One of the bright legends of the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940 became the “cuckoos”-the Finns supposedly masked on the trees, opening fire on the fighters of the Red Army. We checked whether they really existed.
Materials about snipers-"cuckoo" can be found both in the media and in social networks. For example, this topic Dedicated Publication on the website of the television channel "Star", "Kukushkek" is also mentioned by authors BBC And the portal "Russian seed". The stories about Finnish snipers in social networks, in particular in "VKontakte", Facebook And Livejournal, and the videos on YouTube They gain up to half a million views.
When and who first publicly used the term “cuckoo” during the winter war, it was not yet possible to establish. However, it was often used by the authors of the memories of that conflict. In particular, the shooting of Finnish machine gunners from trees Described Junior Politrok I. Kulpin in the collection "Fights in Finland", published in 1941:
“We notice: the bullets lie around us. Where are they from? Suddenly a machine gunner falls. We ask:
- Where is wounded?
“To the back of the head,” the comrade, leaning toward him, replies.
So they shoot from the rear. We begin to inspect the trees. The branches are thick, littered with snow. I notice that the branches of one of the fir trees are a little swaying. I peer through the sight of a sniper rifle and see: "cradle", and on it are legs in Pyaks. I shoot. A man falls from a tree. We run up: Belofinn with a machine gun ...
Soon we find another machine gunner, remove it, but the killed Belofinn drops the machine gun, but does not fall. It turns out that he was tied to a tree with a rope covering the lower back, so, without holding his hands, he could walk freely along the “cradle” around the trunk ...
Then we still did not know that a similar method of war is a system that the enemy would be used throughout the front.
Another time, when the "cuckoos" began to fire from machine guns, Lieutenant Odinets ordered to be dismissed and open fire from light machine guns. Three white -finisheds were immediately shot down with this fire, and the rest calmed down. But as soon as the company rose and moved in the forest again, the Belofin machine gunners climbed onto other trees and again started shelling. We had to act differently. We decided to allocate special fighters with a manual machine gun who combed the forest, moving in front of the company. The "cuckoo" disappeared, and we moved further without delay. "
The actions of the disguised Finnish snipers, shooters, machine gunners and even hand machine gunners, who conduct sudden fire on parts of the Red Army, are noted at least eight authors of the memoirs published in this collection. Moreover, it is not always the question of snipers shooting from trees. So, political instructor Atibeev and Lieutenant Tolmachev Described Shooting from the standpoint on Earth.
The Soviet military and propagandists represented the abandonment of soldiers in the rear for sudden shooting in order to disorganize and panic in the ranks of the manifestation of treachery and partisan tactics of the enemy in the forests of Soviet troops. The Red Army contrasted them with collectivism, growing vigilance and well -aimed return fire.
It is noteworthy that in the memoirs of participants in the combat operation on the Karelian Isthmus "cuckoos" called Also, snipers and machine gunners who disguised themselves not only in the rear of the Soviet troops, but also on their own front edge.
"Cuckoo" are also found in the memoirs of Marshal Kirill Meretskovawho commanded the 7th Army in the Soviet-Finnish war, the artillery of the Red Army of Marshal Nikolai Voronova, Colonel General Andrei Rytova and other participants in the war.
Soon after the end of the Soviet-Finnish war, the snipers sitting on the trees "migrated" into the stories of the military correspondent, the Soviet writer-Marinist Leonid Sobolev. They are mentioned, for example, in the story "In the forest": “In the coastal forest, with snipers in every tree - this secret, hidden, invisible enemy - now whistled between the branches of the shrapnel of the direct tip. The gun brought by Savkin was in point blank in the forest. Shrapnel shook the layers of snow from the fir trees, hooked bitch, knocked down like apples wrapped in white people with machine guns. ” The writer seems to mix snipers and machine gunners.
The Finnish historian Okhot Mannin, in turn, called the “cuckoo” one of the myths of the Soviet-Finnish war. In the article "So were the" cuckoo "?" (1995) He He wrote: “The stories about cuckoos were surprising. No one met veterans who would remember how they climbed the trees. <...> It seems unlikely that the soldier can make him climb a tree, because he should always have the opportunity to retreat. <...> Based on such stories about the sudden attacks of the Finns, a legend arose, which was transmitted from mouth to mouth until it got into the instructions for political propaganda. Thus, this myth, which was first transmitted by the Red Army soldiers who participated in the war, and then other military, entered historiography. So he was preserved in the memory of the Soviet people, although the Finnish "cuckoo", which would really sit on a tree, has not yet met. "
In April 1940 passed A meeting of the highest command staff of the Red Army, dedicated to the discussion of lessons and the results of the Soviet-Finnish war. None of the five commanders of the armies, two corps commanders, eight commanders of divisions and two commanders of the rifle regiments mentioned the massive use of “cuckoo”.
Nevertheless, there is no need to talk about the complete absence of such a practice by Finnish troops. Separate examples of enemy shooting with trees or sudden shelling with snipers and machine gunners can be found in three documents on the participation of units and individual divisions of the border troops in the hostilities published in 1970 in the collection “Border Troops of the USSR. 1939 - June 1941. ” It is curious that in the first case the author of the diary does not call the enemy leading fire from the trees in second The Finnish sniper is called the "Capercaillie", and in third It is said about the "snipers with machine guns" shot down from the trees.
In the documents of the Russian State Military Archive, reflecting the combat operations of units and formations of the Red Army on the Karelian Isthmus and other sections of the front, cases of fire from trees along the units advanced in the forest are rarely mentioned. Significantly more often we are talking about ambushes and sudden shelling of the advancing or defending Soviet soldiers in small groups of enemy, equipped with automatic weapons and penetrated into the rear of the troops advancing to the west. In particular, in the report of the 2nd rank commander Mikhail Kovalev, the defense for the commander of the defense, prepared in January 1940, Marshala Kliment Voroshilov indicated: “The losses mainly apply snipers, well -disguised and often located on trees; Small enemy groups, flowing flanks and attackers from the rear. ”
Separate episodes of the struggle of Soviet military personnel with snipers and assault rifles are also reflected in the documents of some units of the Red Army. For example, in the fighting journal of the 97th Infantry Division of the 13th Army indicatedthat her 69th Infantry Regiment was engaged in the elimination of snipers and machine gunners-“Christmas trees” on one of the islands of Vuoksa on March 12.
Thus, the sudden discovery of fire well-disguised as separate Finnish arrows, snipers, machine gunners and machine gunners, as well as small groups of Finns in the Red Army units were an element of the tactics of Finnish troops in wooded-bolotyous areas. Separate episodes of the application of this tactics were gradually reduced in collective memory to the “cuckoos”, which, even during the war, called Finnish soldiers who shot not only from trees, but also from well -disguised positions on Earth.
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