| Military Administration in Eastern Karelia Itä-Karjalan sotilashallinto | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Military administration byFinland | |||||||||
| 1941–1944 | |||||||||
 Finnish advance toEastern Karelia during the Continuation War. The military administration extended further north. Red area inside the gray borders was re-annexed directly to Finland on 9 December 1941.[1] | |||||||||
| Capital | Mikkeli (1941) Joensuu (1941–1943) Äänislinna (1943–1944) | ||||||||
| Government | |||||||||
| Military Commander | |||||||||
• 1941–1942 | Väinö Kotilainen | ||||||||
• 1942–1943 | J.V. Arajuuri | ||||||||
• 1943–1944 | Olli Paloheimo | ||||||||
| Historical era | World War II | ||||||||
• Military occupation | 1941 | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 1944 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
TheFinnish military administration in Eastern Karelia was an interim administrative system established in those areas of theKarelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (KFSSR) of theSoviet Union which were occupied by theFinnish army during theContinuation War. The military administration was set up on 15 July 1941 and it ended during the summer of 1944. The goal of the administration was to prepare the region for eventual annexation by Finland.
The administration did not encompass the territories ceded to the Soviet Union in theMoscow Peace Treaty and subsequently recaptured by the Finns during thesummer offensive of 1941.
Finnish interest in Russian Karelia goes back to the 19th century.[2] Eastern Karelia was seen as thecradle of Finnish culture and the ancient land of the heroic sagas of theKalevala.[2] Along with the rise of Finnishanti-Russian sentiment, the "Karelian question" became politicized.[2] During and after theFinnish Civil War, severalvoluntary expeditions were launched with the intended goal of liberating the Karelian "kindred people", without success.[2]
The Continuation War and belief in a quick German victory over the Soviet Union once again gave rise toFinnish irredentism.[2] The legality of the Finnish claims on Eastern Karelia was justified by both ethno-cultural and military security factors.[2] During the spring of 1941, when the Finnish political leadership understood the full extent of theGerman plans concerning the Soviet Union, presidentRyti commissioned professor of geographyVäinö Auer and historianEino Jutikkala to demonstrate "scholarly" that Eastern Karelia formed a natural part of the Finnish living space.[3] The resulting bookFinnlands Lebensraum ("Finland's Living Space") was published in the autumn of 1941, and was intended to legitimize Finnish claims and actions to the international audience.[3] A similar book by historianJalmari Jaakkola,Die Ostfrage Finnlands ("Finland's Eastern Question") was published in the summer of the same year.[4]
The Finnish expansionist aims are present in Finnish Commander-in-ChiefC. G. E. Mannerheim'sOrder of the Day given on10 July 1941, which was based on an earlier declaration given by him during theFinnish civil war.[5]
The military administration was established on the order of the Commander-in-Chief, and was mainly under the control of the Army, not theFinnish government.[2][6] It was originally divided into three districts ("piiri"), which were further divided into sub-regions ("alue"). The military administration used exclusively Finnish-Karelian place names (Russian names are given in parentheses).
List of the administrative divisions of East Karelia:[7]
The Maaselkä district was abolished in late 1942. The Karhumäki, Paatene and Porajärvi sub-regions were transferred to Aunus district and the Repola and Rukajärvi sub-regions were transferred to Viena district.
