Finnish policy over East Karelia

[Philip S. Walker]

@AndersG.

I think that most of those who know anything about history, and they are a minority of the population, same as in pretty much any country, will agree that there were a lot of mistakes made.

That's nice to know. Now can we see a bit more of that attitude in practice, please?

Some people here are Finnish. They know a lot about their history and they can read the language. The rest of us have come here to learn, not to watch you guys sit and scratch each other's backs. We all admire the Finnish people, but we are not naive idiots and we refuse to be treated as such. We have heard all the glory stuff, now we ask for the bit that you've been hiding under the white camouflage. If you are anywhere near the men you claim you are, surely you can bear to tell us the whole truth.

If we conclude that errors were made, then we must at the same time conclude that many of those errors were corrected by 1943. None of the camps were secret and the IRC had access to them and had nothing to complain about.

By 1943 the Finnish leaders had realised that the Allied forces would win the war, not the psychotic Comic Book party in Berlin that they had previously relied on. So what they did in East Karelia was clearly an attempt to clean up the previous dirty acts of the AKS representatives who had so far been allowed to run the joint according to their own semi-Fascist agenda. Had the fortunes of war gone the other way, the prisoners of these camps would, according to the agreement with Berlin, have been sent to German occupied areas of Russia to work as slaves. No mistake.

I find it very hard to adopt the mindset of someone 70 years ago.

I was born in 1957 and have no problems judging how people thought and acted a mere 12 years prior to that.

Trying to understand why things happened is not the same as defending or even condoning, but it is no much harder than condemning people because "they are evil". How much did aspirations for a "Greater Finland" play into decisions? 100%, 50%, 0.001%? I would still say it played a minor part. Remember that Mannerheim had very realistic views on Russian military capabilities.

It's not really what we're looking at here. We are concentrating on the Finnish policies with regard to East Karelia, and in that particular regard the Greater Finland fantasies seem to have had a huge impact. And what were they really at the end of the day other than a watered down version of what the Nazis were doing?

I think the major driving force was simple fear. Fear that Russia would "settle the score" with Finland once and for all.

Fear seems to have had very little to do with the issue discussed on this particular thread, apart from the buffer zone aspect.

I think we have exhausted Laine's article

It's a long article and we have only just started looking at it.

this thread has degenerated into just opinion, so I will stop here. By all means post here if you find anything interesting, especially if it has decent sources that can be validated.

How about you finding something interesting and presenting it to the rest of us? You have the knowledge, you know the language, you have good command of the English language, and I'm sure you are familiar with the purposes of this forum.

@Topspeed

You are practically forcing me to give you this link!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPO4cGe2 ... CBAF8E0157

[OJJE]

Here is some information in finnish and swedish about the visits by swedish reporters from Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Stockholms tidning (Tuneberger from Dagens nyheter, Ljungström from Svenska Dagbladet, Hedström from Stockholms Tidning). IT should not be hard to find these articles through Swedish libraries

And Dr Max Mehlemi from the newspaper "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" had visited the East-Karelian camps several times.. from the start 1941 to 1944. So the camps where not a secret as some of you try to make out as..

the pictures are from the book "Suomalaisina itä-karjalassa"

[OJJE]

There is another good book about the East-Karelia 1941-1944: "Helmi Suomen maakuntien joukossa.. Suomalainen itä-karjalassa 1941-1944" by Osmo Hyytiä. It's loaded with statistics..

.. Before the finns advanced into east-karelia the sovjet union evacuated almost all of the cattle, this is what they left behind 1941. Finnish military veterinarians started to make an inventory of the domestic animals that where left behind and this is what they found throughout East-Karelia in the fall/winter 1941. You can't feed the WHOLE population that the sovjet union did not evacuate from East-Karelia 1941 with these:

5220 horses
7230 cows
1340 pigs
3930 sheep
7720 chickens

and in spring 1941 they lost 269 animals, of these 142 horses to bears, wolwes or because some of the animals where too old and had to be put to sleep.

[OJJE]

The populations in the East-Karelia 1939.

Total: 468900

Russian: 296500 (63,2%)
Carelian: 108600 (23,2%)
Vepsian: 9400 (2%)
Finns: 8300 (1,8%)
the rest, 46100 was from ukraine, belarusians.

carelian, vespian and finns = 27% 1939 and 1926 this number was 42,6%..

