58. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 120.
59. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 170–1 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 282–4: Oct. 19, 1939).
60. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 169–70 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 216–8: Beria, Oct. 17, 1939), 170–1 (l. 282-4: Oct. 19); Rentola, “Intelligence and Stalin’s Two Crucial Decisions,” 1093. See also Voskresenskaia, Pod psevdonym Irina, 112–8. On German policy toward Finland, see Jonas, Wipert von Blücher, 105–58. Stalin prohibited engaging ethnic Finns in espionage work, reminding Proskurov (head of Soviet military intelligence) that a radio operator working for them in Mongolia (under the name of Voroshilov, no less) had been exposed as a Finn. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i NKVD, 123 (Aug. 25, 1939).
61. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 172–3 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 341–3: from Colonel Doi).
62. Stalin’s ultimate aims are not spelled out in internal Soviet documents. We are left, like the Finns, to deduce his aims from his statements in the negotiations, and, above all, from his actions.
63. Rentola, “Finnish Communists and the Winter War,” 596.
64. Upton, Finland, 35.
65. Dongarov, “Voina, kotoryi moglo ne byt’,” 35 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, pap. 18, d. 193, l. 3–6).
66. Tanner, Winter War, 42.
67. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 125.
68. Tanner, Winter War, 40–56. Stalin had been warned the Finns would drag out the talks. DVP SSSR, XXII/ii: 184.
69. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 173 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 145–6: Oct. 27, 1939).
70. Roberts, “Soviet Policy and the Baltic States.” On pogroms against Jews by Poles in Wilno, following the arrival of Soviet and Lithuanian troops, see Senn, Lithuania, 55–67.
71. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 119–20. Dimitrov does not appear in Stalin’s office logbook for Oct. 25 (no one does): Na prieme, 277. Dimitrov published his article “The War and the Working Class in the Capitalist Countries,” in Communist International, 1939, no. 8–9.
72. Izvestiia, Oct. 31, 1939; Kabanen, “Dvoinaia igra.”
73. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, II: 466. Molotov instructed Kollontai to ensure the neutrality of Sweden in a Soviet-Finnish War. In the scholarly publication of her diplomatic notebooks, the Nov. visit to Moscow occurs without a meeting with Stalin. Kollontai is not recorded in the office logbooks after 1934. Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, II: 467. Another version has her meeting Stalin: “Beseda Stalina s A. M. Kollontai,” in Sochineniia, XVIII: 606–11 (originally published in Dialog, 1998, no. 8: 92–4). Kollontai knew she was closely watched by the NKVD. Vaksberg, Alexandra Kollontai, 414–21.
74. Pravda (Nov. 3) stated defiantly in an editorial, “we will defend the security of the Soviet Union regardless, breaking down all obstacles of whatever character, in order to attain our goal.”
75. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 135; Tanner, Winter War, 67. Khrushchev recalled that at a dinner sometime in Nov. 1939, Stalin, along with Molotov and Otto Kuusinen, agreed “the Finns should be given a last chance to accept the territorial demands,” otherwise “we would take military action.” Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 177–8.
76. It is not clear that Paasikivi and Tanner were familiar with theses islands. Rzheshevskii et al., Zimniaia voina, I: 127; Tanner, Winter War, 67–8; Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 136.
77. Molotov delivered a speech from the stage, followed by music and dancing. Stalin sat in the tsar’s box, obscured. At intermission, as the guests took advantage of the buffet, Derevyansky, the Soviet envoy to Helsinki, approached Tanner, who claims to have told him the negotiations were going poorly. Tanner, Winter War, 69.
78. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XIII (II/i): 100–2 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 15, d. 25, l. 636–38). Pravda, in articles and cartoons (Oct. 6, 25, and 26, Nov. 12 and 20), relentlessly pounded home the view that the imperialist powers (Britain and France) were inciting war to garner profit and suppress freedoms at home, while scheming to drag “neutral powers” such as the Soviet Union into their bloody game—meaning a Soviet-German war.
79. “There can be no doubt that Stalin was genuinely anxious to reach a settlement,” concluded the scholar Max Jakobson: Diplomacy of the Winter War, 144. Stalin watched the morning Revolution Day parade on Nov. 7 atop the Mausoleum, as massive columns of Red Army soldiers and armor passed, followed by columns of workers bearing aloft portraits of him, then attended the late-afternoon luncheon with the retinue at Voroshilov’s apartment. “I believe that the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war (during the first imperialist war) was appropriate only for Russia, where the workers were tied to the peasants and under tsarist conditions could engage in an assault on the bourgeoisie,” he told those assembled. “For the European countries that slogan was inappropriate, for there the workers had received a few democratic reforms from the bourgeoisie and were clinging to them, and they were not willing to engage in a civil war (revolution) against the bourgeoisie.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 120–1.
