THE COMMUNIQUE OF THE LENINGRAD MILITARY DISTRICT HEADQUARTERS
On June 3, 1940
In Finland it is officially declared that the Finnish losses during the Finnish-Soviet conflict amounted to 66,406 people, including 2,594 officers, 11,664 non-commissioned officers and 52,248 soldiers. As killed — 19,576 people, as missing — 3,263, as wounded — 43 and a half thousand people. According to the Finns, casualties in the last week of the war were particularly large, during battles on the Karelian Isthmus and north west of Lake Ladoga.
The headquarters of the Leningrad Military District is committed to declare that the above "data" of official military authorities grossly distort the true picture of Finnish casualties during the Soviet-Finnish conflict. Actually the Finns killed in action were more than 70 thousand men but when you consider those who died of wounds, at least 15 thousand men, as a whole Finns lost at least 85 thousand as killed. Finnish losses including those wounded accounts to more than 250 thousand men.
Thus, if one is to assume that the Finnish army during the conflict was composed of 600 thousand people, of whom, at the best, about two thirds can be considered as combat-ready, at the best only two thirds of army, it turns out that the Finns lost almost all of its combat-ready army. In essence, the Finns were the end of the conflict without an army. This fact explains why the Finns, making noise about their victories, that they with some outside help would have made the Soviet army to share the fate of Napoleon's army in Russia - were forced to capitulate after the first serious attack by the Soviet troops on the Karelian Isthmus, despite that they had a substantial outside assistance from Norway, Sweden, England, USA, France and other countries.
The Finns write about big losses "during battles on the Karelian Isthmus" in the last weeks of the conflict, but they do not say, how many they lost during these battles. Incontestable data of the Leningrad Military District HQ show that just during the period from February 11 when the Soviet armies launched their offensive on the Karelian Isthmus, till March 12, i.e. about day of the termination of the conflict, the Finns, on the average, had losses not less than 2 thousand people killed on every day. The HQ is forced to publish these data to put an end to the ridiculous lie about the valid Finns during the Soviet-Finnish conflict, systematically disseminated in the Finnish, European and American press.
"Pravda" No. 153 (8199) from June 3, 1940.
[Highest Party School at VKP Central Committee.] Foreign policy of the USSR. Collection of documents. T. IV. No. 429. Moscow — 1946. Computer assisted draft translation by Pauli Kruhse.
Finland in the
Soviet foreign policy 1939-1940