White Karelian Remembrances of
the Post War
Climate Changes
Contributions: J. Markiewicz, R. Nevalainen, A. Aksakov (photos)
Contents
Introduction Roza Tollonjoki village Santra
Introduction
This exhibition shows material from the fieldwork conducted in the summer 2012 in the frame of the project “Cold, and Cooling. White Karelian Remembrances of the Post War Climate Changes” implemented within Geschichtswerkstatt Europa programme. Our task in this project was to collect oral histories, experiences of the individuals, related to the local borderland villages and their destruction in the period of “War, Post War, and Cold War”.
By photographs one can say more than by words, and we found it not only complementary, but bringing a whole new dimension to the fieldwork as well as presentation. The pictures are telling their own stories along with the text, yet independently.
The first and last part presents individual points of view to displacement and the destruction of the home village. The second part compiles together different remembrances of a lost village in a more documentary way, and with a polyphony of voices.
This exhibition is directed to all audiences, and the contents are translated into English. We wanted to provide glimpses of reality and impressions of life on the northernmost peripheries of the former Soviet Union. We hope it will spark interest and inspire further questions.
Let us begin with a brief introduction to the history of White Karelia and the Karels. On the border zone, it is important not only to look back, but also to the East and West. The 1940s and 1950s saw the heat of the war calm and gradually change into the Cold War. The time period has been deeply traumatic in the history of the region and the lives of the people as well as for whole Karelian culture. Irreversible changes came to pass, and there was no return to the past. We wanted to face local reality from the historical as well as cultural point of view, which formed our background when reflecting on the different remembrances in White Karelia.
Karelia as a geographical region is situated between Finland and Russia, and it has been historically significant for both countries. White Karelia (Vienan Karjala in Karelian and Finnish) is the northern part of so called East Karelia, most of which today belongs to the Republic of Karelia. Viena also refers to a historical and geographical region reaching from the western coast of the White Sea to the Finnish border. From the cultural point of view, such a clear boundary does not exist; the cultural area of Viena comprises also three villages on the Finnish side. White Karelia has never belonged to Finland, but it was nevertheless occupied by the Finns during the Continuation War (1941-1944).
Ethnically Karels are a Baltic-Finnic group speaking Karelian, which is a Finnic language and closely related to eastern Finnish dialects. Historical homelands of the Karels include present-day Russian and Finnish Karelia as well as Ladoga Karelia, which Finland ceded to Soviet Union after the Winter War. Today Karels are considered to be a separate group of their own, although previously there has been disputes about their belonging.
During the period of “War, Post War and Cold War� Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (KFSSR, 1940-1956) was created. It took its shape on the basis of the territories ceded by Finland after Winter War and joined together with former Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR).
The Karelian ASSR had its origins in Karelian Labour Сommune formed by Red Finns who fled to Soviet Union after the Finnish Civil War in 1918. Ethnicity had an important role in the politics of the Soviet Union when changing Karelian ASSR into Karelo-Finnish SSR. In this time the concept “Karelian-Finnish people” was introduced, to serve political purposes of the Soviet Union. Close kinship of these two nations was the prevailing conception and justification for action also in 1941, when Finnish military administration was established in East Karelia (in the occupied areas of KFSSR), with a project to prepare the region to be annexed into “Greater Finland”. In July 1941 in the village of Vuokkiniemi in White Karelia, an important meeting was held declaring Olonets and White Karelia to secede from Soviet Union and become part of Finland.
Local reality in the White Karelian borderland villages
Cultural point of view leads us to the problematics of the boundaries and the borderland.
We wanted to focus on the villages because of the importance they have for the whole Karelian culture as well as for this time period. White Karelian culture has always been characteristically a village culture. The villages have been important not only as homesteads and landscapes of the ancestors, but also as cradles where the traditions and language could live on in the changing world. The places visited during this project were remote and situated in the periphery of Russia. This was also the reason why a rich oral tradition, archaic forms of epic singing, story telling and spells, could abide there throughout the centuries. The Second World War caused the majority of the inhabitants to be evacuated either deeper i nto Russia or to Finland. The villages close to the border were occupied by Finns in the summer of 1941, later the people were given a chance for evacuation in Finland. There were efforts to keep the life continuing in the ordinary way as far as possible. After the war, basically everybody who could, returned home. In the beginning there were several difficulties, and it took time to have all the living members of the families back together. Despite the problems, the years after the war saw life slowly returning to the villages.
The villages made possible a form of life, which has not been the same after the natural context was destroyed. The desertation and abandonment of the countryside villages in the former Soviet Union happened as a part of general economical reformation processes. They were seen standing on the way of the development towards greater efficiency. In any case, the economical and technical improvements were not highlighted by the former inhabitants; the loss of homesteads and family unity gained the greatest weight in personal narrations. The border zone of Karelia was part of the great border of the Soviet Union against the West. During the Cold War, the location of the villages doubled the concern of the leaders. Soviet reformations from the late 1950s onwards came to purposely desert and in some cases to completely destroy the old habitations. This came to be known as ”liquidation of villages without perspective”. Each collective village farm was replaced by a centralized state farm. The old houses were often moved from the old villages to the nearest sovkhoz.
“
My grandfather was born in Rimpi. It’s on the Finnish side, close to Akonlahti. From Akonlahti there were tradesmen going to Finland. Before the war the borders were open. You could walk freely there and back. (A.T. 85 yrs, Kalevala)
”
Akonlahti is perhaps the most striking example of the cold determination of the Soviet officials over the matter of borderland control. Akonlahti was a big complex of villages, perhaps the most wealthy in White Karelia with grand houses and well maintained surroundings. It was nevertheless declared as ”without perspective”. The actual problem was it’s location very near the border, and it’s former frequent contacts to Finland. Already in the winter of 1958, before the official launch of the liquidation campaign, there were sent airplanes and helicopters to transfer the children, the elderly and some animals to Kalevala.
