An unexpected archive finding strengthens the “Soviet Union as a fate” database
Information about 6,000 new people added.
A significant amount of new personal data has been added to the National Archives of Finland’s open database “the Soviet Union as a fate”.
The National Archives of Finland’s database already presents the fates of more than 30,000 Finns in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1964.
Among the 6,000 new people are not only red Finns but also Finnish people who were transferred to gulags, or prison camps, and were regarded as "enemies of the Soviet republic", as well as 90 former members of Finnish Parliament.
The database contains personal and map data on Finnish people in the Soviet Union in 1917–1964, especially those who were in Russia in 1917, red refugees, Finnish Americans and defectors.
With the most recent addition, there will be open data on a total of 31,000 people.
Misleadingly catalogued data resulted in a jackpot
The large identity card catalogue of the Communist Party of Finland, a copy of which is kept at the National Archives of Finland, is the most comprehensive new source.
The catalogue contains information about almost 5,000 red refugees and Finns who settled in the Soviet Union in 1918–1935.
The project’s researchers found the catalogue unexpectedly. The treasure was hidden in a misleadingly catalogued package of information.
“The discovery was like a small win in the lottery,” describes Aleksi Mainio, project manager, Docent at the University of Helsinki.
“Previously, we mainly had to guess how many Finnish citizens lived in Russia during the Revolution in the 1920s. Now, the big picture has all of a sudden become much more detailed and diverse.”
What makes the catalogue especially interesting is the extensive personal data it contains. For example, the card of trade union mouthpiece Juha Vuoristo includes not only basic information but also a photo, the body structure, the family members left behind in Finland, and the reason for arrival.
The material was originally received by the National Archives of Finland copied from Russia. The National Archives of Finland suspended its archives cooperation with Russia when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Members of Parliament, deportees to gulags and victims of Stalin’s persecution
The new publication also includes the 90 former members of Finnish Parliament who lived in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.
“The most influential of them were heads of the Communist Party of Finland and worked at the Communist International, as teachers and in newspapers in red parts of Karelia. The few who survived the terror of 1937 and 1938 were threatened with the membership of the Finnish Democratic Republic,” says Joni
Krekola, researcher at the Archives of Parliament who has studied the topic for years.
The Finns who were labelled suspicious in 1942 and were mobilised into the “labour columns” are an interesting new group in the database. They were practically prisoners in camps where rudimentary living conditions became the fate of many.
The recent database publication also includes those Murmansk Finns who were expelled from Northwest Russia in the summer of 1940. In addition, prison camp cards will now be published about Finnish people who were in the Karlag camp in Kazakhstan.
“Not all Finns were shot in the 1937–1938 assembly-line executions, but the fates of many were even tougher. Thousands suffered from arbitrary aggression and painful diseases, or starved to death in gulags across the Soviet Union,” says project manager Mainio.
Publications will continue in the summer of 2025, when the fates of Finns in Leningrad and Finnish Americans will be clarified. Thousands of biographies of
Finns who returned from the Soviet Union will also be clarified.
Go to the “Soviet Union as a fate” database.
Further information
Aleksi Mainio
project manager
[email protected]
Sami Outinen
planner
[email protected]