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Winter War

Nominator(s): Peltimikko (talk) 16:16, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
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I am nominating this for featured article because I think it meets the FA criteria. 30 November 2009 will be the 70th anniversary of the start of the war. Currently GA, and A-Class on WikiProject Military history. Peltimikko (talk) 16:16, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

  • Current ref 18 (Krivosheyev...) needs a page number in additon to the link. Also, this link seems to redirect to a website in Russian, needs to note that and is this a reprint of the book?
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:09, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't regard either www.axishistory.com or www.feldgrau.com as being reliable sources as they both rely on material submitted by amateurs, and would strongly suggest that you replace these references with refs to the books you mention. Nick-D (talk) 23:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Removed. Peltimikko (talk) 05:33, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
I removed your strike throughs, generally at FAC the person who makes the comment/concern strikes through when they feel the issues is resolved. Ealdgyth - Talk 00:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd also like to point out that the FA criteria now require "high-quality reliable sources" so things that the nominator themselves admits are "semi-reliable" aren't good enough. Ealdgyth - Talk 00:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Karjalan liitto and Helsingin Sanomat have basicly a same message. The issue is well known, and there is the article Karelian question in Finnish politics. Still, maybe remove of Karjalan liitto as a source? Furthermore, axishistory.com, feldgrau.com and db2.com are removed. Peltimikko (talk) 07:41, 9 November 2009 (UTC)


Technical comments

  • No dab links or dead external links, which is good.
  • Citation dates are consistent Day Month Year after a minor edit.
  • All images have alt text. The Joseph Stalin navbox had default "Joseph Stalin.jpg" alt text, so I changed that. Some of the earlier alt text has text not obvious from seeing only the image—there may be more such problems:
    • For the first one, perhaps just "A group of soldiers are wearing snowsuits and aiming a heavy machine gun."? (The caption already says they are Finnish, which is not entirely obvious from the image.)
    • For the "Background" map, specify the Baltic countries.
    • Instead of "The signature ceremony in a small office in Helsinki.", maybe "Two men sign papers at opposite sides of a table in a small office"?
    • Instead of "Several people surround walking Paasikivi. The picture is taken at the front.", try to describe the group of men wearing hats to the left, the woman to the right, and the crowd behind.

--an odd name 18:43, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Peltimikko (talk) 08:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Struck issues (finally). I changed ref 24 to be a bulleted list of cites instead of the "tl;dr" bunch. --an odd name (help honey) 09:45, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment. Alt text done; thanks. Alt text is present (thanks!), but it has some problems:
Resolved alt text commentary moved to talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:22, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks; it looks good now. Eubulides (talk) 15:35, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support Resolved 1a, 1c, 2c issues at Talk Nearly resolved: 1a, 1c, Fully resolved: 2c ; expect it will make it, it looks great. I can't see any 1d issues which is very good. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:21, November 25, 2009


Resolved image commentary moved to talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:24, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments – Picked this one up on the backlog list, and it really is a fascinating read. These comments cover only the first few sections; hopefully other reviewers can give the rest some attention.

  • Unless there's material in the lead not backed up by the body, the lead doesn't require references unless the material is controversial or part of a quotation. Perhaps a couple of the statistics-related cites in the lead should be removed, though I don't consider it mandatory by any means.
  • Watch for overlinking; I see an unnecessary second Moscow Peace Treaty link just in the lead.
  • "Moreover, the war cast heavy doubt on the fighting ability of the Red Army, a doubt that may have contributed to Adolf Hitler's decision to launch Operation Barbarossa." Little redundacy hiding in here with a pair of "doubt"s, one modifying the other. To fix this, either change one of them or make secind one "which may have contributed".
  • Comma after Finns in "The Finns however,".
  • Politics of Finland before the war: "Another Finnish miltary policy was the top secret military cooperation between the Finland and Estonia." Drop second "the", as it is ungrammatical.
  • Soviet–Finnish relations and politics before the War: "Finnish–Soviet border" should probably have an en dash instead of the hyphen, if the section title is any indication.
  • "Despite the signing the treaty". Missing "of" in the middle.
  • Again you have multiple links in a section, this time C.G.E. Mannerheim. A run-through of the remainder of the article for similar overlinking may be beneficial.
  • "and wanted the newly-christened city of Leningrad to enjoy a similar security." No hyphen after -ly here.
  • Picky reference formatting comments: Ref 17 should have an en dash for the page range, and ref 18 should give the page number as p., not pp.; the latter problem also exists in several of the books in the bibliography. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 01:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Done/Fixed, except the lead. "Too many citations" is usually better, as getting (fact) tagged is easy (my humble opinion). Peltimikko (talk) 09:38, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments – Also picked it from the backlog list.

  • "Moreover, the war cast doubt on the fighting ability of the Red Army, which may have contributed to Adolf Hitler's decision to launch Operation Barbarossa." There's nothing about this in the rest of the article. I sort of expected to find it under "Germany" down the bottom. So it's really unreferenced.
  • "Finally, the Soviet forces did not accomplish their objective of the total conquest of Finland" There's nothing in the article to suggest that this was the Soviet objective.
  • "At this time, to protect their imperial capital Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia" "their" should be "its"
  • "Finland enjoyed wide autonomy and its own Senate until the turn of the century, when Russia began to assimilate Finland as part of a general policy to strengthen the central government and unify the Empire by Russification." Suggest linking to Russification of Finland instead of Russification.
  • "artillery preparation" Why is this red-linked? Do you intend to create an article? "Barrage", on the other hand can be linked but I don't think that it was a barrage - see that article for a formal definition. Suggest: "The Battle of Taipale began with a forty-hour Soviet artillery preparation."

