Finnish Democratic Republic - Relations With The Soviet Union

Relations With The Soviet Union

The Soviet government entered into diplomatic relations with the "people's government". On the first day of its existence, the regime agreed to lease the Hanko Peninsula; to cede a slice of territory on the Karelian Isthmus; and to sell an island in the Gulf of Finland, along with sections of the Kalastajasaarento near the Arctic Ocean to the Soviet Union.

Kuusinen and Molotov signed a mutual assistance agreement and a secret protocol on 2 December 1939. The content of the agreement was very similar to what the Soviet foreign ministry had planned earlier in October 1939, though it never was presented to the Finnish government. According to the new agreement, the Soviet Union would cede a much larger area, the Eastern Karelia, except for the Murmansk railroad, in exchange for the same territories that the Soviets had demanded in earlier negotiations from the Republic of Finland.

The agreement was signed in Moscow, as ten days earlier draft, the signature location would be Käkisalmi and the Soviet signer Andrei Zhdanov. The Molotov–Kuusinen agreement mentioned leasing the Hanko Peninsula, and determining the number of troops to be appointed in a separate agreement. Before the 1990s historians could only speculate about its existence and content until in 1997, during a joint Finnish-Russian project, the Russian professor Oleg Rzesevski discovered the protocol in the Moscow Kremlin. The content is quite similar to protocols the Soviet Union signed with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in September–October 1939.