232. This concession appears to have been connected to Finland’s efforts to sign a defensive alliance with Sweden and Norway, which Molotov warned Helsinki would be considered a violation of the Soviet-Finnish peace treaty. Dallin, Soviet Russia’s Foreign Policy, 196; van Dyke, Soviet Invasion, 190.
233. Chubarian and Shukman, Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War, 263–75.
234. Waltz, Theory of International Relations, 194–5; Keohane, “Lilliputians’ Dilemmas.”
235. Solodovnikov,”My byli molodye togda,” 210.
236. Timoshenko told the Finnish military attaché in Moscow, “the Russians have learnt much in this hard war in which the Finns fought with heroism.” Mannerheim, Memoirs, 371. Altogether, from Sept. 1939 through March 12, 1940, Red Army call-ups had amounted to 3.16 million. About half were demobilized, leaving an army of 1.547 million. Mikhail Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina, 360 (citing RGVA, f. 40443, op. 3, d. 297, l. 128).
237. Krivosheev, Grif sekretnosti sniat’, 93–126 (esp. 125); RGVA, f. 34980, op. 15, d. 200, 203, 204, 206, 208, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219; f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1301, l. 165–8; Rossiiskaia Federatsiiia, Kniga pamiati; Manninen, “Moshchnoe Sovetskoe nastuplenie,” I: 324–35; “O nakoplenii nachal’stvuiushchego sostava Raboche-Krest’ianskoi Krasnoi Armii,” 181; Balashov, Prinimai nas, 182, 186. Neither Hanko nor the islands would prove to be any protection for Leningrad, since the future Nazi onslaught against the city would not come from the Baltic Sea/Gulf of Finland but from overland.
238. Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 130. In early spring 1940, right after the end of the Soviet-Finnish War, the Soviet ambassador to Paris, Surits, would be declared persona non grata after sending a telegram to Moscow, intercepted by the French, in which he referred to the French and British as warmongers. It was payback.
239. The German ambassador to Finland (Wipert von Blücher) sent a report to Berlin in Jan. noting that “the Red Army has such shortcomings that it cannot even dispose of a small country and the Comintern does not even gain ground in a population that is more than forty percent socialist.” Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 411; Semiryaga, Winter War, 63–4 (no citation). German circles were said by a Swedish Soviet agent to be stunned by the dismal Soviet effort, and wondered about the necessity of abiding by the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 220–1, 224–8.
240. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, VI: 981–2 (Dec. 31, 1939).
241. Förster and Mawdsley, “Hitler and Stalin in Perspective,” 68. See also Förster, “German Military’s Image of Russia,” 123–4.
242. Van Dyke, Soviet Invasion, xii-xiii, 103–27, 189–193.
243. Reese, “Lessons of the Winter War.”
244. Mannerheim, Memoirs, 367. See also Liddell-Hart, Expanding War, 72. One Soviet political commissar observed, “Regiments and divisions were sometimes given to incompetent, inexperienced, and poorly trained people who failed at the slightest difficulty in battle.” Rzheshevskii et al., Zimniaia voina, II: 21–2. The inadequacy of the Soviet officer corps was a long-standing point of critique. Zaitsev, “Krasnaia armiia,” 12.
245. This testimony is second-hand, from Vasilevsky, Shaposhnikov’s top subordinate at the general staff. Vasilievskii, Delo vsei zhizni, I: 102; Bialer, Stalin and his Generals, 132.
246. Vasilevsky, Lifelong Cause, 108–9. Vasilesvsky was in the Little Corner between March 2 and 17, 1940, on all the days Stalin received visitors except one—thirteen visits total. Na prieme, 293–5.
247. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh sem’i, 64–5 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1553, l. 38–9).
248. They would marry on New Year’s Eve 1940–1, just before Vasily would be scheduled to return to his officers’ study courses in Lipetsk, where they would live together in the dormitory. In May 1941, they would return to Moscow; Stalin would order that they move into his Kremlin apartment, which would be subdivided for them. Mamaeva, “Vasily Stalin.”
249. Sheinis, Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov, 367–8; Haslam, “Soviet Foreign Policy,” 116–7; Watson, Molotov, 180.
250. Voroshilov, “Uroki voiny s Finliandiei.” Much of the lively discussion of operations and strategy, prominent through 1936, had been killed off by the terror, but the disastrous Finnish war experience forced its revival. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 500–7.
251. Supposedly, Stalin privately fumed of Voroshilov, “He boasted, assured us, reassured us, that any strike would be answered by a triple strike, that everything is good, everything is in order, everything is ready, Comrade Stalin.” Simonov, “Zametki k biogfraii G. K. Zhukova,” 50. This conversation evidently transpired when Timoshenko was sent to Finland and after Zhukov was put in charge of the Kiev military district.
252. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 128 (March 28, 1940); Rubtsov, Alter ego Stalina, 135 (quoting, without citation, recollections of General Khrulev); Voroshilov, “Uroki voiny s Finliandiei” (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 261, l. 114–58); Volkovskii, Tainy i uroki, 426–49 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 121, l. 1–35: Voroshilov report).
253. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 128. See also Gorodetsky, Grand Illusion, 117–8.
254. Malyshev, “Dnevnik narkoma,” 110.
255. Stalin, Schulenburg added, could at most be expected to meet Hitler in a border town. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 134–6.
256. Pravda, March 30, 1940.
257. Duraczyński and Sakharov, Sovetsko-Pol’skie otnosheniia, 153–4 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1305, l. 210–1). Tevosyan’s sister (Yuliya) was married to Levon Mirzoyan, the Armenian party official, who fell afoul of Beria. She was arrested. “Stal’noi narkom” (Jan. 15–31, 2011): http://noev-kovcheg.ru/mag/2011-02/2363.html.
258. The first issue of the KFSSR newspaper Pravda in Finnish came out on April 10, 1940. Bol’shevistskaia pechat’, 1940, no. 8: 71.
259. For the complete proceedings, see Rzheshevskii et al., Zimniaia voina, II (excerpts in Volkovskii, Tainy i uroki, 450–516, and Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 235–48); Chubarian and Shukman, Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War.
260. Volkovskii, Tainy i uroki, 450–5, 464–5. See also Meretskov, Na sluzhbe, 182. Later, Khrushchev, citing a conversation with Timoshenko, said that “every pillbox the Finns had built on the whole Mannerheim line—all that was well known and even mapped out.” Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 253.