Finnish Reception of the Oppression of Ingrian Finns in the Soviet Union
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MSS0010.1177/17506980211024329Memory StudiesSavolainen 1024329research-article2021 Article Memory Studies 2021, Vol. 14(4) 909 –925 Affordances of memorability: Finnish © The Author(s) 2021 reception of the oppression of Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions Ingrian Finns in the Soviet Union https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980211024329DOI: 10.1177/17506980211024329 journals.sagepub.com/home/mss Ulla Savolainen University of Helsinki, Finland Abstract By addressing recent discussions on reception within the field of memory studies, this article aims to analyze the reasons for the alleged absence of public memory relating to the history of Ingria and the experiences of Ingrian Finns in Finland by focusing on Inkerin romaani (2002), a posthumous novel by Toivo Pekkanen. Through analysis of three scales of reception, the article explores the dynamics of memory and affordances of memorability. It argues that understanding memory dynamics requires looking at the reception of memory as well as its blockages. Moreover, this article suggests that these aspects of memory dynamics can be fruitfully analyzed and theorized through the notion of affordances of memorability. Keywords affordance, reception, cultural memory, Finland, Ingrian Finns, Soviet Union On January 20, 2019, journalist Lea Pakkanen wrote a special feature, “My grandmother, deported in Siberia,”1 in the Helsingin Sanomat, the largest newspaper in Finland. Covering her journey to Yakutia, Siberia, where her late grandmother spent years as a deportee, Pakkanen discusses the Soviet terror inflicted on the people called Ingrian Finns. Additionally, Pakkanen writes about her own Ingrian Finnish roots, her lack of knowledge about her grandmother’s experiences, and the absence of historical consciousness regarding both Ingria and Ingrian Finns in Finland in general. She notes that although the Soviet terror touched the lives of many Ingrian Finns, silence has pre- vailed around the topic for decades at both private and public levels. Furthermore, Pakkanen main- tains that although 32,000 persons with Ingrian Finnish backgrounds have migrated to Finland since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, their history is poorly recognized and poorly acknowl- edged in Finland. The group called Ingrian Finns used to live in the historical area of Ingria, located along the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. For the Ingrian Finns, the 20th century was characterized by various forms of mobilities and the Soviet terror. Today, the majority of the people identifying as Ingrian Finns live in Finland, Russia, Estonia, and Sweden. Although the history of Ingrian Finns Corresponding author: Ulla Savolainen, University Researcher, Department of Cultures, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 59, Unioninkatu 38, Helsinki 00014, Finland. Email: [email protected] 910 Memory Studies 14(4) is not very well known among Finland’s general public, as Pakkanen argues, her article in the Helsingin Sanomat can be seen as part of larger emergent discussions that reflect a growing aware- ness of silenced, forgotten, and absent histories, as well as memories. Claims about recognition often characterize these kinds of discussions around the selectivity of memory. Moreover, these discussions relate to a more general increase in the social and political importance of memory in the Western world (e.g. Huyssen, 2003; Radstone and Hodgkin, 2003; Macdonald, 2013). From this perspective, memory is often associated with an abundance of representation, which entails political and cultural recognition and power. The lack of memory, on the other hand, is associated with oblivion and silencing, often seen as resulting from either trauma or repressive hegemony (Van Vree, 2013). The case of Ingrian Finns, however, complicates these kinds of links between representation and memory. Although the history of Ingria and Ingrian Finns has, without doubt, been both a symbolically and politically charged topic in Finland—and, at times, silenced—several reflections on the experiences of Ingrian Finns have occurred in the public sphere during the last 100 years. For instance, since the 1930s—and especially after the late 1980s—dozens of memoirs and works of autobiographical fiction dealing with Ingrian Finns’ experiences have been published in Finland, and some have been quite popular (see Sihvo, 1991). Arguably due to the memoir’s relatively low status as both a literary genre and a historical source, most of these works have not become well- known classics or entered the literary canon. Still, the sheer existence of this literature reflects that the past experiences of Ingrian Finns were neither