Others were given few hours time to pack their belongings and head towards the East. The villages were burnt to the ground, so that there remained nothing but the cementary.
“
People went where they could. I was told that they had to leave at three o’clock at night. Some found a place in forest punkts. Some had relatives in other villages. Mostly the inhabitants of Akonlahti were settled here [Kalevala]. (L.L. 74 yrs, Kalevala)
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We decided to focus on collecting material from people who have memories either of the
two borderland villages, Tollonjoki and Akonlahti. Both were liquidated and both have been very important for Karelian culture. Our aim in this project was to learn about the memory in every day life, a small and personal viewpoints gained from oral histories. By gathering information of these two villages, we came to know more as well on other habitation centres; Vuokkiniemi, Kostomuksha and Kalevala. There is a complex of relations between these places in demographical, cultural as well as economical sense. First of the two villages, Tollonjoki, is located along a river by the same name. Today there is only one elderly couple with no children living in the village all year round. Another family comes there for the summer. Most of the inhabitants of Tollonjoki were moved to Vuokkiniemi already in the 1960s and in the early 1970s. Vuokkiniemi was earlier an administrative centre of the parish, and in Soviet times it became a sovkhoz brigade. It lies approximately at eight kilometers distance from Tollonjoki to the South and 90 kilometres from Kalevala to the Northeast and has approximately 450 inhabitants. Since the late 1950s, Vuokkiniemi has had a plenty of new inhabitants and often together with their former houses when the surrounding villages were deserted.
When traveling a little over 50 kilometers towards North from one of the region’s biggest habitation centres, Kostomuksha, Tollonjoki is the first White Karelian village the traveler meets. Kostomuksha is an urban style industrial centre built in the end of 1970s with a large iron ore refinery, and it is populated by people from different regions of the former Soviet Union. Today Tollonjoki is part of Vuokkiniemi administration, and Vuokkiniemi is a central village of the district of the town of Kostomuksha. There is a straight relation of the final desertation of Tollonjoki and building Kostomuksha. When the latter became established, the lands of the village came to belong to the property of the Kostomuksha combine. Most of the remaining houses, examples of fine wooden architecture, were demolished and the land under them cultivated. This was however a very short perspective profit; the fields were exploited only for few years, and then the combine moved its cultivation to other areas. We were told by the only inhabitant of the village that after this the fields have been left without use. People from Akonlahti were primarily moved to Kalevala after the liquidation (sometimes the original Karelian name Uhtua is still in use). Kalevala is an urban settlement, a regional centre of the district, with approximately 4500 inhabitants. It is situated 100 kilometers from Vuokkiniemi to the Northeast and it was a former sovkhoz centre. Akonlahti’s location next to the border gives a new perspective for its violent liquidation. It was said, that there you could hear a cockerel crowing in the villages on the Finnish side. Akonlahti consisted of a group of villages with 90 houses and as much as 600 inhabitants. The houses there were more grand and wealthy than in White Karelia in general. In addition to Akonlahti, the villages we visited in this project – and, which were purposely destroyed – also belong to the most important bardic villages, where Kalevalaic epic songs were collected by several collectors. One of these was Lönnrot, who later compiled the Finnish national epos Kalevala. That is, the vast majority of the material in the epos Kalevala was collected in White Karelian villages, which brings a new dimension to their cultural value.
In the town of Kalevala, the celebration of the epos and Kalevalaic culture is perhaps most visible still today; one can see posters, commercial products and memorials expressing this. In 1961, Uhtua was renamed as Kalevala to commemorate the 100 years anniversary of the epos. This was not however celebrational in nature, but was done along with several village liquidations and marks in people’s memory a period of hard centralisation policy of the economical reforms.
The interviews were conducted in Russian and in Finnish, which is close to Karelian.
However, there are considerable variations in the dialects of Karelian language spoken in the Republic. In Vuokkiniemi, the majority of the inhabitants still today are Karelian and know Karelian language. It may be their first language, although practically all understand Russian, if not use it themselves. In Kostomuksha and in Kalevala, almost all the inhabitants are Russian speakers.
“
I don’t understand the Karelian dialect, which they speak in the south [of Karelian Republic], nor Veps language. I have many friends in Finland, Northern Karelian dialect is almost Finnish. (R.Z., 75 yrs, Vuokkiniemi) Here, in the North Karels and Finns understand each other very well. I learnednish at school. It is a little different from Karelian. (A.K. 77 yrs, Kalevala) I turn on Oulun radio [Finnish radio] every morning when I wake up at four. Yes, you can listen to it here. The weather forecasts hold true here too. (N.L. 75 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
”
Language policy played a major role in russification of the Karels. After 1956, when KareloFinnish SSR was merged into Soviet Russia and changed into Karelian ASSR, the education in Finnish (earlier there did not exist written Karelian) was replaced by Russian. Karelian and Russian languages belong to different language families, and present a remarkable learning challenges to native speakers of either of the two. Nowadays the Karelian skills of the young Karels are weak. Russian seems to be the language of the youth.
“
Here in the villages they used to speak only Karelian, there were no Russians here. This was all Karelian. We studied in Finnish at school. In 1956 they changed the language. Now the children understand only Russian, even if their parents are Karelian. (N.L. 75 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
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Linguistic connections and barriers were a recurrent topic of our interviewees, also when talking about the 1940s.
