“MINIMAL” DEMANDS
Despite a specific request from Molotov, Finland did not send foreign minister Erkko or even a plenipotentiary empowered to sign a state accord. Their delegation was led by Juho Kusti Paasikivi (b. 1870), a conservative banker and the Finnish envoy to Sweden, who had negotiated the 1920 Treaty of Tartu with the Soviets, whose border terms Moscow was now trying to overturn. Also included were Colonel Aladár Paasonen (b. 1898), who had been educated at France’s elite École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr and was the foremost expert on the Soviet Union in Finnish military intelligence; the foreign ministry official who handled Soviet affairs; and the Finnish envoy to Moscow. On October 12, with no advance disclosure of the precise agenda, they were summoned to the Kremlin and taken to Molotov’s office. Potyomkin and Derevyansky were also present, but so was Stalin—an unmistakable sign of seriousness.48 Molotov proposed a mutual assistance pact. Paasikivi dismissed this as unthinkable. Molotov dropped his request—apparently astonishing Paasikivi—and proceeded to outline Soviet desiderata for enhancement of its security by way of acquiring a military base on the Finnish coast, mentioning the Hanko Cape. Molotov also indicated a desire to “rectify” both the northern border on the Arctic Sea, near Finnish Petsamo, and the southern border on the Karelian Isthmus, near Leningrad, with territorial compensation from Soviet (eastern) Karelia. Paasikivi responded that Finland’s territorial integrity was inviolable.49 The talks adjourned. Paasikivi wired Helsinki the details of Soviet demands and requested additional instructions.
Stalin was sent eavesdropped conversations among people thought to be privy to Finnish government options. Beria reported that the voluble Swedish military attaché in Moscow, Major Birger Vrang, had expressed regret that the Norwegian and Danish envoys to Moscow had failed to greet Paasikivi at the train station to show Scandinavian solidarity.50 The Finnish military attaché, Major Kaarlo Somerto, told Vrang that Finland’s general staff did not trust British intelligence to the effect that the Soviets had thirty-three divisions on the Finnish border, including just seven between Lake Ladoga and the Arctic Sea, where roads were practically nonexistent. (This looks like Soviet disinformation; the actual figure was almost double that.) Vrang doubted that the Soviets would invade, which would sully their celebrated policy of “peace.” Somerto reported this assertion to Helsinki but added, of the Swedes, that “about help, they say nothing.” On October 13, Beria reported that the Swedish government had promised Finland’s foreign minister “moral support,” and that Finland’s military intelligence chief had been “very disappointed” by his recent trip to sound out attitudes in Berlin. On October 14, Stalin could read that Vrang had told the military expert on the Finnish negotiating team, Paasonen, that “the Russians are Asiatics: initially they demand a great deal, and later they make concessions to obtain what they need.”51
That same day in the Kremlin, at the follow-up Soviet-Finnish negotiating session, again with Stalin present, Paasikivi read aloud an analysis by Paasonen rebutting Soviet claims about threats to the Gulf of Finland, but he allowed that the Finns were prepared to discuss a few islands closest to the Soviet shore.52 In fact, the Red Navy did not even possess enough ships to patrol from all of their newly acquired naval bases in the Baltic states, and the Soviet naval command was most concerned about air attacks from bases situated on Finland’s Karelian Isthmus.53 Whether Stalin shared his navy’s assessment of Leningrad’s security, however, remains unclear, but at a minimum, a Soviet naval base on Finnish territory could deter the British and the Germans from acquiring such facilities for themselves. Moreover, he looked at the situation in terms of what territory imperial Russia had possessed. Molotov formally requested from the Finns a lease for a naval base on Hanko Cape, as well as the permanent transfer to Soviet possession of Suursaari (Hogland) and other islands in the Gulf of Finland. He further demanded the Finnish portion of the northern Rybachy Peninsula, which guarded the approaches to Petsamo, Finland’s only ice-free harbor. And he asked that the border on the Karelian Isthmus be moved westward nearly forty miles, to a location within twenty miles of Viipuri (old Vyborg), a former medieval fortress and Finland’s second-largest city.
Stalin offered to compensate the Finns with Soviet Karelia. “We cannot do anything about geography, nor can you,” he told Paasikivi, who, like all the Finns present, spoke some Russian. “Since Leningrad cannot be moved, the frontier must be moved farther away. We ask for 1,000 square miles, and we offer more than 2,120 in exchange. Would any other great power do this? No, only we are that stupid.”54