The western Finnic minorities and the origins of the Stalinist nationalities deportations

Nationalities Papers

Volumn 24, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 237-268

  Gelb, Michael ^a  

^a MARSHALL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0005500649     PISSN: 00905992     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00905999608408440     Document Type: Article

References (199)

1. Jacques Rossi, The Gulag Handbook: An Encyclopedia Dictionary of Soviet Penitentiary Institutions and Terms Related to the Forced Labor Camps (New York, 1989), p. 216.
2. have no other references to ethnic deportations of Lets, Lithuanians, or Romanians before 1940, and only one to Ukrainians: M. Seleshko, "Vinnytsia - The Katyn of Ukraine: A Report by an Eyewitness" in Ihor Kamenetsky, ed., The Tragedy of Vinnytsia: Materials on Stalin's Policy of Extermination in Ukraine during the Great Purge (Toronto, 1989), pp. 41-42, 51.
3. The Hoover Institution Archives' Nicolaevsky Collection contains several: No author, Pasportnaia sistema Sovetskogo Soiuza, Series SU, Box 11, File 8;
4. B. F. Lago, Massovye operatsii KRU i SPU NKVD po 'ochistke' nekotorykh kraev i oblastei ot 'potentsial' no opasnykh' elementov. Series 227, Box 3, File 294-12;
5. B. Pozdniakov, NKVD SSSR (Po materialam byvshikh sotrudnikov NKVD SSSR), Period 1939-1941 gg., Series 227, Box 2, folders 294-1 to 294-5, pp. 274-291;
6. Aleksandr' Brazhnev, Zapiski chekista, Series 227, Box 2, File 294-11, pp. 196-228.
7. The existence of a 100-kilometer special passport zone along international frontiers is confirmed in Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv istoriko-Politicheskikh Dokumentov (TsGAIPD, former Party Archive of Leningrad Oblast), fond 24, opis' 1b, delo 600, p. 47.
8. Much of this material is gathered in Ian Matley's admirable "Dispersal of the Ingrian Finns," Slavic Review, Vol. 38, p. 1, March 1979.
9. See my study, "An Early Soviet Ethnic Deportation: The Far-Eastern Koreans," Russian Review, Summer 1995.
10. Evidence of partial nationality-related deportations from border regions in the early 1930s is available in my "Osnovy stalinskoi politiki deportatsii narodov" in Lichnost' i totalitarizm: Tezisy dokladov na Vtoroi mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii UralaGuLaga, Perm, 1994.
11. Matley, p. 9; Ott Kurs, "Ingeri põliseianike saatus," Akadeemia, No. 7, 1990, p. 1491.
12. The Ingrian Finns migrated from Finland in the seventeenth century. On their history see Juuso Mustonen, "Inkerin Orjantappurainen Tie," Paper presented at Fourth Congress on Finno-Ugric Culture (Helsinki, 1931), Vol. 7, pp. 48-61.
13. Ronald Wixman, The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook (New York: Armonk), p. 68; the figure refers to 1926. Recently, Helmi Kivi cited a figure of 122,000 in 1928;
14. see Ingrid Eylandt and Toomas Sildam, "Eestimaa Rahvuste Foorum," Noorte Hääl, 27 September 1988, p. 1. The earlier history of Ingermannland/Ingria is summarized in Kurs, pp. 1488-1491.
15. Toivo Nygård, Suur-Suomi vai lähiheimolaisten auttaminen: Aatteellinen heimotyö itsenäisessä Suomessa (Helsinki, 1978), p. 170, n. 2; various estimates discussed on p. 308. Nygård's does not specifically name the Izhora, but his sources probably include them, Wixman, pp. 68-69, 85-86, 215-216.
16. Wixman, pp. 97, 215; Paul Austin, "Soviet Karelian: The Language that Failed," Slavic Review, Vol. 51, No. 1, Spring 1992, pp. 19-21.
17. This treats Stalinism's bizarre attempt to create an artificial language, severely disrupting cultural life in Karelia from 1938 to 1940. See also his, "Soviet Finnish: The Language of Neuvosto Karjala (Soviet Karelia)," Nationalities Papers, IX, 2, Fall 1981, pp. 171-177.
18. An exaggerated but informed account published in Germany during the war states that 10,000 Karelians fled to Finland in the 1920s and 1930s, Yrjö von Grönhagen, Karelien: Finnlands Bollwerk gegen den Osten (Dresden, 1942), p. 44. The author claims the Soviets wanted to deport all Karelians to the east, and entirely depopulate the frontier with Finland, pp. 55-56.
19. Fourteen percent of the Izhora could read and write in Finnish, perhaps a few in Russian, Heiki Pärdi, "Isurid, Ingerimaa põlisrahvas," Eesti Loodus, No. 4, 1988, p. 270. I assume the situation was comparable among the Vod, Karelians, and Veps, all Orthodox. Pärdi notes a limited publishing effort in Izhor between 1932 and 1937-20 titles or so. Many Izhora saw little reason for their children to study their own language, for Russian was the key to advancement.
20. Eylandt and Sildam, p. I; Kurs, 1991-1992; East Carelia: A Survey of the Country and Its Population, and A Review of the Carelian Question (Helsinki, 1934), pp. 131-136, 139-141;
21. Viktor Kuokkanen, "Hyvää päivää!-Zdrastvuite! My eshche zhivy..." Raduga, No. 10, 1990, pp. 57-58.
22. B. W. Maxwell gives 147 national raiony and 3,200 national sel'sovety in the early 1930s, The Soviet State (Topeka, 1934), p. 26.
23. In Ukraine there were 25 national raiony: 8 Russian, 7 German, 3 Bulgarian, 3 Greek, 3 Jewish, and 1 Polish, L. Perchik, How the Soviet Government Solves the Nationality Question (Moscow, 1932), p. 27.
24. Maxwell and Perchik cited in Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (New York, 1936), p. 155, n. 1.
25. In the German, Estonian, and Russian villages of Kuivaisi business was conducted in those languages, Toivo Flink, "My eshche zhivy," Sever, No. 2 (1990), pp. 130-131.
