Karelo-Finnish SSR

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Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic
Karjalais-Suomalainen
Sosialistinen Neuvostotasavalta

1940 — 1956


(In Detail)	(In Detail)

State motto:
Finnish: Kaikkien maiden proletaarit, liittykää yhteen!
Translation: Workers of the world, unite!

Capital

Petrozavodsk

Official language

Finnish and Russian

Established
In the USSR:
- Since
- Until

March 31, 1940

March 31, 1940
July 16, 1956

Area
- Total
- Water (%)

Ranked 7th in the USSR
172,400 km²
25%

Population
- Total
- Density

Ranked 16th in the USSR
651,300 (1959)
3.8/km²

Currency

ruble (rupla)

Time zone

UTC + 3

Anthem

Anthem of Karelo-Finnish SSR

The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (Karelo-Finnish S.S.R., Finnish Karjalais-Suomalainen sosialistinen neuvostotasavalta, Russian Карело-Финская Советская Социалистическая Республика or Karelo-Finskaya Sovietskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika) was a republic of the Soviet Union that existed between 1940 and 1956.

[edit] History

The attack by the Soviet Union on Finland and the ensuing Winter War ended less successfully than the Soviet side had expected. The preparations for setting up a communist-controlled administration for Finland would also have been in vain if it was not for the separation of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from the Russian SFSR. The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic, which was set up on March 31, 1940 by merging the KASSR with the Finnish Democratic Republic which had been created in territory captured from Finland during the Winter War. The new republic was to serve as a reminder for the Finns that the Soviet Union had not renounced its claims on Finland. In the ensuing Continuation War, the territory was occupied by Finland more or less from July 1941 until July 1944, and in the following peace Finland was able to defend its independence. On July 16, 1956, the republic was incorporated into the Russian SFSR as the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. It became the Republic of Karelia, a subdivision of the Russian Federation, on November 13, 1991.

Karelians and Finns were always a minority of around 10% in the republic - at the time, the only Soviet Republic whose titular nation was a minority in its own republic; a Russian joke told that there were only two Finns in Karelia - Finkelstein and Fininspektor - which, on a closer look, were proven to be only one: the Jewish Finance inspector Finkelstein

[edit] Politics

The chairman of the Karelo-Finnish Supreme Soviet (1940-1956) was Finnish communist Otto Ville Kuusinen. In Finland, which had suffered hard from the civil war in 1918 between the White Guard and Red (socialist) "Worker Protection Guards", Kuusinen came to be hated even by the socialist side.^{[citation needed]} In the republic there was also a separate Karelo-Finnish Communist Party led in the 1940s by G.N. Kupriyanov.