Paper short abstract:

The paper studies novels and memoirs written by individuals crossing territorial and symbolic borders at the Finnish-Russian borderlands in the early 20th century. The paper examines these works as trauma narratives, and focuses on their politically biased reception in Finland in the 20th century.

Paper long abstract:

The paper studies the novels and memoirs written by individuals crossing territorial and symbolic borders at the Finnish-Russian borderlands in the early 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, approximately 15 000 Finns migrated to the Soviet Union, and after a while, some of them migrated back to Finland. In Finland, many returning migrants wrote about their experiences in the Soviet Union. There are about 30-40 published memoirs of this kind in Finland.

This paper claims that these memoirs and novels can be understood as trauma narratives about migrants' experiences in the Soviet Union, where the migrants witnessed Soviet persecution of the late 1930s. The paper examines, how the reception of these memoirs and novels in Finland denied the migrant's possibility to return home. Due to political reasons, the reception the memoirs and novels was often harsh in the politically White Finland. The traumas were often denied and the returnees rejected, because migrants had initially showed political affiliation to left, and therefore, the migrants were seen as guilty for their own traumas. Furthermore, after the WW II, their memoirs were censored and silenced, because they showed hostile attitudes towards the Soviet Union. During the so-called Finlandization, that followed the WW II and lasted until the early 1980s, Finland was very cautious in showing criticism towards the Soviet Union due to politically charged situation. The public discussion of these migrants and their trauma narratives has diversified only since the late 20th century.