“
We never learned Russian very good. We don’t speak it much at all. All the characters of the alphabet and all. It is so different. It should be studied when young. And when we were young, we did not need Russian. There were no Russians here. Only one man, Lesik. (N.L and A.L, 75 and 76 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
”
“
After we returned [from evacuation in Finland] we were taken to Leningrad oblast. From there to Kemi, then later to Kalevala. - - There was all the time the question about the papers. Do we have relatives who have been fighting in the war? Do we have family in Finland? None of the officials seemed to speak Finnish. In Kalelava there were older children from our home village, they had already learnt some Russian. They could help us with the papers. Then we could return home. (I.D. 80 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
My parents were evacuated in Arhangelsk region. My family did not speak Russian. Those who did not know Russian were treated different. There was a lot of hatred. They were treated bad. First two years people died of hunger there. Especially the elderly people did not survive. (L.L. 73 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
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As one of our informants put it; in war they were all strangers, the Finns, the Russians, and the Germans. Winter War and Continuation War presented tumultuous times of the childhood of many of the Karels we had a chance to meet. Those who could return to their home after war, had to leave again soon. Interesting question about the villages is, what kind of remembrances do they hold and what kind of places of remembrance have they become.
Images of the lost land: war, memories and longing
It is well worth to take a look at the local reality also from a wider perspective. Characteristics
and phenomena found in the Finnish-Russian frontier might also be found on other borderlands of Europe. Besides, a border of the nation state has geographical and historical relevance in itself. It is a zone where history enters into complex relations with cultural stereotypes, patterns and national myths. The dynamic nature of the border determines it’s importance in cultural as well as national imagination. That is why on all the borderlands it is better to watch out every step and not overestimate own intuition. Therefore we wanted to ask good questions rather than give full answers.
If we trace the “new” border of the Soviet Union after WWII, certainly we will notice it
having shifted to the West. In addition to Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, three other Soviet Republics gained new territories (Belarussian, Moldavian, and Ukrainian). As a consequence of the war, was created three new Soviet Socialist Republics (Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian). The only part of western Soviet border that stayed unchanged was the border of Karelian ASSR (except Salla region which was also a part of Finnish territory incorporated to Karelian ASSR). These changes had remarkable consequences for the Post War societies.
There is for example a certain similarity in Polish and Finnish experience of this time as neighbours to Soviet Union; loss of eastern territories, displacements, and evacuations. These traumatic episodes produced a rich imagery, born as a collective expression of the experiences of loss, longing and reminiscence. Most typically, these images are very extreme and contrasting; on one hand, they are filled with almost utopian idyllic life and happiness, and on the other, with devastation and cruelty. These images have been enhanced by more than 50 years of separation and become rather solid projections of big and complex feelings. Those mental landscapes and their formation was somewhat different in White Karelia, on the other side. The reality of life on the periphery of the Soviet Union did not allow sentimentality to flourish overtly. The people experienced collectivisation, atheisation, and Soviet industrialization. What was not lost behind the border, was in other ways made inaccessible because of it’s vicinity. The border was felt even hundred kilometres away. However, longing for what is lost is similar on both sides, and in fact such a strong sentiment, that it can have been inherited from one’s parents or grandparents, and therefore is closely related to formation of identity. We wanted to approach this by reflecting the meaning of home and roots for those who have experienced the changes of the time.
Roza
We chose to present this life story as a whole, as it represents so well the many stories we heard in White Karelia. Roza’s story shows how the changes of the times formed a forceful background for life, and we wanted to give the readers an opportunity to discover it for themselves.
The first war Roza remembers was the Winter War. It did not last for very long, but she
remembers this being the first time her family was evacuated from their home. People from all the borderland villages were quickly transferred to the east. Roza’s family was taken to Kem. It was an exceptionally cold winter and the lakes had such a thick ice, that they could drive by trucks to the other side. Roza was eight years old when the Continuation War begun. It was almost midsummer and the cows came home late from the fields to be taken to their shed. Roza and her siblings were already in bed when mother came home from the field. Their neighbour and old woman came knocking on the little kitchen window that night. She told the war had begun and it was now for everyone to pack things and leave as fast as they could. On the yard they could see smoke rising from the Vuokkiniemi’s direction. As the word spread, people started running about. Nobody knew where to go. There were lakes, rivers and marshland to every direction. Those who had boats took them, and headed towards the bigger lakes. The rest went hiding on islands or peninsulas, or in other
villages. Some returned soon from the hiding place as there was not enough food. Roza’s family did not manage to get very far. They didn’t have a boat so they went hiding in the forest, to the lumberman’s huts. Roza ‘s grandparents did not follow them into the woods. They said, if they were to die now, then they would rather die at home. She remembers especially one long wait in the forest when the war had already been officially declared. The children soon became restless in the hiding place. As it was warm, they couldn’t resist to go swimming. Soon they went, one by one into the water, and after a little while all the children of the village were splashing in the wide river. Suddenly there came airplanes behind the trees. They were flying very low, and shooting as they went over the river. Roza remembers how the noise of the shooting was multiplied by the calm surface of the water. They could have been killed all of them, but as if by a miracle, nobody was even hurt.
Soon the Finns came. The border is very close from Tollonjoki village, and the Finnish
troops could proceed without facing any resistance. At that time Roza had just finished her first year in school. In the autumn she continued as usual though now under the occupation. The children went to school in Vuokkiniemi, and were living in the school’s boarding house with the teachers. In the case of air raids, they were told, they should go to the big kolkhoz pit and cover themselves with a blanket if gas was being sprayed. All the tuition was in Finnish. Roza has never studied in Russian and does not read in Russian. All her reading she does in Finnish.
Roza remembers the Finns being there for almost four years. Then the retreating started.
