Was built in 1915-1919 as relief work, and was somewhat improved and officially became a public road in 1923-1924. Raate was and is nothing more than a small farm 3.5 km from the actual border. The Raate road’s only significance was that it was the only road for at least tens of kilometers around leading right to theīorder and over it. The war' or 'what the post-war resettlement and reconstruction looked like'. Parts of Finnish history (in Russia at least), while normally I’m much more interested not in courses of battlesĪs such, but rather in questions like 'why a war happened at all', 'how a country and its economy functioned during Winter War and Continuation War already seem to be the best known I’m not an expert on the subject overall.

This is a brief overview of course with some simplifications. Let’s quickly go through what actually happened.

As a matter of fact, this assumption was perfectly correct, and this still didn’t help the That these lands were poorly defended and Finland would not be able to move a lot of forces here quickly (about 200 km from the eastern border to the sea). It itself was a fairly insignificant place, but the aim of the offensive here was to quickly advance west,Īll the way to the city of Oulu on the Bay of Bothnia, and thus cut Finland in two in its narrowest place Suomussalmi and Raate road area was rather far in the northĪnd mostly resembled wilderness on both sides of the border, more so on the Soviet one. With every 1 of 3 their men killed or missing in action.Īlthough the Mannerheim line on the Karelian Isthmus is relatively well known, and also where the Sovietīreakthrough finally happened in February 1940, 2.5 months into the war, the USSR in fact had started war againstįinland on elsewhere too, along much of its border.

Ones and much better armed in theory (they had a lot of tanks and artillery, while the Finns had no tanks andīarely any artillery), were driven back beyond the border, suffering losses several times worse than Finns, Soviet forces, more than twice as strong as Finnish If not the most devastating Soviet losses, happened here. Passingly familiar with the history of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940. Fishscale Strait) municipality in the gloomy forests of Kainuu region, The name of the small Raate road (Raatteen tie), a 20 km long small gravel road going to the Finnishīorder in Suomussalmi (Finn.

Battle of raate road