As prospects for early NATO membership diminish, Ukraine can no longer gamble with its military readiness. Regardless of the outcome of the forthcoming parliamentary elections, whenever they might occur, President Victor Yushchenko has the constitutional responsibility and authority to ensure Ukraine’s national security, including the deterrence capability of its armed forces.
Inasmuch as Russia is the only power that has threatened Ukraine and shown willingness to invade a neighboring state, we could learn a great deal from one of the Soviet Union’s most humiliating and forgotten wars: the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40. During a four-month period, a population roughly the size of St. Petersburg’s, with limited foreign support, fought the world’s largest military power to a standstill.
After the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Josef Stalin feared Leningrad’s vulnerability to German attack. He demanded that Finland give up much of the Karelian Isthmus, cede a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland, and lease the Hanko peninsula for a military base. Although the Finns offered some concessions, they refused to concede to all of Stalin’s demands. On Nov. 26, the Soviets fired an artillery barrage near the town of Mainila, 800 meters inside Soviet territory, but accused the Finns of the shelling. Within days, the Soviets launched a massive ground and air onslaught.
At the start of the war, Finland’s total armed forces consisted of 10 divisions – approximately 150,000 men. Its air force consisted of only 56 fighter planes and 18 bombers. Its communication equipment was primitive. Its machine gun ammo was in short supply. It did not possess a single tank or operational anti-tank gun. Its stock of shells for artillery was very small and many guns dated from the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. Even its supply of cartridges for rifles and light automatics was sufficient for only 60 days.
However, the Finns had an abundance of zeal and patriotism. Although the Finnish parliament was deeply divided along party and ideological lines, and communism had made substantial inroads among the nation’s workers, all these differences disappeared when the Soviets crossed the border. In one village, an aged peasant woman was informed by Finnish border guards that her home would have to be burned the next day to deny shelter to advancing Soviets. Upon their return, they found the home scrubbed and whitewashed until it sparkled. When the soldiers asked the old woman why she had gone to so much trouble, she replied: “When one gives a gift to Finland, one desires that it should be like new.”
The Finnish strategy was based on holding the “Mannerheim Line,” an 80-mile fortified stretch of trenches, mines, barbed wire, tank barriers, and log or concrete fortified strong points located 12-30 miles from the Soviet border. Most of the bunkers were armed with nothing heavier than Maxim machine guns. All along this line Finland positioned troops familiar with the rugged, heavily forested, frigid terrain they were defending. They compensated for their numerical and technological inferiority with speed, daring, and economy of force. During training, officers and men collaborated in the development of technical doctrine specifically adapted to Finnish terrain. The forest terrain dictated individual initiative and small-unit operations. Marksmanship, mental agility, orienteering, camouflage, and physical conditioning were stressed. The Finnish Army was “lean and mean,” experienced at squeezing maximum effectiveness from limited resources.
Stalin, for his part, was persuaded that the “Finnish business” could be completed with resources on hand in the Leningrad District. He was promised a gift of the “People’s Republic of Finland” for his birthday on Dec. 18. This was to be accomplished by unleashing an offensive in keeping with Russian military tradition, i.e., overwhelming the Finns with masses of men and sheer weight of metal.
At the start of hostilities, Stalin committed four armies comprising 28 divisions – a total of 120,000 men, over 1,000 tanks, and the supporting fire of 600 guns. These forces were backed up with a virtually inexhaustible supply of replacements and material. In addition, the land war was augmented by use of 2,500 aircrafts flying 44,000 sorties. Throughout the winter war, Russia deployed four times as many soldiers, 30 times as many aircrafts and 200 times as many tanks as the Finns. However, Stalin had just completed a purge of 50 percent of his most experienced, high-ranking officers and this was to cost him dearly.
By the end of December, it became clear that the Red Army had been stopped at the Mannerheim Line and was gradually being chewed up by small Finish units on skis fielding “Molotov cocktails” against Soviet tanks. Stalin could not afford the humiliation of defeat by tiny Finland and gave General Timoshenko carte blanche to win the war without regard to the human and material cost. Throughout January, fresh, new divisions were brought in, several thousand cannons assembled and massive shipments of the latest Soviet tanks were transported to staging areas in preparation for an unprecedented Feb. 1 “shock and awe” offensive against the thinly stretched and exhausted defenders of the Mannerheim Line. The opening salvo was marked by 300,000 shells crashing into one strategic area of the Line that had been selected for a breakthrough.
The war came to an end on the Ides of March. Finland was forced to cede 9 percent of its territory and 20 percent of its industrial capacity, but retained its independence. The war cost Finland almost 23,000 killed and 44,000 wounded. Approximately 420,000 Finns lost their homes. The cost to the Soviets was 12-15 times greater. According to Nikita Krushchev, 1.5 million men were sent into Finland and 1 million of them were killed, while 1,000 aircraft, 2300 tanks, and a huge amount of other war materials were lost. Although the actual figures may never be known, most reliable current estimates put Soviet dead at 270,000 and another 200,000-300,000 wounded.
Two traditional Russian allies – weather and terrain – favored the Finnish side in this war. The Red Army was unprepared for battle in the frozen, heavily forested Karelian Isthmus. Their overwhelming superiority in personnel and logistics was of limited use along the narrow strips of frozen roadway snaking through dense forests. Although both sides demonstrated great heroism and stamina, the Soviet soldier – unlike his much-better prepared Finnish adversary – had to contend with famine and freezing temperatures. The Finns, on the other hand, had to endure extreme exhaustion in rotational defense of the Mannerheim Line, and severe chronic shortages of armaments.
What lessons can Ukraine learn from this long-forgotten David and Goliath struggle of 70 years ago? First and foremost is the obvious truism that war is more probable when one side perceives the other to be weak and vulnerable. During the weeks and months leading up to the outbreak of hostilities, Stalin hoped to achieve his goals through negotiation. It wasn’t until he was convinced that Finland could be subdued without much difficulty that he launched his offensive. Finland had been unwilling to allocate adequate sums to its defense prior to 1939, and paid a heavy price over a four-month period with the loss of half its army and 10 percent of its territory. Military strength is still the best guarantor of peace.
Another lesson – not unlike the provocative Russian shelling of Georgia – is that Russia will attack according to its own schedule and does not need a pretext or actual provocation to do so: it can manufacture one at will. Mere scrupulous adherence to civil norms and peaceful conduct by the other party is never an adequate deterrent.
A third lesson is that skilled leadership, high morale, and good training can offset huge imbalances in personnel and ordnance. Ukraine cannot afford to match Russia in the size of its armed forces, but it can – at a much lower cost – even the odds by concentrating on the quality, patriotism, and proficiency of its personnel, particularly its officers.
And, lastly, had the Finns invested more heavily in their armed forces prior to Soviet invasion, the war may have ended sooner and on more favorable terms. There is no justification for any country to risk disaster and the lives of its troops by skimping on armaments, training, mobility, and communications. Smaller, highly trained units with the latest and most lethal armaments can be far more effective than masses of men and equipment. Every Finn warrior with an assault rifle took, on average, 12 Soviet soldiers and large quantities of Red army ordnance to the grave with him.
George Woloshyn, a native of Kupnovychi, Ukraine, is an American citizen living in Linden, Virginia.