26. Kuokkanen, p. 58; Flink, p. 131; Austin, "Soviet Karelian."
27. Aira Savolainen, "Ingerisoomlase kolmas kodumaa" in Kultuur Ja Elu, No. 7, 1989, p. 35. It was Savolainen's father who was arrested for the typewriter; then an infant, she was kept separately from her mother in Gorky prison until the latter was released a year and a half later.
28. Vieras isänmaa: Inkeriläinen kohtalontie (Jyväskylä, 1981), p. 12. Himiläinen was an Ingrian Finn, fourteen years old at the time.
29. Ocherki istorii Karelii, Vol. 2 (Petrozavodsk, 1964), p. 246.
30. On the twenty-five thousanders see Lynne Viola, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Collectivizaition (Oxford, 1987).
31. Heinrich Laakmann, Ingermannländischen: und die Ingermannländischen Finnen (Berlin, 1942), pp. 19-20;
32. Pekka Nevalainen, Inkeriläinen siirtoväki Suomessa 1940-luvulla (Helsinki, 1989), pp. 23, 330.
33. It is not clear if Nevalainen's figure of 18,000 comes from Laakman. Liubov' Ustinovna Kotenko remembers the little Ingrian girl "with bright blond hair" she met at summer camp, and whom she visited in her village not far from Petergof. When she asked permission to visit again her father explained they "had all been sent away" interview, 15 December 1992. An overview of the rules regulating the colonists' new lives may be found in Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, pp. 227-232; see also pp. 234-235.
34. Matley, p. 9; Yury Mironenko, "Other National Groups" in N. K. Deker and A. Lebed, eds., Genocide in the USSR: Studies in Group Destruction (New York, 1958), p. 56.
35. During the collectivization of western Belorussia in 1939-1941, immigrants from Central Asia were similarly settled in certain districts, Leu Haroshka, "Religion in Belorussia Today," Belorussian Review, No. 3, 1956, p. 118.
36. Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii 1930-1931gg: Dokumenty i materialy (Petrozavodsk, 1991), p. 86; on poor organization of housing, work, schools, etc., see pp. 225-227.
37. Though it could not prevent hunger and disease in the special settlements - even back home the villagers who had not been deported were living on nothing but bread and fish - the government threatened to prosecute policemen who displayed "insufficient toughness" in preventing escapes to Finland, Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii 1930-1931gg: Dokumenty i materialy ibid., p. 88 (order of Olonets Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, RIK) and p. 95 (note of Ukhta RIK to Karelia Central Executive Committee, TsIK). Grönhagen reports suicides to escape starvation; in 1932 a gang was caught selling meat from exhumed horses, pp. 48, 54.
38. Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, pp. 240-243. The prime cause for delays was the failure to remove the mountains of granite chips that accumulated in the pits.
39. Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, pp. 247-254. Between November 1931 and January 1932 10% of the children at the Shal'skie pits died, ibid., p. 9. Desperate shortage of medical personnel was confirmed in 1933 letter of Belomor Canal Chief Berman to Leningrad Party boss Sergei Kirov in TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 1b, d. 603, pp. 1-2.
40. Helsingin sanomat, 14 July 1932.
41. The nationalist paper Vapaa Karjala ja Inkeri -lehti had reported deportations since late 1929, Nygard, p. 171.
42. In 1932, a delegation of Ingrian refugees asked the Foreign Minister to protest Soviet actions under the 1920 Treaty of Tartu which guaranteed the Ingrians' autonomy, Helsingin sanomat, 14 July 1932.
43. Finland had already sent a note in May 1931. Before it had even arrived, the Soviets shot off two: one denounced Helsinki's "interference," "anti-Soviet" articles in the Finnish press, and a demonstration before the Soviet Embassy; and the other charged that Finland violated the Treaty of Tartu by fortifying some islands in the Gulf of Finland. Neither side wished an escalation, so Finland agreed not to raise the issue in the League of Nations and the Soviets slowed the deportations and allowed some deportees to return, Keijo Korhonen, Naapurit vastoin tahtoaan: Suomi neuvostodiplomatiassa; Tartosta talvisotaan, Vol. 1, 1920-1932, pp. 214-216; Nevalainen, p. 24.
44. Telegram of Russian Council of People's Commissars (SNK) Chair S. Syrtsov to Karelian SNK Chair E. Gylling, 22 February 1930, in Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, pp. 36, 62.
45. Iz istorii raskulachivanii v Karelii, pp. 234-235, 238. Finnish émigré party leader and Comintern executive Otto Willie Kuusinen wrote a request to this effect to Kirov on 10 February 1933, TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 1b, d. 577, pp. 1-2.
46. Iz istorii raskulachivaniia Karelii, pp. 43-45, 47, 77, 178-181.
47. Restrictions on deporting family members unfit for labor were suspended in the border zone, p. 184. This says nothing about ethnicity: one list of households to be deported from the border sel'sovety of Olonets raion includes all Russian names, pp. 183-184; see also pp. 195-196. A report of Leningrad Obkom's Secret Sector to Kirov in 1931 indicates that hundreds of incidents of anti-soviet terror and even mass demonstrations throughout the oblast; the OGPU had arrested or deported well over 24,000 from the oblast in 1930 and the first three months of 1931. Only two heavily Finnic raions (Prigorodnyi and Pushkin) appear in the list of the eleven most difficult, TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 1b, d. 367, pp. 61, 76-77. The regime was thinking of the proximity of Finland: "The remaining kulak element [is changing] the political-moral mood of the peasants into an infectious swamp. If...measures are not carried out... counterrevolutionary elements might go over to the side of Finland." One protocol says some families not "socially alien" are nonetheless "counterrevolutionary"; the heads of some had already been arrested, but all these families (i.e., with or without the heads present) required deportation, pp. 184-185. Peasants often appealed classification as kulaks; appeals were seriously considered, and many were stricken from the list; see Protokol of Karelian Dekulakization Commission, pp. 190-193; see also pp. 201-203. Property was returned: flour, clothing, soap, sewing machines, tools, kitchenware, etc., ibid., p. 203. 35,000 out of 46,261 families sent to the Northern Krai appealed; 10% found support. They were allowed to return or re-established in their new districts as free citizens; their confiscated property was returned or compensated, Istoriia sovetskogo krest'ianstva, Vol. 2 (Moscow, 1986), p. 216
48. (cited in Istoriia raskulachivaniia v Karelii, pp. 263-264).
