Why wasn't Finland turned into a Soviet Puppet State?

[Vrylakas]

So Finland was never knocked out of WWII. It ended the war with an undefeated army. No doubt the Soviets could have taken it over, but the Finns had made certain the Soviets thought it would cost more than it was worth, which is precisely what any small state with Great Power neighbours can hope for.

Stalin could be quite pragmatic and even seemingly magnanimous, when he felt it served his interests. He also not only withheld help for the Greek communists in the 1946-49 civil war, for instance, but also forced Dimitrov, Tito and Hoxha to withhold aid as well. There are today in central Hungary, living around the town of Dunaújváros (old "Sztálinváros" in the good old days, ironically), a large cluster of Greek communist refugees (and by now, their descendants) from the civil war who are still quite bitter about Stalin's lack of support.

But in any event, Stalin "spared" Finland the fate of becoming an "S.S.R." or "Народная Республика" simply because it was not in his way and he did not want to waste forces pacifying something with such little value for him. Finland's threat in 1939-40 was not Finland itself but the fact its borders were so close -- within artillery range -- to Leningrad, and that in any Russo-German conflict Finland was likely to take the German side, so that the Finnish borders served as a potential host to a Wehrmacht threat. In 1945, with Soviet troops in Berlin, Finland posed no such threat and therefore could be allowed to go. As Stalin correctly surmised, the long Soviet border with Finland in Karelia served as a sufficient reminder to Helsinki that it best not act too hostilely to Soviet interests, much as Hitler, with Norway occupied, did not have to actually occupy Sweden to get it to cooperate with his interests. Though a free country in most respects, the Finns throughout the Cold War were infamous among their Scandinavian neighbors for muting any criticism of the USSR. During the Chernobyl disaster, for instance, Swedish scientists argued for crucial weeks with their Finnish colleagues about alarming radiation readings, with the Finns only cooperating after Gorbachov publically admitted that there was a problem at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

In Poland, it was known and accepted -- to a certain extent -- that the Soviet occupation was not going to go away and Moscow would never trust an independent Poland, but Hungarians (who do not have a long, hostile history with the Russians as we do) dreamed after Stalin's death in the 1950s of a "Finnish solution" for Hungary, whereby Hungary would be neutral and promise to behave in exchange for Moscow withdrawing its armed forces and allowing Hungary more independence. After the 1955 Austria Treaty, the focus switched from Finland to Austria, and Hungarians hoped their treaty day would come... but alas....

 

[Verbose]

Finland's threat in 1939-40 was not Finland itself but the fact its borders were so close -- within artillery range -- to Leningrad, and that in any Russo-German conflict Finland was likely to take the German side, so that the Finnish borders served as a potential host to a Wehrmacht threat.

Do we really know that?

Stalin may have had a fairly paranoid view of things, but one of his hopes when invading Finland in 1939 seems to have been that the Finnish Communists, the survivors and their children, who for a while in 1918 seemed like they could win the Finnish civil war, were going to rise up and aid the invading Red Army. Should have made Finland easy pickings, one would assume.

So, I can't see it was such a given Finland would go to war at all. Or even that Stalin expected the Finns to go to war unprovoked. Even the Finnish government wasn't exactly sure where their "Reds" would jump. The fact that they unanimously sided with Finnish independence was a turn up for the books. It made deciding policies for the Finnish "War of Continuation" easier at least.

 

[Vrylakas]

Stalin wasn't initially interested in conquering Finland; indeed, he likely feared that would provoke a German response. He began negotiations with Finland as early as the spring of 1938 over the border issue. Stalin asked only that the border be moved eastwards some 30km on the Karelian isthmus to allow for better defense of Leningrad. Mind you, I am in sympathy with the Finns and would have supported their refusal at the time, but by the scale of Soviet/Stalinist demands on neighboring countries, those of spring 1938-summer 1939 against Finland were quite mild and restrained. I think it is clear that Stalin really had only wanted to safeguard his empire's 2nd largest city and industrial area. While the strength of the Finnish communists had been great in the immediate post-WW I civil war in Finland, they had since been strongly suppressed (repeatedly) afterwards, to the extent that it needed to be re-founded in exile (in Moscow, of course). And even then, the experiences of the 1930s Stalinist years -- purges, etc. -- had soured many Finnish communists on Stalin.

