Abstract
On December 6, 1917, Finland benefited from the disorder caused by the Bolshevik Revolution to declare its independence. Finland attached great importance to this independence and attempted to defend it from the vagaries of the Second World War. At the beginning of the war, Finland was a nationalistic, anti-Russian and anti-communist democracy and not a communist or fascist dictatorship. But Finland was trapped between two great powers that had a huge role in the Second World War: the USSR and Germany. Whereas the relations between Germany and Finland were not so bad, those between the Soviet Union and Finland, however, were very tense. Indeed, the two periods of forced Russification and memories of social upheaval during the civil war contributed to a strong mutual distrust. In addition, Stalin feared Nazi Germany attacks, and as the Soviet-Finnish border was located 32 kilometers from Leningrad, Finland could be a perfect base for a German attack. So in 1932, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Finland. The agreement was confirmed in 1934 for a period of ten years. In anticipation of a possible conflict, the Finnish government bought on October 12, 1937, new warplanes to modernize its air force.
In April 1938, the Soviet Union initiated diplomatic negotiations with Finland to try to improve their mutual defense against Germany. The Soviets claimed their main fear of a German attack against Leningrad using Finland as a bridgehead. The situation did not change for a year, while Europe inevitably went toward war. On August 23, 1939, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This pact included a secret clause to share in "zones of influence" the countries situated between the two powers. In particular, Finland was in the area allocated to the Soviet Union while Poland was divided into two. In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, setting off a symmetrical Soviet reaction: the country was divided according to the secret clause of the pact. Finland found itself caught between the USSR which wanted to install bases on its territory, in order to prevent a German invasion and Hitler's Germany that broke the nonaggression pact with the USSR.