49. Iz isiorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, p. 195. See pp. 211-212 for raion dekulakization troika report on the preparation of mass participation.
50. Ocherki istorii Karelii, p. 212: "Reactionary circles in Finland,... sending spies and diversionists to...the Soviet republic, relied upon kulak support."
51. Also Ocherki istorii karel'skoi organizatsii KPSS (Petrozavodsk, 1974), p. 231.
52. Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, p. 264,
53. citing Grazhdanskaia voina i interventsiia v SSSR: Entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1983);
54. Ocherki istorii Karelii, (Petrozavodsk, 1964), pp. 156-165.
55. Kalju Saaber, "Eestlased rahvaste lapitekis," Kultuur ja Elu (April, May, and June 1989); April, p. 11.
56. East Carelia, p. 165;
57. Ocherki istorii karel'skoi organizatsii KPSS, pp. 230-231.
58. V. A. Maamiagi, Estontsy v SSSR: 1917-1940 (Moscow, 1990), pp. 175-177. Such violence also occured in Estonian cantons in Siberia, the Caucasus, and elsewhere.
59. Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, pp. 32-35.
60. During that year 46 organized bands had been involved in "spying," "smuggling," and "counterrevolutionary agitation," Iz istoriii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, pp. 109-111. The 724 "individual agitators" (odinochki) included 444 Karelians, 275 Russians, 4 Finns, and 1 Ukrainian. Between 1 January and 1 May 1930, 119 members of the organized groups and 241 "individuals" were arrested. See also pp. 196-201, 207-208, 222. "Incidents" included tearful "scenes" as villagers bade deportees farewell, or hysterical threats by others to hang or drown themselves. By 1935 things had calmed down; a secret police report on Kuivaisi and Prigorodnyi raiony indicated for all of 1935 only five "terakty," terrorist acts: two assaults and three fires, TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1442, p. 320. Grönhagen, p. 54.
61. Tauno Flinkman, Neljästi karkuteillä: Muistelmia 33 vuoden vanketisajalta Neuvostoliitossa (Helsinki, 1957), p. 28; Himiläinen, pp. 16, 18;
62. Ocherki istorii Karelii, pp. 245-246.
63. Maamiagi, Estontsy, p. 186. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 1b, d. 576, pp. 1-8 is a subsequent report, apparently from Leningrad Obkom to the Central Committee, on the infiltration of Finnish nationalists, kulaks, and other anti-socialist elements not only into economic and administrative agencies, but even the Party itself. See also f. 24, op. 1b, d. 600, pp. 1-7. Not waiting for the 1933 Party Chistka to begin, the locals were already cleansing the party and komsomol of kulaks (p. 4). A secret denunciation of economic officials charged with deliberate sabotage and corruption is on pp. 6-7.
64. Though he does not indicate whether they were resettled within their own raiony, to neighboring regions, or to further destinations, Flink, p. 131.
65. Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, 1929-1938: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow, 1972), p. 8.
66. These figures seem low; perhaps they include only those actually captured. At first, most border crossers were charged as smugglers or "terrorists," but after 1933 the percentage accused of "spying" rose. See Kostiainen's comment in Loikkarit, p. 58.
67. The Petroskoi (Petrozavodsk) paper Työmies warned that among the "hunger refugees" hundreds of agents of Finnish security had been "exposed," Kostiainen Loikkarit, ibid., p. 102.
68. To the end of the Soviet regime escapees made their way through the forests and swamps of Karelia, only more recently pursued from helicopters rather than by horseback, The Atlanta Constitution, 6 August 1985.
69. TsGAIPD f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1442, p. 253. About half of these violations, 37, were attempts to emigrate from the USSR; of the 37, 8 were Russians, 26 Finns, and 3 "others," p. 321.
70. TsGAIPD f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1442, p. 255. The usual month saw anywhere from 60 to 100, but in October a one-time mass operation netted 824! A variety of newly adopted measures produced good results, but the OGPU was seeking further improvements in 1936, pp. 255-256. Railroad workers were also mobilized to control access to the border zone.
71. It was even the subject of an opera, L. Stepanov's potboiler, Pogranichniki, or Border Patrol, N. Kulikovich, Sovetskaia opera na sluzhbe partii i pravitel'stva (Munich, 1955), p. 23.
72. One kolkhoz near Leningrad bore the name, "Border Guard,." TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1442, p. 289. See, also, Pogranichniki (Moscow: 1973);
73. photograph following p. 64 shows family of railroad inspector A. V. Artemov, which captured perpetrators of 172 illegal border crossings. Father and son were awarded medals, mother and daughters "valuable gifts." Compare the wild and woody frontier of today: Western embassies in Helsinki warn tourists to avoid travel by night to Russia, where criminal gangs have hijacked entire buses, New York Times, 4 February 1992.
74. New York Times, 2 November 1934.
75. Flink, p. 131.
76. TsGAOR, f. 9479, op. 1, d. 28, pp. 3-4; Matley, p. 9; Laakmann, p. 20.
77. New York Times, 16 August 1935. Laakmann also refers to new border regulations announced in 1935, p. 20; Himiläinen, pp. 13, 15.
78. New York Times, 7 June 1936;
79. Himiläinen, pp. 48, 58. "Colonists" paid 5% of their salaries to the NKVD, p. 40. Five years earlier entire villages of Volga Germans - these industrious farmers must have all seemed kulaks to their Russian neighbors - were sent to the far north as "Voluntary Colonists," Alexander Schwarz (pseudonym), In Wologdas weisen Wäldern: Ein Buch aus dem bolschewistischen Bann (Altona-Elbe, 1937).