The Germans had almost reached Kalevala, they were only fourteen kilometers away. Roza does not remember the returning soldiers posing any threat, but she remembers the motorbikes and their noise. In Vuokkiniemi there were so many German motorbikes that you could not count them. Roza was still a little girl and kept away from happenings.
In 1943, when the evenings were getting darker towards the autumn, she was taken to Finland by the retreating troops. The people were told, that those who want to come to Finland, can come, but they will not be forced. On the other hand, Russians were feared. The trucks left from in front of the school building. They were told to keep quiet and not to peek under the canvas laid upon them.
They were taken to Alapitkä camp where there were people from many different places.
They were given enough food, nobody suffered from hunger. Where did all that food come from, Roza does not understand. From Alapitkä she was later taken to Naarajärvi camp. For how long, she does not remember. She remembers children having listened to adults talking and saw them being worried. It was not known what was happening and what would be next. Otherwise it was not so bad. There were no fences around the place where they were. It was like a big country house. You could go walking on the hills, and there was even a shop. Women were even offered work on the fields, but they did not want to take it.
Whether Finns or Russians had worse reputation, was not important for Roza. For her they
were all strangers. When the war was over, Russia wanted it’s own people back. They were taken further to camps and transported to different stops. On their way back they were being asked for the papers on every occasion. Russians told them that they could soon go home. But they were not taken home. They were taken first to Leningrad oblast, to Velikoe Luka. From that trip she remembers continuous hunger and uncertainty. Roza feels sorry for her mother who again had to survive with small children. There was too much hardship in her life. Their cattle had been delivered to Eastern Finland and taken care of. Now back in Russia, all these animals had to be slaughtered for meat.
There was all the time the question about the papers. Had their relatives been fighting in the war? Did they have any family in Finland? This was all to prove that they were no enemies for Russia. It took weeks and weeks with waiting and going from office to office. During this time they were not given permission to move freely. They spent a long time waiting in Kemi, in Kalevala, and in several other places. Some older children from the home village could help them with the papers in Kalevala as they already had learnt some Russian. With their and others help, they finally managed to have the right kind of papers. The officials did not seem to know Finnish at all. After long arrangements, there came the opportunity to send some of the villagers back to Tollonjoki.
It was winter when Roza returned home with her younger sister and some boys from the
neighbourhood. Kerttu, her little sister, was only three years old. They managed to travel on a horse carriage to the village. They went across the ice of the lake Kuitto to the village Pirttilahti, and continued to Vuokkiniemi. There the girls went looking for their aunt, who was still living in the village. They found the house and their aunt, who welcomed them with joy and prepared beds for them. On the following day she sent the girls to Tollonjoki and told the children which roads would lead there. It was already later in winter, probably in March, as Roza remembers the sun already warming despite the cold weather. On the road to Tollonjoki they stopped another horse carriage, and they were taken to their home. Grandmother had stayed all the time Tollonjoki, and she had received a word that the two girls were sent on a trip back home. As they arrived, Roza remembers, they saw their grandmother through the small kitchen window. The door was locked, but she opened it and embraced the girls.
The life started gradually return to normal. The children continued going to school.
Their mother returned later, after having received her passport. Soon she started working in Tollonjoki kolkhoz. In the mornings of those early times after the return, Roza’s mother made a thin vegetable soup and left it on the stove. She told the children to put a little salt in it, eat, and then go to school. Children were trying to study with a constant gnawing hunger. As the ice melted from the lakes towards the spring, Roza told her brother to look for a net, but there was none. They found instead a piece of iron wire and made a small hook. One day the children took a boat and went fishing on the lake. The waters had been quite untouched for a long time, and they returned with a good catch. Roza and her brother decided to go and sell the fish in the village. She packed the biggest of the fish in a canvas, and took them to the centre by a sledge. They met a woman on her way home after a day’s work, and asked if she wanted to buy some fish. She was happy to have the fish and gave the children some potatoes. The woman paid them in money, and so Roza could buy some supplies in the shop. Back in home she made a soup of fish and potatoes. This time they would even have tea with sugar for mother. In the evening they saw mother coming home, swaying slowly by the side of the road. She was so weak that she used a walking stick, and her clothes were hanging loose on her. They were watching and thinking if she has enough strenght to walk all the way home. After the first difficulties, every day life started flowing normally. In Roza’s memories things would turn better from that evening on.
The houses in Tollonjoki were not destroyed in the war, but standing all in good condition.
However in Vuokkiniemi, some people had burned their own houses before the evacuations. Roza has heard of the Akonlahti villages, which were destroyed almost overnight. People were deported in a great hurry. From Akonlahti they were not sent to Vuokkiniemi,
but to Kalevala. Or if some people had relatives who lived in the distant forest punkts, they could move there. Besides to Akonlahti, also Kivijärvi and Latvajärvi Roza remembers being destroyed in the 1950s and 1960s and there is probably nothing left in those villages today. Maybe some fishermen go there sometimes. The kolkhoz in Tollonjoki was terminated, and there was a big centralization. They closed the school, the shop, and everything else. Tollonjoki was not to survive. They said it has no perspective. Kostomuksha was developed to become a town with all the big industry. Roza says, that the villages have always been feeding the towns. But sometimes they feed too much on them, so that they drain all life out of the villages. Roza’s family had to move to Vuokkiniemi. During the sovkhoz there was a plenty of work on the fields, and there were sheep, cows, pigs, and horses to take care of. Every house had an animal, the big lakes around were full of fish, and forests full of mushrooms and berries. They had everything to survive. It would have been better for them if they could keep the cattle in the village. But it all was changed by Kostomuksha. It did not make any sense for the people.