Finnish politics after the civil war were dominated by the conservative right, and indeed only became increasingly so in the 1920s and 30s, and the Finnish right wing was very strongly pro-German, both as a buttress to the old imperial rulers, Russia, and as well in response to the rise of Hitler and his emphasis on nationalist extremism. Stalin clearly feared war with Germany from c. 1935 onwards, and he had ever valid reason to fear Finnish-German military collaboration. He scoffed at the Finns' military, of course, but not at the Wehrmacht.

Stalin only became more serious about his demands against Finland after his 23. August pact with Hitler, which divided Eastern Europe (and Finland) between Germany and Russia, Finland being slated for the Soviet zone of influence. By this point Stalin clearly -- through the archived evidence we now have -- anticipated eventual war with Germany, but with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in place he could make greater demands of Finland than he had been over the previous year. Even then, though, although adding the Hankö Peninsula and demanding other Soviet military rights on some Finnish territories, Stalin tried to balance these demands with an offer of large chunks of Karelian territory, inhabited (then) mostly by ethnic Finns and long-coveted by Finnish nationalists. If Stalin simply wanted to conquer Finland, why bother making attractive offers alongside unpleasant demands? -- and the attractive offer bit was definitely not a normal part pf Stalin's negotiating toolkit. It was only when Finland rejected this offer that Stalin then decided to simply conquer the country, a task that he believed would be easy; indeed the Soviet general staff was told to anticipate being welcomed as heroes in Helsinki within 12 days.

We all know how that part turned out after the Soviets fabricated the Mainila incident in November, 1939, and the communist puppet government (the Kuusinen regime) was created in December on Soviet territory. Some 4 months and minimal 400,000 dead Soviet soldiers later, Finland finally cracked and was forced to sign a humiliating peace with Stalin, losing not only the earlier-demanded territories but the city of Viipuri as well -- but, still important, given that Soviet forces had breached the Mannerheim Line and could have pressed on, Finland was otherwise left independent and alone. It is a story of raw, naked Soviet imperial aggression, but for others who would experience the same, the Finnish story is one of amazing restraint on Stalin's behalf. There is a myth that Stalin was so impressed by the espirited resistance on the Finns' part that he felt respect for Finland and was therefore light in his demands, both in 1940 and 1945 -- but other peoples who dared resist the Soviets, some with levels of success equaling the Finns, would suffer cruel and violent reprisals, filling mass graves across Poland and Ukraine, for instance, with many untold thousands of innocent civilians in the 1940s and 50s. Respect for others was not a normal Stalinist trait.

Ultimately, the real reason Stalin did not press for complete conquest of Finland even after his Pyrrhic victory in early 1940 was again fear; the Finnish war had taken a surprising amount of Soviet military resources to achieve, and Stalin did not want to commit them to occupation duty in an obviously hostile country located far from the main Soviet border with his erstwhile ally but in reality much-feared opponent in the country they had both crushed together and divided between themselves, Poland. Stalin viewed occupied Poland as a buffer between him and Hitler that would help buy time for the development of the Soviet military, and he did not want his forces stuck far to the north in a frozen arctic wasteland hunting down reindeer herder refuseniks. Similarly, in 1945, with the main perceived threat coming from the West, Stalin merely wanted to secure any potential threat of Finland being used as a spring board for an attack on the USSR, but otherwise did not want to tie Soviet forces down there in occupation duty; Poland, meanwhile, on the direct route between the USSR and the West on the Great Northern European Plain, could have no such freedom or independence. Poland and Eastern Europe required -- in Stalin's imperial and exceedingly paranoid view of the world -- direct Soviet occupation and control.

 

[Verbose]

That's all good and true!

