ABSTRACT
On 20 March 1940, representatives from the Soviet and Finnish governments convened at the Kremlin for a final time to formally conclude a war which had never been formally declared. A few days later the Kremlin played host to another official occasion, the plenum of the Central Committee VKP (b), held to confirm the creation of the Karelian-Finnish Union Republic under the presidency of Otto Kuusinen and to take stock of the Soviet Union’s security policy in the wake of the recent war.1
