Aftermath of the Winter War

The Aftermath of the Winter War covers historical events and comments after the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union from 30 November 1939 to 13 March 1940. The short period after the war and before the next, the Continuation War, is known as the Interim Peace.

The 105-day war had a profound and depressing effect in Finland. Useful international support was minimal, arrived late, and the German blockade prevented most armament shipments. At the end of the war, the situation of the Finnish army on the Karelian Isthmus had been the subject of some debate. The orders were already given to prepare a retreat to the next line of defence in the Taipale sector. The estimates of how long the enemy could have been held in these kinds of retreat-and-stand operations varied from a few days to a couple of months, most averaging around a few weeks. During the Interim Peace, Karelian local governments, parishes and provincial organizations established Karjalan Liitto, an interest group, in order to defend the rights and interests of Karelian evacuees and to find a solution for returning Karelia.

During the period between the war and the perestroika in late 1980s, Soviet historiography leaned solely on Vyacheslav Molotov's speeches on the Winter War. In his radio speech of 29 November 1939, Molotov argued that the Soviet Union had tried for two months to negotiate guarantees of security for Leningrad. However, the Finns had taken a hostile stance to "please foreign imperialists". The Finns had undertaken military provocation and the Soviets could no longer hold to nonaggression pacts. According to Molotov, the Soviets did not want to occupy or annex Finland; the goal was purely to secure Leningrad.

Another source, later used widely in Soviet historiography, was the Molotov speech in front of the Supreme Soviet on 29 March 1940. Molotov blamed Western countries for starting the war and argued that they had used Finland as a proxy to fight the Soviet Union. The Western Allies had furthermore tried to take neutral Sweden and Norway along with them. The main "villains" for the Soviets were the United Kingdom and France, but also Sweden, the United States, and Italy, who had issued massive amounts of matériel, money, and numbers of men, to Finland. According to Molotov, the Soviet Union was merciful in peace terms, as the problem of Leningrad security had been solved.

...
Wikipedia