What I find less compelling is the idea that the Finns, given a choice, wouldn't have remained still, forgoing any kind of association with Germany.
The reason would be internal Finnish politics. The conservatives might have been in the drivers seat, but anything to upset the internal balance, like an opportunistic war on the Soviet Union, could have shattered it and set off the socialists again. Or so would be the fear.

 

[Vrylakas]

You’re confusing two different things: what the Finns themselves actually intended to do or likely would have done, and what a highly paranoid, insular and frequently delusional dictator of a neighboring mass xenophobic police state thought the Finns would do.

Remember that Stalin had only traveled outside the Russian empire some 3 times in his life by 1938-39, all of them very brief trips and none of them to his liking. His only language skills were in his native Georgian and Russian (as a second language), and despite the piles of books attributed to him, he was not terribly competent in either language. For instance, he never quite adapted to the Slavic habit in Russian of not bothering to use the verb “to be” (since Slavic grammar defines most words’ relationships anyway) in the present tense, and he often inserted the odd Russian verb являатся incorrectly as a substitute. The point is, Stalin was not a worldly man and as the events of November-March 1930-40 bear out, he clearly did not understand Finland or its intentions well. To Stalin, there was a potential threat, and he acted to mute it, though he considered other strategic areas (e.g., Poland, Romania, etc,) more important and tried to minimize the impact on Soviet resources by initially bargaining with the Finns. He decided to invade and conquer only when the Finns refused what he considered reasonable demands, and the subsequent military disaster, though eventually victorious, convinced him it would not be worth the drain on Soviet resources to occupy Finland.

This is a classic case, BTW, of Russian paranoia creating bogeymen enemies and then, in over-reacting to them, creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. I do not know enough about Finnish political history of the 1930s to know how seriously they might have considered a German alliance before 1938, but I do know that Stalin feared as much, and through his fumbled brutal handling of his perceived “Finno-German threat”, he managed to create exactly the circumstance whereby the Finns did ally with the Germans and allow German troops on their soil. There is a long history of this sort of behavior in Russian history, but particularly after the Russian capital was moved to Moscow, perhaps because it is more remote and isolated from the rest of the world.

 

[Verbose]

No, I don't think I'm not confusing these things.

This is the bit I find not entirely compelling, given internal Finnish politics:

Finnish politics after the civil war were dominated by the conservative right, and indeed only became increasingly so in the 1920s and 30s, and the Finnish right wing was very strongly pro-German, both as a buttress to the old imperial rulers, Russia, and as well in response to the rise of Hitler and his emphasis on nationalist extremism. Stalin clearly feared war with Germany from c. 1935 onwards, and he had ever valid reason to fear Finnish-German military collaboration.

 

[Vrylakas]

This isn't my own theoretical invention; it is quite widespread in sources on the 1939-40 Winter War. If you'd like it from the horse's mouth, as it were, Khrushchov himself in his memoirs said that:

"As we became increasingly concerned about protecting our defenses against attack from the north, the question of Finland arose. We had to guarantee the security of Leningrad, which was within artillery range of the Finnish border and could easily have been shelled from Finnish territory. Moreover, the Finnish government was following policies hostile to the Soviet Union. It was demonstratively flirting with Hitlerite Germany. The Finnish commander-in-chief, Carl Mannerheim, was a former tsarist general and a sworn enemy of the Soviet Union. Vaino Tanner was an old Social Democrat, but he remained an irreconcilable foe of our Marxist-Leninist ideology until the end of his days. Consequently, Finland represented a real threat to us because its territory could be used by more powerful governments; and it was therefore sensible, indeed crucial, for the Soviet state to take steps to protect Leningrad."

(Crankshaw/Talbott version, 1970: pp. 150-151)

 

[Adler17]

Real or only immaginary threat?

Adler

 

[Vrylakas]

Well, there's the first answer, which I gave to Verbose:

You’re confusing two different things: what the Finns themselves actually intended to do or likely would have done, and what a highly paranoid, insular and frequently delusional dictator of a neighboring mass xenophobic police\state thought the Finns would do.

