Sociocultural portrait of the commander of the Red Army who participated in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940

This article deals with the principal socio-cultural characteristics of forty senior officers of the Red Army, commanders of Rifle Divisions and Rifle Corps, who participated in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. The source data is mainly derived from officers’ personal service cards in the Russian Defense Ministry’s central military archive in the city of Podolsk and supplemented by four brief biographies [38-41]. The Soviet-Finnish war is one of the largest local wars of the 20th century. The USSR and Finland massed on the 1400 kilometers long front up to 1.5 million soldiers, with the overall losses amounting to 415 000 troops, and the total death toll of over 165 000 men. The military operation planned by the Red Army’s General Staff as a one-month long blitzkrieg lasted 105 days and heavily strained the USSR’s armed forces, economy and transport infrastructure. The main idea of the author of this article is to clarify the qualitative characteristics of the senior officers of the Red Army, commanders of rifle divisions and rifle corps who took part in the Winter War, to assess the impact of this factor on the course of the fighting and the final result of the war, as well as on the outcome of key battles during the offensive, defense and encirclement...