Terijoki Government
테리요키 정부
A Soviet puppet government established on 1 December 1939, the day after the Winter War began, in the occupied Finnish border town of Terijoki. Officially named the Finnish Democratic Republic (Suomen kansanvaltainen tasavalta), it was headed by Finnish exile communist and Comintern official Otto Wille Kuusinen. The Soviet Union recognized it as Finland's sole legitimate government and signed a mutual assistance treaty with it in Moscow, but it failed to gain support among Finnish workers and was recognized internationally only by the Soviet Union, Mongolia, and Tuva. It was quietly dissolved after the Moscow Peace Treaty of March 1940, when the Soviets reached terms with Finland's actual government, and remains a textbook example of Soviet use of 'native' puppet governments in wartime operations.
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Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) article on the Terijoki Government / Finnish Democratic Republic; its establishment on 1 Dec 1939, Kuusinen as prime minister, the 2 Dec 1939 mutual assistance treaty with the USSR, and its dissolution after the Moscow Peace Treaty.
- finlandatwar.com detailed narrative of the government's founding in Terijoki, Kuusinen's signing away of Finnish territory, the failed attempt to gain legitimacy among Finns, and its role as an obstacle to peace negotiations.
- histdoc.net 'The order of 2nd rank NKVD commissar Godlidze to allocate troops to secure the safety and services for the Kuusinen puppet government at Terijoki, Nov. 29. 1939' — archival evidence of Soviet preparation for the puppet government before the invasion.