ABSTRACT
Stalin’s outburst to Meretskov in late December 1939, that a prolonged war with Finland would provoke foreign intervention, was not unfounded. The British and French governments had convened a meeting of the Supreme War Council a few days after the Soviet Union’s expulsion from the League of Nations to discuss the strategic situation in Scandinavia and the Baltic region and, in the first instance, to ask Sweden and Norway to give direct military assistance to Finland.1 The Swedish and Norwegian governments were anxious to maintain their neutrality and declined the Supreme War Council’s proposal, but the significance of this proposal was not lost on the Soviet high command. Stalin and the Main Military Soviet decided that the war with Finland had to be brought to an acceptable conclusion as quickly as possible. Molotov began making arrangements at the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to establish diplomatic contact with the Finnish government in Helsinki via Stockholm while Timoshenko re-armed and re-trained the troops of the North-Western Front for a new offensive on the Karelian Isthmus.
