North American Finns in the Soviet Union in the 1930S EVGENY
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At the Intersections of Nations, Diasporas, and Modernities: North American Finns in the Soviet Union in the 1930s EVGENY EFREMKIN A DISSERTATION* SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO September 2014 © Evgeny Efremkin, 2014 Abstract In the early 1930s, approximately seven thousand North American Finns, many of whom were born in Canada and the United States, left for Soviet Karelia, an autonomous republic in north-western Russia, bordering on Finland. Through the case study of the Karelian fever (a term by which North American Finnish migration to Soviet Karelia is now known), this work analyzes processes of identity construction at individual, regional, and national levels. My argument is that transnational migrant labour became a means by which diasporic, regional, and national leaders defined and redefined the cultural and political borders of their imagined communities. Whereas the movement of people was physically and psychologically transnational, national and diasporic imaginaries on both sides of the Atlantic were engaged in a perpetual effort to include, and in other instances reject, the cultural, social, economic, and political memberships of these migrants in their communities. The study focuses on a specific community, but transcends geographical boundaries in a period of less than a decade and shows a vibrant, tumultuous historical process of identity formation, both structural and subjective. In addition to analytical frameworks of nation and diaspora, my work looks at immigrant lives in dissimilar and competing versions of modernity, western capitalism and Soviet socialism. Finns on the move across the Atlantic in the 1920s and the 1930s were transnational agents, who by virtue of their mobility infused elements of western modernization into the Soviet society. As a result, these Finnish migrants who moved across land and sea borders in search of a social, economic, and political haven, became embroiled in the process of modern nation-state construction, but also found themselves within a larger, global contest of alternative modernities, that is between competing notions of what the new subject of the modern nation-state should look like. What follows is a multi-sited ethnographic analysis of the way immigrants’ ethnic ii identities were forged, and contested in different social contexts and varying levels of scale. In other words, what were the ways by which social spaces such as diasporas (locally), nations (regionally), and modernities (globally) were culturally produced. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Roberto Perin, my thesis supervisor, who has extended his outmost support for the completion of this project. It was in his class in my M.A year at York that I was inspired to fuse my interests in Canadian, European, and Soviet history under the overarching field of immigration and ethnic history. Thank you Roberto for all your help, support, and the invaluable, countless conversations we had, which influenced my work, but more so the way I look at the world today and yesterday. I would like to thank Craig Heron and Orest Subtelny for reading my dissertation and providing valuable feedback and corrections, without which this work would not have been completed. I have been lucky to receive their guidance at all levels of my post-secondary experience, having completed my B.A and M.A at York University. I also want to add William Wicken to this list, under whom I served as a Teaching Assistant for three years, and who provided me with important academic advice on the work in progress. Many thanks to all other committee members – Carmela Patrias, Sheila Embleton, and Gabriele Scardellato – for taking their time to read and reflect on my work. A special thanks to Alexei Golubev from the University of British Columbia, whose invaluable knowledge of the immigrants’ experiences in Soviet Karelia proved crucial for the completion of this project. Numerous conversations with Alexei armed me with the necessary theoretical frameworks within which to situate the narrative I present below. I would also like to thank several individuals in academia with whom I was involved in various international projects concerning the immigration of North American Finns to Karelia, namely Irina Takala, Markku Kangaspurro, Samira Saramo, and Borje Vahamaki. I also want to thank all the faculty members and graduate students with whom I came in contact during my stay at York. They all enriched my graduate studies experience. I also extend many thanks to the administrative staff at York, namely Lisa Hoffman, Patricia Di Benigno, Karen Dancy, and Anita Szucko, who make the graduate student experience at the history department so much more pleasant. I would also like to thank the government of Ontario with furnishing me with 4 graduate scholarships, which played an important part in the timely completion of the current project. Of course all of this would not have been possible without the support of my family, my parents Anatoly and Inna, my beloved wife Dinara, and my beautiful daughter Alana. They all inspired me, awaited patiently the date of the defense, while providing unwavering psychological support. iv Finally, I want to thank Varpu Lindstrom, who unfortunately is not with us anymore. This work is in many ways a dedication to her and the tremendous amount of work she has put into studying the experience of Finnish immigrants in North America, and later in the Soviet Union. Although she might not have agreed with some of the views that I share here, nonetheless I am sure that she would support me unconditionally like she always did. Thank you Varpu for everything, this is for you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………….…...……..iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………………..………......vi Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter Two: A Re-Imagined Community: The Finnish North American Left and the Karelian Fever…………….…………………………………… ………………..42 Chapter Three: The Artificial Republic…………...……………………………………..89 Chapter Four: Canada’s Invisible Nationality Policy……………………………………129 Chapter Five: At the Intersection of Modernities …………………………………….…171 Chapter Six: The State and the Stranger: The Great Terror and the Deconstruction of an Imagined Community…………………………………………………………...…204 Chapter Seven: Conclusion…………………...………………….…………………...…261 Bibliography……………………………………………...…………………………….278 Appendices……………………………………………………………………………..289 vi Chapter 1: Introduction Overarching Argument In the early 1930s, approximately seven thousand North American Finns, many of whom were born in Canada and the United States, left for Soviet Karelia, an autonomous republic in northwestern Russia, bordering on Finland. Through the case study of the Karelian fever (a term by which North American Finnish migration to Soviet Karelia is now known), this work analyzes processes of identity construction at individual, organizational, regional, and national levels. My argument is that transnational migrant labor – a subaltern force consisting primarily of nuclear and extended family units on the move in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in search of economic and social security – became a means by which diasporic, regional, and national leaders defined and redefined the cultural and political borders of their imagined communities. Whereas the movement of people was physically and psychologically transnational, national and diasporic imaginaries on both sides of the Atlantic were engaged in a perpetual effort to include, and in other instances reject, the cultural, social, economic, and political memberships of these migrants in their communities. While my study focuses on a specific community, it nonetheless transcends geographical and ethnic boundaries in a period of less than a decade and shows a vibrant, tumultuous historical process of identity formation both structural and subjective. That said the process of identity construction through the theoretical prisms of imagined communities,1 imagined geographies,2 and imagined futures,3 is not the only focus of this 1 On the concept of imagined communities, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso, 1991. 2 The concept of imagined geographies was developed based on the works of Edward Said, particularly his critique of Orientalism. See, Edward Said, Orientalism. Penguin Books, 1995. 1 dissertation. Given that the migratory group and pattern under scrutiny involves analysis of socio-political and cultural discourses of nations outside the western hemisphere, i.e. the Soviet Union, my work looks at immigrant lives in different nation-states, but also in dissimilar and competing versions of modernity, western capitalism and Soviet socialism. The migratory group under investigation – Finns on the move between Canada, the United States, Finland, and the Soviet Union in the 1920s and the 1930s – were transnational agents, who by virtue of their mobility infused elements of western modernization into the Soviet society. As a result, these Finnish migrants who moved across land and sea borders in search of a social, economic, and political haven, became embroiled in the process of modern nation-state construction, but also found themselves within a larger, global contest of alternative modernities, that is