Prioritization of Soviet-Finnish negotiations of 1938-1939.

This article examines the complex of Soviet-Finnish negotiations through the lens of the issue of priority of Soviet demands in the period of the autumn negotiations of 1939. The negotiation process between the USSR and Finland, concerning the relations between the two states against the background of Germany's aggressive policy, began not in the fall of 1939, but a year and a half earlier - in the spring of 1938. The points of the Soviet demands voiced by the Soviet side during the negotiation process were changed and adjusted. Moreover, in comparison with the Soviet proposals of 1938, there were new points that had not appeared before. The study of the reasons for the changing rhetoric in the negotiation process between the USSR and Finland will help to understand the nature of the breakdown of the negotiations in the fall of 1939. The problem of the article is the question of the correctness or incorrectness of the thesis about the priority of the goal of moving the land border on the Karelian Isthmus away from Leningrad during the negotiations between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1938-1939. This thesis has not been questioned in domestic historiography, apparently because only the Soviet demands of 1939 were taken as a basis and less importance was attached to the proposals put forward by the Soviet side during the negotiations of 1938 and the spring of 1939. The confirmation or refutation of the thesis about the priority of the clause in the text of the memorandum on the movement of the land frontier on the Karelian Isthmus should be the outcome of this study.