people’s democracy. Periodically, he noted that there was much left to do to reach that goal.⁴⁹ At the first meeting of the Cominform in Poland in September 1947, where Zhdanov delivered his important “two camps” speech, in which he divided the world into capitalist and socialist antagonists, Zhdanov included Finland “in part” with those former enemy countries that, like Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, had joined the “antifascist front” in the struggle “for peace, for democracy, and for freedom and independence” against the British and American “imperialists.”⁵⁰

Zhdanov kept the Finnish authorities on edge, making sure they understood that the Soviet Union could, at any time, occupy Finland and install in power the increasingly influential Democratic Union of the Finnish People, which was supported by the Soviets and anchored by the Finnish Communist Party. There was always the specter of the Winter War, when Soviet troops, after crossing the border on November 30, 1939, had established Kuusinen’s Provisional People’s Republic of Finland (the “Terijoki Republic”), and there was also the continuing threat of the Karelian-Finnish Republic, headed up by Kuusinen in Vyborg, becoming the core of a new communist Finland.⁵¹ In order to get the Finns to comply with the difficult armistice terms, Zhdanov was perfectly happy to have them treat him, as he told F. M. Shepherd, head of the British mission in Helsinki, as if “he had come with a regiment of tanks in one pocket and a squadron of airplanes in the other.”⁵² When he could, he bullied and cajoled them into fulfilling the Soviets’ demands. To the dissident Social Democrats, the so-called “Six,” who had spent the war years in prison due to their opposition to the alliance with Hitler and who had separated from the mainstream Finnish Social Democratic Party, Zhdanov said (regarding those who opposed the armistice treaty), “Try to bring it about that the panic which we have created will continue. Keep them in fear.…”⁵³ He insisted that the Finnish government keep strictly to its reparations delivery schedule, which it for the most part did. And he constantly rode Paasikivi on the issue of prosecuting Finnish war criminals.

At the same time, Zhdanov and his staff reiterated their commitment in the Allied Control Commission not to interfere directly in Finnish politics. He stuck strictly to the Kremlin’s general principle of not using Soviet military units or police to support his policies in Finland, and he underscored Stalin’s advocacy of strong Soviet-Finnish relations. He also seemed to have accepted with a certain appreciation that Finnish attitudes toward the Soviets had radically improved, given the “many years, I would say decades long, I’m afraid to say thousand year enemy relationship to the Soviet Union.”⁵⁴ He admitted to having found the Finns more accessible and less “taciturn” than he had anticipated. “When receiving Soviet singers and artists,” he claimed, “they expressed their feelings as spontaneously as the Russians.”⁵⁵ Generally the Soviets in the ACC were pleased with the Finns’ warm reception to visiting Russian artists, ensembles and cultural representatives of various sorts.

Zhdanov’s attitude toward both Mannerheim and Paasikivi was deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, he exhibited a grudging respect for these grand old men of the Finnish establishment, both of whom had political experience that stretched back to the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian empire. The Soviet politician spoke positively of Mannerheim’s antique, imperial-tinged Russian and of Paasikivi’s long and unwavering commitment to carving out a realm of Finnish independence while making sure that Soviet security interests were fully respected. Paasikivi also impressed Zhdanov and especially Stalin with his superb Russian and knowledge of the people and the country, as well as his ability to deal with Soviet officials over the years. During the imperial period, Paasikivi had been a student of history in Novgorod and had a profound knowledge of and deep interest in the Russian past. His wartime advocacy of a separate peace with the Soviets on Moscow’s terms also impressed Stalin and Molotov, who had met him in Moscow and were known to appreciate his knowledge and diplomatic skills.⁵⁶

Despite his respect for the prime minister’s (later president’s) qualities, Zhdanov would often lose patience with Paasikivi’s stolid insistence on Finnish parliamentary and judicial procedures. He also complained to Finnish communists about Paasikivi’s duplicity in covering up his reactionary domestic actions with his ostensibly pro-Soviet foreign policy. “This person is conservative to the very marrow of his bones,” he told them, disturbed in particular, that Paasikivi would do everything possible to limit the “democratic transformation” of the parliament.⁵⁷ Mannerheim, on the other hand, irritated Zhdanov with his recalcitrance about the arrest and trial of Finnish war criminals and his hesitancy to disband the “reactionary,” in Zhdanov’s words, veterans’ organization the Comrades in Arms Association. But Zhdanov was unwilling to go along with the confidential plans of the communists and the Finnish People’s Democratic Union (SKDL) that they controlled to bully Mannerheim into resigning. Too great were his concerns about the possible reaction of the other parties (the Agrarians and the Social Democrats), given that Mannerheim, in the words of the communist minister of interior Yrjö Leino stood “a foot and a half taller” than any other political figure in the country.⁵⁸ Besides, taking such a route turned out to be unnecessary. The seventy-nine year-old Finnish icon was frequently sick and tired out, as well as subject to “a kind of mental illness.”⁵⁹ Once Mannerheim was assured by the Soviets that he himself would not be arrested and tried as a war criminal, he resigned the presidency in favor of Paasikivi in March 1946.⁶⁰ For all practical purposes, Paasikivi had already assumed the duties of president, given Mannerheim’s long absences from the capital for medical treatment. Although himself described as “a quite elderly and somewhat feeble gentleman,” Paasikivi’s general health was good and he was driven by a deep sense of moral duty to lead Finland through its postwar crisis.⁶¹

