ABSTRACT
After World War Two, most of Central Europe found itself within the Soviet bloc. Furthermore, although the terms of the secret German-Soviet Pact of August 23, 1939 were declared null and void in relation to Germany, these terms were tacitly accepted in the context of the postwar Soviet Union. As a result, the Kremlin retained its 1939–1940 territorial gains west of the interwar Soviet western frontier, namely, the interwar nation-states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were made into Soviet Socialist Republics; eastern Poland incorporated into Soviet Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine; and Romania’s Bessarabia made into a Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, drawing on the tradition of the interwar Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Finland successfully withstood the Soviet attack in the course of the Winter War of 1939–1940. But after 1945 Helsinki had to pay a price for this success and wartime alliance with Germany. Independent “capitalist” Finland had to remain neutral, distance itself from NATO and the European Economic Communities, and time and again prove its unwavering loyalty to the Kremlin by subsidizing the faltering Soviet economy with exports of selected Finnish products at discount prices or through barter.
