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The forthcoming Indian Tamil feature film is Porkkalam.
Porkkalanniemi has rocky costline
Porkkala () is a peninsula in the
Gulf of Finland located at
Kirkkonummi (Kyrkslätt) in Southern
Finland.
The peninsula had great strategic value, as
coastal artillery based there would be able to reach more than halfway across the
Gulf of Finland. If the same power would also control the
Estonian coast, on the opposite side of the gulf, it would then be able to block naval access from
Saint Petersburg to the
Baltic Sea. Porkkala is furthermore located only 30 kilometers from
Helsinki, the Finnish capital, and a foreign power based there would be able to exert significant pressure on the
Finnish government.
Nowadays the coasts of the peninsula are popular
bird watching areas during spring migration as the Arctic
geese and other
waterfowl are on their passage.
History
During the
Cold War the
Soviet Union secured the
rights of lease to a naval base at Porkkala, in accordance with the
Moscow armistice agreement that ended the
Continuation War, between Finland and the Soviets on September 19, 1944. Porkkala thus replaced the peninsula of
Hanko, which had been leased to the Soviets as a naval base in 1940-41. A large area centered on the peninsula, including land from the municipalities of
Kirkkonummi,
Siuntio and
Ingå and almost the entire area of
Degerby, was leased to the USSR from 10 February 1947.
The Soviet military occupied the Porkkala peninsular on 29 September 1944, ten days after the armistice.
It was immediately placed under a military commander, Neon Vasilyevich Antonov (b. 1907 - d. 1948), who remained in office till June 1945, when he was transferred to command the
Amur River flotilla, in preparation to the
war against Japan.
No Soviet civilian administration was set up, the USSR simply administered it through the military commander of Porkkala, a post held (from an unclear date) until 1 January 1956 to
Sergey Ivanovich Kabanov (b. 1901 - d. 1973), the former Commander of Hanko naval base.
While the area was under Soviet occupation, Finnish passenger trains running between Helsinki and
Turku were still allowed to cross the area, but with windows closed by shutters, and photography prohibited.
Although the Soviet lease for Porkkala had been conceded for 50 years, agreement was reached to return it earlier (negotiations ended during autumn 1955). Control was handed back to Finland in January 1956. This may be attributed to the process of
Finlandization and to technological progress making coastal artillery obsolete, but the renunciation of
Stalinism by the Soviet Union under
Nikita Khrushchev, and the fact that
Finland had undertaken to adopt neutrality and so remain out of
NATO, were also important contributing factors.
At present, the Porkkala area has one of the main
bases of the
Finnish Navy, located in Upinniemi near to Porkkala proper.