The aftermath of the Winter War covers the historical events and views following the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union from 30 November 1939 to 13 March 1940.
The short period between the Winter War and the Continuation War of 1941-1944, where hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union resumed, is known as the Interim Peace.
Post-war
Effects in Finland
The 105-day war had a profound and depressing effect in Finland. Useful international support was minimal, arrived late, and the German blockade prevented most armament shipments. The state of the Finnish Army on the Karelian Isthmus at the end of the war has been the subject of debate. Orders were already given to prepare a retreat to the next line of defence in the Taipale sector. Estimates of how long the enemy could have been held in these kinds of retreat-and-stand operations varied from a few days to a couple of months, most averaging around a few weeks. During the Interim Peace, Karelian local governments, parishes and provincial organizations established Karjalan Liitto, an interest group, in order to defend the rights and interests of Karelian evacuees and to find a solution for returning Karelia.
Soviet views
During the period between the war and the perestroika in late 1980s, Soviet historiography leaned solely on the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov's comments on the Winter War. In his radio speech of 29 November 1939, Molotov argued that the Soviet Union had been trying for two months to negotiate guarantees for the security for Leningrad. However, the Finns had taken a hostile stance in order to "please foreign imperialists". The Finns had undertaken military provocation and the Soviets could no longer honor nonaggression pacts. According to Molotov, Soviets did not want to occupy or annex Finland; the goal was purely to secure Leningrad.
Another source, later used widely in Soviet historiography, was the speech of Molotov to the Supreme Soviet on 29 March 1940. Molotov blamed western countries for instigating the war and argued that they had used Finland as a proxy to fight against the Soviet Union. The Allies had furthermore tried to persuade Sweden and Norway to join the conflict. The main "antagonists" in Soviet eyes were the United Kingdom and France, but also Sweden, the United States, and Italy, which had issued massive amounts of materials, money, and manpower to Finland. According to Molotov, the Soviet Union was merciful in peace terms, as the problem of Leningrad's security had been solved.
It has been speculated that Stalin had practically wiped out his intelligence apparatus during the purges, thus damaging the effectiveness of spies in Finland and other countries, as well as cowing operatives into telling Stalin what he wanted to hear Thus, he was not aware of the real situation in Finland and amongst the Allies. Soviet intelligence sources had reported on Allied plans to intervene in the war, but not on the actual unpreparedness of the Allies. Therefore, the Soviets felt forced to seek a premature end to the war before possible Allied intervention and declaration of war on the Soviet Union.
In 1948, Stalin wrote in Falsifiers of History that "there could hardly be any doubt that the leading circles of Finland were in league with the Hitlerites and that they wanted to turn Finland into a springboard for Hitler Germany's attack on the U.S.S.R." Regarding the beginning of the war, Stalin wrote, "In the war which the Finnish reactionaries started against the Soviet Union, Britain and France rendered the Finnish militarists every kind of assistance. The Anglo-French ruling circles kept inciting the Finnish Government to continue hostilities."
Nikita Khrushchev, who had been a party leader during the war, reminisced later on: "In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."
In 1994, the President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, denounced the Winter War, conceding that it was a war of aggression.