Scource: Suomalainen itä-karjalassa by Osmo Hyttiä and he gives his scoure: Pokrovskaja 1978 page 70-73 and Kangaspuro 2000 page 242-243.

[AndersG]

By 1943 the Finnish leaders had realised that the Allied forces would win the war

That realisation came much earlier than 1943. Even in 1941 most higher ranking officers knew that Germany would never win and the best to hope for was a stalemate.

I was born in 1957 and have no problems judging how people thought and acted a mere 12 years prior to that.

Excuse me saying so, but that is not entirely evident from what you write. Perhaps there is a little bit of hubris on your part. This (putting oneself into a historical person's shoes) discussion is one I have had with many historians and they all agree that it is difficult, extremely difficult.

Greater Finland fantasies seem to have had a huge impact.

That is your opinion and you are entitled to it, few historians would agree though.

How about you finding something interesting and presenting it to the rest of us?

I think I already have... I have translated passages of Laine's article. I have pointed you at Roséns Book as well as other sources, some of them even in Swedish. I get the feeling that you have made up your mind and when someone presents facts that contradict your view, you brush them aside as "whitewashing".

[Philip S. Walker]

AndersG.

Philip: By 1943 the Finnish leaders had realised that the Allied forces would win the war

AndersG: That realisation came much earlier than 1943. Even in 1941 most higher ranking officers knew that Germany would never win and the best to hope for was a stalemate.

I'm sure the situation was somewhat more obvious and pressing by 1943 than it had been in December 1941, when sources near Mannerheim say they detected in the old man a severe drop in his belief in the German cause.

Philip: I was born in 1957 and have no problems judging how people thought and acted a mere 12 years prior to that.

AndersG: Excuse me saying so, but that is not entirely evident from what you write.

Please be specific.

Perhaps there is a little bit of hubris on your part. This (putting oneself into a historical person's shoes) discussion is one I have had with many historians and they all agree that it is difficult, extremely difficult.

You've been speaking to the wrong crowd. If they found it easy (as I do), they probably wouldn't have become historians but writers of historically based fiction, which is what so many of them aspire to and do so badly.

Philip: Greater Finland fantasies seem to have had a huge impact.

AndersG: That is your opinion and you are entitled to it, few historians would agree though.

No, it's not my opinion because you quote me out of concept. I was only talking about the Finnish policy over East Karelia, which is what this thread is about, and even more specifically about Laine's essay and what it says.

I get the feeling that you have made up your mind and when someone presents facts that contradict your view, you brush them aside as "whitewashing".

My mind can be changed by proper argumentation and presentation of sources in English, in accordance with the rules of this forum. Since most of the material we need to look at on this subject only exists in Finnish, it should be the duty of Finnish members to enlighten the rest of us with English translations. Some actually do that, but almost only where it suits their private "patriotic" agenda. I can hardly speak any Finnish at all, yet I've had to spend many hours trying to chew my way through Laine's essential essay, mainly with the help of a Finnish friend outside of this forum (actually a historian who's a former student of Laine's), while people here have only helped out very sporadically. I also constantly translate from Swedish and Danish and put it on the forum.(though my last Danish translation was scrapped because it mentioned that the person in question was a homosexual - not exactly against to forum rules. Hm.)

[Oleg Grigoryev]

It was scrapped because it did not have anything with subject of the thread. If you can establish that somehow affected Finish policies toward Karelia then by all means do that. Personally I cannot even see the methodology which can be used to that end.
I am also not exactly a fan of sweeping generalizations either. Obviously there deep rooted dogmas in history of any country that are very hard to challenge. However statements like “Nation N is bunch of drunkards” or “Nation X consists of arrogant stubborn snobs” will do nothing but incite a flame war.

[Philip S. Walker]

We were trying to learn something about Helanen, the leader of the AKS, an organisation who were extremely influential in deciding the Finnish policy over East Karelia. It turned out that he was a strong Nazi supporter. It also turned out that he had connections with a Danish engineer, Thoralf Kyrre, who had operated as a German spy in Finland, and in fact it was their relationship that caused Helanen to end up in a Finnish prison for several years.

Being Danish by birth I surfed to find information about Thoralf Kyrre and found a description of his very violent death in 1960. Since he was stabbed to death by two very young male prostitutes it hardly made any sense to deny that he was a homosexual. I duly and objectively translated the information into English and put it in my post.

