Bitter Finn

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (316 pp.)--Voino Linna--Putnam ($4).

The Finns in the past 18 years have fought two wars with Russia, both beyond their capacity to win. The first was the Winter War of 1939 when Finland thrilled the world by holding the Red army at bay for 3 1/2 months. The second, and the subject of this impressive novel, took place 15 months later, and found Finland alongside Hitler in his invasion of the Soviet Union. Author Linna, a textile worker who served in that war, writes with a ferocity and explicitness certain to jolt the half-patronizing image of "plucky little Finland" held by many Americans.

The soldiers are tough and cynical; they hold their own officers in nearly as much contempt as they do the Russians. Few have any clear idea of war aims, and most fight merely because they have no alternative. Yet there is always a swaggering consciousness of their own worth. "You know, boys," boasts a veteran, "I think that if there were thirty million of us, we'd take a crack at the whole world."

But there were less than half a million

Finns under arms. They drove back the Russians in a series of savage, no quarter battles, but when the advance stopped at the Svir River, the gamble was lost. After Stalingrad, the Russians came surging back with heavy tanks and Stormovik planes, crippling the Finnish army in its long retreat through the forests and swamps of Karelia.

Author Linna's bitter book is a huge bestseller in Finland. American readers should be impressed by his terse descriptions of infighting, and grateful for the absence of the detailed flashbacks to peacetime life that have become the curse of war novels. There are some stereotypes but also some fresh, vivid portraits: Rokka, the veteran of the Winter War, who will fight his own way or not at all; Honkajoki, the eccentric pedant, who infuriates his officers by carrying a longbow into battle; Lahtinen, the Communist sympathizer, who wins a medal for bravery, yet takes a perverse pleasure in the stubborn resistance put up by the Reds.

"These were good men," says Author Linna of both the dead and the living. Fate had laid the whip of defeat across their backs, but it also released them from responsibility for the future, and they were content to sit back and watch the victors destroy their victory. Says one exhausted survivor when the fighting is over and the politicians take command: "Speeches aren't going to help anything. When your powder's all gone, it's better to keep your mouth shut than to go spouting about the rights of small nations. A dog raises his hind leg on them."

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