All in all, a fine article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:18, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  • Support - Well-written and well-organized, with good structure. Some minor points: There are some short paragraphs and one-sentence paragraphs in subsections War preparations, Soviet political and military offensive, Navies in frost, Finnish views, Soviet views, and Germany. I would suggest upmerging. Also, I'd recommend renaming the section Notes to Footnotes, and calling the section named Citations to Notes and Bibliography to References, and remove the sub-levels. But that is sort of a personal preference. Cirt (talk) 19:03, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Oppose—the lead shows a lot of redundant wording, and other prose issues that need to be cleaned up. Is it all like that?

  • "The Soviet forces had three times as many soldiers as the Finns, 30 times as many aircraft and a hundred times as many tanks." Add a comma.
  • "Because of the combination of these factors,"—remove three words and one comma.
  • "Finland was able to successfully resist the Soviet invasion for"—remove one word.
  • "However, the Red Army had recently been crippled by a drastic purge in 1937"—So 1937 was recent.
  • "The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal, and the Soviet Union was expelled from the League on 14 December." The causality needs to be more explicit.
  • "Soviet losses on the front were heavy and the country's international reputation also suffered." Remove one word.
  • "The peace treaty thwarted the half-hearted Franco–British plan to send troops to Finland"—"a half-hearted", since we don't know about it yet.

You might consider working through this. Tony (talk) 13:24, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Weak oppose from Maralia - oppose because I don't think it's ready, but 'weak' because I think it could still make it through in this FAC, with diligent work. I reviewed the lead and the last 4 sections.

  • Dashes need a review as there are errors throughout (they're not all wrong, but many are). Franco-British should be hyphenated, not endashed. Why does "East-Karelian Uprising" have any kind of dash? Why is "Ladoga-Karelia" hyphenated in two instances but not any other? "German–Soviet relations" should be endashed. "Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact" should be endashed.
  • Spaced endashes are in use for parenthetical statements – which is fine – but the one unspaced emdash used for the same should be changed to an endash for consistency.
  • Image caption text needs a review throughout for punctuation: only full sentences should end with fullstops (with the exception of the very lengthy, multi-'sentence' captions where precise grammar is suspended for reasons of brevity).
  • The numerous notes and footnotes in the infobox make it very difficult to read the infobox text. You might consider combining those cites.

From the lead:

From 'Naval warfare':

From 'Foreign support':

  • "The military coordination Committee of the War Cabinet met the next day" - unclear; is this the War Cabinet's military coordination committee? Was it actually called the Military Coordination Committee?
  • Overlinking: at this late point in the article, do we need to link London, or Allies?
  • "This demand was made in new notes sent to Norway and Sweden on 6 January, but these too were rejected six days later." -'new' is unnecessary here. Isn't 'notes' an awfully informal term for these?

From 'Aftermath':

The MOS issues should be easily fixed; they are not the basis for my oppose. I just don't feel the prose is quite there yet. I see hints of what may be non-native English (such as "In April 1938, an NKVD agent Boris Yartsev contacted the Finnish foreign minister"). Attention is needed to wikilinking throughout; there are too many common-word or repeated links (Russian Empire is linked twice in one sentence!), and links are missing for some more obscure terms (revanche). I also noticed quite a few instances of redundant wording, as pointed out above by Tony. In my opinion, this needs the 'easiest' kind of copyedit: the logic and flow of the prose is generally fine, but some fine-tuning is needed, mostly to pare down redundant wording. I would be happy to help with this, but I will be offline for the next few days. Good luck, in any case; you've clearly put a lot of effort into this, and it shows. Maralia (talk) 19:05, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

  • Lean Support - a few minor things, and overall it seems good in terms of logic and sources. The last sentence in "Suomussalmi–Raate double operation" needs a citation. The last sentence of the first paragraph in "Finnish Lapland" needs a citation. As a side note, there were too many "had"s within the article where standard past tense would be fine. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:10, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I have a few concerns. Firstly, there's the claim that the Soviets intended to conquer all of Finland—my understanding is that's a contested historical claim. The Soviets did set up a puppet government during the war, but they also offered peace on terms that were only slightly more harsh than their initial pre-war demands. Secondly, I think the article would benefit from more extensive use of Russian scholarship on the subject. Everyking (talk) 06:03, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
    • 1) Russian scholarship, mostly Yuri Kilin, is used via Finnish books where he has written articles and studies. Also some short references to Pavel Aptekar and Grigoriy Krivosheyev. 2) "Conquer all Finland" is very well recorded. The Red Army occupied East Poland and the Baltic States by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In Operational Plans during 1930s, Finland was intended to cut half and march to Oulu and in south march to Helsinki. These plans were later updated but basics were same when the Soviets started the Winter War. The planning phases are described in memoirs of A.A. Vasilevski and also K.A. Meretskov. According to Merestkov, Stalin himself gave Meretkov a command to create a "counterattack" (Soviet terminology) plan against Finland in June 1939. The plan was ready July, and Stalin and Voroshilov short the conquer deadline, to reach Helsinki, in two weeks. There were also some other minor evidences such as Dmitri Shostakovich's theme to be performed in Helsinki. See also: Background of the Winter War. Peltimikko (talk) 09:13, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I don't think having operational plans is quite the same as political intent. It doesn't really explain why the Soviets stopped the war in early March 1940. If they actually wanted to conquer Finland, that was the time to do it. Everyking (talk) 17:32, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
      • We do not know for sure why Stalin stopped the invasion though the plan was to march all the way to Helsinki. Russia has not opened (for contemporary political reasons) all parts of the Moscow Archieves, where the issue might receive more light. We can only put pieces together, and presume that the Moscow Peace was a combination of differents issues, where the Franco-British intervention was probably the biggest reason. Peltimikko (talk) 18:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC)