Soviet pilots fight against Finnish airplanes misleadingly marked with Civic Guard sleeve badges. The actual insignia, swastika, used since 1918 in Finnish military airplanes, could not be used because it had easily been confused with that of Germany, then the contractual partner of the Soviet Union. Cover page of the book: "Heroes of the Finnish campaign". The Krasnaja Zvezda Publishing House, Moscow, 1940. Drawn by Dolgorukov.

Pravda Nr. , Nov 26, 1939: A Buffoon holding the post of Prime Minister
Krasnaya Zvezda on Dec. 2, 1939: "For a close friendship with the Finnish people." Original article in Russian.
People's Power (Kansan valta) Nr. 4, Dec 7, 1939: Soviet airplanes over Viipuri
People's Power (Kansan valta) Nr. 10, Dec 15, 1939: Soviet pilots — Eagles of liberty
Russian radiopropaganda on frontline: "Ryti, Prime Minister of so-called government, is a merchant of death pocketing from the war. He has transferred his riches abroad while pushing Finland into an abyss but ready to flee himself." (Russian microfilms in the Finnish National Archives)
People's Power (Kansan valta) Nr. 6, Jan 17, 1940: A living corpse [League of Nations]
Three "minor" news in the English language Moscow newspaper Moscow News, January 22, 1940: Regrets for accidentally flying over Sweden and Norway; Helsinki was never and will never be bombed by Soviet Air Forces; dismissing false German news about the intentions of Soviet Government on Petsamo. The full page
People's Power (Kansan valta) Nr. 24, Feb 23, 1940: The People's Government of Finland greets the Red Army
Prinimai nas, Suomi — krasavitsa. Receive us, Suomi [Finland] — the beauty. Presented by a Red Army ensemble in 1939. YouTube (Russian soldiers advancing, song with Finnish subtitles). Heninen, MP3
For Freedom of the People of Finland. Four poems from the collection For the Glory of Motherland. Poems and songs of the Red Army and the Navy. State Publishing House "Artistic Literature", Leningrad, 1940)

Newspaper Narodnaya Armiya (Army of the People, i.e. of Finland). The "Army" was created as a flank of the Red Army to liberate Finland from the yoke of her bourgeois government. Issue of Feb. 14, 1940. Two pages in Russian (front page, page 2). Translation of the communiqué about the new Soviet economic treaty with the National Socialist Germany published in the newspaper's page 2.

The article about the Swedish aid to Finland in Krasnaya Zvezda, the Central Organ of the People's Commissariat for Defence of the USSR on 26th of February, 1940. Translations (original, Finnish p.3, English p.5)
Krasnaya Zvezda/Kansan valta 1.3.1940. O.W. Kuusinen: Mannerheim Supporters' Gambling Doomed to Crash. (In Russian p.1, in Finnish p.3, in English p.5)


People's Power (Kansan valta).
Publisher: the "Democratic Government of Finland", headed by Otto-Wille Kuusinen.
17 issues from the Winter War times 1939-1940 (pdf, in Finnish, 35 MB).

Soviet-Russian view of the reasons of the Winter War and establishment of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic. Pages 33-47 from The Saga of the Karelo-Finnish Republic by I. Sergeyev, Workers Library Publishers, Inc. New York, January, 1941.
Soviet Viipuri, an article celebrating the conquest of the city of Viipuri in the Winter War in the 1st year anniversary publication of the Karelo-Finnish SSR. In English.

Russian emigré newspapers: An article "Stalin's Finnish mistake" (in Russian) written by Erich Wollenberg and published in Paris on January 20, 1940, in the emigré newspaper "Novaia Rossiia" (chief editor A.F. Kerensky). Wollenberg was a German Reichswehr officer, who after WWI joined the Communist Party in Germany, acting, also, temporarily as the supreme commander of the short lived Bavarian Soviet republic, moved to Soviet Russia in 1924, drifted there in opposition to Stalin and fled the Soviet Union in 1934. He fled from Paris to Casablanca in 1940. His attempts to get a US visa from there is considered as having served a sort of a loose background story to the film Casablanca (1942). Pieces of Wollenberg's article published with a commentary in the Finnish magazine "Koti ja Isänmaa" (Home and Fatherland) n:o 1, February 28, 1940.

