Paper short abstract:

The paper presents a microhistorical case of heritage politics on the Eastern borders of Europe, 1920-1945. The focus is on the political and symbolic appropriation of vernacular culture, and the making of collaborative representations of oral tradition and politically relevant heritages.

Paper long abstract:

The paper presents a microhistorical case of heritage politics in Karelia, the borderland between Finland and the Soviet Union, 1920-1945. The focus is on the political and symbolic appropriation of vernacular culture, and the making of collaborative representations of oral tradition and politically relevant heritages. The oral poetry used in the composition of the Finnish national epic Kalevala (1848) was collected in these fragile borderlands and the Finnish and Soviet regimes sought to involve the local communities to their ideological projects by manipulating and circulating tradition in new contexts. In Finland the Nationalist movements celebrated Karelia as the origin of Finnishness, whereas the Soviet tradition policy struggled to combine the construction of a Pan-Soviet cultural identity to local ethnic characteristics. On both sides of the border vernacular oral traditions were used to legitimize the regimes by varying interpretations of the notions of authenticity, heritage, and national identity. The political and symbolic dilemma of borderland heritage(s) materializes in the life story of a Karelian ritual specialist who collaborated with Finnish nationalists in turning his cultural competence into a representation of ancient national wisdom, was recruited as a double agent, and faced eventually Stalinist terror.