Russia at war 1941-1945

September 14 and the Armistice was signed on the 19th. The chief Soviet negotiator was Zhdanov, who soon afterwards became head of the Allied Control Commission in

Helsinki. The 300 million dollars-worth of reparations in kind—the hardest of the

armistice terms—were spread out over six years., later to be extended to eight years; the 1940 frontier was restored; the Russians renounced their claim on Hangö but, instead, leased the territory of Porkkala Udd, only a few miles from Helsinki, as a military base

[The Russians renounced this some years after the war], and the Petsamo area, with its nickel mines and its outlet to the Arctic, "voluntarily" surrendered to Finland in 1920, was now returned to the Soviet Union. The loss of Karelia and Petsamo implied the

repatriation to Finland of some 400,000 people who did not want to stay under Soviet rale and the loss of substantial timber and hydroelectric resources. The agreement not to occupy Finland with Russian troops was a gesture of goodwill to the Finns themselves and a gesture of reassurance to the Scandinavian countries generally.

When Zhdanov, who had stood at the head of the defence of Leningrad, went to Helsinki, he conferred politely for two hours with "fascist Beast" Mannerheim, the object of so many vicious Russian cartoons; and in October Stalin sent a friendly message to the

Finnish-Soviet Friendship Society in Helsinki, whose president was none other than that conservative but ultra-realist new Premier, Paasikivi himself.

In the end, the Finns did not do much to "disarm" the Germans, and there does not appear to have been any actual fighting between Finns and Germans. What in fact happened was that the Germans withdrew from most of northern Finland of their own free will, after burning down all the towns and villages (to be later rebuilt with UNRRA help). What

fighting there was was done by Russian troops under Marshal Meretskov who broke

through the strong German lines west of Murmansk, and then captured Petsamo and

Kirkenes [The German air base whose main purpose had been to smash the

convoys from England to Murmansk and Archangel], the latter inside Norway.

Everything in northern Norway was burned down by the Germans who then withdrew by

sea. The rest of Norway remained under their occupation till May 1945. But the fact that even a small part of Norway was liberated by the Red Army continued to be of some

sentimental value in Soviet-Norwegian relations for some years after the war.

The story of Bulgaria can be told very briefly. Although Britain and the United States were at war with Bulgaria, the Soviet Union was not, and there was a Bulgarian Minister in Moscow (or Kuibyshev) throughout the war. The Germans had used Bulgaria as a

source of raw materials and as a military and naval base, but the Russians, making

allowances for the widespread pro-Russian sentiment in Bulgaria and the weakness of its government, had shown considerable tolerance to that country for a long time, even

despite serious provocations—for instance when the Germans freely used Bulgarian ports during their evacuation of the Crimea. But by August 1944, the situation had changed.

When the Red Army overran Rumania, several armed German ships escaped from there

to Bulgarian ports, and were not interned. These ports were also alleged to harbour

German submarines.

On August 26, Draganov, the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, made a "neutrality" declaration and promised that any German soldiers in Bulgaria would be disarmed if they refused to withdraw from the country.

The Russians did not think this good enough and declared war on Bulgaria on September 5. Three days later Tolbukhin's troops invaded Bulgaria. They met with no resistance, and were received with enthusiasm. On the following day as a result of an anti-German insurrection in Sofia, Kimon Georgiev's "Fatherland Front" Government was formed and declared war on Germany. The bloodless Two Days' War was over. Messages of

brotherly affection were sent by the Bulgarian Government to Tito, and a Bulgarian

Army was getting ready to fight the Germans. The "revolutionary enthusiasm" in Bulgaria was much deeper and more general than in Rumania.

Before many weeks had passed, the Russian press noted with satisfaction that all over Bulgaria People's Courts had been set up to try war criminals, and that the Bulgarian Army was being purged of all its "Fascist elements".

The Armistice between the Allies and Bulgaria was signed in Moscow on October 28.

[One of the Bulgarian signatories was N. Petkov, the Agrarian leader, who was to be tried and shot soon after the war as a Western "agent".]

Bulgaria, like Rumania, had entered the Soviet "sphere of influence".

The link-up between the Red Army and Tito's Yugoslavs took place at the end of

September. On the 29th a TASS communiqué announced that, in order to be able to

attack the Germans and Hungarians in Hungary from the south, the Russians had asked