The 1st Soviet-Finnish War
Review of the Osprey Publishing eBook edition (2016)

This is a very well done overview of the opposing forces in the so-called Winter War 1939-40 (from the Finnish Talvisota). The nickname derives from its taking place over 105 days of winter from November 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940 when it was concluded by the Moscow Peace Treaty. The book provides short summaries of the main battle events (The Taipale Sector Dec. 6-27, 1939; The Raate Road Dec. 23-Jan. 8, 1940; the 'Millionaire' & 'Poppius' bunkers Feb. 11-13, 1940), from which you get a good general overview. The main draw is the amount of research and detail about the various orders of battle and the extremely finely detailed colour paintings of the uniforms. These are often based on black & white photographs of the time, of which there is also a generous number included.

Although Finland did end up conceding territory to the Soviet Union in the Treaty, the fact that it was able to not be overrun by overwhelming forces is the main issue of historical interest. Finland's motivated small army made up of forces well used to its winter climate and terrain and knowledgeable in skiing and hunting was able to make a stand against a hapless Soviet army untrained and unfamiliar with the terrain and demoralized by Stalin's purges of its officer class from 1937 onwards.

See photograph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War#/media/File:A_Finnish_Maxim_M-32_machin...
Photograph of a Finnish machine gun crew during the Winter War. Image sourced from Wikipedia at the above Winter War wikipedia link. The same photograph appears in the Osprey book.

Finnish Soldier vs Soviet Soldier: Winter War 1939-40 is part of the Combat series of books published by military history publishers Osprey Publishing. Related books are Soviet Soldier vs Finnish Soldier: The Continuation War 1941–44 (Osprey Combat #49, 2020), The Mannerheim Line 1920–39: Finnish Fortifications of the Winter War (Osprey Fortress #88, 2009), and Finland at War 1939-45 (Osprey Elite #141, 2006)

I read the eBook edition available through Scribd. A useful feature of the online version is that you can click on the images to examine the finer details of the photographs and the maps and uniforms as drawn by contributing artist Johnny Shumate.

Trivia and Links
A fictional account of the Winter War was made in the novel Talvisota (1984), translated as The Winter War (2003) by Finnish novelist Antti Tuuri. It was adapted into a film as Talvisota (1989) by director Pekka Parikka and a trailer from its recent 4K restoration can be viewed on YouTube here. ( )