Treaty of Tartu (Finland–Soviet Russia)
타르투 조약 (핀란드–소비에트 러시아)
The peace treaty signed by Finland and Soviet Russia in Tartu, Estonia, on 14 October 1920 after nearly five months of negotiations. It fixed the border along the old line between the Grand Duchy of Finland and the Russian Empire and gave Petsamo to Finland, while Repola, Porajärvi and North Ingria went back to Russia. It came into force on 31 December and is distinct from the Estonian–Soviet treaty signed in the same city that February.
In depth
Diplomatic relations broke off when the Finnish Civil War began, and the Sovnarkom recognised the Red People’s Delegation as the government of Finland. According to the Finnish-language source, Finland held that a state of war had existed between the two countries since 1918. By 1920, as a Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War looked certain, Russia’s neighbours moved to normalise relations: Estonia (February, at Tartu), Latvia (June, at Riga) and Lithuania (July, at Moscow) signed their treaties first, and the talks coincided with the Polish–Soviet War. The Finnish delegation was led by Juho Kusti Paasikivi and included Juho Vennola, Alexander Frey, Rudolf Walden, Väinö Tanner, Väinö Voionmaa and Väinö Kivilinna; the Soviet delegation included Jan Antonovich Berzin, Platon Kerzhentsev, Nikolai Tikhmenev, Alexander Samoylo and Yevgeny Berens. The treaty was signed in the building of the Estonian Students’ Society in Tartu.
Finland gained Petsamo with its ice-free harbour on the Arctic Ocean, which Tsar Alexander II had promised in 1864 in exchange for a piece of the Karelian Isthmus. In return it left Repola and Porajärvi, annexed and occupied during the Viena and Aunus expeditions, and handed over North Ingria, disbanding the Republic of North Ingria. The Soviets guaranteed free navigation for merchant ships from Finland’s Ladoga ports via the Neva to the Gulf of Finland, and Finland guaranteed land transit to Norway through Petsamo. Finland also disarmed the coastal fortress of Ino opposite Kronstadt and demilitarised its outer islands in the Gulf of Finland. According to the Russian-language source the All-Russian Central Executive Committee approved the treaty on 23 October and the Finnish Parliament on 1 December, President Ståhlberg ratified it on 11 December, and ratifications were exchanged in Moscow on 31 December. Nationalist and rightist deputies called it shameful for abandoning the ideal of a greater Finland, and kinship activists named it the “shameful peace”. It first became controversial when Finnish volunteers joined the East Karelian uprising of 1921–1922; the Soviet Union broke it by starting the Winter War in 1939, and it was replaced by the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940.