RANDOM LIVES
From the post of Ingrians:

1

I am ALMA VEHVILÄINEN, born in 1922. In our region, from Sestroretsk [Swedish Systerback, see map ] till Lakhta [real name Lahti ], there dwelled a lot of Finns. Nevertheless this region became rapidly Russianised because of the nearness of Leningrad and the Factory of Voskov. I recollect my schooldays when local people spoke Finnish at the end of the 30-ties, not only the Finns, but also local Russians. Our village was called Gorskaya (real name Koronenä). In Tarkhovka, in Alexandrovka, in Gorskaya as well on the Fox’es Cape (Lisiy Nos) dwelled Finns up to Lakhta, but the Russian language began to prevail in the 30-ties.

We were parishioners of the Lutheran church in Lakhta. Its last pastor was Frederik Soittonen, a relative of my grandmother.

There was one church in Sestroretsk more. My schoolmate lived in the outskirts of Sestroretsk before the war, she attended this church in her childhood. If one goes from the railway-station to cemetery, there is a multistory house on the right side. It stands on the place of the church.

This wooden church was on a hill, a Finnish cemetery was behind it. Some people say having seen the lights of Elma there.

The today Proletarian street was named Chukhon [a Russian name for the autochthons of the Baltics]. We, the pre-war generation, were not taught Finnish and were inspired to feel ashamed of the Finnish nationality. The oppression began in the 30-ties. My elder sister, who had been employed after finishing school, was discharged with a reference, which unofficially meant "enemy of the people". Soon my brother, who had just finished a professional school at the factory of Voskov, was discharged too. The reason was the same: his nationality. My brother and sister were good pupils and conscientious employees, as most of the Finns. Together with the discharge they automatically lost right to the ration cards.

We, the five persons, became dependent on the single father, who was engaged as a fire watchman at a club of the "Vulcan" factory in Novaya Derevnia [real name Mantere]. His salary was 92 roubles a month. I, my younger sister and our mother could not apply for ration cards because we were considered to be agricultural dwellers. Thus we starved for a long time until one clever man advised my sister not to show that reference and to throw it out. After that she found a job, as well as my brother too.

The arrests began in autumn 1937. Both my uncles were arrested, i.e. Peter Vehvilainen and Nilo Teterev (Pukkonen). Uncle Peter was soon shot to death in the prison of "Kresty", but his family was deported to Ostashkov. After their exoneration in Khrushchov’s times, only his wife was let back to the motherland, but the children still had no right to near surroundings of Leningrad.

As for Uncle Nilo, he spent several years in concentration camps and died there. The family got into the blockade ring during the war and died. Some people died on the way to the place of deportation.

We, as well as other Finns, were not permitted to come back to our motherland after the war. I was invited to study in Leningrad in 1945 and 6 years lived in a students’ hostel there, periodically visited by the militia. Nevertheless everything ended good. As for my sister, she has never been let to Leningrad.

My cousin Rosalia Vehvilainen, dwelling in Sosnovy Bor, cannot win exoneration up today: the Liteiny House Number Four [KGB Building on Liteiny avenue] does not answer to her. She only wants to be deprived of the stamp of the "enemy of the people", nothing more. Nevertheless, I think that this sheet of paper means nothing. Those people, whose standpoint is cruel, will not be persuaded by any papers. The attitude to our nationality has not changed. Good people are good to everybody, but the enviers are ready to sink you down in a spoon when only an opportunity comes.

[The Ingermanlandians (in Russian and Finnish). Inkerin Liitto: Sankt-Peterburg, 1997, No 2, 40-41]

2

I am VERA OLLIKAINEN, a daughter of a "kulak". Our family originates from Vuolijarvi. My parents and I got into the first selection. We were visited suddenly in the evening on 15 February 1931, Sunday. I cannot imagine the fright of my parents because at that moment I was in the nearby club (I was 11 years old). I was called from there. I do not remember, how many they were, I only recall a man with a grey topcoat. Mama times went out, times came into our farmhouse tying up sacks. I began to gather my school things. I do not memorise my dad, whether he moved. It seems to me now, he was sitting at a table. After that we were seated on a sledge and taken to a railway-station. I recall our house left with light shining from inside through the windows.

At night we got into a cattle van with wooden bed-shelves. I recall my mother having said: "Good that Lisa (my younger sister) has died and does not see this". From time to time the doors clanked and we all, men, women, children, were let out for natural needs.

On 21 February, in full dark, we got into a vast excavated plot among mountains. After the sanitary treatment and shaving heads of the children we were led to the high mountain slope, where tents had been prepared. Our tent was No 4. This all was the beginning of a new town, Khibinogorsk [in the Far North].

Dad did not bear these hard conditions and soon got into a hospital. All school-age children were gathered for checking up. We did not attend school that winter because we did not spoke Russian. Next year a Finnish school was opened and I had to start from the fourth form again.

