Of course, the plans for that unremarkable war, frankly speaking, suffered from hats and contempt for the enemy, and the elaboration of the operation was very, to put it mildly, superficial, but there were reasons and reasons for this. The ten pre-war years were very successful and victorious for the country and for the Red Army. In the country as a whole, industrialization, collectivization and a cultural revolution were carried out, the army received and actively tested new technology, and tested it successfully. In 1929, MS-1 tanks defeated the Chinese at the Chinese Eastern Railway, of course, together with other types of troops, in 1937-1939. our advisers showed themselves well in Spain and China, in 1938 there was Khasan - a problematic, but successful, and in 1939 - Khalkhin-Gol, where the Red Army defeated the army of a world power in the modern war of motors. Then the Liberation Campaign, in which Poland, which had defeated the Red Army twenty years earlier, did not offer resistance, and it turned out that technically we look no worse than the Germans and much better than the Poles. All this can be interpreted in different ways and different reasons can be found, but then it was seen that way - solid victories.
Against this background, Finland did not look at all, residents - as in a good Soviet region, troops - a cat cried, technically … let's not talk about sad things. Seriously, as seen from Moscow, Finland was only covered from the sea. Mannerheim Line? Well, pillboxes, so there is artillery and aviation, and the plans were to act not only against it, in other areas the territory was not covered by anything. Actually, we are talking about one of such operations, about an attempt by the 9th Army to attack the Gulf of Bothnia. The plans of the division commander Dukhanov were the most decisive.
But, to quote the classic:
“We thought for a long time, wondered, Topographers wrote everything
On a large sheet. Smoothly written in the paper
Yes, they forgot about the ravines, And walk on them …"
The problem was not in the pace, they were quite real, not in the technique, there was more of it than necessary, not in the enemy, he was practically not there, the problem was in the logistics. They had to advance along the only road, the army's troops were pulled from the pine forest (163 division - formed in 1939 in Tula, 44 division - Kiev special military district, 54 division - local). And the division commander Dukhanov turned out to be a theoretician, poorly adapted to the real command and control of troops in a real war. The brigade commander Zelentsov (division commander - 163), a good performer, personally a brave man, but not a fan of showing initiative, was a match for him.
Everything started well - the 163rd rifle briskly pushed forward, striking, in fact, into the void, and achieved significant progress. It reached and rested on the defense of the 9th Infantry Division urgently formed by the Finns. It rested on two regiments, the third was stretched for 30 km along the road for the defense of communications. 44 Infantry had not yet approached by that time. The Finns, knowing the area perfectly, being mobile in winter conditions thanks to the detachments of skiers, cut off and surrounded the 163 division. There was nothing terrible in this - on the way was Vinogradov's division, 15,000 men, 40 tanks, 120 guns.
As a result, the 163 division left the encirclement, I must say, rather conditional, hitting the North and reaching the border of the USSR, losing only 30 percent of personnel and equipment (one of the regiments of the division was thrown on the road - the same one left to cover the supply line), but 44 … Unfamiliar with the terrain and local conditions, in addition, not taking what was happening seriously, comrade red commanders led by Vinogradov stretched the division 20 kilometers along a narrow road. The Finns, not being fools, cut the road in the rear of the Soviet troops, and Vinogradov, instead of normally concentrating the units entrusted to him and knocking down the enemy's screen, which was neither large nor well-armed, went on the defensive and began to ask the army headquarters for 50 tons cargo by air. The problem was that the army headquarters simply did not have a military transport aviation, and sitting out, placing divisions in a chaotic manner on a narrow frozen route, could only be a problem.
They attacked - the Finns began to cut divisions of the division, arrange blockages, mine them and leave ambushes. Vinogradov, in a panic, requests a way out of the encirclement through the forests, abandoning all the equipment. The new commander of the army, Chuikov, refuses him, and rightly so - the very idea of throwing so many weapons to the enemy, which the 44th division is superior in strength, looks absurd. As a result, a breakthrough begins along the road.
For some things, one must not only shoot, one must hang. As a result, a completely successful division, surpassing the enemy on December 31, was completely defeated a week later. And she went out to her own, leaving the enemy:
"43 tanks, 71 field guns, 260 trucks, 29 anti-tank guns and over a thousand horses."
