Stalin полностью

Meretskov’s revised battle plan, delivered on October 29, 1939, dutifully slashed the number of Soviet forces necessary, while calling for an attack at widely separated points across the entire 800-mile border—the wide-front approach of the Russian civil war, two decades earlier. Just 12 divisions would strike at an equal number of different points. Stalin chose not to have the Main Military Council discuss the new plan. He had Shaposhnikov sent on holiday to Sochi.¹³⁴

Thanks to Stalin’s shift of the economy to wartime production and his personal attention to military factories, the Soviet Union was armed to the teeth. In 1939, the armaments commissariat had been expanded into four, for armaments, ammunition, aircraft, and shipbuilding. The Finns, however, had built a series of defense belts, known as the Mannerheim Line (for their commander in chief), made up of reinforced concrete emplacements two stories high and topped by armor-plated roofs. Although many of the pillboxes and bunkers were too old to withstand modern shell fire, some were sturdy, and there were antitank traps, log barriers, ditches, and minefields. Beyond the line, primitive traps (boulders, barbed wire strung across sticks) were laid. The Finns also glued portraits of Stalin onto structures, making Red Army troops hesitate before firing. Above all, the line was complemented by marshy forest, countless lakes, and other natural obstacles, which constituted a key reason the war had been started in the dead of winter: the frozen watery wastes would presumably allow tanks and wheeled artillery to cross. But in such unsuitable terrain, Soviet mechanized units attempted a German-style war of maneuver.

Without sufficient room to maneuver its heavy forces or bring its superior firepower to bear, the Red Army saw entire divisions sliced to pieces (or frozen to death). Moreover, in trying to race ahead in simple frontal assaults without accompanying infantry, the Red Army exposed its tanks to ad hoc attacks by flammable liquids stuffed in bottles and ignited by hand-lit wicks, first used in the Spanish civil war and now christened “Molotov cocktails.” (“I never knew a tank could burn for quite that long,” remarked one Finn.) Furthermore, the north’s long winter darkness blunted the advantages of Soviet air power. Back on November 19, eleven days before launch, when Meretskov had toured the region to fix deployment problems, his staff car had become stuck in the deep snow, leading him to conclude that “it would be very difficult to conduct military operations in this region.”¹³⁵ The 1939–40 winter turned out to be especially cold: a site on the Karelian Isthmus recorded a record low of 45 degrees below zero (minus 43 Celsius).¹³⁶ The Red Army suffered from pervasive frostbite. Neither the climate nor the terrain should have been a surprise.

Finland showed tactical superiority. Dark silhouettes of Red Army soldiers stood out against the white snow, even if they had not lit fires to try to warm themselves, but the Finns adapted to the subarctic wilderness by donning camouflage whites, using mobile troops on skis, and carrying submachine guns to strike at the Soviet flanks or rear, in asymmetric warfare. The Finns called this tactic motti, meaning “firewood battle,” or “chopping the enemy off in bits.” Especially proficient Finnish snipers became known as “White Death.”¹³⁷ “The Finns have chosen a special combat tactic in the forests: they climb the pine trees, conceal themselves behind the branches, pull white sheets or camouflage garments over themselves, and become completely invisible,” Stalin privately marveled. “As our people approach, they get shot down point-blank from the trees.”¹³⁸ Even when the Finns yielded some territory, they carried off useful supplies and livestock. They also left behind eye-catching consumer goods—bicycles, gramophones, radios—which were booby-trapped.¹³⁹ Some Soviet commanders were observed giving orders to attack and then fleeing the battlefield. Complaints were overheard that, while soldiers got a measly 8 rubles per month, officials in the rear were paid 800 rubles—at safe desk jobs. Reports surfaced in Leningrad that returning soldiers were desperately selling army property.¹⁴⁰

In the censored Soviet public sphere, the information about the hostilities was miserly and distorted. Pravda found it necessary to issue denials that the Red Army was on the verge of defeat. At military hospitals in Leningrad, according to the NKVD, crowds surrounded wounded Red Army soldiers to learn what was really happening in the war.¹⁴¹

MISCALCULATION EXPOSED