In Vuokkiniemi there are mostly Karels, and only few people from outside. But in Kostomuksha
there are many nationalities from all around the Soviet Union. She remembers two families that came earlier from Belarussia. They soon returned, because they did not like it in there. They did not understand the life in Karelia. They were working in a forest punkt. Lumberman’s work was hard. At that time there were no electric saws. Roza was also working in the forest for three years, in a place called Huopainen. That was as early as in kolkhoz times and it was hard work. Every day they had to have the daily norm done. There was not much time to rest. During the sovkhoz she could work in the village with the cattle. Then came the machines, and gave more force to do the work. Life became easier also because there was no need to work in the forest so much.
Roza’s husband was working in all different kinds of sovkhoz jobs. That’s how it was in those times. He had a weak heart. He went to see the doctor and was given some medication. And then one morning it happened. They had just finished the morning tea, and all the cups were still on the table. He went to work in the garage where the saws and motors were kept. The boys were all in the yard. He had taken a motor saw, which had to be pulled very hard to start the engine. And it was then when his heart stopped. He died at once. The son came home running to tell. It was so sudden. They say in Karelia that a good man has a good death.
The house where Roza lives now was given to her for her hard work in sovkhoz. She has lived
in the house for more than thirty years. 14th of June it will be ten years when her husband died. The house would need renovation, but there is no man to take care of it. She herself is too weak. The water and maintenance payments are high, and the retirement allowance is small. The stove is not in good condition, and the fire place should be swept. She has been promised renovation help, and for that she has already been waiting for a long time. Electricity is working poorly and keeps cutting. Last winter was especially cold, and Roza was wearing woollen socks and warm shoes all the days and nights. She is living now with her second son, who is fifty years old. He had a bad stroke when he was only nine months old and it left him crippled. He can only use his left hand. He also cannot talk, but he understands some. Roza has come to know, that what he had as a child, could be cured today. But there were no doctors at that time with such a knowledge, especially not in the villages.
Roza has four children. Her oldest son lives some kilometers from Vuokkiniemi. He has a
wife but no children. The third son became an alcoholic as did so many men in the villages. He went with the others. Roza has not heard of him and does not know where he is. Her youngest child is a daughter. She went to school and studied ten classes.
At that time there were not so many classes taught in the school of Vuokkiniemi, but she went to continue her studies in Kalevala. When Kostomuksha was established, they invited young people to work in the industry kombinat. She went and has been working there for twenty eight years. She has two sons. The older one finished the university in Petrozavodsk and is working in the kombinat as an engineer. The younger son is still at school. Roza’s grandchildren children don’t know Karelian nor Finnish and Roza cannot talk with them fluently. Their father was from Bashkiria, behind the Urals. Roza knows many marriages with foreigners in Kostomuksha. He also started to drink, and the daughter moved away from him. Nowadays it is more difficult at the daughter’s workplace. She has problems with her lungs because of the gasses that the burning coal produces. Roza thinks the toxic particles are getting in her body and produce various symptoms. She would already get a pension, but she feels she has to keep earning money for the younger son.
Roza has told her own children about her past, but it is impossible even for them to
understand how the life has been, and how the threat of death has been upon her so many times. She is now a little over eighty years old. And it has not been an easy life. Another saying goes, that you should not remember the bad times. Roza wishes the people would learn and not ever fight again.
Now in summer the nature is in its most beautiful in Vuokkiniemi. But Roza looks back to
Tollonjoki. The wide river had few little rapids, the place was simply so beautiful. There were houses on every riverbank, and all of them had a name. Roza remembers people being good, and there was almost no quarreling at all. When the weather was calm, you could hear what the people were talking in the neighbourhood. You could invite your neighbour for a tea just by raising your voice a little, even if the house was further away. Every house had their own sauna by the shore. There was also an island, Livonsuari, with four houses.
There they went to pick raspberries by a boat. Cloudberries they could find in the marshlands. You could not find a more beautiful place. By now it has all disappeared. People are already dead. Even those in the age of Roza’s children have died. Roza is one of the oldest alive.
Roza knows that their old house in Tollonjoki is still standing on it’s place. There is a fungus
decaying the wooden floors. You could not walk inside anymore. Roza was there last time two years ago. The roof had sank a little. The house would have needed a big renovation a long time ago, but there was no money for it. They would have moved back home a long time ago if it only had been possible. Vuokkiniemi is not the same. Now her feet are weak and high blood pressure causes problems. When they were returning home with her little sister by walk from Kalevala in winter time, they were wearing only very thin shoes. The hard life, hunger and cold has destroyed her health. She will live as long as God gives her time. Her grandmother had died only three days before she turned one hundred. It is not for us to know how long we stay here.
Tollonjoki village
This part is from our study on the villages which do not exist anymore. Tollonjoki was ”drained” rather than completely demolished like Akonlahti. In our approach, the most important were not the physical remains – though we also travelled to see the village, the few houses and the lands, which once belonged to it. We wanted to ask, how Tollonjoki is being remembered by it’s inhabitants and we followed their traces of memory.
Travel to the villages on the periphery is difficult. The first proper road was constructed in
White Karelia as late as 1929. In the North the distances are big, and the condition of the roads is generally poor still today, although a new road construction project was going on. In older days even adjacent villages can at times have been relatively isolated from each other. In some cases the communications have been very frequent; bodies of water served as routes, and there were tradesmen’s paths in the forest. Tollonjoki lies approximately eight kilometres South from Vuokkiniemi village, and a little over thirty kilometres from the Finnish border. Compared to other White Karelian villages, Tollonjoki was not very big even at its largest. It consisted of several parts situated on the banks of the river; Tollontermä, Hukkalantermä, Ortjontermä, Kusmasentermä, and Suari (island). Interviewees remember there being approximately twenty houses (more than a hundred inhabitants) after the war and until the village was gradually destroyed starting from the early 1960s.