80. Conditions were so bad, one woman reported, that her husband became impotent for a year, Nadezhda and Maia Ulanovskie, Istoriia odnoi sem'i (New York, 1972), pp. 384-385.
81. George Kitchin describes the circumstances of the settlers (primarily Volga Germans) in his exceptionally interesting memoir, Prisoner of the OGPU (London, 1935), pp. 265-282. The "colonists" were charged for their transport! p. 275.
82. Matley, p. 9; Kuokkanen, p. 58. Kuokken numbers the victims at 10,000. Nevalainen links this operation to the campaign against Finnish nationalism, rather than proximity to the border, because deportations were also taking place in Eastern Karelia, far from the border; 24. Matley cites statistical and other evidence, some of it unavailable in the United States, to contend that the April 1935 and May-June 1936 operations eliminated all Finns from certain districts, in particular Valkeassari, Lempaala, Vuole, and Miikkulainen. This is possible, even likely - but not proven.
83. Matley, pp. 9-10; Mironenko, p. 56; Laakman, p. 19; Flink, p. 211. Kivi states that all surviving Lutheran churches in Kuivaisi Raion were closed in 1936, Eylandt and Sildam, p. 1. Kurs (p. 1492) states the district was abolished in 1939, citing A. Smirnov, Administrativno-territorial'nye izmeneniia v SSSR za 1938-1939 gody, (Leningrad, 1941), p. 120
84. (unavailable in the United States). Kurs says the first contingents of the 20,000 deported in May and June 1936 were sent to Gatchina and Krasnoe Selo, the rest to Siberia and Central Asia, p. 1492. The Ingrians' Lutheran church in Pushkin has recently reopened; Paul Austin, personal communication, 21 July 1992. Another Finnish Lutheran church is being restored in the nearby dacha community of Martyshkino; interview with Iurii Sergeevich Kotenko, January 1993. While my wife was growing up, she knew this church well - as the kinoteatr' where the children watched summer matinees. Mikko Kolomainen gives biographical details about 24 Ingrian Lutheran preachers in the 1930s: of those whose fates could be traced, only one is known to have evaded repression; at least 13 were arrested, mostly in 1935, 8 to die before seeing freedom again. Another was deported from Leningrad in 1933 during passportization; he went to Murmansk, whence he escaped to Finland, Inkerin 'toisinajattelijat': Muistelmia Inkerin vapaiden herätysliikkeiden syntyvaiheista (Helsinki, 1989), pp. 45-55.
85. Laakmann, p. 20. Kurs notes that schools near the mouths of the Soikkola and Lauga rivers offered instruction in Izhora between 1932 and 1937, p. 1487; Kurs, p. 1492. Of course, one could also say that in 1939 there were still 32 Finnish sel'sovety!
86. Matly, 10; Nevalainen, who says (pp. 23-24) 18,000 from 1929-1931, 27,000 from 1935 to 1936, 50,000 in all; and Kuokkanen, who says nearly half of the Finns of Ingria - 60,000 out of 130,000 or 140,000 - were deported between 1928 and 1935 (p. 58). At a recent conference on the minorities of Estonia, Kivi stated approximately one-third of the Ingrian Finns were "eliminated" during collectivization, Eylandt and Sildam, p. 1. Kurs says the population of Ingrian Finns went down by 50,000, a quarter of whom perished; and confirms the division into two waves, with minor actions in between, pp. 1492-1493. An informal source says 60,000 were deported "before the war," Savolainen, p. 32. On their subsequent fate, see Matley, pp. 10-16.
87. Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, p. 26. East Carelia states "large numbers of Carelians are deported annually"; and that despite high regard for the Red Army's Karelian ski troops "all frontier guard forces are purely Russian," pp. 151-152. The authors continue (pp. 164-165): "Arrests and interrogations are daily occurrences.... The OGPU is specially active [in the frontier districts]. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent victims are banished annually...; it seems, indeed, as though the OGPU had actually decided to evacuate the whole population...as Moscow is declared to have ordered...in 1931.... Many villages have already lost all their male inhabitants. To give one example, in a single parish in Aunus, nearly 100 persons were sentenced to various penalties up to ten years' hard labor."
88. Erkki Tuuli, Inkeriläisten Vaellus: Inkeriläisen väestön siirto, 1941-1945, Porvoo-Helsinki-Juva, 1988, p. 17.
89. Júri Viikberg, "Vanematest eesti asundustest Siberis," Keel ja kirjandus, No. 5, 1988, pp. 184-188;
90. Maamiagi, Estontsy, pp. 87-91, 109. On the lukewarm response to the Estonian government's half-hearted 1920s campaign to attract Soviet Estonians, see pp. 77-86 and 185-186. The flow of Estonians to the USSR peaked in 1924, when it reached 3,000. Emigration to the Soviet Union was thereafter outlawed, but illegal flight, primarily by Russian émigrés, increased toward the end of the 1930s, p. 149.
91. Maamiagi, Estontsy, p. 177.
92. Ilmar Arens, "Die estnische Russlandkolonisation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert und die Trans-Peipus-Esten unter dem Zaren- und Sowjetregime 1861-1941, III, Commentationes Balticae XIV/XV, Vol. 1, 1971, pp. 124-125, 127.
93. Maamiagi, "Rahvusdemokratism: müüt või reaalsus?" Eesti kommunist, No. 61, 1988, p. 68;
94. Estontsy, p. 190.
95. Arens, pp. 124-125, 127, 129-132.
96. Arens, p. 132. Many Estonian, or predominantly Estonian, villages remained.
97. Maamiagi, Estontsy, p. 190; Saaber, May, p. 14.
98. Arens, pp. 38-42; and Maamiagi, Estontsy, p. 144.
99. Some Estonians feared to wear wedding rings, symbols of Christian marriage, not to mention capitalist wealth. Officials called the 1930 closure of Leningrad's seventy-year-old Estonian Church (preceded by the usual mass meeting and other hullabaloo) "a victory of the toilers on the cultural front." They converted part of it into a club, Maamiagi, Estontsy, p. 145. (A diehard, Maamiagi named this chapter, "The Struggle Against Religion and Alcoholism.")