Since Helanen was obvious deeply involved with Kyrre on some level (and I don't necessarily mean in a sexual sense, though I do find signs of possible homoerotic themes in the descriptions I have seen of Helanens literary production), I felt this could be a way to move the thread on. There are a few thing about Kyrre on the net in Finnish, so I was hoping for some help there. That's all. If I had any prejudice against homosexuals I would probably be the only living Danish citizen to have that.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

He could have died from being hit in the head by giant icicle, or was run over by car, or from the real bad case of flue, or of an old age. It would still bring you no closer to understanding of how and why Finish Policies in Karelia were designed and implemented. The same goes for his lifestyle – be it his favorite brand of shoes, favorite move, book, color or whatever else. Hitler was a vegetarian and Stalin liked to smoke pipes. Neither of this will explain Holocaust or Purges. The things that are important are his political views and what his abilities to implement them were.

[Whiskey]

We have heard all the glory stuff, now we ask for the bit that you've been hiding under the white camouflage. If you are anywhere near the men you claim you are, surely you can bear to tell us the whole truth.

That's exactly what we are trying to do. That is also why we react so strongly when someone doesn't bother to look whole truth but insist that some fringe section presents the whole truth.

By 1943 the Finnish leaders had realised that the Allied forces would win the war, not the psychotic Comic Book party in Berlin that they had previously relied on. So what they did in East Karelia was clearly an attempt to clean up the previous dirty acts of the AKS representatives who had so far been allowed to run the joint according to their own semi-Fascist agenda.

You got the timeline wrong. The situation at the camps started to improve at the late summer of 1942, when new harvest started to arrive. At the same time German offensive was still in the full swing towards Stalingrad.

Had the fortunes of war gone the other way, the prisoners of these camps would, according to the agreement with Berlin, have been sent to German occupied areas of Russia to work as slaves. No mistake.

Either to German controlled area or to Russian controlled area. It was planned to use them to exchange Finnish related Russians (Finns, Karelians, Ingrians, Vepsäns etc.) from the areas remaining in German/Russian hands.

Also, here you presume Finns were aware of Generalplan Ost and the intention of Germans to use slavs as a slave labor. That view is not supported by any historian.

It's not really what we're looking at here. We are concentrating on the Finnish policies with regard to East Karelia, and in that particular regard the Greater Finland fantasies seem to have had a huge impact. And what were they really at the end of the day other than a watered down version of what the Nazis were doing?

Not fantasies. Even Soviet Union saw that as witnessed by the land exchange treaty Kuusinen government did with Soviet Union, where most of the area of East Karelia was incorporated to Finland. In fact, the border ran almost constantly 30-40km westward from Murmansk railroad, and in that area inhabitants were still 80-90% Finns/Karelians.

Fear seems to have had very little to do with the issue discussed on this particular thread, apart from the buffer zone aspect.

And the merit of the buffer zone cannot be underestimated.

Whiskey

[Philip S. Walker]

Philip S. Walker wrote:We have heard all the glory stuff, now we ask for the bit that you've been hiding under the white camouflage. If you are anywhere near the men you claim you are, surely you can bear to tell us the whole truth.

Whiskey: That's exactly what we are trying to do. That is also why we react so strongly when someone doesn't bother to look whole truth but insist that some fringe section presents the whole truth.

I have never insisted that some fringe section presents the whole truth. I have only said that we need to look at one thing at a time. Logically we must look at what happened and establish that as clearly as possible, before we look at why. The problem is that people muddle those two thing up in order to divert and sabotage a discussion they don't want to happen, and that goes directly against the purpose and the rules of this forum.

Philip: By 1943 the Finnish leaders had realised that the Allied forces would win the war, not the psychotic Comic Book party in Berlin that they had previously relied on. So what they did in East Karelia was clearly an attempt to clean up the previous dirty acts of the AKS representatives who had so far been allowed to run the joint according to their own semi-Fascist agenda.

Whiskey: You got the timeline wrong. The situation at the camps started to improve at the late summer of 1942, when new harvest started to arrive. At the same time German offensive was still in the full swing towards Stalingrad.

The Finnish realisation that Germany would lose the War was a gradual process, starting from December 1941 and leading to the conclusion sometime during 1943 that the race was definitely lost.

