The Finns, however, held steadfast. The Reds, racked by the effects of the Great Terror, fought hard but incompetently. The Winter War turned into a bloody stalemate in the northern snows. The Finnish government was aware that the total defeat of the Red Army was beyond it. Discussions were resumed and a peace treaty was signed in March 1940. The realistic Finns gave up much territory and several military bases. The Soviet frontier with Finland was moved hundreds of miles to the north of Leningrad. Stalin had achieved his ends but at a terrible price. One hundred and twenty-seven thousand Red Army soldiers perished.9 More importantly for Stalin (who cared nothing for the number of deaths), the military might of the USSR had been exposed as weaker than the world had thought. If the Soviet armed forces could not crush Finland, what would they be able to do against the Third Reich if ever war broke out with Hitler?
The shock was general in the Kremlin. With so large a force, the Red Army had been expected to thrust back the Finns without difficulty and enable the establishment of a Finnish Soviet Republic which would apply for incorporation in the USSR. Stalin was beside himself with fury. He rebuked Voroshilov. Drink and old friendship loosened Voroshilov’s tongue. Despite the Great Terror, he kept a sense of personal honour and was unwilling to accept criticism from the Leader who had supervised every large decision about security and defence in recent years. Voroshilov had had enough: he picked up a plate of suckling pig and crashed it down on the table.10 This sort of outburst would have condemned most men to the Gulag. (They would usually have gone to the Gulag long before they got round to shouting at the Leader.) The war, though, gave Stalin reason to take stock strategically and necessitated a reorganisation of the Red Army. Stalin dismissed the inadequate Voroshilov and appointed Semën Timoshenko, a professional commander, to lead the People’s Commissariat of Defence.
The urgency of the task was demonstrated in summer 1940 as the Wehrmacht raced through the Low Countries into France, forcing Paris’s capitulation and the emergency evacuation of British forces from the beaches of Dunkirk. The fall of the United Kingdom seemed imminent. Timoshenko, with Stalin’s consent, restored a sense of pride to the Soviet officer corps. Political education was reduced as a proportion of required military training. Plans were put in hand for a new line of defence works to be constructed along the boundaries separating the German and Soviet spheres of interest. In order to realise this aim it appeared necessary to bring Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania under the USSR’s control. There was to be no repetition of the Finnish débâcle. A brief charade was played out. Incidents of ‘provocation’ were arranged for the Kremlin to have a pretext to intervene. Baltic politicians had to be intimidated. Ministers were summoned from the capitals of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Stalin and Molotov were bullies with decades of experience. The visitors to Moscow were given no choice but to accept annexation. Molotov snarled to the Latvian Foreign Minister: ‘You’re not going to return home until you give your signature to your self-inclusion in the USSR.’11 The three governments were militarily helpless. Resistance would lead to national disaster.
Compliance, of course, would also bring disaster since Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would undoubtedly undergo the same treatment as eastern Poland. In fact the bully-boy methods did not immediately result in signed requests for incorporation in the USSR. The Red Army therefore moved in force to secure Stalin’s aims, and NKVD units — some of which had been operating in Poland — were close behind. A façade of constitutionalism was maintained. Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov, closely liaising with his master Stalin, was sent to the Baltic region to carry out his orders behind the scenes. Police arrests took place under the cover of a news black-out. Executions and deportations ensued as the Soviet-dominated media announced fresh elections. Only candidates belonging to the communists, or at least supporting them, were allowed to stand. Parliaments assembled in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in July and declared total agreement with Moscow’s wishes. All petitioned, as Stalin had demanded, for incorporation in the USSR. For form’s sake Stalin declined to admit the three on the same day. Lithuania entered the USSR on 3 August, Latvia two days later and Estonia a day after that.
