La città di Viipuri qualche tempo dopo essere stata liberata dal dominio sovietico dalle forze finlandesi, nel 1941

Viipuri is the age-old trading center of Finnish Karelians and used to be the cultural center, capital and most populous city of Finnish Karelia. Even though it’s been under the rule of many different nations, its inhabitants had always been Finns – until WW2.

As a result of Soviet aggression and the Winter War, the city was forcibly ceded to the USSR in 1940 and all of its 75 000 inhabitants had to be evacuated. Losing the city was an absurd concept at the time, as it hadn’t been included in any earlier Soviet demands, was the second biggest city of Finland, and the Red Army never even conquered it.

Viipuri was one of the cities damaged the most during the Winter War. After being annexed by the USSR, it became part of the newly formed Karelo-Finnish SSR. All of the original Finnish inhabitants were evacuated, so Soviet peoples from the inlands moved in instead.

During the Continuation War, the city was liberated by the Finnish Army in 1941 and the Finns quickly restorated the city to a livable condition. Many of the evacuees moved back in, and all of the areas ceded to the USSR were annexed by Finland on 6.12.1941.

Though, in 1944, with the ‘Vyborg-Petrozavodsk-offensive’, the Red army pushed Finnish forces back. Viipuri was completely evacuated and this time the Red Army occupied the city, without battle. With the Moscow Armistice, the city was again ceded to the USSR. The oblast of Leningrad had been requesting the K-FSSR for land in the Finnish-ceded areas, and the whole Karelian Isthmus, with Viipuri, became part of the oblast in 1944.

In 1943, to get Finland to agree to a peace more easily, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had proposed to Stalin that Viipuri be left to Finland. However, Stalin was stubborn, demanded that the city would stay in Soviet hands, and refused to even discuss the matter.

Since then, Viipuri has been part of the USSR/Russia. It retains some of its Finnish aspects and looks like a Finnish city, but is Russificated and in a bad condition. In 2010, it was granted the status of “City of Military Glory” by president Medvedev. Recently the city has been used as a subject in Russian propaganda against the Finns.

Surprisingly still intact in this picture.