In the city of Usinsk in the Komi Republic in Northern Russia the local authorities intended to celebrate the coming Victory Day Saturday 9 May 2020 with a dramatic photo of a soldier holding a submachine gun and a reindeer.
Some local gun collectors observed immediately that the submachine gun is not a Soviet gun, but the classical Finnish Suomi submachine gun, famous from the Winter war.
When the photo was further examined it became clear that the Russian graphical artists had taken the photo from the freely accessable Finnish Defence Forces photo archive (SA-kuva).
The photo SA-149983 was taken by the Finnish Army photographer Oswald Hedenström 4 May 1944 - almost on the day 76 years ago - and depicts a Finnish soldier in Lapland!
Although the Finns and the Komis are ethnically distantly related, this fact did not soften the scandal... the Usinsk mayor declared that the responsible persons will be punished, in the traditional Russian way "kto vinovat"...
Russian Victory Day 9 May to be celebrated with photo of Finnish Soldier
Re: Russian Victory Day 9 May to be celebrated with photo of Finnish Soldier
Classical case of a designer girl with Google image search.
Re: Russian Victory Day 9 May to be celebrated with photo of Finnish Soldier
It would be interesting to know what search methods and arguments were used by the Komi artists to find just this photo - "Finnish soldier with reindeer and Suomi submachine gun"?
Re: Russian Victory Day 9 May to be celebrated with photo of Finnish Soldier
I especially like this one ( )
- Juha Tompuri
- Forum Staff
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- Joined: 11 Sep 2002, 21:02
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Re: Russian Victory Day 9 May to be celebrated with photo of Finnish Soldier
Here Rájá-Jon Johanas, Johannes Halonen posing with the photo of his father Rájá-Jovnna, Klemet Jouni Jeremias Halonen.
Even Johannes is amused about the case, he feels sad for what will happen to the person who made the mistake to put that photo on the banner.
https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11336377
Regards, Juha