The military administration was originally stationed inMikkeli, Finland, where the general staff of the Finnish army was located. On 15 October, it was transferred toJoensuu, Finland, and finally on 15 November 1943, toÄänislinna (Petrozavodsk), KFSSR.[8]
The first commander of the military administration wasmining counselor and CEO ofEnso-Gutzeit,Lieutenant ColonelVäinö Kotilainen. Kotilainen was followed byColonelJ. V. Arajuuri from 15 June 1942 to 19 August 1943, and finally by ColOlli Paloheimo who held the position to the end of the war.[9]
On the staff of the military commander worked professor ofadministrative law Veli Merikoski, whose task was to ensure that the military administration functioned in accordance with international law.[10] After the end of the Continuation War, Merikoski wrote a booklet on the military administration, describing it in an overtly positive light.[10] This was done to help the Finnish cause in the coming peace negotiations.[10]
Members of theAcademic Karelia Society (AKS), a Finno-Ugric activist organization, held a dominating role in the military administration.[11] During the Continuation War the "liberation" of Eastern Karelia had become the main focus point of AKS activities, and its members were highly influential in choosing the policies of the military administration in accordance with the organization's "Greater Finland" ideology.[11] In the summer of 1941, over half of the initial higher leadership of the military administration were AKS members.[11]
The long-term goal of the military administration was to make it possible for Eastern Karelia to be permanently integrated to the Finnish state after the ultimate German victory over the Soviet Union.[1] This was to be done by inspiring the native population's confidence towards the Finnish occupiers.[10]
As most place names in Eastern Karelia had a historical Finnish or Karelian alternatives which were still in use in the KFSSR, extensive renaming was not necessary.[12] The notable exception isPetroskoi (Petrozavodsk), which was deemed as sounding too "Russian", and was renamedÄänislinna, a literal Finnish translation of the nameOnegaborg used in theTheatrum Orbis Terrarum ofAbraham Ortelius.[12][13] Although Finnish troops never reachedKemi (Kem) on the shores of theWhite Sea, this town was also to be renamed, as atown with an identical name already stood inFinnish Lapland.[14] The new name was tentatively suggested to beVienanlinna ("Castle ofViena"), a continuation of several Finnish cities and towns ending in suffix-linna (e.g.Hämeenlinna,Savonlinna).[14]
Streets were to be named after prominent Finns and patriots (such as Mannerheim,Elias Lönnrot,Elias Simojoki andPaavo Talvela), and also after names featured in the Kalevala and theKanteletar.[15] The Karelian population was also discouraged from giving their childrenSlavic names.[15]
The remaining population of Eastern Karelia was estimated to be under 85,000 in 1941, and consisted mainly of women, children and the elderly, while the pre-war population was about 300,000.[16] The Finnish authorities further estimated that of the remaining 85,000, about half could be classified as "national"; that is,Karelians,Finns,Estonians,Ingrians,Vepsians and other smaller Finnic minorities considered "kindred peoples" (heimo).[16][17] The majority of the population was defined as "non-national", with most beingRussian orUkrainian.[17] The Finns encountered considerable challenges in dividing the population into these two groups, aslinguistic and ethnic boundaries were not very apparent.[17] Ultimately, the division was based on ethnic principles (sometimes expressing somewhatpseudo-scientificanthropological theories), and thus monolingualRussian-speaking Karelians and children from multinational families were usually classified as "national".[16][17] The long-term goal of this pursued policy was to expel the "non-national" part of the population toGerman-occupied Russia after the war had reached a victorious conclusion.[16]
Finnishpropaganda directed at the Karelian population focused onpan-Finnicism, presented the occupiers as liberators, and also tried to encourage antagonism between the Karelians and Russians.[18] The main propaganda tools of the military administration were the newspaperVapaa Karjala ("Free Karelia") andAunus Radio.[19]
School attendance was obligatory for 7- to 15-year-old children classified as "national" in ethnicity.[20] The language of instruction was Finnish and the teaching had a heavy focus on Finnish nationalistic and religious themes.[14][20] If the children were monolingual Russian orVeps speakers, with the latter language differing considerably from Finnish, Karelian-speaking children were used as translators.[14] By the end of 1942, 110 elementary schools were opened, with an attendance of over 10,000 children.[16]
One of the aims of the military administration was the revival of religious observation, which had been completely repressed under Soviet rule.[21] The central idea of this policy was to bolsteranti-communist feelings among the "nationals".[16]
Suffering from severe underpopulation, especially after the planned expulsion of the "non-national" ethnic groups, the Finns theorized several possible ways to repopulate the region. Most suggestions revolved around the re-settlement of certain Finnic minorities of Russia.[22] The Karelians ofTver, who had escaped Swedish and Lutheran rule from theCounty of Kexholm andIngria after theIngrian War and theTreaty of Stolbovo of 1617 were especially considered,[22] as theSoviet Census of 1926 had counted them as numbering over 140,000, making the Karelian population of Tver more numerous than the Karelians in the KFSSR itself. The transfer was not, however, possible before Finnish and German fronts reached each other on theRiver Svir, which never happened during the war.
