Finnish AU (Part III)

PART II

100 years ago the Finnish revolution started OTL and together with it, the Class War where
30,000 workers lost their lives in the struggle against Mannerheim's slaughter guards and other White Bandits and German Imperialists.
My AU project continues from the what-iff we would have won the struggle, with the twist of taking Place in my Novgorod AU universe (The history of this part follows mostly of those posted before. Reviseted version will be found on the forthcoming WIKI section)

SUOMEN KANSAN ARMEIJA – THE FINNISH PEOPLE'S ARMY

The origins of the Finnish People's Army remains (offically) in the creation of The Red Guard of Finland, in 26th January 1918, when the old seperate Red Guards and Worker's Security Guards were united into a single revolutionary military oraganisation. As the revolutionary council of the SDP had voted for an armed revolution to took place, at 23:00 Finnish time in the same day, a red lanttern was placed at the top of the Workers House in Helsinki and the revolution started, making 26th of January the National day in Democratic Republic of Finland. On the next day, the Red Guard of Finland was mobilised and on the 28th day, Helsinki was completely secured by the reds. 27th of January is the offical day of the People's Army.

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During the Finnish Civil War and the following foreign Intervention period (descriped seperatly), the Red Guards gradually formed themselves from the political activist organisations into a fully functional military, with hard earned experience and great political prestige in the new revolutionary country. Practical solutions and inflow of many ex-Grand Principality's military into the Reds retained lot of the old Military tradition of the old, which was mixed with domestic as well as Soviet Bolsevik military doktrine. The first ranks of Red officers were trained in Petograd's International Military school and that influence continued to give its flavor for the all development untill the 2nd World War. Suomen Kansanarmeija, The People's Army (offical abrevation is SKA) was offically formed in 4th June 1920, and that day remains as the Flag Day of the People's Army.

The SKA was organised in peacetime strength of two corps, Norhtern and Southern, with two division each and the Divisions followed pretty closely those of Soviet Red Army. National Conscription was enabled, ordering all men over 18 years of age to serve one year in the ranks of SKA. Togther with the Revolutionaries dispise of hierarchial military structure, the role of Political officers was important and sometimes even overtaking the need of military competense. In this aspect, SKA suffered all the same birth deficts that its larger cousin RKKA. Actuall military schools were established during the 1920's and domestic generation of officer corps begun, although the Finns followed the Soviet examble and used the word Päällikkö, Commander in place of Upseeri, or officer in the old Finnish hierarchy. Also the shoulder polettes were abolished and the Finnish rank system originally followed the Soviet task based system but the old Officer titles were reintroduced in the late 1930's also analog to the Soviet examble. Only the shoulder polettes of Imperial Russian heritage were not followed in Finland as desire of maintaining nationally different military tradition.

Doctrionally, SKA took major advantages of its experience in the Civil war and later Intervetions as well as following closely the revolutionary war-science of Soviet Union, such as teachings of Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the Deep Operations concepts. In Practice, the rural and backward Finland was not able nor intressed in deep scale mechanisation of its limited forces, embhasis had always been on ligth units mobility and taking advances of the geography and terrain, and early intresses in assymetrical warfare. During WWII (descriped seperatly) SKA suffered its intial defeats in the Ahvenanmaa Archipelago and in Lapland, but as the war stagnated in the Finnish front, it begun to adapt dotrinal and experience learned in fighting the Facist invaders, togther with massive material aid from the Allied nations. The wartime strength of SKA peaked in 15 divisions and in 620,000 men and after heavy fighting and bitter losses, the SKA eventually managed to drive off the invaders from 1944 onwards, mostly without any Soviet units participating. The victory and SKA's role in it was great unficiating matter for the civil-war torn nation, and thus it finaly legimitised the Democratic Republic and Communist rule. The SKA itself was begun to see apolitical and national effort, which followed the Hero Cult, similar that of Soviet Union untill these days.

During the Cold war years, SKA followed pretty much the offical Finnish political stand, of nominally Warsaw Pact member, but in practice conducting and creating its own unique military doctrines and structures, drawn from the heavy war experiences and more suited to the capacities of Finnish economy. During the 1950's, SKA abandoned its old Soviet based divisional organisation, and begun to create rather large brigades, dominated by strong battalions, as the core of its figthing force, while the overal Defensive strategy was that of Area-Defence, a concept similar to those of Yugoslavian and Albanian partisan strategies, as well as the Chinese “People's War”. The assymetrical nature of the defence divided all services into High-end general forces, which would be used in the main threath direction to create massive but temporary consentrations, while the rest would be defended by local units, made up of second grade units and equipment. Heavy embhasis was given in Light infantry use, despite them beeing offically titled as “Motorised Rifles”, analog to the Soviet counterparts, but motorisation mostly ment trucks and forrestry tractors. No large scale mechanisation was followed unlike the Soviet and rest of the Warsaw Pact nations. The Finnish tank troops remained small, with just reinforced regiment size units serving in each of the 3 Military districts that the nation was divided into.

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The Domestic armsindustry was predominately infantry weapon orientated, and quite self-sufficent even in pre-WWII era. The heavier military production, aside Aircrafts and Shipbuilding begun in the artillery field, and the Finnish made field guns and mortars replaced Soviet Imports by 1970's, and this took place at the same time as the motorisation of the Rifle Brigades with Finnish made trucks. The truck industry gave direction for wheeled APC development during the 1980's and has continued to supply SKA with high end domestic armoured vehicles. Only Tanks and Missile armaments have remained imported as the limited numbers of their use has made domestic manufacture unfeasible economically.

The end of the Cold War did not make too drastic changes to the SKA's overal concept and composition, as it has allready remained stricktly defensive arm and highly localised. The Experiences from 1990 Gulf War and later NATO's interventions in Yugoslavia and elsewhere had been closely followed by SKA theorethics, and the importance of Eletronical warfare has been in great embhasis in the 90's an early 2000's development projects, after the political stability has earned it more funding to recover from the Fall of the soviet system elsewhere. Although the basic doctrines remains the same, the Modern SKA Land Forces are more mobile and compact than before, and the Area Defence and Total Defence doctrines allows it to retain highly effective use of older equipment and voluntary civil forces in form of the reformed Red Guard (Functioning similar to Soviet DOSAAF) as well as strong internal security forces, which during the wartime would be part of the local defence troops.

Flags and insignia of KSA
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Order of Battle of the KSA Ground forces
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TO&Es

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