Also, here you presume Finns were aware of Generalplan Ost and the intention of Germans to use Slavs as a slave labor. That view is not supported by any historian.

No, all I do is look at this from Laine's essay:

The legal assistant of the military commander of Eastern Karelia, professor Veli Merikoski was in late autum 1941 in Riga, to familiarize with the administration of the German captured areas in the east. In discussions was dealt with the possibilities to move, already before the end of the war, the Russian civil population that had been left in Eastern Karelia to the parts of Russia that had been conquered by Germany. This population would be exchanged with Finnic people. The move was mentioned to be topical only then, when the road south of lake Ladoga would be open to traffic. When this never happened, the matter was not discussed later. Instead movements of Finnic people in German hands were realized in several stages. The largest group was Ingrians from the Leningrad area and Northern Estonia.

Philip: It's not really what we're looking at here. We are concentrating on the Finnish policies with regard to East Karelia, and in that particular regard the Greater Finland fantasies seem to have had a huge impact. And what were they really at the end of the day other than a watered down version of what the Nazis were doing?

Whiskey: Not fantasies. Even Soviet Union saw that as witnessed by the land exchange treaty Kuusinen government did with Soviet Union, where most of the area of East Karelia was incorporated to Finland. In fact, the border ran almost constantly 30-40km westward from Murmansk railroad, and in that area inhabitants were still 80-90% Finns/Karelians.

So Greater Finland was really a just case ... is that your point?

Philip: Fear seems to have had very little to do with the issue discussed on this particular thread, apart from the buffer zone aspect.

Whiskey: And the merit of the buffer zone cannot be underestimated.

I assume you mean the opposite. In any case, it is obvious that several interests and feelings coincided when the Finnish policies over East Karelia were made. Or to put it in another way: attempts were made to kill two birds with one stone. We have heard about the buffer zone idea again and again, and now's the time look at the other aspects. You are a well-read man and know a lot about these issues. If you have any factual criticism against Laine's description of events, you should present that to us and back it up with facts.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

I tried to keep my distance from the discussion itself, because, in my experience, when moderator starts to express his own point of view, it creates an impression of favoritism and unfair play, and that is something I am most determined to avoid. That being said, I read through the entire thread and this are my issues with it.
We are relaying on the third party, however excellent their academic credentials might be , to interpret Finish polices and what was driving them. So, it becomes not so much thread on policies, rather than on studies dealing with policies. I still read all the translations with great interest; I want to thank everyone who took part in doing that. It is certainly not an easy task; it is time consuming, and often people who read final product it don’t appreciate the effort that went into it. Please keep it up.
Having said that, In my opinion we could benefit from the injection of actual primary sources on the subject. For instance
a) Very first post on this thread references

the author Olli Vehviläinen mentions a parliament debate from 29 November 1941 where Prime Minister Rangell starts by stressing that the main aim of the war is to recapture the areas lost in the Moscow Pact, and that larger prospects must be settled at a later point. Next, he becomes a bit ambiguous by saying that while the occupation of East Karelia is strategic, Parliament must not forget that "it is inhabited by part of the Finnish nation. It is the duty of Finland to do all it can to secure the position of the Eastern Karelians."

Chances are there were several drafts of this speech, and it would be very interesting to see actual versions, and to make our own conclusions. It would be also interesting to hear, since it was a debate, what counter points were raised, and who raised them.

b)

From April 1941, the Finnish top leaders started to prepare for the situation in the regions that were to be taken over. The first task was to make the Germans understand why East Karelia should belong to Finland. The arguments given were of both historical and geographical nature. Historian Eino Jutikkla made a report that was translated into German called “Finnlands Lebensraum”. Another publication that appeared in several languages was Professor Jalmari Jaakkola’s “The Finnish Question in the East”.

Are there actual original Finish documents that deal with question of East Karelia prior to start of the hostilities? Naturally some outline of logistics and Administrative guideline had to be put in place. They in turn had to be based on some notions such as, perceived level of hostility of locals, their political sympathies etc.

c)

It's not too difficult to find Fascism, semi-Fascism or Fascistoid tendencies in a lot of places, if one wants hard enough to find them, but doing so sometimes muddles or hides more than it boasts to reveal.