100. Saaber, May, p. 15; Maamiagi, Estontsy, pp. 128, 186-190. Another specialist claimed 66 in 1932, 90 if we include the "mixed" ones, but Maamiagi's archival work concludes that even including the latter, the total would not exceed 66.
101. Maamiagi, Estontsy, pp. 179-180, 183, 186-189; Arens, pp. 158-161.
102. August Lehmus speaks of analogous developments in Karelia, Suomilaiset Kommunistit Itä-Karjalassa (Tampere, 1958), p. 129.
103. Toivo Raun, Estonia and the Estonians (Stanford, 1987), pp. 115-123;
104. John Hiden and Patrick Salmon, The Baltic Nations and Europe: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the Twentieth Century (London, 1991), p. 56;
105. Maamiagi, Estontsy, pp. 185-186.
106. Arens, pp. 147-156. Estonian schools in the Caucasus were closed, Saaber, May, pp. 13, 15.
107. The émigré communist leader Jaan Anvelt, called Estonian villages "nests of white-guards," whose outlook, even after de-kulakization, was more "kulak" than Soviet, Maamiagi, Rahvusdemokratism, pp. 64-65.
108. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, I-II (New York, 1974), p. 72.
109. An NKVD acquaintance told Nadezhda Ulanovskaia that "all Latvians" in his district of Leningrad had been arrested in 1937 and 1938. He had been sent with six others to replace Leningrad NKVD officers recently liquidated; he was the only one not subsequently shot. In late 1938 he was fired for protesting arrest quotas, worked in industry for two years, and then returned to the secret police, Ulanovskie, p. 137. The Politburo made eleven nationalities purge targets: Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Germans, Greeks, Iranians, Chinese, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. It also listed Kharbintsy, presumably employees of the Far-Eastern Railroad. See 31 January 1938 telegram to Ezhov in Svetlana Alieva, ed., Tak eto bylo: Natsional'nye repressii v SSSR, 1919-1952 gody, (documents) 3 vols (Moscow, 1993), Vol. 1, p. 253. The NKVD was to "smash" (pogromit') their "spying-diversionist contingents," regardless of whether they were Soviet or foreign citizens.
110. Galina Vishnevskaya, A Russian Story (New York, 1984), p. 24. A famous opera singer, the author was destined, along with her future husband, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, to shelter Solzhenitsyn four decades later.
111. Maamiagi, Estontsy, pp. 190 and 129-142.
112. The organization of Finno-Ugric Peoples, its headquarters in Estonia, spoke of the Soviet community as the best organized of the diaspora, Maamiagi, Estontsy, ibid., p. 185.
113. Saaber also has people burning printed matter in Estonia, May, p. 13. On the Latvian minority compare Vaira Strautnietse, "Zemlia Neizvestnaia...," Rodnik, No. 6, 1988, pp. 62-64.
114. Saaber, April, p. 10; Raun, pp. 145-146, 150. The same situation faced Stalin and Finnish émigré leader Otto Willie Kuusinen when they formed the "Terijoki Government" of the newly proclaimed "Karelo-Finnish Republic" in November 1939: most of the "People's Commissars" were unknown to virtually anybody in Finland (Kuusinen was the only member of the émigré Central Committee not in the gulag or six feet under). Even after 1945 a communist takeover of Finland along Czech lines remained impossible due to the destruction of Finnish communists during the purges, Arvo Tuominen, The Bells of the Kremlin: An Experience in Communism (London, 1983), pp. 318-319.
115. TsGAOR, fond 9479, opis', delo 28 (op. cit.), pp. 3-4. Bugai considers this the beginning of the deportations of Leningrad Finns, "Sever v politike pereseleniia narodov," Sever, No. 4, 1991 (documents): p. 96. The published version omits nothing essential.
116. Tsentr' Khraneniia i Izucheniia Dokumentov Noveishoi Istorii (TsKhIDNI, formerly the Central Party Archive), f. 77, op. 3s, d. 12, pp. 1-4.
117. TsKhIDNI, f. 77, op. 3s, d. 12, pp. 5-6.
118. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1442, pp. 254.
119. TsKhIDNI, f. 77, op. 3s, d. 114, pp. 10-11. Possible identification of Perov from Ocherki istorii Karelii, p. 582.
120. TsKhIDNI, f. 77, op. 3s, d. 456, pp. 1-8. Just as in 1935, in 1930 sensitivity to the border could moderate oppressive policies: a directive from Karelia's Olonets raikom warned sel'sovet chairmen (just after Stalin's "Dizzy with Success" speech) that "excesses" were an especially dangerous political mistake there, Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, p. 101.
121. The police eased up on confiscations of kulak property, and ordered the return of some already seized, Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, ibid., pp. 102-105.
122. A 24 February 1930 resolution of the Borovichi (near Pskov) raikom ordered a halt to robbery of kulaks "for purposes of personal gain" and limited closure of village churches, TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 1b, d. 77, pp. 7-8. (Note this is several days before Stalin's speech.) In 1931 the only difference in treatment of kulaks in the border raiony of Karelia was that there all three categories of kulaks were sent away. Everywhere else only category one (active counterrevolutionary activity) and category two (the more prosperous and hostile farmers) were; category three (the least dangerous) stayed in the raion, though transferred to the least productive land and barred from kolkhozy. In one list of farmers to be dekulakized we find notes such as "agitation in favor of emigration to Finland" and "maintains written contact with Finland through brother," Iz istorii raskulachivaniia v Karelii, pp. 143-147. Sokolov is not identified in Ocherki istorii Karelii, op. cit. The NKVD report is TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1442, pp. 271-277. Author stresses making the "happy lot" of the Soviet population visible across the border. On the other hand, he notes his raion's overwhelmingly Finnish population; its largely "white-green" (i.e., tsarist-kulak) mood during the Civil War; that part of its population went to Finland when the Reds prevailed; that many of the latter had taken part in interventions onto Soviet territory; that some of these questionable people had returned after the amnesty of 1923; that the latter now had relatives across the border; the activities of Finnish intelligence and the "Ingrian Committee" on the Soviet side of the border (the "cases" of "The Hobo," "The Continuator," etc.); and "counterrevolutionary" activity among Finnish Baptist, Evangelical, and Adventist "sects." He connects rumors of a deportation of Finns to popular misunderstanding of the "April Operation" of 1935, in which 353 families - 1,505 people - were deported from the district, p. 319.
