by  Mâra Zirnîte.

The life history of Lilija Šica, selected for family portrayal and multimedia presentation, consists of several sources: oral history records, written memories, family photos and epistolary archives, photos of Lilija’s self made textiles and a video clip. The Latvian National OH archive includes over 4000 audio interviews – the sources for qualitative research and topical publications about individual life experiences.The life histories’ records are the main form of sources, initiated by the OH researchers at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia.  [Interviews provide sources on various research topics such as cultural identity, the role of traditions and impact of regional culture, political and social changes, gender roles, etc. Family history and transmissions of cultural traditions and values, communication between generations and family members are also among the topics.] Selection of narrators depends on the research objective – during systematic field-work for obtaining life experiences of the Latvian people within and outside of Latvia.
Recommendation to introduce Lilija’s life story we received at her birth place. Her roots there were alive and she continues active communication with local people. The local history explorer knows her very well, although Lilija has lived there at least one third of her life.    Lilija has given birth to six children, and the number of her descendants is growing. Lilija has followed her mothers’ practice and has written memories of childhood and early youthhood.  The OH interviews with Lilija were recorded in 2010-2012, after Lilija’s 90th birthday.  She still has a retentive memory.
The three years of cooperation between the researcher and Lilija resulted in Lilija’s own book of memories and a multimedia presentation made by the researchers.  (We present the part of that materilal.) 

Cultural and historical context of the resource

The life history of Lilija Šica related  to the countryside in the southeast part of Latvia – Selonia, a particular cultural and historical region.  The multimedia composition allows us to follow Lilija’s childhood memories. It is supplemented with illustrations and photos from a broad time period – from the end of the 19^th century to the beginning of the 21^st century. At the first meeting it turned out that Lilija is a very active person. Despite being in her 90s her loom was prepared for weaving. The current era, with Lilija in her 90s, is illustrated by photos of the colourful textiles weaved by Lilija, which is an activity she does on a daily basis. Weaving was her speciality at technical school in Riga, which she graduated after the Second World War. She still weaves to this day. She has weaved many gifts for all her family members. Lilija is proud of her grandsons, Andris and Juris Šics, popular bobsleigh drivers, who have been prize winners at the Olympic Games.She has a rich library; one of her favourite writers is Jānis Jaunsudrabiņš, born near the same district as Lilija. She feels familiar with the picturesque childhood descriptions in his novels.

The collection of family photos added to the stories tells about various people and life trajectories, characters and relations, included in fatal thread of life and imprints Lilija’s life. All the old photos demonstrate the turn-of-the-20th-century clothing fashion style and bearing of the objects.  Lilija was born at the same year (1920) when her father died. Her mother became a widow, and both of her brothers – 7 and 10 years older than Lilija – have been her babysitters. The first photo of four-year-old Lilija together with her cousin, Mega, who at that time was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Riga, illustrates the modern haircut and dress design for them both. It was Lilija’s first visit to Riga, and we could see how perfectly the children from the countryside obtained a city style. The photo allows us to better understand changes in prestige, style and fashion during the time periods. People’s relationships are marked by arm position and posture, which changed over the years and serves as characteristics of the aesthetic taste of the epoch.  Lilija’s mother had experienced a hard working life. She was religious and belonged to the marginal parish of Seventh-day Adventists. Although her sisters were rich housekeepers, she didn’t agree when one of them wanted to adopt Lilija.  She was proud and didn’t ask for support from anybody. So Lilija experienced a childhood of poverty and soon trained to do various jobs at farm. Often at the springtime (at Jurģi, which is a traditional moving/migrating day), Lilija’s mother and her three children moved from one farm to another, and thus Lilija often had to change the school.  We could not see great differences in lifestyle and cultural activities between the city and countryside during the 1920s and 1930s. Horses were a popular mode of transport in the countryside and cities, too. Essential changes in style and fashion happened after the Second World War. People who had previously paid great attention to their clothing and external image, had to changed their values. The value system differed in cities and countryside. It depends on changes in the social system overall.  The memories written by this 90-year-old grandmother begin with the child’ view and this perspective ensures successful communication between generations. Lilija called the small episodes of her mother’s stories and her own memories a “Flash of memory”.

