ISBN 0-7146-5203-2
301 pages

Acknowledgements; Preface by D. Glantz; Foreword by A.O. Chubaryan; Introduction by H. Shukman; photos; maps; Index

Appendix: List and Biographies of Participants

   Frank Cass has added to its impressive series "On the Soviet (Russian) Study of War" with this new publication about the Winter War of 1939-1940. The original text for this volume came from a transcript of a high-level military conference—"Meeting of Command Personnel at the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) for the Collection of Experiences in the Military Operations against Finland"—conducted in Moscow in April 1940. The transcript was first edited in Russian by E.N. Kulkov and O.A. Rzheshevsky for the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, then translated into English by Tatyana Sokokina, and finally edited by Harold Shukman for the Cass edition.
   Despite multiple layers of editing and translating, Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War offers a mostly verbatim account of four days of mostly frank presentations and discussions by the men who commanded Soviet forces in the Winter War. This record provides a remarkable window into how the Soviets fought that war, what lessons they learned from it, and how they planned to use their new knowledge in future campaigns.
   While the conference itself takes up almost the entire book, David Glantz, A.O. Chubaryan, and Harold Shukman offer, respectively, a Preface, Foreword, and Introduction. Of these, Shukman's Introduction is the lengthiest (at eight pages) and serves best to place the conference in context. For example, although the text is more or less a word-for-word record of the meeting, and the meeting is said to have been a remarkably open exchange of views, Shukman sets the scene and reminds the reader how much was necessarily left unsaid.

   The most brilliant of the survivors of the old school, Marshal Shaposhnikov, was less sanguine. While Stalin and Voroshilov believed that at worst the war might last a few days, Shaposhnikov—who was absent from Moscow when Stalin and Voroshilov took the decision to launch the campaign against Finland—feared it could go on for months, and was rebuked by Stalin for underestimating the strength of the Red Army and exaggerating that of the Finnish Army.
   Commanders at the Kremlin meeting repeatedly refer to the fact that they had not been aware of the strength of Finland's defences, or of much else about Finland's fighting capacity. Many blamed the culture of secretiveness that had kept this information from those to whom it would have been of most value. With breathtaking hypocrisy, their complaints were echoed by Stalin himself, the architect and chief exponent of that culture. Nor had Soviet commanders been given access to Western journals, from which they could have learnt about the latest thinking on modern warfare. And in the wake of the purges the very idea of foreign travel and visits to study the practices of other armies was properly regarded as the kiss of death.
   By blaming the allegedly poor performance of military intelligence, Stalin and the campaign commanders engaged in a conspiracy to deflect criticism from themselves and, above all, the political leadership, personified by Stalin and Voroshilov. The General Staff's chief of intelligence himself, Proskurov, was the only participant at the meeting to stand up and attempt to expose the fraud, and would soon pay for his lack of tact with his life. In Session 6, he points out that everything had in fact been known about the disposition and strength of the Finnish defences, and had been circulated to the relevant commands. His assistant, V. Novobranets—in memoirs that were not published until 1990, six years after his death in 1984—claimed (without documentary proof ) that all the facts of Finnish preparations had been compiled in a 'black album', containing detailed photographs, copies of which had been distributed to all Red Army commanders in Karelia. It is therefore clear that Stalin and Voroshilov assumed that, all the contrary evidence not withstanding, the Red Army would succeed as easily against the Finns as it had against the Poles; and also that the Kremlin meeting had the dual purpose of both exposing the shortcomings of the armed forces, and of laying much of the blame for their failure on the intelligence services.

   Following the Preface, Foreword, and Introduction, the transcript of the meeting is divided into seven chapters, one for each session. Here are the chapters and the main speakers in each:

1. First Session, 14 April 1940, Evening [Khrenov; Kirponos; Oborin; Parsegov; Pshennikov; Rosly; Semenov; Sinitsyn; Stalin; Voroshilov]

2. Second Session, 15 April 1940, Morning [Alabushev; Bychevsky; Chernyak; Klich; Kozlov; Kryukov; Kulik; Lelyushenko; Meretskov; Mukhin; Nedvigin; Novoselsky; Stalin; Voroshilov]

3. Third Session, 15 April 1940, Evening [Batov; Chuikov; Frolov; Gorelenko; Kravchenko; Kulik; Mekhlis; Muravyov; Stalin; Vasiliev]

4. Fourth Session, 16 April 1940, Morning [Kopets; Kulik; Kurdyumov; Mekhlis; Meretskov; Mladentsev; Molotov; Ptukhin; Shevchenko; Shtern; Stalin]

5. Fifth Session, 16 April 1940, Evening [Khrulev; Kulik; Mekhlis; Meretskov; Rychagov; Shaposhnikov; Shchadenko; Shtern; Stalin; Vashugin; Zhdanov]

6. Sixth Session, 17 April 1940, Morning [Ermakov; Kovalev; Kulik; Kurdyumov; Mekhlis; Meretskov; Proskurov; Shaposhnikov; Stalin; Vashugin]

7. Seventh Session, 17 April 1940, Evening [Grendal; Kulik; Kuznetsov; Mamsurov; MeLhlis; Meretskov; Molotov; Pavlov; Proskurov; Shchandenko; Shtern; Smorodinov; Stalin; Vasiliev; Voronov; Zaporozhets]

   Each speaker is identified in each chapter, and there are a few (less than a half dozen) explanatory notes for each chapter. Other than that, the transcript of the discussions stands on its own. A speaker is identified and given the floor. He gives his remarks with varying numbers of interruptions. He answers questions. Sometimes the proceedings become a dialogue between the speaker and Stalin. The next speaker is identified and given the floor. Here's an extract from a typical exchange.

