On this day in 1940 the Winter War comes to an end: Finland signs the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union, ceding almost all of Finnish Karelia.
On this day in 1940 the Winter War comes to an end: Finland signs the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union, ceding almost all of Finnish Karelia.
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The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed by Finland and the Soviet Union on 12 March 1940, and the ratifications were exchanged on 21 March. It marked the end of the 105-day Winter War, upon which Finland ceded border areas to the Soviet Union.
The terms of the treaty were not reversed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the Karelian question remains disputed.
The Russo-Finnish War, also called Winter War, (30 November 1939 – 12 March 1940) was the war waged by the Soviet Union against Finland at the beginning of World War II, following the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 23 August 1939.
Following the invasion, defeat, and partitioning of Poland by Germany and the Soviets in 1939, the Soviet Union sought to push its border with Finland on the Karelian Isthmus westward in an attempt to buttress the security of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) from potential German attack.
To that end, the Soviets also endeavoured to gain possession of several Finnish islands in the Gulf of Finland and to secure a 30-year lease for a naval base at Hanko (Hangö). The Soviet proposals for those acquisitions included an offer to exchange Soviet land. When Finland refused, the Soviet Union launched an attack on 30 November 1939, beginning the Russo-Finnish War.
Soviet troops totaling about one million men attacked Finland on several fronts. The heavily outnumbered Finns put up a skillful and effective defense that winter, and the Red Army made little progress.
In February 1940, however, the Soviets used massive artillery bombardments to breach the Mannerheim Line (the Finns’ southern defensive barrier stretching across the Karelian Isthmus), after which they streamed northward across the isthmus to the Finnish city of Viipuri (Vyborg).
Unable to secure help from Britain and France, the exhausted Finns made peace (the Treaty of Moscow) on Soviet terms on 12 March 1940, agreeing to the cession of western Karelia and to the construction of a Soviet naval base on the Hanko Peninsula.
Having approached Germany without reaching a formal alliance, Finland allowed German troops transit through the country after the outbreak of war between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Finns then joined the fight against the Soviets, undertaking the “War of Continuation.”
An armistice signed on 19 September 1944, effectively concluded that conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, contingent on Finnish recognition of the Treaty of Moscow and the evacuation of German troops (who refused to leave).
The formal end of the Soviet-Finnish conflict came with the signing of a peace treaty in Paris on 10 February 1947.
That’s called theft of land.
How do Finns feel about this land now? If you got the chance to get it back in the aftermath of Putin’s war, would you want it?