ABSTRACT
For the people of Helsinki, Thursday, November 30, 1939, began quite normally. In Helsinki, as well as Viipuri, Hanko, Kotka, and other cities where bombs fell, the Finnish anti-aircraft batteries went into action. The Finns climbed above the cloud layer into sunshine at 5,000 feet but there was no sign of the enemy. As machine guns strafed the city streets, the Finnish government moved its headquarters from the parliament building in Helsinki to a more protected area in the outskirts. Meanwhile from "somewhere in Finland," an unknown radio station announced that the Finnish Communist Party had set up a "democratic government of Finland" with Comrade Otto Kuusinen at its head. In reality, Terijoki, a beach resort on the Gulf of Finland a few miles from the Soviet-Finnish border, had been abandoned by the frontier guards without a fight. The reaction of the Finns was the complete opposite of what the Soviets had hoped.