Zhdanov’s relationship to the Finnish Communist Party was testy and difficult, though it is worth remembering that tensions between Soviet plenipotentiaries and local communists were common throughout those parts of Europe where the Soviets held some political power, and even in some where they did not. At the time of the armistice, the Finnish Communist Party was small and illegal. Counting no more than two thousand active members, it lacked the kind of forceful internal leadership and organization that characterized some of the other European parties. To be sure, Otto Kuusinen, the “father” of Finnish communism was alive and well in Moscow. Yet as head of the Karelian-Finnish Republic, he had become part of the Soviet political establishment and was not allowed to return to Finland after the war because of his identification with the unpopular Terijoki government.⁶² Stalin might also have held him in reserve to install him in the right circumstances as the leader of a full-fledged Finnish people’s democracy. Kuusinen’s daughter, Hertta Kuusinen, also a communist, did meet regularly with Zhdanov at the Allied Control Commission, along with Ville Pessi, the party secretary, and Yrjö Leino, Kuusinen’s husband, who became minister of internal affairs in the Finnish government. Leino, who had been in Soviet military intelligence during the war, reported frequently in confidence to Zhdanov about the proceedings of the Finnish cabinet.⁶³ He was thus a special asset for the Soviets, but he was also a problem. As a member of the government, he tended to support coalition policies and turn a deaf ear to the efforts of the Communist Party of Finland (CPF) to push the program of people’s democracy in Finland. Not unlike a number of Finnish politicians at this time, he also drank to excess and fell into semi-competence as his problem with alcoholism grew more serious. The British noted that Leino “has taken to Wein and Weib in a big way!” He was also known to join British representatives during their hunting forays, which no doubt aroused suspicions about his loyalties.⁶⁴

While Zhdanov told his ACC staff to refrain from getting involved in politics and giving the Finnish communists advice on how to behave, he constantly did so himself. He urged the Finnish comrades, for example, to stifle their unruly “sectarian” left, which opposed parliamentary tactics, and he warned them against extreme programs of land reform, not to mention collectivization, for fear of alienating the Finnish small farmer.⁶⁵ He also provided the communists with an election strategy, exhorting them to focus on their ostensible surprise that the same bourgeois politicians who had driven reactionary Finland into war with the Soviet Union were now singing songs of friendship with the Soviets. The communists needed to prepare some real revelations, “bombshells” as he put it, to spring on the public right before the election.⁶⁶ At the same time, Zhdanov admitted to the Finnish communists that he was not sure how one should handle Paasikivi’s unwillingness to countenance a Soviet-style “democratization” of Finnish law, with “tactics of pressure or tactics of concessions.”⁶⁷

Zhdanov wanted much more from the Finnish communists than he was able to get, and he was irritated that they constantly asked advice about matters in which he expected them to take their own initiative. But this also reflected a larger problem that the Soviets had with communist parties abroad (the Austrian Communist Party was a case in point): the Soviets wanted these parties to be strong and robust, and to move resolutely along the lines of the people’s democracy outlined by Moscow. At the same time, the masters in Moscow also harshly criticized and punished mistakes by these parties, especially when they appeared to be too radical or revolutionary, thus fostering a kind of infantile dependence of the national communist leaderships on Moscow. The Finnish communists, like the Austrians, would have liked for the Soviet occupation of their country to settle their political problems. (The difference was that the Soviets occupied at least Lower Austria.) Leading Finnish party members, wrote Zhdanov, thought that “it was a mistake for the Soviet tanks not to go all the way to Helsinki” in 1944. The Soviet plenipotentiary responded brusquely: “The Soviet Union rejects the idea of achieving success ‘by riding through a foreign country.’ Every country must win its own victory by its own forces. Every step (forward) of an independent communist movement is worth more than hundreds of tanks.”⁶⁸

Zhdanov felt this particularly acutely in the Finnish case because it was amply clear that neither the British nor especially the Americans had offered any serious help to the centrist or Social Democratic Finnish parties.⁶⁹ The Finnish left could do the job of instituting a people’s democracy on its own. In this sense, the absence of serious political involvement on the part of the Western powers in Finland can be seen as an important deterrent to a Sovietization campaign in Finland. Zhdanov (and Stalin) had no intention of attracting Western attention to the political development of Finland by overtly and forcibly helping the communists achieve power.