123. Cited by Bugai, "Ingermanlandtsy: pod grifom 'Sekretno'," Sever, No. 3, 1992, (documents) p. 123;
124. Resolution No. 196ss of 26 August 1941, cited by Bugai, Sever, pp. 96-97.
125. It would seem there was no analogous wartime deportation from Karelia; the immigrant Finn Miriam Nousianen was indeed evacuated from the front zone, but only to Arkhangelsk, and as a free citizen like everyone else, Washington Post, 6 June 1993.
126. On the other hand, Mayme Sevander, whose father had been arrested in 1937, writes of her family's deportation from Uhtua in 1938: "This little Finnish-Karelian settlement was not far from the state border so it was decided that it was 'dangerous' to have families of 'enemies of the people' so close to Finland. Who knows, the Finns in Uhtua might unite forces with the neighboring state and spark off a revolution! One fine July afternoon, over sixty families were given notice to be ready for transportation the next day to a new place of residence." Their new home was a typhoid-ridden settlement near Kem, 180 km. to the east on the White Sea. The deportees might move elsewhere, only not back to the border zone, Red Exodus: Finnish American Emigration to Russia (Duluth, 1993) pp. 89, 107-109.
127. Eylandt and Sildam, p. 1. An NKVD telegram related to this deportation was displayed in the 1992 exhibition of "Revelations from the Russian Archives" at the Library of Congress, TsGAOR, f. 9479s, op. 1s, d. 86, document I, p. 65.
128. Bugai, Sever, p. 97.
129. A. Ritari says 25,000, "Iz istorii ingermanlandskikh finnov," Raduga, No. 10, 1990, pp. 64-65.
130. Eylandt and Sildam, p. 1; Nevalainen, p. 59. A full study is Tuuli, op. cit. See also Keijo Kulha, "Inkeriläisten siirtäminen Suomen II maailmansodan aikana," Studia Historica Jyväskyläensia, V, 1967, pp. 224-260.
131. Aira Savolainen, "Ostav'te mne moiu tret'iu rodinu!," Raduga, No. 9, 1988, p. 85
132. (Russian version of his, Ingerisoomlase).
133. Sinikka Grönberg Garcia left a train evacuating children just before Soviet bombers obliterated it. She recounts resettlement in The Finn in Me: The Chronicles of a Karelian Emigrant (Minnesota: St Cloud, 1992), pp. 18-40.
134. The 1920 figure includes Pskov city, that for 1942 does not, Edgar Kant, Omstridd Mark: Om Bebyggelsens Ålder i Lill-estland i Smaband Med den Lokala Folktraditionen Från den Svenska Tiden (Lund, 1948), pp. x-xi.
135. Maamiagi, Estontsy, p. 195.
136. Nevalainen, p. 56; and Kurs, p. 1493. A Soviet archival report casts a highly negative light on the German repatriation of the Ingermannlanders to Estonia: "On 2 December 1942 17,531 people were taken to Estonia. Of these, by this time [sic] 968 died, 2,001 were located in camps at Paldiski and Pyllkiula, 11,675 were directed to agricultural labor, 864 - to industrial enterprises, while 1,923 were located in the camp at Klooga," Kuokkanen, p. 59. Though conditions may have been desperate, the Soviet version grossly misstates efforts by Estonia and Finland to transport, feed, and employ tens of thousands of repatriates under wartime circumstances. See Kulha, Inkerin, and Tiit Birkan, "Kui aja none oli ksmeel: Soome Ühiskond Talvesõja ja Jätkusõja vahel" in Aja Pulss, July 1991.
137. Ritari, pp. 64-65; Bugai, Sever, p. 97; Kuokkanen, p. 59.
138. Kuokkanen, p. 59. I have no information on the fate of the Krasnoe Selo survivors.
139. Huuskonen, pp. 50-51. Parvilahti reports a group in one of the Temnikovskii camps, part of the Pot'ma system in Mordovia, p. 119.
140. Kaarlo R. Tuomi, "The Karelian 'Fever' of the Early 1930s," Finnish Americana, 3 (1980): p. 74.
141. Tokaev, an Ossete, was denied permission to serve with the partisans behind German lines in the Caucasus for fear he would defect, Comrade X (London, 1956), pp. 247-248. The Ossetes evaded punishment as a people later, but unlike the Chechens they were Orthodox Christians, not Moslems.
142. Kuokkanen, p. 60; "Iz vospominanii vyselentsa finna M. A. Muttonena" in Iosif Stalin - Lavrentiiu Berii, pp. 21-22.
143. A German documentary on a communist theater group living in Soviet exile featured an actor exiled to the Urals during the war who recalled the arrival of the Finns in 1943; she also confirmed the "one step to the left, one step to the right" rule, "Gadiny Scheusale: Kolonne Links im Exil" DEFA, 1990. Thanks to Markus Wehner and Ralph Zwengel for sharing the videotape during our own temporary exile in Moscow, June 1993.
144. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, II, p. 396.
145. Novoe russkoe slovo, 8 July 1992, op. cit.
146. A 1950 rebellion there was drowned in blood. Chief of construction was the same P. K. Suprunenko who received some of the Soviet prisoners of war from Finland in 1940 and dispatched them to the Iuzhnyi camp. Suprunenko received a party reprimand, but it is not clear whether for liberalism in permitting the strike to take place, or for barbarism in suppressing it. Cheliabinsk 40's two reactors produced material for the first Soviet atomic bomb; their waste poisoned the Techa, a tributary of the Ob', and was measured as far away as the Arctic; more waste was then poured into Lake Karachai than was released by the Chernobyl' explosion. The government later stored waste in underground tanks. Total irradiation of the region is the equivalent of about twenty Chernobyls; see D. J. Peterson, Troubled Lands: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Destruction (Boulder, 1993), pp. 5, 146-150.
