page_title: Finland–Russia border
section_title: Finland-Soviet Russia border
hierarchical_section_title: Finland–Russia border / History / Finland-Soviet Russia border
context_page_description: The Finnish–Russian border is the roughly north/south international border between the Republic of Finland and the Russian Federation. Some 1,340 km long, it runs mostly through uninhabited taiga forests and sparsely populated rural areas, not following any particular natural feature or river. It is also part of the external border of both the political and economic union; European Union and the loose confederation;
  Commonwealth of Independent States.
  Border crossings are controlled and patrolled by the Finnish Border Guard and the Border Guard Service of Russia, who also enforce border zones. Entry to a border zone requires a permit. The electronic surveillance on the Finnish side is concentrated most heavily on the "southernmost 200 kilometers" and is constantly growing in sophistication. The Finnish Border Guard conducts "regularly irregular" dog patrols to catch anyone venturing into the border zone. Russia maintains its 500-year-old border patrol in the Arctic region as elsewhere, and plans to upgrade Soviet Union-era border technologies to both save on cost and to fully maximize the efficiency of the Border Service by the year 2020.
context_section_description: After Finland became independent in 1917, there was the Finnish Civil War in 1918, and even after this war, the Russian Civil War continued. Finnish activists often crossed the border into Soviet territory in order to fight in the "heimosodat", wars aiming at Finnish ethnic self-determination and possible annexation into Finland. However, this came to an end in 1920, when the Russian/Finnish Treaty of Tartu in 1920 defined Finland as independent and demarcated the countries' common border. However, Finnish fighters would still take part in the East Karelian uprising and Soviet–Finnish conflict of 1921–22. Finally, the Finnish government closed the border from the volunteers and food and munitions shipments in 1922.
caption: Treaty of Tartu in 1920: Repola and Porajärvi, occupied by the Finnish government, were returned to the Soviet Union, while Petsamo was gained by Finland.
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