80. Tanner, Winter War, 71–2.
81. DGFP, series D, VIII: 293 (Hitler to Sven Hedin); Tanner, Winter War, 82–3.
82. Upton, Finland, 43–44; Tanner, Winter War, 82; Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 142; Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 172; Ken et al., Shvetsiia v politike Moskvy.
83. Rentola, “Intelligence and Stalin’s Two Crucial Decisions,” 1091 (citing report by the Swedish military attaché to Moscow, Major Vrang, no. 44, Oct. 4, 1939, KrA, FST/Und, E I: 15).
84. Mannerheim, Memoirs, 300–3, 315; Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 64, 150–1; Virmarita, “Karl Gustaf Emil’ Mannergeim,” 65–6.
85. Rei, Drama of the Baltic Peoples, 259–60. Rei was the notetaker for Estonian foreign minister K. Selter with Molotov. “Soviet Russia’s period of weakness was over,” Paasikivi observed of the Pact. Paasikivi, Meine Moskauer Mission, 56.
86. Tanner, Winter War, 73.
87. Van Dyke, Soviet Invasion, 21 (citing AVP RF, f. 0135, op. 22, pap. 145, d. 1, l. 22–3: Yeliseyev to Dekanozov, Nov. 12, 1939). Sinitsyn captured the rivalry between Beria and Molotov firsthand. He also had an audience with Stalin, evidently on Nov. 27, 1939, which is not recorded in the office logbooks. He noted that “Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Kaganonovich and even Voroshilov behaved like bad pupils in front of a strict teacher, or, more accurately, like mannequins.” Sinitsyn, Rezident svidetel’stvuet, 20–56 (quote at 40).
88. Tanner, Winter War, 75–6.
89. Na prieme, 279.
90. Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 221 (citing RGALI, f. 1038, op. 1, d. 2076, l. 31ob.), 225–6 (l. 68). The very same day, the all-Union Society of Cultural Ties Abroad demonstratively assembled novelists, film directors, composers, painters, journalists, and more to affirm friendship with Nazi Germany, according to the head of the import agency International Book (A. Solovyev). The next day, Vishnevsky told a meeting of screenwriters that “the question of the British empire, the destruction of this gigantic colonial empire, has been sharply posed, and here, paradoxically, . . . Germany is doing a progressive thing.” Solov’ev, “Tretrady krasnogo professor, 1912–1941 gg.,” IV: 205; Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 221–2, citing RGALI, f. 2456, op. 1, d. 445, l. 23).
91. Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, II/i: 55–8; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 238. Isolationist sentiment in Britain had not receded despite the guarantees to Poland. “What concerns me is the fate of the British empire!” Lord Beaverbrook, the conservative press baron, told Maisky in London on Nov. 15, 1939. “I want the empire to remain intact, but I don’t understand why for the sake of this we must wage a three-year war to crush ‘Hitlerism.’ To hell with that man Hitler! If the Germans want him, I happily concede them this treasure and make my bow. Poland? Czechoslovakia? What are they to us?” Maiskii, Dnevnik diplomata, II/i: 60–1; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 239.
92. Upton, Finland, 25–50; Tanner, Winter War, 80–1; Spring, “Soviet Decision for War.”
93. A Soviet protocol official improbably reported that he found the departing Finns in high spirits. Baryshnikov, Ot prokhaldnogo mira, 259 (citing AVPRF, f. 06, op. 1, p. 1, d. 7, l. 64 [B. Pontikov]).
94. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 63 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1552, l.15–6).
95. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 66, l. 13.
96. DGFP, series D, VIII: 427–8. Molotov would blame the “Social Democrat” Tanner, rather than the prime minister and foreign minister back in Helsinki. See also Kollontai, “‘Seven Shots’”; and Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, II: 466–7. Paasikivi would make telling criticisms of Tanner in his memoirs.
97. Domarus, Hitler: Reden, III: 1422–4; Domarus, Hitler: Speeches, III: 1882–91; DGFP, series D, VIII: 439–46.
98. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 171 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 31, l. 282–4). Tanner recorded a different version of Stalin’s flippancy (“You are sure to get 99 percent support”). Tanner, Winter War, 30.