147. Gadolin, p. 13. Finland was not technically a defeated power, since they abandoned their German allies as a precondition to the Soviet armistice; the Germans departed only under Soviet attack, devastating part of Lappland before leaving. Finland succeeded in evacuating the entire civilian population (between 400,000 and 485,000) of the territory it lost in 1940 (resettled by Slavs, Central Asians, and Ingrians deported a decade earlier to the Kola Peninsula), Himiläinen, p. 109; New York Times, 11 February 1992;
148. Anatole Mazour, Finland between East and West (New York, 1956), pp. 130-136, 183-185.
149. Monographic studies include Antti Laine, Suur-Suomen Kahdet Kasvot: Itä-Karjalan siviiliväestön asema suomalaisessa miehityshallinnossa, 1941-1944 (Keuruu, 1982);
150. Helge Seppälä, Suomi miehittäjänä, 1941-1944 (Helsinki, 1989).
151. See also John Wuorinen, ed., Finland and World War II, 1939-1944 (New York, 1948).
152. On the Karelians evacuated from the territories lost in 1940 (60%, anticipating Soviet defeat, returned during the war), and their resettlement, see Birkan, pp. 11-14; and Keijo Kulha, "Karjalaisen siirtoväen asuttamisesta käyty julkinen keskustelu vuosina, 1944-1948," Studia Historica Jyväskyläensia VII, 1969, pp. 5-317.
153. In 1944, when it was clear the war was lost, the Finns evacuated 450,000 or so from all of occupied Karelia (the bulk of them returnees to the homes they had left in 1940), leaving some 36,000 Finnic and 50,000 non-Finns to face the reimposition of Soviet power, Fredrik Valros, Finland, 1946-1952 (Helsinki, 1953), p. 31.
154. No figures are given in either Mazour or Axel de Gadolin, The Solution of the Karelian Refugee Problem in Finland, (The Hague, 1952).
155. "Ingermanlandtsy," p. 124;
156. Nevalainen, p. 296; Himiläinen, pp. 118-205 (more detail pp. 297-321). Of the 3,000 or so who escaped repatriation (by another calculation) half were in Sweden, the others in Finland, Kurs, p. 1494. Bugai says 69,000 were originally evacuated by the Finns ("Ingermanlandtsy," ibid., p. 128);
157. Nevalainen says 57,000 were returned ("Ingermanlandtsy," ibid., p. 296).
158. Boris B'rkelund and 19 others were flown out; only 11 saw Finland again. Not all were former Soviet citizens and not all were ethnic Finns; all were, however, either Finnish citizens or refugees from the USSR, Novoe russkoe slovo, 24-26 December 1993. Ludwig Rajala was kidnapped ("arrested") at the Soviet Embassy in 1947 while trying to obtain permission for his wife to join him in Finland. The two were reunited only in 1957, Sevander, pp. 126-128.
159. "Ingermanlandtsy," pp. 124-125; Kurs, p. 1494.
160. Savolainen, p. 35; Bugai, "Ingermanlandtsy," p. 125; Parvilahti, pp. 120-122, 209; Kuokkanen, pp. 59-60; Huuskonen, p. 73. The lad had been separated from his parents and had no idea where they were, or even if they were alive.
161. Ulanovskie, pp. 292-297; Silde, p. 100.
162. Bugai, "Ingermanlandtsy," pp. 125-128.
163. Kurs, p. 1495; Savolainen and her mother were sent to Velikie Luki upon returning from Finland, whence they moved on to Estonia, there to remain, Ingerisoomlase, p. 36.
164. Kuokkanen, p. 60. Kuokkanen grew up on Ulitsa Komarovskaia in Cheliabinsk, named for General A. N. Komarovskii, the MGB hero who supervised construction of the complex, p. 61. No streets were named for Kuokkanen senior and the tens of thousands of other non-Russians who built the place. Komarovskii was replaced as lord of the Cheliabinsk construction by General Iakov Davidovich Rappoport, of White-Sea Canal fame. Rappoport also did not have a street named after him.
165. Muttonen, p. 22. Viktor Kuokkanen was another deportee to Pakhta-Aral, Leninskaia pravda (Petrozavodsk), 19 October 1990,
166. cited in Bugai, "Ingermanlandtsy" p. 123.
167. A. A. Kozhanov, "Izmeneniia v etnicheskom sostave sel'skogo naseleniia Karel'skoi ASSR v poslevoennyi period (1945-1979 gg.)" in E. I. Klement'ev and R. F. Nikol'skaia, eds, Etnokul'turnye protsessy v Karelii (Petrzavodsk, 1986), p. 8, n. 12. Kozhanov says nothing more about the Ingermannlanders, Kuokkanen, p. 61. One wonders if the shortage of labor in Karelia was a motivating factor in closing Estonia to returnees.
168. Eylandt and Sildam, p. 1; Kurs, pp. 1487, 1498; Pärdi p. 270; Muttonen, p. 22. The MVD made Estonians freed from exile in the 1956 and 1957 pledge not to return to their former homes or claim their "nationalized" property, Silde, p. 101; Kuokkanen, p. 62.
169. Austin, personal communication, fall 1992.
170. Kuokkanen, p. 61.
171. Flink, pp. 131-132. In Karelia (where Karelians, Ingrian Finns, and survivors of the Finnish emigration constitute 15% of the population) whatever grade-school instruction in the native language survived Stalin was finished off in 1956. The government is "doing everything it can" to revive the study of Karelian and Finnish, though it resisted until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Flink, op. cit., and The Christian Science Monitor, 10 March 1993.
172. Kuokkanen, pp. 56, 62-63. Flink says 23,000 in Leningrad (city and oblast), 20,000 each in Estonia and Karelia, p. 131.
