The Plight and Death in Soviet Karelia
In the early 1930s, around 10,000 Finns made the decision to leave their homes in the US and Canada and head for the new promised land, Karelia. The lands, while historically Finnish, are under the control of the USSR. The following account sums the situation up pretty clearly:
Finland suffered from famine. . . . Then father decided to go to America. He left in 1926, and mother — in 1927. They went to Canada, because people said that there was a need in workers for logging. They fared well there, I mean, in financial terms. Father had two horses, two cows, and a house, they carved huge refrigerators in a rock — we didn’t have such refrigerators at that time as now. Finns lived in their own community. They always helped each other and didn’t communicate much with locals [Canadians] and other immigrants. Of course, there were difficulties, as we didn’t know the [English] language. Well, many didn’t want to learn it either. By the time my brother and I were born, [our] parents had got on [their] feet, more or less. They had a good household, father had a regular salary, but still America seemed alien to us. Then, in the early 1930s, unemployment struck. And the radio and newspapers kept on calling to move to the ussr, to build socialism. It was then that [our] parents decided to emigrate to Russia. During the crisis, life became very difficult. My husband kept on trying to find a job. If he worked at least for a week in a month, we considered it a big luck. Back in America, we lived in Detroit, an automobile city. Father worked at the Ford factory, while mother earned some money in a household of some millionaire. He had his own servants, but mother came twice a week to clean up the house. We lived quite well. Had a Ford of our own — well, almost everybody had a car at that time. Lived in private houses. . . . Then unemployment came to America. It was really hard. Every day father was leaving home to search for a job and came back tired and hungry. At first mother asked him every day: “Any news?” He only sighed. Then she stopped asking him.
Apart from economic difficulties, support for socialism and communism was very high among Finns living in the US. Leftist press was very popular among them and they constituted about half of the membership of the Workers Party of America. Then, it is not very surprising that the promise of the USSR sounded very good indeed.
The difficulties of one such family that decided to move to Karelia are detailed in J.P. Koskinen’s work of fiction entitled “Firewing” (Tulisiipi in the original) from 2019. As the book doesn’t seem to have been translated into English yet, and ChatGPT has no clue that it exists, you’ll just have to trust me when I say it is a pretty decent piece. Koskinen weaves historical facts, myths, and a fictional–albeit representative of the historical reality–personal story into a coherent whole.
The thing that holds the story together is the life of a particular individual who becomes obsessed with flying as a boy and wants nothing more out of life. His story develops against the backdrop of real events that his family must face. First, the boy is named Charles, and he lives a normal American life in a normal immigrant working class family. There’s leftist press, there’s propaganda, and agitation for better conditions in Karelia, and his family is eventually convinced to make the move. Charles becomes Kaarle because that suits the conditions better. Soon enough, the family finds out that the situation in the Finnish workers’ paradise isn’t all that rosy.
In fact, the realities of Soviet Karelia in the 30s were not at all suitable for North American workers. The living conditions were appalling, resources scarce, and food rationed. Plus, the Soviet way of doing things definitely didn’t sit well with the newcomers, which is reflected in Koskinen’s portrayal of work at the car repair facility where Kaarle’s father works. “Why does the car of the committee chief get the new parts first when it would be better to use older spare parts?”
Kaarle wants nothing more than to fly, and nothing will deter him. Not even the dead body he comes across in the forest. Eventually, he makes useful connections and gets to train to be a pilot for the Red Army. Since he is actually really talented, he manages to progress quickly but still has to assume a new name, Gennady. As the years go by, being Finnish becomes increasingly more problematic. In reality, Karelia doesn’t escape Soviet terror and it is particularly the Finns who stand out.
Gennady’s life continues to outline the misfortunes of life in Soviet Karelia. His family finally decides to leave and go back to the US, but through an unfortunate accident, the young man manages to miss the train his family is on and ends up in a work camp in Siberia for years until Germany attacks. The invasion changes everything, and Gennady is called up to serve. His only wish is to fly so he does, and he also manages to shoot down a sufficient number of enemy fighters to make himself into a hero. Unfortunately, he is shot down in the end, and the 20 seconds in enemy hands make him a traitor in Stalin’s eyes, so… gulag.
It almost sounds farcical when you look at it all together like that, but when you are reading the story, knowing a little something about the place and time, it’s not all that implausible. However, the great big finish of the book is what takes its credibility away. Koskinen proceeds to blend myth with reality and continue Gennady’s story by making him the first man to go to space. When the regime calmed down a bit after Stalin’s timely demise, his pilot skills were appreciated again, and he made it into the space flight program. At the same time, he continued to date a woman — a childhood friend — who managed to make a career in the NKVD, and it is clear that her contribution helped him to get the spot of the first man in space ahead of his rivals, including Gagarin.
This way, Koskinen utilizes the myth of phantom cosmonauts — the myth that there were other failed flights before Gagarin that were covered up. Gennady’s fight fails because some self-inflated idiot official installed a seat that was just too big to be ejected through the door and he decides to fly off into space instead of burning up during his descent because flying off, that’s… freedom. To me, that ending is… meh.
I think, sometimes, we should just accept that things don’t end well. I don’t know how many people got to enjoy two extended stays in Siberian gulags and survived it, but you really don’t have to make your tortured hero into a glorious cosmonaut and grant him tragic death in the freedom of suffocating in space as compensation. The gulags were enough.
Overall, the book is a great read and does great justice to the history of Finnish Karelia. Although the total immigration, as well as the numbers that died in Soviet persecution, were relatively small in comparison with what else was going on, one has to appreciate fiction that shines the spotlight on little-known stories.
Sources:
Koskinen, J.P. Tulisiipi (“Firewing”)
Golubev, Alexey — Irina Takala. The Search for a Socialist El Dorado: Finnish Immigration to Soviet Karelia from the United States and Canada in the 1930s. Michigan State University Press. ISBN 9781611861150.
