Casualty statistics during WW2 are largely mythological. The battles of Suomussalmi makes a good case study on which force in this war were more exaggerative of friendly and enemy combat losses. The Russian records claim 13k Soviet losses while the Finns claim 27.5k. Finnish losses; Russian claim 2,700, Finns claim 750. I believe the Soviet figures are more realistic. In the last 10 years or so the Finnish authors have really been churning out some BS on this war. Still it was an excellent example of guerrilla tactics by the Finns. The Soviets were dis-coordinated and lazy about route security. Instead of encircling and destroying the Finnish forces south of Suomussalmi an entire Rifle Division was encircled instead.
Well, we are talking about a highly sensitive subject here. It is no wonder, for the people who fought there and especially people in charge of leading the battle, lower friendly casualties and higher enemy casualties can make the difference between "a job well done" or "a disaster". Especially Colonel Siilasvuo made a huge PR stunt by publishing his memoirs of the battle as soon as 1940. I think we should understand why this kind of exaggeration was made, but also acknowledge it meaning we have to be skeptical of what has been written in the past.
I believe the Finnish archives are very reliable, when it comes to numbers of Finnish casualties. That's the benefit of how the war went; Finnish troops were able to keep their records quite diligently and essentially no records were lost. This is in contrast to for example the East front after 1941, when both German and Soviet sides lost tremendous amounts of whole Divisions and even larger formations.
When looking at "Battles of Suomussalmi", the Finnish archives show Finnish losses to have been quite close to what you state as the "Russian claim" (2700). For example, the figure given in "Raaka tie Raatteeseen", the 2012 book written by a Finn, cited in the discussion on the thread you posted, gives Finnish casualties by January 3rd as 1317. If you combine this with the casualties estimated in the same thread (by another Finn, based on the Finnish archives)(edit: for the time period of Jan 4th-10th), you arrive at over 2000 Finnish casualties. Clearly, modern Finnish authors give numbers that are quite close to Russian claims. So I really would like to know, who are these "
the Finnish authors", who have been "churning out some BS". It is entirely possible that some are still using outdated figures, but I would expect it to be because they are lazy (not wanting to do the counting themselves), not some intentional attempt at misinformation.
Whether battles of Suomussalmi should be considered a single battle or a series of battles has nothing to do with this question. I believe we all agree that Finnish and Soviet losses should be counted on equal basis: if you count Soviet losses for the whole period until ~the 10th of January, so should you count Finnish losses. It is possible some Finnish historians at some point have made mistakes in this kind of calculation, but let's make sure we don't do the same. From the Finnish point of view it makes sense to divide the battle in two phases, but it is irrelevant for the counting of total casualties. While liquidating the elements of 44th was harder and costlier than battles against 163rd, the casualty ratio is still in generally the same range.
I think the Soviet forces in general were incapable of fighting in the terrain. Their whole supply was reliant on the road coming from Raate, and their inability to fight outside the road made securing this road impossible. So it was definitely right decision by 163rd to not attempt any further offensives once they became out of supply. Ultimately it wasn't down to what I would call guerrilla tactics. With the use of terrain, Finnish forces were able to pin down much larger Soviet forces, divide them in small pieces and use concentration of force once the Soviets were immobilized in small pockets. I think this is in contrast with typical guerrilla warfare, which is more about hit and run, in order to weaken enemy through attrition.
