 Joseph Stalin was not pleased with the results of the first month of the Finnish campaign . The Red Army had been humiliated . By the third week of the war , Soviet propaganda was working hard to explain the failures of the Soviet army to the populace : blaming bad terrain and harsh climate , and falsely claiming that the Mannerheim Line was stronger than the Maginot Line , and that the Americans had sent 1 @,@ 000 of their best pilots to Finland . Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov was given full authority over operations in the Finnish theatre , and he ordered the suspension of frontal assaults in late December . Kliment Voroshilov was replaced with Semyon Timoshenko as the commander of the Soviet forces in the war on 7 January . 