In this spirit, the elections of March 17–18, 1945, were observed to take place in a fair and orderly manner, with a record turnout of 80 percent of the electorate.⁷⁰ The CPF, embedded in a national front, the Finnish People’s Democratic Union, with several other “progressive” parties, but notably unable to break the unity of the Social Democratic Party, won a fourth of all the seats in the Diet, which was a substantial increase in their representation. By 1947, the Communist Party had grown from a mere two thousand to some forty thousand members. But the CPF still showed no signs of being able to muster a leadership role in society or in politics, despite the support and counsel of Zhdanov and the Allied Control Commission. Nor could they outpoll the powerful Finnish Social Democrats. Rather like the communist parties in France and Italy, though without their numbers, the Finnish Communist Party in the view of their Soviet advisors was unable to exploit its favorable position in the parliament and society. The communists were not invited to the Cominform meeting in Poland in September 1947. Moscow tended to treat them as second-class allies.

`The “Paasikivi Line”`

During the fall and winter of 1944–1945, the Finnish military engaged in two operations that reflected its supposition that there would inevitably be another war with the Soviet Union, triggered either by the Soviet occupation of Finland or by a bigger war between Moscow and the West. “Stella Polaris,” arranged in secret with Swedish military intelligence, was a well-designed operation to preserve Finnish intelligence materials and communications equipment by shipping them off to Sweden for later use. When the armistice agreement was signed and no occupation appeared to be in the offing, the operation was suspended and the equipment that made it to Sweden sold.⁷¹ The other, related effort consisted in the concealed stockpiling of valuable Finnish weapons for future use. During the demobilization of the Finnish army at the end of the war, some members of the Finnish high command ordered the burying of caches of arms and munitions in preparation for an anticipated war with the Soviet Union. One historian writes,

Arms were hidden in the archipelago or in forest areas with the help of the foresters, sometimes they were stored in official depositories but uncounted in the bookkeeping, while in one place petrol for the military was stored in the Shell depot, while in northern Savo weapons from demobilized troops to equip two battalions were left under the control of the local civil guard.⁷²

As the British representative to Finland, Francis Shepherd, put it, “Were the Russians seeking grounds of justification for more direct intervention they might have found them in the discovery of thirty (some reports say fifty) hidden stores of arms in various parts of the country.”⁷³ A number of high-ranking Finnish officers were implicated in the affair, and the ACC accused the Finnish general staff of being involved. But significantly, the Soviets were content to let the Finnish government take control of the investigation, which was conducted in due course through the communist-led ministry of the interior. The Finnish government handled the scandal with skill, and the Soviets seemed satisfied with the result.⁷⁴ The Operations Section of the General Staff was found to be deeply involved and numbers of officers resigned, while others were arrested. Of the roughly ten thousand men and women bound up in this effort altogether, six thousand were interrogated and 2,012 eventually brought to trial.⁷⁵

Zhdanov and the ACC were not always so patient. There were many other cases where they ordered the communist minister of interior Leino to arrest and imprison targeted opponents. The ban on Finnish veterans’ associations and a variety of paramilitary groups was carried out by ACC administrative fiat, as usual through Leino. The British report on these moves notes that “once again, the control commission has bypassed the Finnish prime minister.” As a member of the commission, Shepherd noted, “I have not (repeat not) been informed about any of the above events by my Soviet colleagues.”⁷⁶

Nonetheless, Paasikivi managed to keep the palpable threat of Soviet military intervention off the agenda by skillfully and doggedly sticking to his pro-Soviet foreign policy, while maintaining control of domestic politics. At the same time, Paasikivi understood that there were some domestic issues where he had to make concessions to the Soviets—including their insistence on trying Finnish war criminals, which stuck in his craw (and earlier Mannerheim’s) and proved difficult to get past. The question was really less about “war criminals” per se than about “war politicians”: those Finnish leaders who had instigated the alliance with Hitler, fought against the Soviet Union, and delayed the signing of the armistice.⁷⁷

The prosecution and trial of those responsible for Finland’s war against the Soviet Union, called for in article 13 of the armistice, was a symbolically and emotionally charged demand. Like the return of Soviet displaced persons in the West, it was one of those issues that seemed to touch a central nerve regarding the Soviets’ self-image and sense of justice. But it also served as a barometer of Soviet-Finnish relations: Could the Soviets trust the Helsinki government to do what they insisted was the right thing, when confronted with resistance from the Finnish middle class and their “bourgeois mentality”?

