"the Soviet war against Finland is universally seen as a fiasco...Stalin's secret goal was to conquer the country...yet Finland remained an independent and sovereign state [and] the losses the Finns inflicted on the Red Army were far out of proportion..." muse.jhu.edu/article/241169… 
"...fresh sources, archival and memoir, suggest that although the Soviets fell short of their political goals and performed dismally in combat, the Red Army was far more militarily effective than appreciated by the Soviet...leadership [and] Adolf Hitler" muse.jhu.edu/article/241169…
'Contemporaries such as news correspondent Alexander Werth and Soviet generals...viewed the Winter War in overly pessimistic terms. Later, historians... followed the initial trend... reporting only the negative aspects of Soviet military efficiency" muse.jhu.edu/article/241169…
"by all objective indices of the preparedness of the Red Army in 1939 in the months leading up to the [Winter] war and into the first six weeks of fighting, this was an army that one would have the right to expect to collapse when put up against a competent foe. Yet it did not."
"Although Soviet soldiers did retreat, desert, surrender, shirk, and inflict wounds on themselves to get out of combat...none of these factors escalated to the point that they threatened to destroy the overall military effectiveness of the Soviet forces." proquest.com/docview/195646…
"Because the people perceived the [Soviet-Finnish] conflict as a just war, the state had little difficulty in mobilizing a crucial specific segment of society-urban youth-to support it, and did not try to mobilize public support at large." proquest.com/docview/195646…
"Anti-Soviet sentiment became more & more vocal abroad [&] rising international sympathy for the Finns. As the war dragged on, foreign aid for Finland increased steadily, with military weaponry [&] volunteers from Europe and the US arriving weekly in 1940" proquest.com/docview/195646…
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