Strong men were organised to build dwellings. These were slab barracks. Tahvo Jurkijainen, our tent’s neighbour from Katumaa village, was responsible for building. He promised to my parents we should also get a room in a barrack. At appropriate time we did not get a separate room because of a new family of Vainonen from Tosno. They bribed that Jurkijainen but we were settled into one common room together with Maria Sarkkinen from Roskaya village. She had three children (there was the fourth too, an adult one, but he disappeared soon). Later Maria’s husband came from the Bay Nechaevo, but he died soon. The room was 4 m in length and 3 m in width. There was a stove on our side. My parents slept on a wooden shelf, but I did on two plywood boxes, which were put one over the other in the daytime and thus a table appeared. I finished the 4^th-7^th forms of the Finnish school and the 8^th-10^th forms of the Russian school, when we lived there, on 18 Bolotnaya str., flat 4.

I recall my mother cooking barley or French turnip porridge in an aluminium pan after the work. Having come home after school, I strewed bread with sugar and took with something tea-like or with hot water. I do not remember having suffered hunger (this was experienced first during the war only), nevertheless I dreamt to be able to eat three times a day when I was a student.

Of course, I had boils on my fingers because of the insufficient food, several nails went off several times. Later the quinsy came every winter. There was no milk neither during the deportation, nor the studentship time. Finally milk became necessary to nourish my own children, so that I can drink it for myself in the last decades only.

At school, whether Finnish or Russian, I was always among the first pupils. But after I had submitted my application to the Institute of Foreign Languages in Leningrad in 1938, I got a negative answer. Nevertheless, with the help of the director of my school and with the intercession of the deputy to the local Soviet, I was admitted to entrance examinations. There were 8 examinations then. Once the examiner demonstrated my test book to those, who were weak, showing how one must pass exams. Therefore I was very surprised when officially informed that I had not passed the competition. I had to refer to my test book. Then the chairman said firmly: "Take into consideration we still have enough children of honest kolkhoz farmers". This was said after the authorities had officially declared that "the children are not responsible for their father". I was responsible.

On my back way to the place of the deportation I accidentally turned in Petrozavodsk , where I was admitted to local university immediately after showing my test book. I had only to visit Khibinogorsk and to show the admittance reference in order to get a passport.

This was Petrozavodsk where I spent all my further life (except being in Siberia during the war and finishing university in Syktyvkar ). 8 years I was a newspaper correspondent before the post-graduate studentship in Moscow . After that I was engaged as a research fellow at the Institute of Language , Literature and History of the Karelian Department of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. It was in 1988 when I retired on a pension.

My parents remained in Khibinogorsk. Dad was some time engaged as a coachman nightman, but mama was at various black works. Before the beginning of the war they were taken to the Pudost region in Karelia , but later they appeared to be dangerous there too and were sent to the region of Arkhangelsk . Having belonged to the disablement group already before, my dad died in 1942. Mama could not bury his remains in the earth, nobody could help her. One invalid took a coffin to a cemetery in February frost and they both buried it in snow together. Mama was taken back to Karelia , to the station Letniy, from where I was permitted to bring her to Petrozavodsk . She was given a passport there. She died in 1961. Of course, the deportation made the life of my parents entire suffering. There was nobody to whom one could complaint. My father was silent all his life.

Mama enjoyed a good health. She always dreamt to visit our homeland. This dream could not be realised. I also failed to see my childhood yard. After mama’s death I went there together with my children. We spent a night in Matoksa [see map ] and next morning achieved a crossing before my Vuolijarvi. There we were stopped by the forest-guard who turned us away. From afar we had time only to catch sight of a grey house which was seen lonely in the middle of the village. Suddenly the rain came down in torrents, such strong that I had never experienced earlier, but it ceased in a moment. After that the brightest sun lit up all the surrounding.

The child’s memory does not fix many negative things. Nevertheless the deportation has not but left traces of hard emotional experience in my mind. I shall never forget my tears when I was not admitted to study what I wanted and what I earned to study with my test book marks: I wept all the way long from Leningrad to Petrozavodsk when I kneeled on a side seat near the train WC.

Even at the place of the deportation I suffered because of the absence of separate dwelling, possessed by other people. One can imagine what was my sleeping on boxes near the stinking tarpaulin of my father when he was engaged as a nightman. I took to heart my poor dressing what was a result of our scarce income.

When engaged at a newspaper, I was once invited to the chief editor who said, as if apologising, he could not appoint me head of division in spite of my high education, because he did not want to be responsible for this. At that time there were only 2 persons with high education at the editorial board. One of them was I, the other was head of the division of information. These words were comic for me, because I never pretended to be head of division while I knew my place in the organ of the local Central Committee of the Bolshevik party.

Sometimes my own husband made hints to my "kulak" origin. Thus all my life was that of a second-sort person.

The process of exoneration appeared to be extremely hard. I started it in February 1994 from getting my birth certificate and certificate of death of my father. Twice I had to appear in court as a plaintiff as well as a witness. It seems that I am nearing to the finish now since I have been already informed about a positive indication concerning pecuniary recompense for the property confiscated from my parents. This sum is so little that it may be named symbolic. But even this is important for an old age pensioner.

[The Ingermanlandians, 1997, No 2, 39-40]