3.2 On the occasion of Finnish independence, December 6, 1947, Helsinki photographer Eino Partanen decorated his store window with the installation “Scapegoats,” depicting the politicians charged in the ongoing war crimes trial demanded by the Soviets. Partanen was himself indicted with “vandalism” for “endangering the public order” and “defaming the authorities.” The charges were eventually dropped. FINNISH HERITAGE AGENCY.

While Zhdanov talked about executing all Finnish war criminals, Paasikivi stood by the principle that their arrests and trials be conducted strictly according to Finnish legal procedures. To the British representative Shepherd, Paasikivi stated that the creation of a special court and the retroactive passing of special laws—there were no provisions in Finnish law for trying the past leaders—were “contrary to Finnish conceptions of justice.”⁷⁸ The prime minister also had to face considerable opposition in parliament, the judiciary, and noncommunist political parties to putting on trial former members of a legal Finnish government.⁷⁹ He argued directly with Zhdanov that doing so would only stoke anti-Soviet feelings in Finland and make the defendants into heroes and martyrs.⁸⁰ Removing the accused from public life, he added, should be enough to satisfy the spirit of article 13 of the armistice.⁸¹

Zhdanov rightly interpreted these arguments as foot-dragging. He was well aware that trials of wartime generals would have been tremendously unpopular among Paasikivi’s supporters in Finland, even if, as Zhdanov suggested, Mannerheim could be excluded from the indictments because he had signed the armistice with the Soviets and, like Marshal Pietro Badoglio in Italy, could be considered to have assuaged his guilt.⁸²

Once the Potsdam Agreement of August 1945 had reaffirmed the principle of trying German war criminals and those of its allies, Zhdanov turned up the pressure on Paasikivi. Already several months earlier, the Soviets had encouraged meetings and demonstrations, sponsored by the Finnish left, to call for the setting up people’s courts to try war criminals, an idea that was completely alien to Paasikivi’s mentality.⁸³ The Finnish leader understood that he had no choice about proceeding with the indictments, especially given the relative indifference to the issue on the part of the British and Americans. Zhdanov wanted to make clear that the Soviets “did not intend to tolerate further delay.” As Zhdanov told the Finnish communists Leino and Kuusinen, “[I]t is important not only to crush the bourgeoisie but we need to know how to compel them to serve us. Therefore in Finland it is very important to have the bourgeoisie itself punish those guilty of the war.”⁸⁴ Still, Zhdanov was so frustrated by Paasikivi’s procedural stalling that he queried Stalin and Molotov whether it might not be preferable for the ACC to become officially involved in the trials, maybe even to take them over. Molotov, worried about accusations of meddling, answered in the negative.⁸⁵

Still, Zhdanov did not give up. In private talks with Paasikivi, he told the prime minister that he had to answer to Moscow about what was happening about the trials in Finland and that he needed to know whether the Finns were reneging on their friendly stance to the Soviets. “I should say to you that they often call me on the telephone and ask: what are you doing there; what’s going on there; how come this has happened. There is lot of bewilderment [about the trials],” Zhdanov told Paasikivi, “a lot of bewilderment.… So that this crisis does not end in a dead end [for you] and so that it does not destroy our relations, it is necessary to take the appropriate measures.” Zhdanov added that he had no right to meddle in internal Finnish affairs, but if Paasikivi did not do something quickly, the situation could get very serious.⁸⁶

At the same time that Zhdanov complained about protests “from Moscow,” he also requested from his Kremlin colleagues that critical articles on the Finnish trials appear in the Soviet central press.⁸⁷ That way he could increase the pressure on Paasikivi to speed up the process. After the trials had finally begun, Zhdanov was not satisfied either. He took out his frustrations about the Finns on the local communists. He was especially angry that some of the defendants fought the charges by making anti-Soviet statements in court. Not only that, none of the Finnish media criticized the court for allowing them to do so. “Nothing has changed!” Zhdanov ranted.⁸⁸