silenced nor forgotten. In addition to testimonies and memoirs, other kinds of literary works have discussed Ingrian Finns’ dramatic 20th-century history. Arguably, one of the most prominent of these works is Inkerin romaani (“The Novel of Ingria”), a posthumous work by Toivo Pekkanen (1902–1957) published in Finland in 2002. Pekkanen is a notable 20th-century Finnish author and one of the central figures of Finnish working-class literature, who ascended from poor childhood to the position of a nation- ally distinguished author with several literary prizes and the honorary title of the Academician of Art in 1955. During his career, Pekkanen wrote over 30 works, mostly prose and plays. His litera- ture is characterized by his calm and subdued style and detailed realistic descriptions of the every- day life of workers. Even though Toivo Pekkanen’s works are often counted among working-class literature, he often focused on the personal development of his proletarian protagonists instead of opting for overtly political and class-conscious works. Avoidance of manifestly leftist opinions with literary themes related to the life of working-class people made Pekkanen’s oeuvre both appreciated and criticized across the political spectrum.2 Considering Toivo Pekkanen’s position as a well-known author in Finland, one would think if any book could have increased the public and collective awareness of Ingrian history and gener- ated debates on Ingrian Finns’ tragic experiences in Finland, it would have been his Inkerin romaani. But although the first edition of Inkerin romaani quickly sold out, and the novel was reviewed by the most important newspapers, public discussion of the novel and its topic was lim- ited and soon passed over. Moreover, even today, no research has been published on the novel.3 This lack of discussion is surprising. Not only was the novel authored by a nationally recognized author, but the story of its belated publication is also compelling. Indeed, authored at the beginning of the 1940s during the Second World War and the war between Finland and the Soviet Union, the novel was not published until 2002 due to reasons related to Finland’s geopolitical position as a neighbor of the Soviet Union. Given these issues, the absence of public memory appears not to stem from silencing alone. Rather, it seems that when stories about Ingrian Finnish experiences have been told and histories have been represented, they have not managed to circulate long term in the popular historical con- sciousness. Clearly, the absence of public memory relates to reception. By continuing the recent Savolainen 911 discussions on reception within the field of cultural memory studies (e.g. Sindbæk Andersen and Törnquist-Plewa, 2017), this article aims to analyze the reasons for the absence of public memory about the history of Ingria and the experiences of Ingrian Finns in Finland by focusing on Inkerin romaani. By analyzing three scales of reception—the novel’s publication history, the novel’s media reception, and my reading of the novel’s poetics—I will explore the dynamics of memory (and the lack thereof) in general and affordances of memorability in particular. Originally developed in the psychology of visual perception (Gibson, 1977)—and more recently in the fields of design (e.g. Norman, 1988), archaeology (e.g. Knappett, 2004), anthropology (e.g. Ingold, 2000; Keane, 2016), and media, communication, and technology studies (e.g. Nagy and Neff, 2015)—the concept of affordance refers to the qualities of certain expression of media (e.g. narrative, objects, and technology) in relation to their use in certain situations. I suggest that affordances of memorability refer to the formal, functional, and thematic qualities of texts and media as well as the performative, social, and historical contexts that define which memories, nar- ratives, and experiences attract broader interest so that they become mediated and collectively remembered (while others remain forgotten). This means that affordance is inherently a relational and social phenomenon (Keane, 2016: 30). In this article, I argue that understanding the dynamics of cultural and social memory requires looking not only at the reception of memory but also at blockages to reception. Moreover, I argue that these aspects of memory dynamics can be fruitfully differentiated, analyzed, and theorized through the notion of affordance of memorability. As an analytical concept, affordance directs attention not only to the properties of “memory matter,” such as certain stories, events, characters, artifacts, or images, but also to their actualization in a certain sociohistorical situation. Affordance, in other words, allows theorization and analysis of memora- bility as a fundamentally relational (on the relationality of memory, see Erll, 2018) and socio- material phenomenon. Reception