Battle of Raate Road
1940 battle during the Winter War between Soviet Union and Finland
The Battle of Raate Road (Finnish: Raatteen tien taistelu) was fought during the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland in January 1940, as a part of the Battle of Suomussalmi.
On December 7, 1939, the Soviet 163rd Rifle Division captured Suomussalmi, but found itself trapped deep inside Finnish territory, and the Soviet 44th Rifle Division was sent to aid the 163rd. Over the next week, Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo's outnumbered 9th Division stopped and decisively defeated the Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road.
Background
During the Battle of Suomussalmi, the Finns cut the Raate Road on December 11, 1939. The action blocked the second, southern supply route to the Soviet 163rd Rifle Division in the town of Suomussalmi. The Finns also cut the first, northern supply route on 13 December, and the Soviets were forced to open a new supply route through Lake Kiantajärvi. The 163rd Division was nearly surrounded and suffered major casualties in Suomussalmi. The situation was getting worse, and on 20 December the commander of the 163rd Division, Andrei Zelentsov, asked permission to retreat from Suomussalmi. In response, part of the 44th Division, the 1st Battalion of the 305th Rifle Regiment, and the 3rd Battalion of the 662nd Rifle Regiment, were sent to reinforce the 163rd Division troops near Suomussalmi. Zelentsov's concerns were not understood at Red Army headquarters, as the entire 44th Division was about to move along the Raate Road.
“Battle of Raate Road” enters the record as 1940 battle during the Winter War between Soviet Union and Finland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Battle, Raate and Road can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2446643. Authority coordinates are 64.848, 29.326. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Raate Road” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.