The Allied Control Commission had drawn up a list of sixty-one people the Finns should arrest for war crimes, mainly in connection with their treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. Forty-five of them were held in a detention camp in Miehikkälä, some for as long as three years, but two-thirds were released without having been indicted. Eight politicians were brought to trial for having instigated the Continuation War in alliance with the Nazis, which started on June 25, 1941, a few days after Operation Barbarossa, and for having delayed the armistice. The Soviets were particularly interested in prosecuting Väinö Tanner, a Social Democrat, who, though only a member of the foreign relations committee of the parliament during the war, bore for Zhdanov particular responsibility for deceiving the Finnish working class into supporting the war.⁸⁹ (Since Lenin’s times, anti-communist Social Democrats typically aroused even greater ire from the Soviets than stolid conservatives.) Tanner and the others, including the former president, Risto Ryti, and two former prime ministers, Jukka Rangell and Edwin Linkomies, were finally tried and convicted for their crimes. Tanner received a sentence of “only” three and a half years in prison.

The courtroom proceedings attracted little attention from Finnish society and were sparsely attended, except for uniformed Red Army officers and visiting journalists, mostly from the Soviet Union.⁹⁰ Zhdanov and the Soviets were incensed by what they thought were inconsequential prison terms for the guilty, and protested Tanner’s sentence in particular. As a result, the Paasikivi government was forced to abandon its principles and go against public opinion by pressuring the court to increase the sentences, which it did on February 21, 1946. Tanner, for example, would now serve five and a half years in prison and former president Risto Ryti ten, which was the longest sentence of those indicted.

The Finnish public was unhappy with the trials and sentencing. Throughout the country, photographs were pasted on shop windows showing the convicted politicians with the caption “They Served Finland.”⁹¹ Most Finns understood the trials as a clear case of Soviet “victors’ justice,” especially since the British were not involved at all. Moreover, the Soviets had started the Winter War against Finland in November 1939, they complained, and were not subject to criminal prosecution as a result. But beyond the blow they delivered to Finnish self-esteem, the trials had little concrete impact on the country. The sentences were reduced by the generous parole options built into the Finnish judicial system, and Paasikivi pardoned a number of the convicted after the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty and the withdrawal of the Allied Control Commission in August and September 1947.

The problem of prosecuting alleged war criminals remained the most serious crisis in Soviet-Finnish relations in the immediate postwar period. Paasikivi had an easier time dealing with the issue of the Marshall Plan, not least because he steered a less confrontational course in this regard. He and his government had entered into treaty obligations with Moscow about reparations and mandatory deliveries of goods. While the Marshall Plan was popular in the parliament and society in general, Finland’s participation in it would have complicated the already difficult negotiations with the Soviet leadership about the two countries’ future relations. Besides, the Soviets made it amply clear that such a decision would be viewed as a “hostile act.” As a result, Helsinki rejected the offer of attending the Marshall Plan conference in July 1947 with the official explanation that “Finland has not yet exchanged the treaty ratifications with Moscow and could not now undertake any obligations unless her political stability was more firmly established.”⁹²

When Zhdanov returned to his post as head of the ACC in early 1947 after a long interlude in Moscow, he seemed pleased with the maturation of Finnish politics during his absence. Even when Leino and Pessi complained about Paasikivi—Pessi called him a “real reactionary”—Zhdanov was more conciliatory. Paasikivi was “the godson of the DSNF [the People’s Front] and the ACC,” he stated. “We supported him; we helped get Mannerheim out of the way.” Now Paasikivi would remain under the influence of the People’s Front and the ACC. But Zhdanov also called for the radicalization of the communist tactics urging the Finnish comrades to focus harder on economic issues, including the nationalization of industry and banks, and on agrarian reform, so as to win the masses to their banner. “The communists will be the complete victors in the country and this means that they will transform [Finland] into socialism via a peaceful road without civil war.” The time had come, he declared, for the Finnish communists to catch up with the rest of eastern Europe.⁹³ Yet when Zhdanov met with representatives of the other Finnish parties and the government, he reiterated that the success of Soviet-Finnish relations depended on the good will of both sides and on mutual respect for the views and desires of the other.⁹⁴ In the end, Zhdanov’s pious wishes for socialism in Finland were subordinate to Stalin’s apparent choice to foster good relations with Paasikivi and the Finnish middle class.

