Researcher: Spoils of war from Eastern Karelia include 1,000 artefacts of cultural value

Study reveals a sensitive and quietly forgotten issue in recent Finnish history

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According to a recent publication by historian Tenho Pimiä from the University of Jyväskylä, a total of around 1,000 artefacts of cultural value, icons, and national historical items were brought back from the occupied zone in Eastern Karelia to Finnish museums in the spring of 1942. This was at the height of the Continuation War, which was fought between Finland and the Soviet Union from June 25, 1941, until September 19, 1944.
     
Pimiä's work, entitled Sotasaalista Itä-Karjalasta - suomalaistutkijat miehitetyillä alueilla 1941-1944 ("War Spoils from East Karelia - Finnish Scholars in the Occupied Zone from 1941 to 1944") is based on Pimiä’s thesis and was published by Ajatus on Wednesday.
      The work sheds some light on World War II from the ethnologists’ point of view. The research, based on archive material, reports what the Finnish conquerors were actually doing in Eastern Karelia after the army marched briskly across the old pre-war borders in the Continuation War, a conflict so named because it was seen as a "continuation" of the Winter War of 1939-40, when the Soviet Union attacked Finland and ultimately forced the Finns to cede land in Karelia and elsewhere.
     
According to Pimiä, the war booty project is an embarrassing reminder of the idea of "Greater Finland", a plan including some or all of previous Finnish territory, as some people in Finland harboured plans of returning the "surrendered" territories and more besides. The idea of embracing territories inhabited by ethnically-related Finnic or Finno-Ugric peoples was first mooted after Independence was gained in 1917, and lost its foundation and support after World War II and the Continuation War.
      "After advancing into East Karelia, Finnish soldiers were supposed to evacuate all artefacts of cultural heritage from the area back to Finland. The idea behind the project was to show that the occupied territory and Finland belonged together both historically and nationally", Pimiä notes.
      Geographer Väinö Auer and historian Eino Jutikkala were saddled with the scientific responsibility for the project.
     
The Finns managed to collect a surprisingly large number of national historical artefacts from desolate houses, cemeteries, and Orthodox chapels, bringing them to Finnish museums. However, nobody knows exactly how many artefacts found their way into private homes, Pimiä says.
      According to the peace terms, Finland had to return all artefacts with cultural and historical value back to the Soviet Union.
      The entire topic of "Greater Finland" is now seen as something of a blot on the Finnish escutcheon - a vestige of a kind of expansionist thinking that was partly a result of the perceived theft by the Soviets of Finnish land, and which casts Finland in less of a "victim" light as regards the conflict of 1941-44.
      The subject of the war spoils and their purpose has been quietly forgotten, and in Pimiä's view it remains to this day a somewhat taboo subject.


Links:
  "Greater Finland" (Wikipedia)

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