Finnish war reparations to the Soviet Union

War reparations of Finland to the Soviet Union were originally worth US$300,000,000 at 1938 prices (equivalent to US$6.49 billion in 2023). Finland agreed to pay the reparations in the Moscow Armistice signed on 19 September 1944. The protocol to determine more precisely the war reparations to the Soviet Union was signed in December 1944, by the prime minister Juho Kusti Paasikivi and the chairman of the Allied Control Commission for controlling the Moscow Armistice in Helsinki, Andrei Zhdanov.

Finland was originally obliged to pay $300,000,000 in gold to be paid in the form of ships and machinery, over six years.^[1][2] The Soviet Union agreed to prolong the payment period from six to eight years in late 1945. In summer 1948 the sum was cut to $226,500,000 (equivalent to US$4.9 billion in 2023). The last dispatched train of the deliveries paying the war reparations crossed the border between Finland and the Soviet Union on 18 September 1952, in Vainikkala railway border station. Approximately 340,000 railroad carloads were needed to deliver all reparations.^[3]

The authority responsible for deliveries, and also organising production agreements with the manufacturers according to the protocols, was Sotakorvausteollisuuden valtuuskunta, the delegation of the war reparations industry. The preliminary committee was established on 9 October 1944. It was chaired by the industrialist Walter Gräsbeck [fi], with Jaakko Rautanen as secretary, and Gunnar Jaatinen [fi], Juho Jännes, Johan Nykopp, Arno Solin [fi], and Wilhelm Wahlforss as members.