In addition, 40% of the personnel were lost. All this was done in battles with an under-formed Finnish division, numbering as many as 11 guns and 17,000 personnel. Among other things, the operation of the 9th Army was completely disrupted, and the Red Army, after the publication in the media of a photo of endless columns of captured equipment and prisoners, became a laughing stock. The tribunal became, as it were, a logical outcome, and its verdict is fully justified.
If you look deeper … Vinogradov and his comrades' fault is undoubted, his inexperience is a rather conventional thing.
“In the Red Army, March 1919
262 pp. Regiment of the 30th SD Eastern Front - Red Army soldier 1919 March - 1920 June;
1st Moscow paint courses - cadet June 1920 - August 1920;
Separate … brigade of the Southern Front against Makhno - August 20 - February 21;
77 Sumy Infantry Courses - cadet - February 1921 - September 1922;
143th regiment 48th division MBO - Jr. commander - September 1922 - June 23;
143 r. Regiment 48 r. Div. MVO - com. platoon - June 23 - March 24;
143 r. Regiment 48 r. Div. MVO - pomkomroty - March 24 - August 24;
Comrades of the 48th page div. MBO - listener - August 24 - October 24;
143 p. Regiment 48 SD MVO - pomkomroty - October 24 - March 27;
144 lines regiment of the 48th SD - comrots - March 27 - December 30;
144 pp. Regiment of the 48th SD - head of the school ml. com. composition - December 30 - May 32;
144 pp. Regiment of the 48th SD - chief of staff of the regiment - May 32 - March 33;
4th line regiment of the 48th line of the MVO division - early. regiment headquarters - March 33 - May 34;
143 r. Regiment 48 r. Div. - early. PCS. regiment Belarusian VO - May 1934 - June 1937;
143 r. Regiment 48 r. Div. Belarusian Military District - regiment commander - June 37 - February 1938;
At the disposal of the Directorate of the command staff of the Red Army - February 1938 - January 1939 - NKO of the USSR 0236-39;
44-p. division of the 8th rifle corps of the Kiev Special Military District - com. divisions: - 1939 - January - NKO of the USSR - 0327.
Excluded from the lists according to the order of the Heads. Military. Council of the Red Army dated January 19, 1940, No. 01 227."
He is quite an experienced commander, who went through the war and all the steps of the career ladder, who had commanded a division at the time of the defeat for a year. What happened? But a trivial thing happened - neither Vinogradov nor his immediate superiors took the situation seriously. During interrogation by Mehlis, Vinogradov claimed that he had gone over to the defensive, so that after the release from the outside he would immediately go on the offensive, and, I think, somehow it was so. From December 31 to January 2, 1940, the brigade commander simply waited for Chuikov to unblock the division, then, from January 2 to 4, it seemed as if he simply did not understand the full depth of the catastrophe, and then there was panic and attempts to leave at any cost, the price was equipment and trucks with the wounded, simply abandoned on the Raat road.
And here it should be noted the humanism of Comrade Mekhlis and Comrade Stalin - only three people stood in front of the firing squad. And the division commander Dukhanov and Chuikov could have been added, it was good for what. Yes, and Vinogradov was tried not for defeat, not for lack of initiative, but for personal cowardice and abandonment of the wounded. Both the first and the second took place, as well as the loss of control, and the open stupidity of the command. An example of this is the same 163 division, which in similar conditions left, retaining a significant part of the equipment, being much worse trained and prepared than the Vinogradov division, the legendary Shchorsovskaya, the elite of the Red Army.
Defeats should teach - and the fact that hats are bad, especially when in a division redeployed from warm Ukraine to the northern icy desert, there is a lack of warm hats, and that the correct provision of logistics is half the battle, and that the commander must constantly monitor the situation and be proactive. But alas, politics intervened in the Vinogradov case and he was rehabilitated on the principle that Mekhlis could not organize a fair trial, and under Stalin, shoot commanders for the cause. Meanwhile, all this for the Red Army at that time became a lesson, sorry - not fully learned.