`The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Aid`

The initial period of postwar Soviet-Finnish relations from the conclusion of the armistice in September 1944 to the signing of the Friendship Treaty on April 6, 1948, is justifiably called the “dangerous years” in Finnish history.⁹⁵ Two skilled and determined political leaders, Andrei Zhdanov (on behalf of Stalin) and Juho Paasikivi, first as prime minister and then as president of Finland, negotiated the relationship between the two countries without forcing either’s hand. The British, though closely watching the Finnish negotiations, prudently kept a low profile.⁹⁶

Zhdanov and Paasikivi did not agree about the trajectory of Finnish internal developments: Zhdanov looked to the creation of a people’s democracy, not unlike in Romania or Hungary, while Paasikivi sought to protect the future of Finnish parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. Periodically, Paasikivi broached the subject of the return of Karelia, which annoyed Zhdanov and aroused his doubts about working with the Finnish conservative.⁹⁷ Yet both understood that Finland would have to be a “friendly” neighbor of the Soviet Union. Without steadfast Finnish guarantees that the country would not be used to threaten Soviet security, Moscow would force Finland into its alliance system, which was already taking shape in other parts of eastern Europe. The combination of Paasikivi’s skillful handling of Moscow’s demands and the relative weakness and lack of initiative on the part of the Finnish communists kept the prospects of people’s democracy low, although the vision—for the Finns, the specter—remained prominent in the minds of both Zhdanov and Paasikivi.

A military agreement between the Soviets and the Finns had been on the agenda between Zhdanov and Mannerheim since early 1945, originally as a way of deterring German attacks on Finland in response to the Finnish withdrawal from the war. But Molotov argued that according to the norms of the Grand Alliance those talks were inappropriate given the absence of a peace treaty. Once the peace treaty with Finland was signed by the Allies in Paris—it is worth reiterating that the United States was not a signatory—and ratified by Moscow on September 26, 1947, Paasikivi, his prime minister Mauno Pekkala from the leftist SKDL, and the Soviets began exploring the possibilities of a friendship and mutual assistance treaty that would regulate Soviet-Finnish relations and security questions. Paasikivi noted in his diary that he would have preferred not to negotiate a treaty at all, but that the Soviets left him no choice.⁹⁸ For him, the main challenge was to formulate an agreement on military questions that would not sign away Finland’s sovereignty and would avoid an outright alliance with Moscow.

According to the Paris Peace Treaty, Finland’s borders were to be those of January 1, 1941. This confirmed the losses of Finnish territory after the Winter War, much to the disappointment of the Finns, who had hoped for the return of at least some of the parts of Karelia they had ceded to the Soviet Union by the armistice. Yet in Paris the Finns were excluded from the negotiations and even expelled from the visitors’ gallery.⁹⁹ In addition to the Karelian losses, Finland had to cede the territory of Petsamo to the Soviet Union, as agreed in the armistice. Already in April 1946 the Finns had asked the Soviets for modifications of the agreement on the Porkkala concession, seeking access to the Helsinki–Turku railway that ran through the Soviet leased territory. They also asked to use the Saimaa (Samuskovo) Canal that ran to Vyborg. Stalin conceded on both issues, despite some objections from the military, making it clear that he sought to develop positive relations with the Finns. Paasikivi on his side was anxious that Moscow understand that Finland would not serve as a base for enemies of the Soviet Union. In February 1947 he stated that “Finland would fight with all her resources, against any aggressor seeking to strike the Soviet Union across Finnish territory … however if her strength would not suffice for this, help would have to be sought from the Soviet Union.”¹⁰⁰ Here Paasikivi set out his basic idea about how Soviet-Finnish security relations could and should develop. Finland should have the means and determination to defend its territory against any outside aggressors. But at the same time, if Finland were unable to do so, then she would invite the Soviet Union to join the defense of her territory. In other words, the Finns would be a strictly defensive power. They would not join an alliance to attack any other countries, and they would allow Soviet incursion on their territory only as the result of a formal request from Helsinki to Moscow.

The history of the signing of the Friendship Treaty can be seen as a confirmation of Paasikivi’s calculations, despite a great deal of legitimate nervousness on the Finnish side about whether it would hold. Molotov invited Prime Minister Pekkala to Moscow in November 1947 to talk about “some kind of military treaty” to improve security cooperation between the Soviet Union and Finland. On February 22, 1948, Stalin wrote Paasikivi that it would be a good idea to conclude a Finnish-Soviet agreement “which would be similar to the treaties between Hungary and the Soviet Union and Romania and the Soviet Union.”¹⁰¹ This worried Paasikivi to no end, since it would signify the inclusion of Finland in a Soviet-led military bloc, which he firmly opposed, and perhaps even the stationing of Soviet troops on Finnish soil, which might spell the end of the Finnish democratic governmental system. The “Old Finn” wanted to avoid being drawn into the emerging conflict between East and West and had turned down Marshall Plan aid to this end. He had no intention of bringing Finland into a position where its military would be forced to engage an enemy outside of Finland itself. Paasikivi was ready to sign a bilateral treaty with the Soviet Union to protect Leningrad and the Soviet flank from outside aggression. But he was decidedly opposed to joining a larger bloc.¹⁰² “It would be best for us if we did not need to sign a treaty,” he wrote, “[but] since the Russians want negotiations, we can’t say no.”¹⁰³