173. Ethnographic treatments of the Vod, based in large part on the Estonian expeditions, are Gustav Rank, Vatjalaiset (Helsinki, 1960);
174. Ilmar Talve, Vatjalaista kansankulttuuria (Helsinki, 1981).
175. See also Toivo Vuorela, The Finno-Ugric Peoples, Bloomington, 1964, p. 145;
176. László- Szabó, "The Fate of a Language: A Brief Survey of Wotic," Nationalities Papers, IX, 2, Fall 1981, p. 179; and Wixman, p. 216. The Vod underwent their first national resettlement upon Ivan III's unification of Novgorod to Muscovy; on their early history see Kurs, pp. 1483-1486.
177. Kurs, pp. 1487-1488; Wixman, pp. 85-86; Pärdi, pp. 270-271. Kurs summarizes the history of the Izhora on pp. 1486-1487. A linguistic and ethnographic treatment is in Arvo Laanest, Isurid ja Isuri keel-meie lähemaid sugulaskeeli (Tallinn, 1964). Laanest discusses the Izhora evacuated to Finland and repatriated to the USSR, p. 11.
178. Paul Ariste, cited by Nevalainen, p. 327. (Academician Ariste was one of the Soviet Union's leading Finno-Ugrists.) Pärdi says there were 300 Izhora, making no mention of any Vod, and not specifying what percentage could still speak the language, p. 271.
179. Wixman, pp. 214-215. On their early history, see V. V. Pimenov, Vepsy: Ocherk etnicheskoi istorii i genezisa kul'tury (Moscow-Leningrad, 1965).
180. This does not say none were dekulakized. Sevander (p. 109) has Veps among the undesirables deported from Petrozavodsk, apparently in 1938, to logging settlements near the southwestern shore of Lake Onega. A few Veps found themselves in Finland during the war, whence they were repatriated along with the Ingrians, Bugai, "Ingermanlandtsy" p. 124.
181. Mironenko says up to two-thirds of the Veps were deported (p. 56); I have discovered no confirmation. Some must have been deported during dekulakization, but I have no figures. Until 1937 the second page of the district paper in Soutjärve was published in Veps, Neuvosto-Karjala, 2 July 1991.
182. See also V. V. Pimenov and Z. I. Strogal'shchikova, "Vepsy: Rasselenie, istoriia, problemy etnicheskogo razvitiia" in Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepsskoi narodnosti, Peterozavodsk, 1989, pp. 18-22;
183. N. G. Zaitseva, "Veppskii iazyk i problemy ego razvitia" Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepsskoi narodnosti, ibid., pp. 97-98;
184. V. Mal'mi, "Baletmeister v. Kononov (1905-1983)" Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepsskoi narodnosti, ibid., pp. 148-151;
185. L. L. Melent'eva, Istoriia vepskogo narodnogo khora, Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepsskoi narodnosti, ibid., pp. 151-158;
186. Kristi Salve, "Vepslased ja nende keel muuseumisse," Kultuur ja Elu, October 1989, p. 29
187. Mikhail Iupp (Taranov), "Poezda k vepsam," Novoe russkoe slovo, 2 July 1983, who points out that in the 1960s a goodly number of ex-cons were settled in their districts, contributing to the climate of drinking, brawling, and crime that hastened the Veps' decline.
188. Maris Makko, "Kahekūnenda sajandi Soome-Ugri kogemus," Aja Pulss, June 1991, p. 19;
189. Salve, pp. 27-31; Sergei Savoskul and Evgeniia Kashtanova, "Na Belom Ozere Sidit Veps," Rodina, No. 8, 1990, pp. 81-82;
190. Pimenov and Strogal'shchikova, pp. 21-22; Z. I. Strogal'shchikova, "Ob etnodemagraficheskikh tendentsiiakh, sotsial'no-ekonomicheskom i kul'turnom razvitii vepsskoi narodnosti" in Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepskoi narodnosti, pp. 27-42;
191. V. N. Birin, "Demograficheskaia situatsiia u vepsov Karelii v 1950-1970-e gody," Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepskoi narodnosti, ibid., pp. 43-55;
192. A. V. Petukhov, "Administrativnaia razobshchennost' - faktor uskoreniia assimiliatsii vepsov," Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepskoi narodnosti, ibid., pp. 55-63.
193. Makko, p. 19; Wixman, p. 215. On efforts to save Veps culture see Neuvosto-Karjala, 2 July 1991,
194. on a recent Veps culture festival, "The Tree of Life" in the village of Himjoki in Leningrad oblast; see Makko, p. 20, on restoring instruction in Veps in schools; and Savoskul and Kashtanova, pp. 81-82. See also Marje Joalaid at a conference on national minorities of Estonia, Eylandt and Sildam, p. 3; T. G. Zimina, "Podporozhskii kraevedcheskii muzei" in Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepsskoi narodnosi, pp. 136-140;
195. R. P. Lonin, "O sozdanii muzeia vepsskoi kul'tury v. s. Sheltozero," Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepsskoi narodnosi, ibid., pp. 140-144;
196. A. P. Maksimov, "O rabote muzeia vepsskoi kul'tury," Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepsskoi narodnosi, ibid., pp. 145-148 (the two museums were founded in 1967);
197. I. I. Mullonen and Iu. Iu. Surkhasko, "O soveshchanii po problemam vepsskoi narodnosti," Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepsskoi narodnosi, ibid., pp. 159-163;
198. "Rekomendalsii regional'nogo mezhvedomstvennogo soveshchaniia 'Vepsy: Problemy razvitiia ekonomiki i kul'tury v usloviiakh perestroiki,'" Problemy istorii i kul'tury vepsskoi narodnosi, ibid., pp. 163-171.
199. For a model see Seppo Lallukka, The East Finnic Minorities in the Soviet Union: An Appraisal of the Erosive Trends (Helsinki, 1990), which does not treat the peoples we look at. 20,000 is often considered the minimum required for survival of an ethnos. Nevalainen emphasizes the role of Soviet ideological training on Ingrian youth. Kurs cites quantitative and other indices, pp. 1494-1497. The census understates the Izhors' numbers, for many identified themselves as Russians, some even using blat (influence) to obtain this entry in their passports, Pärdi, p. 270.