CHAPTER ELEVEN

“KARELIA ISSUE” THE POLITICS AND MEMORY OF KARELIA IN FINLAND

Outi Fingerroos

For a foreign reader, the central place of Karelia in the Finnish memory culture may seem surprising. Unlike any other region, the Karelian borderland between Finland and Russia, with its varying cultural meanings and geographical borders, has been in focus when defi ning Finnishness as an identity and nationality. Ever since the Finnish national champion Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884) collected traditional oral poetry in Karelia and composed them into the national epic Kalevala in 1849, Karelia has been a source of inspiration for Finnish nationalism and culture. In World War II, all the major battles between Finland and the Soviet Union took place in Finnish Karelia and in Soviet Eastern Karelia, which has further emphasized the signifi cance of Karelia in the Finnish memory culture. Today, the “Karelia issue” is mostly referring to the question of the areas annexed by the Soviet Union in World War II and to the memories of this “lost Karelia” among the Finns. Th e two diff erent Karelias under discussion may be confusing. For the sake of clarity, I will use the umbrella term “Finnish Karelia” to refer to those Karelian regions, which were a part of Finland before World War II. Th e borders of Finland had been confi rmed in 1920 by the Treaty of Tartu aft er the nation had achieved its independence from Soviet Russia in 1917. Finnish Karelia included the Karelian Isthmus and the Ladoga Karelia, with the city of Vyborg as the heart of the region. Th ese areas were annexed by the Soviet Union aft er the Winter War in 1940, recaptured by the Finns in 1941, and then lost again in 1944.1 Th e prewar population of Finnish Karelia was ethnically Finnish; they spoke Finnish with a Karelian dialect and

1 Part of Finnish Karelia is still inside the contemporary Finnish borders in Eastern and Southeastern Finland, with the towns of Joensuu and Lappeenranta as the main centers. 484 outi fingerroos understood themselves to be just as Finnish as the rest of the country. In 1939–40, the whole population of Finnish Karelia, over 400,000 Finns, was evacuated and resettled inside the new Finnish borders. Th e majority of these exiles, the so-called “Karelian evacuees” (in Finnish evakko) returned to their homes during the Continuation War and were thus re-evacuated in 1944. Aft er that, the Karelian evacuees established new homes all over Finland. Nevertheless, despite losing their original Finnish Karelian home region, many of the evacuees and their descendants have upheld a distinctive Karelian identity and tradi- tion until today. “Eastern Karelia,” instead, has never been a part of Finland. With no unambiguous borders, it refers roughly to the large areas east of Finland between Lake Ladoga, River Svir, Lake Onega and the White Sea. Th e area is further divided into Olonets (Aunus) Karelia in the south and Dvina (Viena) Karelia in the north. Th e Karelian population of Eastern Karelia is not Finnish, but an ethnic people in its own right, speaking the Finnic language of Karelian. Demographically, the area has been a mixed region of ethnic Karelians and Russians, plus some smaller Finnic peoples. During the 1920s and 1930s, a large number of Russians and other non-Finnic nationalities of the Soviet Union were resettled in Eastern Karelia, thus making the Karelians a minority in the area. In 1923, Eastern Karelia as a part of the Soviet Union formed the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic; today, the Republic of Karelia is a federal district of Russia with Petrozavodsk as the capital city. During the Continuation War in 1941–44, Finland occupied most of Eastern Karelia for over two and a half years. Consequently, there are two diff erent topics when looking at the Karelias: the expansive idea in prewar and wartime Finland to attach Eastern Karelia to Finland, defi ned as the ideology of Greater Finland; and the experience of losing Finnish Karelia in 1940 and again in 1944, the memory of which is still a current issue in contemporary Finland. Naturally, the question of creating Greater Finland by incorporating Eastern Karelia has not been on any political agenda aft er 1944.2 “Karelianism,” a broad term referring to the keen Finnish public, political, artistic and academic interest in Karelia and the Karelians,

2 On the Finnish occupation of Eastern Karelia, see the chapters by Oula Silvennoinen and Tenho Pimiä in this book. Th e most important study on the subject is still Antti Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot: Itä-Karjalan siviiliväestön asema suomalaisessa miehityshallinnossa 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1982).