So, there's the difference between any real threat and what a highly paranoid dictatorship in Moscow perceived as a real threat. That's first.

Secondly, I can't speak as much to Finnish intentions, though my sense from readings is that the Finns in power in the 1920s and 30s -- especially the 30s -- definitely favored Germany. The Soviet Union of the 1930s was an aggressively predatory state with land and ideological claims against most of its neighbors, and it actively supported organizations (usually in the form of a local communist party) whose aim was to overthrow the governments of its neighbors. In this light, most Eastern European states feared the USSR far more than Hitler's (1930s) Germany, and actively sought to associate themselves with Germany as insurance against an unpredictable and threatening Stalin. A few states -- Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania -- who had taken territory from the Zweites Reich in 1918-22 were seen as unredeemable in German eyes, both Weimar and Nazi German, but most other Eastern European states (Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) saw fit to orient themselves towards Berlin against Moscow. For Finland in particular, along with the Baltic states, though an indirect side-product, it was known and appreciated that independence from Russian rule came in the guise of the German invasions of 1915-18 (though post-war German forces were sometimes hostile to local ambitions). Does this mean that the Finns actively wanted the Wehrmacht operating on their soil pre-1938? Probably not; that would have just justified a Soviet invasion.

Verbose mentions the Finnish left and their strength in Helsinki's 1930s politics but there is an important difference between the Finnish communists who fought the civil war of 1918 -- and were later suppressed by the victorious Finnish "whites", to the extent that the Finnish communist party had to be re-created in Moscow in the 1930s -- and the more moderate left of Socialists, Social Democrats, etc. It was indeed a pleasant surprise to the Finns of 1939 that these Finnish leftists supported Helsinki against Moscow in the Winter War, but as I mentioned that should be little surprise, as many of them had become disillusioned with Stalin and Moscow, and saw the contemporary Soviet Union as just an extension of the historical tsarist imperial Russian empire, at least in terms of its foreign policies. Indeed, I recall reading somewhere about the need by Helsinki to muzzle some of these Finnish leftists after 1945 from openly denouncing Soviet imperial policies in Eastern Europe, lest Stalin be provoked to rule Finland directly. Leftists did not automatically translate into pro-Soviet.

What did Hitler actually plan for Finland before 1938? I really don't know. Clearly by 1935, Hitler had plans for another war in the east, and Finland would be a very strategic ally (for its geographic location vis-a-vis Leningrad and control of the Gulf of Finland and the vitally dependent Lake Ladoga supply/distribution system for the USSR). However, before that war could come Hitler needed to build up German strength, so an open provocation of German military forces in Finland prior to the opening of hostilities seems unlikely. Indeed, given the pact of 23. August, Hitler was uncommonly loyal to his Soviet allies during the Winter War as he responded to the desperately-pleading Finns by telling them to come to terms with Moscow.

So this is the basis of my argument: In April, 1938, Stalin made a limited territorial request of the Finns, and even offered twice as much Karelian territory in exchange -- something he's almost never done before. This was born, I believe, of a genuine Soviet belief (meaning, Moscow saw a threat, whether it actually existed or not being another matter) that:

A. War with Nazi Germany was inevitable, and

B. Finland would likely be used as one of several launching pads for this invasion, for obvious strategic reasons.

The Finns refused Stalin's offer -- a very understandable stance -- and negotiations dragged on for a year. Then, in August, 1939, Stalin signed a pact with Hitler, in effect dividing Eastern Europe between the two powers. This freed Stalin's hand a bit and he made much more forceful demands of the Finns, which their refusal of led directly to the Soviet invasion and war of November 1939-March 1940. Even then, though, Stalin only made surprisingly light demands of the defeated Finns (given how they had humiliated and mauled Stalin's military), perhaps hoping to build up some sort of good will -- "See, I only raped you, but didn't kill you as I could have"; to Stalin, this amounted to a good deed -- but futilely, as the enthusiastic Finnish joining of the Hitler war against the USSR (though in very restricted form, limiting Finnish forces to former Finnish territories) in 1941. This is the self-fulfilling prophecy I mentioned in 2 posts previous.

