Terijoki Government

The Terijoki Government was a controlled 'native' administration installed by the Soviet Union in the territory it occupied at the start of the Winter War. It was proclaimed on 1 December 1939, the day after the Red Army captured the Finnish border town of Terijoki, and its official name was the Finnish People's Government (Suomen kansanhallitus). Otto Wille Kuusinen, who had fled to Soviet Russia after the defeat of the Reds in the Finnish Civil War and had served for years as a secretary of the Comintern Executive Committee, was placed at its head. Its cabinet was staffed by Soviet citizens and left-wing Finns who had fled to Soviet Russia after the civil war.

Treaty and recognition

Immediately after its creation the Soviet Union recognized it as Finland's only legitimate government and opened diplomatic relations with it. On 2 December Kuusinen and Vyacheslav Molotov signed a mutual assistance and friendship treaty in Moscow under which the government agreed to lease the Hanko Peninsula, cede part of the Karelian Isthmus, and hand over islands in the Gulf of Finland and sections of the Arctic coast, in exchange for a much larger area of eastern Karelia. The terms closely resembled the demands Soviet diplomacy had planned to press on the Finnish government in October 1939 but had failed to secure; by signing with a newly created body rather than the Republic of Finland, the Soviet Union substituted its own negotiating partner. Internationally the government was recognized only by the Soviet Union and its satellite states, the Mongolian People's Republic and the Tuvan People's Republic.

Failure to win support

The Terijoki Government failed to gain the support of Finnish workers. Soviet leaflets portrayed the invasion as a liberation from capitalists and landlords, but Finnish society instead united against the invasion in what came to be called the Spirit of the Winter War. The Finnish Communist Party had little influence in the 1930s and operated underground, so it could not incite a mass revolt or a mutiny in the army, and the Soviet leadership, drawing on intelligence about Finland's domestic situation, did not anticipate that the government would trigger revolutionary action or popular uprisings. Some left-wing intellectuals and writers, among them Jawaharlal Nehru, George Bernard Shaw and John Steinbeck, did voice support, and state newspapers in Nazi Germany, bound by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also backed it. The government fielded a Finnish People's Army, the 1st Finnish People's Rifle Corps, under Red Army command, some 22,600 strong and made up of Ingrians, Karelians, Finns, Russians and others; the hoped-for influx of prisoners of war and deserters never materialized.

Dissolution

As the war dragged on, the Soviets began to seek rapprochement with the Finnish government and the Kuusinen regime fell out of favor. When Finland and the Soviet Union signed the Moscow Peace Treaty on 12 March 1940, the Terijoki Government became obsolete. It was abolished, and the newly ceded territory was merged with the Karelian ASSR to form the Karelo-Finnish SSR, of which Kuusinen became chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet. The last official mention of the government came at a session of the USSR Supreme Soviet in late March 1940, which stated that the Finnish People's Government had dissolved.