The railway transport and conditions of the military railway transportation to the North-Western (Finnish) Front (1939-1940)

Abstract

The article discusses technical skills of the Red Army soldiers on the eve of the Great Patriotic war. It is shown that the fundamental fighting unit of the Red Army remained a soldier with an ordinary rifle, so the fighting capacity was largely dependent on the ability of a soldier to address to his rifle and to provide it with proper care. It is concluded that for various reasons technical skills of a soldier of the Red Army were insufficient, which was one of the reasons of defeats of the Red Army in the Soviet-Finnish war and at the beginning of the Great Patriotic war.