The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was established by the Soviet government on 31 March 1940 by merging the
KASSR with the
Finnish Democratic Republic. The latter was created in territory ceded by
Finland in the
Winter War by the
Moscow Peace Treaty, namely the
Karelian Isthmus and
Ladoga Karelia, including the cities of
Viipuri and
Sortavala. Virtually the entire Karelian population of the ceded areas, about 422,000 people,
was evacuated to
Finland, and the territories were settled by peoples from other parts of the
Soviet Union. Creating a new
Republic of the Union for an ethnic group that was not large in absolute terms, nor constituted anything close to a majority in its territory, nor had been a separate independent nation before its incorporation into the USSR, was unprecedented in the
history of the USSR. Some later historians believe that the elevation of Soviet Karelia from an
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (within the
RSFSR) to an SSR was a political move as a "convenient means for facilitating the possible incorporation of additional Finnish territory" (or, possibly, the whole of Finland) into the USSR. In 1941, during the
Continuation War, Finland retook the territory that it had lost in 1940 after the
Winter War and
occupied most of the Karelian lands that had been within the USSR before 1940, including the capital
Petrozavodsk (Petroskoi). In 1944, the Soviet Union recaptured the area. Soviet sovereignty was recognized by Finland in the
Moscow Armistice and
Paris Peace Treaty. The Finnish Karelians were evacuated to Finland again. In September 1944, the
Karelian Isthmus with
Vyborg (Viipuri) was transferred from the Karelo-Finnish SSR to the
Leningrad Oblast of the RSFSR, but
Ladoga Karelia remained a part of the republic. On 16 July 1956, the republic was incorporated into the Russian SFSR as the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. This move can perhaps be explained in the context of the general post-war
improvement of Finno-Soviet relations, which also included such steps as the Soviets' return of the
Porkkala Naval Base leased territory to full Finnish sovereignty (January 1956), and leasing
Maly Vysotsky Island and the Soviet section of the
Saimaa Canal (conquered by the USSR in 1940 and 1944) back to Finland (1963). The abolition of the Karelian SSR in 1956 was the only case in the history of the USSR (1922–1991) of merging a
member republic of the USSR into another republic. The
state emblem of the Soviet Union had to be changed to reflect this, with one of the 16 ribbons symbolizing constituent republics (that in the Finnish language) removed. Soviet banknotes bearing the emblem were also changed accordingly. In the last days of the USSR, the Karelian ASSR became the
Republic of Karelia, a
subdivision of the
Russian Federation, on 13 November 1991. ==Politics==