The final treaty negotiations in Moscow upheld Paasikivi’s conception of Soviet-Finnish cooperation. Surprising to many in the Finnish delegation, the treaty resembled Moscow’s treaties with France and Czechoslovakia more than it did those with Romania or Hungary. Unique to the Finnish Treaty was the stipulation that it was limited to an attack through Finnish territory, precluding any obligation to fight against a third-party aggression outside of Finland.¹⁰⁴ Apparently, the Finns succeeded in convincing Stalin, Molotov, and the Soviet leadership that they could be relied on to resist Western entreaties to become part of an incipient Western alliance, even though this would have strengthened the country’s military and economic potential. From Moscow’s point of view, it was best to allow the hullaballoo aroused in the West by the February 1948 communist-led coup in Czechoslovakia to die down before forcing a potential political crisis in Helsinki as a result of the treaty negotiations with the Finns, who still had many friends in the West as a result of their plucky defense during the Winter War. At the same time, Moscow was appreciative of regular Finnish reparations payments and looked forward to increased trade possibilities. Zhdanov praised the exactitude of the Finnish deliveries in a January 1948 Kremlin meeting: “Everything on time, expertly packed and of excellent quality.”¹⁰⁵

The desperate need of the Soviet Union for this kind of a reliable infusion of equipment and goods in the immediate postwar period should not be underestimated as a factor supporting Finnish sovereignty. There was famine in the Soviet Union in the years 1946 to 1948; despite its own shortages, Finland was nearby and a good source of food.

People’s democracy might come later; for the moment, the important thing was to make sure that Finland did not fall into the Western camp. NATO negotiations were underway at the same time, and Moscow wanted to keep Finland in its own security orbit.¹⁰⁶ As a result, the critical article in the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Aid, signed on April 6, 1948, defining Helsinki’s security role, conformed to the Finnish position:

In the event of Finland or the Soviet Union across the territory of Finland, becoming the object of military aggression on the part of Germany or any State allied to the latter, Finland loyal to her duty as an independent State, will fight to repulse the aggression. In doing so, Finland will direct all the forces at her disposal to the defence of the inviolability of her territory on land, on sea and in the air, acting within her boundaries in accordance with her obligations under the present Treaty with the assistance, in case of need, of the Soviet Union or jointly with the latter.

In the cases indicated above, the Soviet Union will render Finland the necessary assistance, in regard to the granting of which the parties will agree between themselves.¹⁰⁷

In the end, then, Paasikivi got the treaty he wanted. Apparently in the presence of Stalin, Finnish prime minister Kekkonen later called the treaty the “Paasikivi diktat,” and Stalin himself supposedly called it “the Finnish diktat.”¹⁰⁸ In any case, Finland could concentrate on rebuilding its economy and reviving its society after a disastrous war without having to commit to the newly emerging Soviet bloc. When the Warsaw Pact was formed in May 1955, there was no discussion about the Finns.¹⁰⁹ With the disbanding of the Allied Control Commission in September 1947 and the signing of the Friendship Treaty, the Finns could operate domestically with considerably more freedom than allowed before. There was no more Zhdanov or ACC to worry about.

Yet the Soviets profited from the agreement as well. They gained a buffer zone in the northwest, firm control of the Gulf of Finland, and a common border with Norway. Finland, with heavy-gun emplacements on the Gulf of Bothnia, would resist any incursions from the West. With the addition of Porkkala, the Soviets gained a major military base in Finland that guaranteed that the Finns would not go back on their agreements. The Soviets could not station their troops elsewhere in the country, which no doubt limited their security profile in the northwest and reduced their potential influence on Finnish politics. Soviet assistance could only be proffered “subject to mutual agreement.”¹¹⁰

Despite the limitations on the Soviets, Paasikivi did not like the treaty. “It has become clear to the Finnish nation and the whole world,” he wrote in his diary, April 14, 1948, “that we would rather be without such a treaty if circumstances had allowed it.”¹¹¹ It tied the Finns’ hands when it came to an independent foreign and security policy. But especially with the coming of the Cold War, circumstances did not allow it, and the agreement on mutual defense gave Finland a way to steer clear of the Sovietization, not to mention Stalinization, that other countries in the Soviet East European sphere were forced to endure.

