The winter war in the French press

In the 1930s, Finland was not a subject of great interest for French readers. The sharp rise in publications focused on the country was due to the Soviet-Finnish territorial conflict during the autumn and winter of 1939-1940, commonly referred to as the Winter War, though in France the war was not commonly referred to as such until the 1950s. Nevertheless, since October 1939, Finnish relations with the USSR were consistently covered in French periodicals. This article, based on sources from the National Library of France’s electronic resource Retro-news.fr, aims to examine the main trends in French press coverage of the Soviet-Finnish conflict. Two diagrams in the paper illustrate the varying frequency of mentions of key geographical locations and individuals related to events in Northern Europe in both Parisian and regional periodicals. The article analyzes the methods and approaches used in reporting the different stages of the conflict, the positions of the opposing sides, and the international perception of political statements and events. Despite France being engaged in war with Nazi Germany at the time of the Winter War (though not occupied by German forces yet), and its mass media remaining diverse and politically free, the French periodicals displayed a unanimous pro-Finnish and anti-Soviet stance when assessing the Soviet-Finnish conflict.