Paper short abstract:

The memory of the war-time Finnish concentration camps in Russian Karelia was silenced in Soviet time and became a powerful resource in national and transnational negotiations of belongings in the Post-Soviet time. Today it is instrumentalized in producing ‘neovictimized’ Russian identity.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation deals with the memory of the Finnish concentration camps in Russian Karelia in different temporal and (trans)national contexts. During Continuation war (1941-1944) big part of Soviet Karelia was occupied by Finland. Approximately 20% of pre-war population (86000) remained in the occupied territories. Half of the remained were ethnically non-Karelians, and up to 24000 of them were incarcerated in the concentration camps. 44% of the camps’ population were children under 17 years old. Approximately 4600 of the prisoners died, mostly of starvation.

In my presentation I look at the identities of survivors of the camps as they are being constructed in their memoirs, interviews, edited books and documentaries. During the Soviet time the memory of the camps did not belong to the national heroic narrative of Great patriotic war. In Soviet Karelia, the concentration camps were silenced due to the foreign political reasons. In Post-Soviet time, the organization of ‘Juvenile prisoners of concentration camps’ was founded and started to make the memory of the camps and victims visible and known. This memory became a powerful resource in national and transnational contexts in negotiations of national and transnational belongings through the discourses of reconciliation and formation of a new Russian national identity. Today, the memory of the concentration camps is instrumentalized by the Russian state in producing ‘neovictimized’ Russian identity. Simultaneously, the turn from the politics of reconciliation to the politics of self-victimization has transnational effects, since thousands of dwellers of Russian Karelia have emigrated to Finland.