The 44th Kievskaya Rifle Division was a Soviet Red Army division that was active from 1918 to 1957. Raised by the Communist Party of Ukraine as part of the Ukrainian Soviet Army, the division fought in the Ukrainian War of Independence before participating in the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland and the Winter War. At the Battle of Suomussalmi, the division was surrounded and annihilated; of its 17,000 troops, 1,000 were cpatured, 700 escaped, and the rest were killed. The division was recreated in June 1941 as part of the 13th Rifle Corps, and it was wiped out at Podvyskoe (near Uman) during Operation Barbarossa. The division was again recreated at Leningrad in October 1941 and fought in the Leningrad Front and in the Courland Pocket. It was reactivated one last time from 1955 to 1957, when it became the 44th Motor Rifle Division, which disbanded in 1959 and merged into the 43rd Rifle Division.