The Finnish Communist Party grew in numbers, but it remained a minor force in Finnish politics. Paasikivi removed Yrjö Leino from his position as minister of interior in the spring of 1948 on charges that he had mistreated Ingrian deportees to the Soviet Union in 1945. But the main problem for the communists at this time were the rumors and denunciations that swirled around the alleged threat of a communist takeover, which many Finns feared would follow upon the Czechoslovak coup of February 1948. It did not help that in a March 24 report on a speech by the CPF member Hertta Kuusinen (daughter of Otto Kuusinen), Vapaa Sana, the main newspaper of the Finnish Communist Party and Democratic Front, ran the headline “The Czechoslovak way is our way.”¹¹² The negotiations in Moscow about the Friendship Treaty raised the level of tension in Helsinki in April 1948 to the point where Paasikivi anchored two Finnish gunboats nearby the presidential palace and ordered the Finnish security forces to take precautionary measures.¹¹³ The Finnish military secretly mobilized its forces to protect against a coup attempt, careful not to provoke any kind of Soviet response.¹¹⁴ But whatever the vain hopes of the CPF, there is no evidence that the Soviets thought a coup would work in their interests in Finland.¹¹⁵

Similarly, the Soviets restrained the Finnish communists from engaging in a large-scale strike movement at the end of May 1948 to protest the removal of Leino from his ministry post, which left the government with no communists. Instead of allowing the communists to disrupt the upcoming July 1948 elections, the Soviets tried to influence their outcome by sharply reducing the remaining Finnish reparations obligations (from $147 million to $73.5 million).¹¹⁶ Although this was a very welcome concession—the Finnish economy remained in the doldrums because of the heavy burden of reparations, 16.1 percent of the budget in 1945 and 14.8 percent in 1948¹¹⁷—the Finnish people were determined to keep their independence. The turnout at the polls remained extremely high, with nearly 80 percent of the eligible Finns voting. The SKDL bloc, with the communists as the lead party, suffered a severe defeat, which, together with the loss of eleven parliamentary seats and the exclusion of the communists from the new government formed by the Social Democrat Karl-August Fagerholm, relieved Paasikivi’s fears of some kind of a coup.¹¹⁸ In addition, the president’s complete control of the military and his deft handling of Soviet security needs in the Friendship Treaty meant the “Paasikivi Line” in one iteration or another would continue to dominate Soviet-Finnish relations.

For a number of reasons, Finland managed to escape Soviet domination at the end of the war and beginning of the peace. Some of them had to do with Finland’s geostrategic position in Stalin’s view of Europe. As long as Sweden remained neutral, Finland was not seen as a “front-line” nation that had a high priority in Soviet security calculations, especially given Finnish concessions in Porkkala and the ceding of Petsamo to the Soviets. But it is also true that the Finnish leaders made certain that the Soviets could rely on the fact that Finland, which had a very long and vulnerable border with the Soviet Union, would not fall into the hands of political forces that might invite Western powers to use it as a base against Soviet interests. In fact, given Zhdanov’s and Stalin’s lack of confidence in the Finnish communists, stolid “Old Finns” like Mannerheim and Paasikivi, who in the postwar period consistently followed a pro-Soviet security policy, were preferable to the unreliable Finnish communists and the “anti-Soviet” Finnish Social Democrats. One historian astutely notes that as a result of Helsinki’s policies and relative Western disinterest, which came out of the specifics of the history of Finnish involvement in World War II, “domestic conflicts in Finnish politics were neither ‘internationalized’ nor were they transformed into a test of prestige and power among the Big Three as elsewhere in eastern Europe.”¹¹⁹

Juho Kusti Paasikivi made a huge difference to the unpredictable outcome of Soviet-Finnish relations after the 1944 armistice. He managed to follow his conception of Finnish foreign policy, emphasizing careful bargaining and tactical concessions, while maintaining Finnish domestic independence. Despite his often anti-communist domestic policies, he successfully kept the Soviets (and Stalin, in particular) on his side, even if he sometimes clashed with Zhdanov and aroused the latter’s suspicions. Paasikivi received the Order of Lenin when he finally retired in 1956, before dying a few months later at the age of eighty-six. Soviet-Finnish relations had their tense moments during his time as prime minister and president, but he managed to define and pursue a course of Finnish foreign policy that continued to be relevant almost to the very end of the Soviet Union.