 

[E O S]

I see the main question has been dealt with fairly well. It's pretty clear that Finland wasn't turned into a Soviet puppet because it was never occupied. Why it wasn't occupied is the interesting question. I see two central aspects to it: 1.) The Soviets' spring 1944 offensive failed to break through in the face of stiff Finnish resistance. Before and during it, the Soviets demanded an unconditional surrender. Afterward, the Soviets were willing to negotiate. 2.) The Soviets were unwilling to try, try again. The race to Berlin probably played a part. They may have mistakenly calculated that Finland would turn socialist after the war.

A few words about pre-war Finnish politics:

In the 1930s Finland moved to the left politically. The Lapua movement peaked in 1930-1931. Its posthumous electoral wing, the fascist Patriotic People's Movement, didn't make much of an impact, holding at most seven percent of the seats in the parliament and being subjected to a cordon sanitaire. The other major right-wing force in the country was the conservative National Coalition Party. Its fortunes also suffered in the 1930s. At the start of the decade they were commonly in government and their grand old man Pehr Evind Svinhufvud held the presidency, but after Kallio became the president in 1937, the Social Democrats became the Agrarians' government partner of choice.

The Communist Party of Finland was founded in Moscow in 1918 and didn't operate openly in Finland until the end of the Continuation War. Domestic Communists were represented in the parliament under several different names in 1922-1930, but the Communist Party itself wasn't legal. In the absence of Communist electoral fronts, most Finnish communists voted for the Social Democrats. Thus the ban probably boosted the Finnish left, because unlike the Communists, the Social Democrats were acceptable government partners for the centre-right.

By the time Soviet Union invaded Finland, Finno-German relations were at an all-time low. The Finnish leaders - e.g. president Kyösti Kallio of the centrist Agrarian League, prime minister A.K. Cajander of the liberal National Progressive Party, and finance minister Väinö Tanner of the Social Democratic Party - abhorred Hitler's radicalism, aggressive foreign policy, and consorting with Stalin. These guys were deeply attached to the idea of Finland as a sovereign republic. As such, they didn't think highly of a dictator who kept invading his smaller neighbours and seemed to get along okay with their country's biggest security threat.

And of course the territorial demands the Soviets made before the war and the ceded areas they received at the war's end were entirely inadequate for their stated aim of protecting Leningrad. Yeah, it took the Finns a while to get to the old border. Big deal. Had the Finns wanted to attack Leningrad, that's just what they would have done, ceded areas or no ceded areas. Assuming that Stalin and the boys were at least minimally competent in assessing the situation, we can reason that if Finland had acquiesced and taken the first step down the Baltic Road, it would have soon faced yet more Soviet demands.

If a Finland in league with Germany was what Soviet Union feared, the Winter War was the one thing they could do to make their fear a reality. They say that to conquer your fears you must face them, but the approach really shouldn't be applied to geopolitics.

 

[Yui108]

Well I suppose the Soviets knew that the Finns would give them far more than their troubles worth if Russia ever tried to come in there. In WWII during the Russo-Finn war, wasn't it something like 10k Finnish casualties and 80,000 dead Russians?

 

[Julian Delphiki]

These are from wiki,

Finnish casualties in winter war:

26,662 dead
39,886 wounded
1,000 captured

Russian casualties in winter war:

126,875 dead or missing
264,908 wounded
5,600 captured

Finnish casualties in continuation war:

58,715 dead or missing
158,000 wounded
1,500 civilian dead

Russian casualties in continuation war:

200,000 dead or missing
385,000 wounded
190,000 hospitalized due to sickness
64,000 captured

 

[Ukas]

Those figures could be wrong because of propaganda reasons. The Russians weren't that proud they failed in the war they started.

Nikita Hrustsov's commented the amount of the Russian Winter War casualties: "I'd say we lost about million lives."

 

[Adler17]

Russian loss figures are in ww2 especially careful to look at. If they are official they are mostly too low.

Adler