Finnish (in English)

Civilian targets bombed in the center of Helsinki, on November 30,1939, first day of the war. A combined news reel footage (flv, 12 MB) superimposed with live contemporary radio commentary by the Finnish Broadcasting Company on the very site of one of the major bomp hits. Subtitles in English.
Week in Pictures in Finland (the magazine Suomen Kuvalehti) N:o 50, Dec. 1939: Marks of Soviet air raid destruction in Helsinki
Finnish Foreign Ministry publication of documents of the prelude of the Winter War, 1940.
Newspaper Uusi Suomi, N:o 15, Jan. 17, 1940: Huge number of booty on battlegrounds at Suomussalmi
Eye-witness report by a visitor in Leningrad published in the Finnish evening newspaper Ilta-Sanomat on January 20, 1940. In English.
Newsreel nr 1 of Finnish Defense Forces: War booty on Raate dirt road and at Suomussalmi village, duration 13:27, 30 January 1940 (KAVI). Synopsis in English.
Newspaper Uusi Suomi , N:o 31, Feb. 2, 1940: Columnist Timo: Against flying devils.

Swedish, Norwegian (with English translation)

Norwegian newspaper Bergens Arbeiderblad reports about Russian air attacks against refugees close to Norwegian border in Petsamo, December 1, 1939
War on Nordic coasts, the leading article of Ny Dag, Swedish Communist newspaper, on April 9, 1940
Swedish Communist newspaper Ny Dag publishes Soviet government explanation - as told in Izvestiya - for reasons, why Germany had to invade Denmark and Norway, April 12, 1940.

British

The Times news comment on Swedish reactions, November 29, 1939
The Times leading article, December 11, 1939: Finland at Geneva.
The Times leading article on Soviet comments about expulsion of the USSR from the League of Nations, December 18, 1939: Strange jargon in which "provocation" meant the resolution of a small people to defend its borders.
The British press followed intensively and with sympathy the Finnish fight against the attacking Red Army. The article "Finland's Heroic Resistance Surprises the World" in The War Illustrated magazine, 23 Dec. 1939, was one of them (http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/TWI/ )
The Labour Party. February, 1940: Finland. The Criminal Conspiracy of Stalin and Hitler. (pdf)
British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax on BBC (Finnish language transmission), on March 24, 1940: The bravery shown by the Finnish people will be rewarded in the future.

American

Former president Herbert Hoover appeals to the American people for material help to Finland. Subtitles in Finnish. (YouTube 5:40, the last 2 minutes).
Life Magazine's evalution of the Soviet demands on Finland and the Baltic states. October 30, 1939.
Russian ex-PM Kerensky living in the U.S. comments in The New York Times, on 4 Dec. 1939, the Soviet attack on Finland.
American Legation building in downtown Helsinki and the residence of the American Minister to Finland H. F. Arthur Schoenfeld somewhat outside Helsinki were bombed by Russian airplanes (New York Times, Jan-Feb. 1940)

German (in German)

Wintertage in Helsinki (Winterdays in Helsinki). Revaler Zeitung, Tallinn, 30 December 1942. (Ukraine State Archives. Rosenberg Collection)

Trinidad & Tobago

Trinidadian musician Raymond Quevedo, "Atilla the Hun", recorded on Feb. 3, 1940, a calypso with the name Finland. The song begins, "Dictators are ungenerous/Their actions highly advantegeous/By air and sea and land/That's how Red Russia invades Finland .."

Back to the Winter War

Finland in the Great Power politics, 1939-1940.

Finland in the Soviet foreign policy, 1939-1940. Material from the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union and other sources.