   MLADENTSEV (Colonel, Commander of the 387th Rifle Regiment): Comrades, I commanded the 387th Regiment of the 136th Rifle Division. The regiment operated on the Karelian Isthmus, on the 13th Army's main direction. Our division encountered no less than 28 concrete permanent emplacements, of which much has been said here.
   Comrades from the 7th Army have said that they had a whole month at their disposal to prepare the demolition of permanent emplacements. Our division did not have so much time. We had only three days to prepare for the demolition of the emplacements on the Mannerheim Line. It took us six days to breach the Muolaa-Ilves sector on the Mannerheim Line.
   What was done in those three days? We managed to reconnoitre the defence system and bring up the artillery. The artillery stripped the emplacements in three days. On the day of the offensive, the guns failed to demolish the emplacements, but destroyed the firing posts located between the emplacements with direct fire. The guns fired 152-122-mm shells, that is, a garrison could not hide in the emplacements. However, we did not manage to take the emplacements in the daytime. Taking the first Muolaa line, eight permanent emplacements in all, we took advantage of the blizzard and the dark, as the enemy had zero visibility in our direction. Our men did not lose the advantage and rushed towards the bunkers. We occupied the fortified belt at Muolaa and approached Ilves on the same night. The second line of permanent emplacements at Ilves was also captured by our troops.
   It should be pointed out that this was the first time in the history of warfare that heavy artillery was brought to within 200 m of the enemy's defences. We did it at Ilves: heavy artillery was stationed 200 m away from the enemy's emplacements.

   STALIN: What calibre?

   MLADENTSEV: Two hundred and three-millimetre. Before the large-calibre artillery arrived, the Finns fired on our positions with machine-guns, as well as mortars and artillery.
   When two tractors brought our gun to the woods, things went much better.

   STALIN: The wooded terrain helped.

   MLADENTSEV: Right, the wooded terrain helped. I brought forward six regimental guns and three anti-tank guns, then three tanks to protect the large-calibre guns, and we opened direct fire on the permanent emplacements. The 203-mm guns did not demolish the emplacements, but the Finnish garrisons left them.

   VOICE: That was good, anyway.

   MLADENTSEV: We were glad the Finns left. After that the infantry took the bunkers and destroyed them.
   Many comrades said that they under-used their artillery. We used all our artillery all the time in our sectors. Thirteen artillery battalions were attached to my regiment. All 13 battalions operated at full capacity.

   KULIK: This is unknown to history.

   STALIN: Not unknown.

   MLADENTSEV: All guns operated at full capacity.
   I think that infantry chiefs with the rank of regimental commander can employ not only regimental and anti-tank guns, but also large-calibre artillery. This was new to regimental commanders during this campaign.
   The use of tanks. Comrade tank-men, it is written in the manual that tanks cannot be used at night. I engaged the tanks at night, and they performed well. The tanks would go, and the infantry would go, and they worked together. They operated well. The infantrymen felt moral support, while the tank-crews had no fear of the dark despite poor visibility. The infantry and tanks did a good job together, breaching fortified lines and destroying the enemy's counter-attacks. Tanks can and must be used at night. For this, joint actions of tanks and infantry at night should be practised systematically in peacetime.
   Little was said here about night actions. As for me, I arrived at the conclusion that night operations should be conducted, better still when the weather is snowy and windy.

   VOICE: You are right.

   VOICE: Day and night.

   MLADENTSEV: We had greater losses in daytime than at night, and more advantages at night than in daytime. Our men from Gorky demonstrated good results in night battles. When they were set a task, they would ask if they could do it at night.

   STALIN: Good lads.

   MLADENTSEV: I would like to emphasise that the men were not afraid of the Finns and engaged them in bayonet-fighting.
   What else is worthy of notice? It should be noted that the men feared the Finns when they could not see them: the Finns would fire, but our men did not see them. This produced a psychological effect, but when they saw live Finns, our men were bursting to go into action; one could not hold them back. The men always strove to go ahead, not to retreat. This characteristic is worthy of notice.

   Beyond that, the book contains a few photographs, two sketch maps, and a paragraph of biographical information on each participant.
   As fascinating as these transcripts prove to be—the effect is more like lurking in a corner of the room and listening to the meeting rather than just reading about it—the book as a whole will hold far more appeal for those specializing in the Winter War or the Soviet armed forces, and far less appeal for general readers. All in all, another valuable addition to serious study of the Russo-Finnish War, but not a book with a great deal of glamour or broad appeal, and certainly not intended to be an operational account of the campaign. Readers seeking a fresh operational account of the Winter War—rather than a transcript of generals discussing the war—will want to look into Carl van Dyke's The Soviet Invasion of Finland, 1939-1940, also published by Frank Cass.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Frank Cass in the UK and International Specialized Book Services in the US.
   Thanks to ISBS for providing this review copy.