The other main group intended to be settled in Eastern Karelia was the Ingrian Finns of theLeningrad Oblast,[22] who according to the 1926 census numbered c. 115,000.[23] However, duringStalin's purges tens of thousands of Ingrians had perished or weretransferred to other parts of the Soviet Union,[24] and in 1941 the Ingrians of Leningrad probably numbered only c. 80,000–90,000. In the autumn of 1941, Western and Central Ingria were occupied by the advancing German forces and placed under German military administration. Because Ingria was to be reserved for German colonization according to theGeneralplan Ost (Ingermanland), the German and Finnish authorities agreed on a treaty which stated that Ingria was to be totally emptied of Finns and other Finnic minorities, mainlyVotes andIzhorians. This treaty was implemented during March 1943 to the summer of 1944, when over 64,000 people were transferred from Ingria to Finland.[25] The Ingrians remaining areas still under the control of the Red Army (c. 20,000–30,000) were deported to Siberia during the winter of 1942–1943. After theMoscow Armistice, some 55,000 Ingrians were repatriated to the Soviet Union, but were not allowed to return to their homes in the Leningrad Oblast before the 1950s.[26] Around 7,000 to 8,000 Ingrians moved from Finland to Sweden to escape the Soviet authorities.[26]
Other discussed sources for East Karelian settlers included the Finnish immigrants ofAmerica andCanada, FinnicSoviet prisoners of war in German captivity, Eastern Karelian refugees currently living in Finland, and Finnish war veterans.[22] Land redistribution was to favor those without farms or land, disabled veterans who were still capable of working, formerNCOs, borderjägers and soldiers distinguished in battle.[22]
At the beginning of the Finnish occupation of Karelia, over 20,000 of the local ethnic Russians (almost half of them) were placed ininternment andlabor camps. At the end of 1941 this number rose to 24,000. Later prisoners were gradually released and then transferred to empty villages. However, their movement was controlled as they had red clearance, while "national" people had green clearance. Furthermore, ethnic Russians did not have permission to travel to Finland.[27]
Living in the Finnish camps was harsh as 4,000–7,000 of the civil prisoners died, mostly from hunger during the spring and summer of 1942 due to the failed harvest of 1941.[28][29] Also segregation in education and medical care between Karelians and Russians created resentment among the Russian population. These actions made many local ethnic Russian people support thepartisan attacks.[29]
In a conversation held on 27 November 1941 with the Finnish Foreign MinisterWitting,Hitler proposed that the new Finnish border should run from theKola Peninsula to the Svir, and in the case Leningrad was razed to the ground as originally planned, to theRiver Neva.[1] In Finland this theoretical border was sometimes referred to asKolmen kannaksen raja ("the Border of Three Isthmuses", referring to theKarelian Isthmus, Olonets Isthmus and the White Sea Isthmus). The exact border of the White Sea Isthmus was left undefined during the war, butAlfred Rosenberg, head of theReich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO), held that Finland should annex the whole KFSSR.[30] The most eastward suggestion discussed among the Finnish officer corps before the war drew the line from Nimenga in theArkhangelsk Oblast to thePudozhsky District onLake Onega.[31] ProfessorGerhard von Mende (RMfdbO) had consulted Finnish far-right activistErkki Räikkönen on Finland's "natural" eastern borders, and sent to Rosenberg a memorandum suggesting that the northeastern border between Finland and Germany should run along theNorthern Dvina River (Finnish:Vienanjoki) nearArkangelsk.[32]
The Kola Peninsula was to bede jure a part of Finland, but the nickel deposits of the region were to be exploited jointly with Germany.[33] Jalmari Jaakkola estimated inDie Ostfrage Finnlands that some 200,000 Russians had to be expelled from the region, leaving the peninsula with a population of c. 20,000 Finns,Samis and Karelians.[34]
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