Especially after the rains it is difficult to get to the village; as the level of the water rises, part of the road disappears and must be crossed by a boat. Today, there are houses only in one part of the village, and most of them are deserted. There lives only one elderly couple all year round; a man who refused to leave his home in the 1970s, and his wife who went to live in the village after retiring from her work in Vuokkiniemi.
Economical motives behind village liquidations aimed at increasing agricultural production by creating centralised units. The services, such as shops and schools, were terminated in the smaller villages and concentrated in one bigger and two smaller sovkhoz centres. This was done also in purpose to elevate living standards in the rural areas. On the other hand, it made controlling the border zone inhabitants easier.
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They came and said that this village has no perspective. What does it mean? It means the village has no future. They took away the school, the post office, the shop. How can people live there? Our house is not there anymore, it was transferred here on the lakeshore. We never lived in it here in Vuokkiniemi. The village [Tollonjoki] was already empty when our house was moved. It must have been 1965 or 1966. - Pirttilahti, Ponkalahti, Latvajärvi, Kivijärvi, Tollonjoki – they were all destroyed. (T.I. 78 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
They came and close the school and shop in Tollonjoki. The whole village is cut from the bridge onwards. - - Tollonjoki was a big village. Now it’s all empty. Only grass grows there. I had to move here [in Vuokkiniemi] because my children had to go to school. It was not possible to stay there. - - Of course I would have stayed. Why would I have moved from there. - - Our house is still standing there. It’s the second house in Hukkalantermä, between the river and the lake. I haven’t been there to see that in two or three years. Now I’m weak, I cannot walk anymore. - - Our house is on clayey land, and the base might be sinking. Nobody lives [in that house] now. It was a beautiful house. This [the current house] is nothing like that. It was a big house, and on a good place. My grandfather built it. The neighbouring house was also built by my grandfather, in 1925. Our house was even older. There lives now only one couple in Tollonjoki. But they are already old. (I.I. 82 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
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They terminated Tollo in 1963. If I remember right. I was born there. There came a lot of people here [Vuokkiniemi] from Tollo and Latvajärvi. Now I am the oldest man left from the village. - - The young people today don’t have work. They just drink here. There was a lot of work in Soviet times. Nobody was unempolyed. I moved to Kalevala when I was young. To earn my living. It was not possible in Tollonjoki. (N.L. 75 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
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Many informants tell the Soviet officials coming to close the services. This is being remembered as an important turning point of the Post War times. Most of the former inhabitants are living in Vuokkiniemi, and we met them there. Over time Vuokkiniemi has lost it’s character as a Karelian village. For some parts, it is more like a collection of houses built for different
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When they were building the sovkhoz, they transported many houses from Tollonjoki to Vuokkiniemi. You can tell which houses are from Tollo, which from Latvajärvi. They are older. Then there are those big houses built in sovkhoz times. They are not in their place. They are not Karelian. (R.Z. 75 yrs, Vuokkiniemi) Yes, the houses on this side of the shore are from Latvajärvi. They destroyed living villages. People took their houses with them. They marked the logs, and built them again in here. (L.L. 75 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
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Not all the young people have abandoned the homesteads and moved to bigger habitation centres, although it is the general trend. Nonetheless, living in the villages is difficult. A man in Vuokkiniemi told us that he is using the fields of the old villages for his cattle in summer time. He expressed his interest to live in his family homestead, but it is lonely.
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--My brother, he is staying at his home [in Vuokkiniemi]. I used to keep cattle in Ponkalahti. I am from there. I used to stay there in winter. There is a lot of fish in the lake there. - - I don’t have family, no wife, no children. - - Yes, it would be nicer if there were more people there. There has been only one, two people living there occasionally. (K.K. 39 yrs, Vuokkiniemi) When I went to the army, there were nineteen houses here [in Tollonjoki], nineteen families. Here an old fermer died a little over a year ago. There came people from the town, they made a bonfire inside the house. They would have burnt it, but I drove them away. There are now five houses standing in here, only two habitable. The last one has a family staying there over the summer. (I.D. 73 yrs, Tollonjoki)
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The home village is very precious for it’s former inhabitants. The stories have similarities, and we did not really find two contrasting points of view. For many it is the time after the war, before the liquidation, that appears to be a kind of a reference point in the narrations. In those days the work in kolkhoz collective farm was more harder than in the new collective system. There was hunger and shortage. Yet despite all that, this is the time so many come back in their memories as the ”golden time”. It was after they had returned home after the war, when the biggest difficulties were won, and life started developing.
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Everything would have been fine unless we had to move again. Life was good after the war in Tollonjoki. There was a kolkhoz there. Cattle was growing well, and everybody had work. Everything was normalised. After the war people were so happy. After a while life started going good. They were dancing, singing, performing. There were happenings every week. I was given this house here [in Vuokkiniemi]. For my hard work. In Tollo our house was big and beautiful. Decorations on the walls. It was built by my grandfather. It was built for a family to live. The landscape was the most beautiful. This is a sovkhoz house. (T.I. 76 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
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Tollonjoki was inhabited almost throughout the Continuation War. Towards the end of the war people were evacuated. Living close to the border became dangerous. When the war was over, those who could, returned, but families had experienced losses.