It appears to me that different people assign different meaning to these. Lets either drop it altogether or provide some solid classification. In general, in my opinion it is better for the discussion to limit labeling to an absolute minimum.

There was a more or less sound military and strategic reason for the advance. there was an idea and an ideological reason, cause and argument.

Are there official Finish documents of the time describing those?
I think this thread produced some interesting material and viewpoints, and it has very nice potential as long as we civil to each other.

[AndersG]

Chances are there were several drafts of this speech,

No doubt would a visit to the national archives be fruitful here. I am generally a but suspicious when a document mentions that "Someone mentioned that someone had said that someone said". I have myself on occasion gone straight to the source by ordering copies from the archives, only to find that the statements referred to were either totally missing, translated wrong or taken out of context.

I thank Oleg for trying to keep this discussion civil and above all on track.

But also, whar exactly should we read into "Finnish policy over East Karelia"? I see two different threads here one is "Why did Finland occupy East Karelia". Ie the reasons for the occupation and ultimately the reasons for the Continuation War.

The second is more like "Finnish policies in Eastern Karelia". Ie that people were put in camps. That Lutheran Missionaries were allowed to mission in predominantly Orthodox areas. That food rations were (initially) based on ethnicity etc. But also the establishment of Schools (also for Russian-speakers), healthcare etc.

Unfortunately is my time limited, but I will continue translating Laine's article.

One final question for Philip S Walker, I know it is off topic (a bit), but goes to establish ability to put oneself in a historical person's shoes: "What, in your opinion were the reasons driving the Danes that enlisted in the Waffen SS?"

[AndersG]

The most important group were schoolchildren, since they were the most impressible. The population was separated into ethnic groups: citizens (ie fenno-ugric) and non-citizens (ie mainly ethnic Russians). The latter were seen as not belonging to the original population, but rather the result of forced relocation and as such should be gotten rid (päästä eroon) of as soon as possible. From the start the "citizens" were schooled to be proper (greater)finnish citizens. Mandatory education (oppivelvollisuus/läroplikt) was established in 1942, the language of education was Finnish

I am sure that those so inclined will make a whole lot out of "get rid of", but that is the best translation I can think of for "päästä eroon". The Finnish phrase does not have all the negative connotations that "get rid of" has though.

That Eastern Karelia had been the subject of some rather heavy-handed russification during 1930..39 (after fist being subjected to an equally heavy-handed "Finnization" by the soviet union 1918.1929) was common knowledge in Finland. Finland had even tried to bring the matter before the league of nations in 1931. But the assumption that all Russians were "imports" was an error, an unfortunate one. In fact had Karelia had a sizeable ethnic Russian population for ages. The exact numbers are hard to judge as many minority peoples did not even have a written language and thus probably were counted as "russians"

[AndersG]

Russians put into concentration camps

Before the Finnish troops had started the main attack, the supreme commander gave the order (8.7.1941) that determined how the population that remained in the occupied territories would be treated. This happened before the military administration was established. According to the order, the Russians were to be captured and put in camps.

Those on conquered land were put in camps but for those in the Karelian capital, Petroskoi (which the Finns renamed Äänislinna) remained there. Äänislinna was hence the best alternative as a few blocks could be cordoned off to form a camp. Initially there were six camps in the city. There was also a large camp in Aunus. There was also a camp for "untrusted elements" in Replola that had a maximum of 200 inhabitants and another, equally large in Kiinasvaara where there also was a Prison.

In the autumn of 1941 there were 23000 inhabitants in the camps, the maximum was in April of 1942, 23984. The total number of inhabitants in the occupied areas were 85000. Since most of the men were in the Red Army, the majority of the prisoners were women and children. As a maximum 27% of the civilian population were put in camps

The Russians were regarded as unwanted (kuulumattomana) guests in East Karelia. The legal counsel of the military administration professor Veli Merikoski went to Riga in the autumn of 1941 to get aquainted with the situation in the German occupied territories. He discussed the possibility (source missing) of transferring, even before the end of the war, the Russian Civilians to German occupied territories in the Soviet Union. This was in exchange for fennic people (in the German controlled areas). This was only possible when the road south of Ladoga opened. When this never happened, the discussion was not brought up again. Nevertheless several groups of fennic people were moved to Finland, the largest group was the Ingrian Finns

The latter is described in "The Dispersal of the ingrian finns"