Kuusinen — Terijoki, 1 December
, 58, is a Finnish communist who has lived in exile in the USSR since 1918, following the failure of the Finnish Red Revolution. A member of the Comintern Executive Committee since 1921, he is one of the very few Finnish cadres in the USSR to have survived Stalin's Great Purges of 1937-1938 — almost every other Finnish communist in the USSR was executed during that period.
On 30 November 1939 the invades Finland. Moscow must give the invasion a political veneer. On 1 December 1939 — thirty hours after operations begin — Pravda announces the formation of a "People's Government of Finland" headed by Kuusinen, based at Terijoki, the first Finnish village seized by the , fifty kilometres from Leningrad. A classic Soviet stratagem: manufacture a phoney local authority that retroactively "invites" the military intervention.
On 2 December the Terijoki government signs a treaty of friendship and mutual assistance with the USSR — text drafted in Moscow by Molotov. The programme: nationalisation of industry, redistribution of land, cession of the Karelian territories Moscow has been demanding.
Stalin reckons Finland beaten within three weeks. Kuusinen must decide on the political strategy that will turn the fiction into reality.
How should Moscow sustain the fiction of the Terijoki government?
Stalin begins with A — he believes in swift victory. But the military disaster of December 1939 - February 1940 forces him to switch to C. The Terijoki fiction becomes an embarrassment: no foreign government recognises it (only Soviet Mongolia and Tuva), the Finnish peasants of Karelia do not rise up, and the Soviets are losing tens of thousands of men. On 12 March 1940, when Moscow signs the Peace of Moscow with the Ryti government in Helsinki, the Terijoki government is dissolved that same day — it is mentioned in no clause of the treaty. Kuusinen returns to being a mere Comintern functionary, then heads the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (annexed in 1940, merged into the Russian SFSR in 1956). Politburo member 1957-1964 under Khrushchev. Died in Moscow in May 1964.
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