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We retrurned in 1944. We had been evacuated to Archangelsk region. I lost my grandparents there. In Tollonjoki the houses were in good condition, there were Finns living there, and the school was working. Those who could stay during the war, lived there well, they did not know hunger as we knew it. (N.L. 75 yrs, Vuokkiniemi) Tollonjoki was a very beautiful village. The river was beautiful and we loved the sound of the small rapids. It was very special. The families had gone to live on every riverbend and built their houses there. Every house had sauna on the shore. There was some distance between the houses, but when the weather was calm, you could hear the neighbour’s voices, even from other parts of the village. - -In the river there was Livonsuari [island] with four houses. - - Here with my neighbour, we are among the oldest people alive from Tollonjoki. (T.I. 82 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
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Moving to nearby Vuokkiniemi, which is by its inhabitants, one of the most Karelian today, did never replace the homestead that were left behind. Too many things had changed.
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I remember every tree from Tollo. I would find the way. Even though I’m blind I can find the paths. It’s been almost 60 years since I left Tollonjoki. (N.L. 75 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
I know our old house is standing there. I was there last time two years ago. Ours is by the river. It is in a bad condition. You can see if you go there. It should have been renovated a long time ago. But it was not possible. - - There used to be a big sarai, there was a shed for the animals. Horses were kept upstairs. On the yeard you could see the island. The island and the marshlands around were full of berries. We went to pick them with the girls after school. - - For sure we would have moved back if only it was possible. - -Where else would I want to live? (I.T. 80 yrs, Vuokkiniemi)
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These mental territories, images and memories have become endangered heritage to
which only few have access today. However, there is an effort to keep the family knowledge and memory alive, and people together. In Karelia a tradition of village festivals has been revitalized. Every village has it’s own day in a year, typically on a nameday of a saint in the summer months. Festivals are generally not religious in character, rather it is time for dancing, playing and singing Karelian songs, memorizing, eating, drinking, and people getting together. In some villages, there is a more specialized programme, but mostly it is just a free and joyful gathering.
The festival is held on a central place, and everyone would participate. In the old days, this was an opportunity for young people to meet as people from other villages would gather there too. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been cultural activists from Finland influencing in the continuation of the tradition, but generally the arrangements are in the hands of the locals.
The village festival of Tollonjoki as well as Akonlahti are special, because they happen in an
empty place on a grass or by water, where there used to be houses and life. In Tollonjoki people gather every two years to commemorate the lost village. These village festivals have become a kind of collective commemorations. People tell their and their parent’s stories; when they left, and what happened to them, where they were living, and where they went after the war. A notice in a bulletin board in Vuokkiniemi tells, that the festival of Tollonjoki will take place in ”there, where used to be a shop”. There is nothing in the place that a stranger could grasp, but a field and a dusty road. No ruins, no memorials, nor a sign of a former shop.
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Now they have that village festival. They have it there near the bridge. There will be people from all over Karelia, all the former inhabitants. There comes all who possibly can. We go, yes, Vieno [wife] will sing there. My brother will come from Kalevala. From Finland there are normally some people, who have roots there. Once there were people even from Estonia. (I.D. 73 yrs, Tollonjoki)
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The nostalgy becomes collectively expressed in the gathering. Ending our first field trip
with the festival, we heard again more stories of Post War times. The festival of the lost village could be seen as an institution emphasizing the (destroeyd) identity of the Karels as well as consolidating the culture of remembrance. There is a feeling of speciality in the inherited knowledge of native singing tradition, yoiks of Viena, which were being presented. The landscape hides paths once walked, meeting places, people talking, river flowing, summer nights, sauna warming, work on the fields, animal sheds, meadows and marshlands where cloudberries were growing. A stranger in White Karelia can learn how seemingly empty spaces can hold intricate patterns of memories in the minds of the locals. The lived experiences, and their sharing create the places of remembrance imbuing them with meanings and feeling.
The years after the war marked a turning point in the history of White Karelia. Tollonjoki
is just one example of the destruction of the smaller villages. What people managed to grow and make blossom after the war, they had to bury and leave behind. The development was accelerated in the times of Cold War. This was done purposely by the Soviet authorities without considering the destruction of whole forms of life. In Tollonjoki's case it is not so clear, whether the reason for abolishment was the location near the border, or it was simply the inevitable outcome of the economical reformations and turning kolkhozes to sovkhoses. However in the 1950s, the border zones were wider than today, and could cover large areas. The abrupt demolition of prosperous Akonlahti villages next to the border, even before the official launch of liquidation policy, leaves little left to guess.
Santra
This story tells about Akonlahti, a palce formerly known as “a treasure house of poetry and the cradle of Karelianism”. Its close location to the border made it an object of violent liquidation in 1958. This story is based on one interview which in a clear way highlights the importance of imagination as a coherent component of memory as well as the nature this type of cultural heritage. The ability to remember something is also ability to imagine reality from the past that sometimes gives a possibility to reconstruction and recreation. Presented narration shows personal fate and motivation creating understanding of a heritage: emotional links between the life of the ancestors and the present. The remembrance on individual level goes hand in hand with commemoration of regional and even national heritage on the Finnish-Russian borderland. Both narratives had to face Post War destruction of Akonlahti village and fill the gaps in the history. Santra’s story shows the changes brought by the times, especially the physical disappearance of the villages – and how they can thrive in the minds of the people.
Santra never saw Akonlahti before it was destroyed. She was born in 1937 in Uhtua
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(Kalevala), the place where she lives today. She could not visit Akonlahti before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Still today a special permission is needed from the officials for access to the border zone, specific to living near the border. Viewed from Moscow, the frontier zone of Karelia is a distant periphery, where the accumulation of the state control is however similar to the centres. The inhabitants of the border areas often find themselves in a situation when they have to communicate with the centre. In the narrations of the inhabitants of the region similar situation remains in the context of returning from the evacuation. They spent weeks and often even months waiting for papers and permissions in several locations to be able to return to their home villages. In those days and conditions traveling in Karelia was hard and considerably slow.
