(This takes approximately five minutes to read.)

On August 5, 1938, the Finns stated [to the Soviets] that they would welcome better commercial relations, but that territorially, the Treaty of Tartu between their countries established boundaries, which they hold inviolate. The threat of [the Wehrmacht’s] presence in Finland, either invited or forced, burned intensely in the Soviet conscious.

There was some ground to this fear. It was the presence of [Reichswehr] troops and German training that had enabled the success of the White forces during the civil war. Several public visits, including one as recent as April 12, 1938, during which the [Fascist] Count von der Goltz joined Marshall Mannerheim to review troops at a military parade for the Germans who had died for Finnish freedom in 1918–19⁴. This diplomatic faux pas sent the wrong message to Moscow.

Despite their lack of success, the talks of a German–Finnish Non-Aggression Treaty early 1938 between Helsinki and Berlin, reminded the Soviets of the proximity of [Finland’s] potential German ally.

[…]

While Leningrad and the Kronstadt naval facilities were strategic to Soviet interests, they also appreciated their vulnerability within the Gulf of Finland. The fear of [the Axis] attacking Leningrad both via the sea route, which they felt the Finns could not protect, as well as via land from a potentially pliant Finland was an overwhelming fear.

Nonetheless, it is important to point out that following the Winter War with the leasing of the peninsula of Hanko to the Soviets; it provided the Soviets with no security against the [Axis powers]. When they attempted to take Leningrad they bypassed the sea routes and came by land. Ironically, though it was not across the Karelian frontier, but from the south.

The Finns steadfastly refused [Fascist] demands for them to conduct a joint operation and once the Finns returned to their border of 1939, they simply dug in and held them for the duration of the war.

[…]

First, the Soviets had the option of doing nothing — of ignoring the fact that they had even entered into negotiations and simply letting the Finns walk away from the table and hoping that the status quo could be maintained.

How realistic is this for the Soviets? Not realistic at all, as they do not perceive the Finns as necessarily taking any actions themselves that would threaten the USSR. They do, however, fear that Finnish territory could be used by an outside power.

This point of view assumes that the Soviets accepted that the Finns actually believed in defense of their neutrality and had bargained in good faith and that right-wing fanatics would not overthrow the government of Finland. One has to discount this, as the Soviets, reasonably, assumed that:

1. the [Third Reich] had military designs on Finland;
2. the Finnish government had demonstrated a lack of cohesion itself when carrying out the negotiations over the previous year;
3. right-wing (in Soviet eyes — Nazi-inspired) coups had rocked the foundations of the Finnish state repeatedly over the past decade, each one becoming more successful than the last;
4. Finnish behaviour suggested they felt that they had greater grounds to reject reasonable demands than their military preparedness suggested, thus raising suspicions of a pre-existing secret protocol with [the Third Reich].

Because of these facts, it is clear that the Soviet Union could not simply walk away from the table. It is further clear that the Soviets are driven by paranoia and behavior based on trust was simply ludicrous.

The Soviets had a second option: that of reinitiating the negotiations later and hoping for a more favourable Finnish attitude. This option begs the question of exactly how long a negotiating party could expect to continue without seeing any positive results.

The Soviets however had been trying to deduce exactly what was behind the Finnish motivation and continued to believe that it might be [the Wehrmacht’s] involvement. They based this belief on the continuation of diplomatic relations, the existence of splinter Finnish fascists groups and their own […] paranoia¹⁸.

The Soviets ha[d] been planning the invasion of Finland, if not to occupy, at least to threaten, the Finns into accepting the Soviet terms. The success of this operation was based on factors, such as the time of year, the availability of materiel and the fact they would not question their existing Non-Aggression Treaty with the Germans.

With suspicions that the [Fascists] were going to take military action eventually, the Soviets believe that as every day that goes by, they were one step closer to either having to confront the [Fascists] following their own move into Scandinavia or to risk a situation in which the [Fascists] were materially involved with the defense of Finland.

It is clear that Stalin had no misconception about the value of collective security. Both he and Hitler had trampled on agreements with other states in the past and its seems abundantly clear to any Soviet military strategist that Hitler’s moves into eastern Europe threaten Soviet interests. As regards the Soviets, seeking any alliance with the western powers at this time seems less likely with their “long histories of anti-communism”¹⁹.

As William Trotter concludes in Frozen Hell, “for the moment, given the realities of the day, Russia would have to go it alone. So, given the real threat posed by Hitler, the record of close German–Finnish co-operation in 1918, the realities of geography, the Russian viewpoint concerning Finland was not entirely unreasonable.”²⁰ In the Soviet mind, time was working against them and any delay in the negotiations would favour the Finns.

In regards to the Soviet paranoia of [Fascist] influence in Finland, there were grounds for this suspicion. Because of German aid during the civil war, the military caste in Finland had remained friendly with the Germans over time. Trade with the Germans was more significant than with the USSR and political visits between Berlin and Helsinki continued at the highest levels.

Additionally, “Stalin was unrealistically influenced by the headline-grabbing antics²¹,” of the Finnish right wing splinter groups. It seems clear that in later negotiations, Stalin “really did believe that the interior of Finland seethed with class antagonism and fascist plotters and that all Finnish society was undercut by smoldering grudges left over from the civil war days.”²²

The Third option open to the Soviets was to invade Finland. They chose to exercise this option on November 30, 1939. Realistically, they were left with no reason to suppose that further negotiations would lead to any greater success. Similarly, they have been given no signs that the Finns had ultimately peaceful motives behind their wish for neutrality. The Soviets could not understand the Finns’ inability to perceive the Soviets’ fear of invasion.

Similarly, quoting Ville Kivimäki in Finland in World War II: History, Memory, Interpretations, page 13:

It took an impact from abroad to cause a debate to flare up on Finnish participation in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. In 1957 American scholar Charles L. Lundin published his study on Finland in World War II. Lundin left no doubt about the blatant nature of the Soviet attack in 1939, and he was not wholly unsympathetic to Finland’s difficult foreign political position after the Winter War.

Nevertheless, he denied that Finland was a mere victim caught between the two […] régimes of Soviet Union and Germany: the Finns were not completely innocent in raising Soviet suspicion against Finland before the Winter War and Finland had actively sought to ally itself with [the Third Reich] in 1940–41, thus compromising its democratic principles and political system.⁹

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Despite their bias, the rest of Shawn Day’s and Professor Terry Copp’s paper is a good refutation of the myth that Moscow assaulted Finland in late 1939 out of imperialist greed (if not sheer sadism).

A word of warning, though: anticommunists shall be extremely offended if you try to explain to them what made the U.S.S.R.’s aggression against Finland inevitable. You don’t even need to say that it was a ‘good’ thing; merely showing the circumstances that made it necessary is infinitely more offensive to anticommunists than even Shoah denial… although maybe not quite as offensive to them as saying ‘rape jokes should be banned’.