�� - THE RUSSIAN BATTLEFIELD

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Alexander

RE: ��
Jan 05 2009 18:59:11

Jin Green wrote:
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Tyi prav, konetsno. No izvinite, ja pishu po-angliskij, moj russkij uzhasno.

I have noticed that "the Winter War" is a delicate subject among my friends in Piter, Russia. Most of them do not know about the subject. Many others do not discuss about it out of courtesy, because I am a Finn. I have also noticed that there is lot of disinformation about "the Winter War". And books, which publish semi-truths do not help at all.

I read your comments on "The Winter War according to Sokolov" carefully. Most of your remarks were accurate. However, there were two minor details, that caught my eye.

1)
The Finnish rifle: "Rather, a typical Finnish infantryman was armed with a "pirated", to use a modern term, copy of Dragunov's modified Mosin obr 1891 bolt-action rifle"

It was NOT a pirated Mosin-Nagant, it was a REAL Mosin-Nagant. Yes, the barrel was Finnish, the stock was Finnish, it was assembled in Finnish factories, but the rifle mechanism was original Russian "Mosin-Nagant". Finland had huge reserves of this rifle (for historical reasons...). Large amounts were also captured during the war. These Russian rifles were dissembled, their rifle action mechanism was serviced, honed, fine-tuned, fitted and tested by Finnish gunsmiths. The result was one of the finest and most accurate military bolt action rifles in the world. Finns called them "Pystykorva (Laika)" or "Ukko-Pekka (Starik)" and they were Finnish rifles. But the rifle action mechanism was original Russian and had still some Cyrillic letters stamped on it!

2)
Soviet SMG: "In reality, sub-machine guns were introduced in the Red Army as early as 1934 (PPD-34), but were withdrawn back into stocks in 1936. In December of 1939 they were once again issued to frontline." Russia had a SMG (PPD-34 and PPD34/38), which was heavily based on German Bergman MP28. It also inherited some of its problems, specially the horrible, unreliable magazine. It was produced only in small numbers and it was allocated to NKVD troops, not for regular army. Sokolov's wording in not correct, I agree. But essentially he is correct. The Red army did not have a SMG in service � for real.

(The next generation Soviet SMG (PPSh-41) was an excellent weapon, with a reliable drum magazine, taken from the PPD-40. Which was a "pirated

" copy of Finnish Suomi M31 drum magazine.)

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