It took quite time to come back [from evacuation]. First we have been taken to Vyborg, and from there to Velikaja Luka, further in the East. It didn’t last for very long, men from Tollo said, that we can’t stay there. They were asking [officials] who we are and where from, and that we are not allowed to go to Leningrad. So we were taken to the shores of the river Volga, they were taken all around. Transported by car. My mother and three men started going to work. They worked for a month, then came the officials, and told that we can return to our homelands. First we came to Leningrad, then to Kemi, then to Uhtua, in Uhtua we stayed for a year before kolkhozes were built.
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In the Russian system of borders Akonlahti is located in the first zone. Kostamuksha for example, lying approximately thirty kilometres from the border, is categorized in the second zone. The easiest way to get to Akonlahti is to participate in the village festival on 12th of July. Organizations and individuals arranging the festival, have a list of invited people and they take care of all permissions in Petrozavodsk. This is what Santra does every year.
There are two ways by which Santra could experience Akonlahti; transmission between
generations and participation in the village festival. Between these two representations of the village is a gap of more than sixty years. Santra’s family moved from Akonlahti to Uhtua in 1938, and the first village festival was held in the beginning of 1990s. These two sources of knowledge can also be seen as two different ways of imbuing meanings to the village. First is connected with personal family history, and the second with cultural images of Akonlahti. The main reason why Santra’s family left Akonlahti were political repressions of the 1930s :
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My mother came from Akonlahti in 1938, when I was born. Those were the times of political repressions. They took and arrested many men on the basis of 58th paragraph. They came at night time and took people. They took my grandmother’s son in law. He was working at the village club [placed in former church]. It was komsomol work but he was sent to Magadan anyway. Back then we didn’t know where they sent him. And they wanted to send my grandmother’s daughter as well. That’s why they moved to Uhtua.
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In the beginning of the war in 1941 Santra’s father has been killed at the front. She and her family were evacuated to Arhangelsk region. Soon after returning from evacuation her mother died and Santra was put to an orphanage in Kalevala. The only members of the close family surviving the war were her younger sister and
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grandmother, who later became the closest person to Santra. With her grandmother Santra startd to go deeper in the stories about Akonlahti of the Mid War period which was strongly contrasted to her Post War reality. For Santra, it became a world of safety and hard work, and more importantly, a place of humane values and morale where everything had it’s place.
For example there where old people in the village. But at that time there were no houses for old people. For lonely people. So that kind of person was living for some time, like for one month, in every house. One month here, one month there. So they went from house to house. And I was also providing a house for some old women [babushka] here in Uhtua, that they could look a bit after my children when I was working.
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Santra’s narration about her family is filled with a feeling of loss. From one hand it is a result of personal history of orphanage substituting a family. From the other hand, the experience of institutionalisation of social relations is also an expression of changing local reality of the 1950s and beginning of 1960s in the border regions of Soviet Karelia. Kalevala, where Sandra lives has always been an important regional economical centre but towards the end of 1950s the town experienced a demographic boom: there came inhabitants form liquidated villages, and new migrants form other Soviet Republics came to work in forest industry. It is worth to mention that despite poor infrastructure, Karelia has long tradition as a target of labour migration from other parts of Soviet Union as well as western countries (especially Finland). One of the biggest migration waves of labour force from Finland was result of economical crisis of the 1920s and 30s. Later, as a consequence of practical isolation between West and East, White Karelia has become a place of living and working only for soviet citizens.
Today in Kalevala, in addition to Karels and Russians, lives Belorussians, Moldovans and
Ukrainians, and mixed marriages are common. Russian is the most commonly spoken language, not many understand Karelian or Finnish. For the ethnical character of Kalevala the localization of army base has also made a big impact. According to the soviet practice, the military services in bases located near the borders where filled by soldiers from distant regions of Soviet Union. By the migrations and changes in recent history, Kalevala is rather devoid of any Karelian character and become somewhat “soviet international” habitation centre. Often in Karelia one can hear stories about adaptation into new Karelian conditions sometimes extremely hard for individuals from southern parts of Soviet Union where the climate is very different. However, the new inhabitants often contrast practical obstacles with friendliness of Karels. “Kalevalaic” culture is something people are aware and proud of, but it does not exist as a lived experience. Kalevala has become a place of different stories, narrations and fates. In this respect it fits into a definition of the town as a space where unity of a place is filled in different times. The town becomes a heterogeneous space without clear distinction between “here” and “there”, and where “there” could also be understood as different visions of the past. Kalevala is a result of transformations typical to the centres located near the border of the former Soviet Union. Today in Kalevala lives families from liquidated borderland villages, with similar fates to those of Akonlahti or Tollonjoki. They do not form any special or visible group in the structure of the town, but their remembrances form an invisible layer in the history of Kalevala. Sandra sees it important to keep the family history alive by telling her children about their roots. Her granddaughter does not speak Karelian, but knows about Akonlahti. She has even participated in the festival. However, the Karelian culture which was in the earlier centuries found in Akonlahti has become assimilated in Kalevala and the traditions have no longer possibility to continue in a natural context.
There are still occasions for Santra to get to know more about her roots in Akonlahti. There are still Karels, older than her to talk to. Some remember not only the village, but also Santra’s relatives and family. In this background, her proud statement “I am the seventh generation from Akonlahti” can be seen as a witnessing typical for the elderly people who have lost their home, but recognize their origin. “My village moved to Uhtua” she says.
The project “Cold, and Cooling. White Karelian Remembrances of the Post War Climate Changes” was implemented within the Geschichtswerkstatt Europa, a programme of the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”.