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The Spirit of the Winter War (Finnish: Talvisodan henki, Swedish: Vinterkrigets anda) is the national unity that had been credited with having saved Finland from disintegrating along class and ideological lines under the invasion of the Soviet Union during the Winter War from November 30, 1939, to March 13, 1940.
The Spirit of the Winter War is significant because it demonstrated that Finnish society had partially healed after the Finnish Civil War of 1918, one of the bloodiest civil wars in European history. Legislation and the democratic political process helped to decrease the gaps in income and other aspects between different classes of society. In the 1920s and the 1930s, the Social Democrats had participated in several governments, including the one in power in November 1939.
After the Winter War began, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin established a puppet regime in Terijoki in hopes that Finnish workers would join and assist the Soviet invasion and its puppet government. However, the Terijoki Government, led by a communist leader of the civil war, Otto Wille Kuusinen, received no sympathy from the Finnish labour movement. Instead, the Finnish people rallied to defend their homeland against invasion, regardless of political affiliation.