Stalin полностью

A Finnish delegation was invited to Moscow and, on March 5, 1939, presented with a formal proposal for a thirty-year lease of the Hanko Cape, which had been used by the tsarist fleet and constituted a choke point where ships from the Baltic Sea could be blocked from entering the Gulf of Finland. The Soviets emphasized that their proposal was not for a full-fledged military base but merely an observation point.²⁶ The Finns responded negatively within just three days. Beyond the likely public firestorm that would have consumed any Finnish government that consented, the country’s constitution called its territory “indivisible” and therefore nonnegotiable by the foreign ministry. A Soviet counterproposal to exchange four Finnish islands in the Gulf of Finland for Soviet territory north of Lake Ladoga was similarly rebuffed, to Moscow’s evident disappointment.²⁷ The more the Soviets doggedly insisted that small states such as Finland were simply unable to prevent third parties from using their territory for aggression against another state, the more the Finns began to see the Soviet Union as that third party.²⁸

Diplomatic efforts were also made in Helsinki, but not via the Soviet ambassador, Vladimir Derevyansky; instead, Stalin sent the former envoy to Finland, Boris Stein, who was now stationed in Italy. Stein arrived in Helsinki in March 1939, supposedly to take a holiday in the chilly north. He carried a proposal to exchange Soviet Karelia, a predominantly ethnic Finnish enclave contiguous with Finland, for the Finnish islands the Soviets sought, and to pay for the relocation of Finnish citizens from any territory acquired by the USSR. But he, too, proved unable to convince Foreign Minister Erkko of the ineffectiveness of a policy of neutrality by small states, despite citing recently devoured Czechoslovakia (which, of course, had had mutual assistance pacts with France and the Soviet Union). Stein departed for Moscow empty-handed, albeit not before warning Erkko that “the Soviet government does not accept Finland’s answer. We will not give up our demand for the islands in the Gulf of Finland.”²⁹

NO APPARENT WIGGLE ROOM

Secretly, in the first half of March 1939, Voroshilov had informed the recently appointed commander of the Leningrad military district, Kirill Meretskov, to prepare for a possible military aggression from the territory of Finland, by a third party.³⁰ Stalin called Meretskov “Yaroslavets,” according to Molotov, because “the people in Yaroslavl were so shifty there were almost no Jews, and there the Russians themselves perform those functions.”³¹ (Meretskov actually hailed from a village near Ryazan.) On-site, the ingratiating Meretskov judged that Finnish troops stationed near the border themselves had aggressive intentions to burst through and seize Leningrad.³² The Soviets launched a massive military construction effort in the region, which the Finns could not help but notice. In June 1939, Meretskov would later claim, Stalin summoned him to discuss the Finnish threat and anti-Soviet moods in the Finnish government. The Leningrad military district’s war contingency plans for Finland were defensive. Stalin ordered up operational plans for a “counter-blow.”³³

Soviet interest in Finland would soon be mentioned in the Pact’s secret protocol, but the suspicious despot would keep a close eye on the intelligence concerning whether Hitler would keep his word. If Hitler abandoned Finland to its fate, he would be throwing away decades of goodwill toward Germany in this strategically located country. Additionally, as the Soviet ambassador to Berlin would warn the foreign affairs commissariat, Germany had to be careful not to suffer interruption in strategic supplies from Finland of timber, food, copper, and molybdenum for steel alloys.³⁴ In July 1939, during General Halder’s jubilant tour of Finland, Stalin received details, partly from intercepted Japanese military intelligence telegrams sent from Helsinki to Tokyo, about German-Finnish military links.³⁵ In fact, the Finns were working diplomatic channels to try to exact British protection. On July 4, 1939, a representative of the British war office posted to Helsinki reported to London that the Finns “do not want anything to do with Germany but, rather than accept a Russian guarantee, they would join the Axis.”³⁶