The dismal fighting on this front gave little opportunity for a unit to distinguish itself, and the division did not finally earn a battle honor until late January 1944, during the Leningrad–Novgorod Offensive.

It continued to serve in the summer and autumn offensive through the Baltic States, becoming so reduced in strength that its remaining infantry was consolidated into a single understrength regiment which nevertheless won a battle honor in the liberation of Riga.

The operation got off to a slow start, and it was not until the night of 23/24 January that the Front commander, Army Gen. K. A. Meretskov, could convince himself that 2nd Shock had created enough of a breach to commit his exploitation force.

Early the next day Meretskov launched a desperate new assault which managed to carve out a tenuous gap 3 - 5 km wide near the village of Miasnoi Bor.

This was by no means adequate, and in early April, 59th Army, including the 374th, attacked in the area southwest of Spasskaia Polist, but gained little ground at the cost of heavy losses.

[6] Col. Yakov Stepanovich Yermakov took command of the division from Colonel Vitoshkin on 5 July, but he was in turn succeeded five days later by Col. Dimitrii Ivanovich Barabanshchikov.

In early October it was briefly part of the 4th Guards Rifle Corps of that Army, before being removed to the Reserve of the Supreme High Command for a much-needed rebuilding.

The STAVKA was planning an ambitious offensive, Operation Polyarnaya Zvezda, but this was stymied in the south by the German reserves gained by their evacuation of the Demyansk Pocket.

In order to penetrate the strong German defenses the Army commander, Lt. Gen. F. N. Starikov, organized his forces into two shock groups, each of two echelons.

Late in the month Starikov released the 165th and 379th Rifle Divisions from second echelon but this did not improve the situation as German reserves were arriving just as 5th Mountain was falling apart.

[10] On 9 August Soviet reconnaissance detected what they thought was a weak point in the German defenses around a small bridgehead on the east bank of the Naziia River, held by the much-weakened 5th Mountain.

A German source states that the 374th had committed two rifle regiments to the battle and that by 16, 12 to 14 August Red Army infantry battalions were reported as "decimated".

However, that night the German XXVIII Army Corps began to withdraw, and over the next four days the 54th's right flank advanced 20 km towards Lyuban, but encountered heavier resistance as it approached the Rollbahn Line.

[20] By the middle of the month the division was in the vicinity of Porkhov,[21] from where it advanced to the south and then west, bypassing the remaining German defenses in the Ostrov - Pskov area and entering the so-called "Baltic Gap".

As of 1 August it was back in 54th Army as part of 7th Rifle Corps, all of which was in 3rd Baltic Front,[22] and had reached the area of Abrene on the border with Latvia.

The troops who participated in the liberation of Riga, by the order of the Supreme High Command of October 13, 1944, and a commendation in Moscow, are given a salute of 24 artillery salvoes from 324 guns.