“Flash of memory”- drawings The painter Zanda Zībiņa had illustrated Lilija’s stories as it come from the child’s eyes. “Flash of memory” reflects situations and events meaningful for creating Lilija’s personality. She grew up together with all these people living under the same roof, and this left a vivid impression on her childhood memories. Within this social model everything important happened in front of her eyes, also death and birth. Lilija’s first education came not from schools but from the life going on around her. It consisted of characters, relations, speech and the acquiring of customs, handiwork and crafts, rites of nature. There are her brothers as babysitters, relationships between her aunts, the emigration of neighbours to Brazil to obtain land and prosperity (very common in the 1920s), her daily trek for milk, the fantasies of children, fear and inspiration, the fate of little chicks if their mother was butchered for soup, and the great wish to go to school as soon as possible. The illustrated part of Lilija’s memories reflects ordinary situations being filled with emotional values.

The life story leads from the current time to the beginning of the narrator’s life and mentions the most important moments in the maturation of the story teller’s personality. Her father’s absence welded together the members of family. Mother and  both brothers participate in her story as strong background, as a sense of security for her first independent steps in adult life. We could understand the role of family as a meaningfull value, as a careful attitude toward all tales, legends and memories connected with ancestors.  Lilija’s written memories finish with her marriage. The recorded life history follows after her marriage.

 

 

The video clip of Lilija’s story about the fair in her farmstead. With great emotion, Lilija tells how she had noticed the smoke, understood that her two younger daughters were on the second storey of the barn, and promptly jumped into the fire. She puts one daughter in the father arms, and then pushes down the other, and then she jumped out herself. During the accident Lilija sustained an injury to her face. That was the strongest link between the mother and her daughters. Lilija is good story teller, dancer and atractive joke master. She knows many riddles and folk dances – and these are known by every member of her big family, which includes more than 20 descendants. Thanks to Lilija’s written memories, the family history lives on into a 21^st century. Lilija’s story does not convey ethical or pedagogical advice or morals; it offers one person’s real life experiences and also describes conflict situations, mistakes, failures and losses one could overcome. Memories coming from the personal level may possibly have a broader influence on society – it is possible to form a concept of national cultural identity and to point out the understanding of family as a value not only in the past but always.  Family histories reflected in life-stories open up the relationship between generations and transmission of skills, patterns, opinions and cultural heritage from parents to children and even further to grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The case of Lilija’s story is a pattern of cooperation between generations, which is one of the sources of authentic Latvian culture.

 

 

Creating a Family History: One Day Training Session for Adult Education

Memory stories and the way they express attitudes towards events within the family circle show the big role of family towards the self-assessment and self-realisation process of an individual. These stories also serve as an announcement of oneself to the world. By remembering the stories and legends of the difficulties one’s ancestors have overcome, one also starts to trust his own skills and abilities. Through the memory stories of previous generations, people gain support in times of need as well as inspiration for continuing the traditions in the future. Within the family, storytelling and legends have an educational role because they strengthen self-confidence and identify common values. Even negative experience, if turned into a story, acquires a moral sense. This especially applies to the memories of the events dedicated to the family history.

A proposed training session, “Creating family history”, is provided for everyone who wants to start doing own family history. The training session includes insight into how to conduct a family history using oral history methods: why, how and when to start; doing biographical interviews step by step; what kind of additional materials can be used; and how to make for the project public if one wishes to.

 

The main target group:

• School and University students; adults and seniors

The goal of the training session:

• To encourage people to make their family history – everyone can do it – and why it is important both at personal and national level;
• To provide knowledge about family and oral history opportunities in the sense of researching cultural identity;
• To provide practical step by step information and skills about how to conduct family history by using oral history and biographical interviewing;
• To discuss ethical issues that might arise during and after the family history project, especially if it is published.

Sources used:

• Life stories and other sources from the Latvian National Oral History Archive (LNOH);
• Biographical interviews, written materials: diaries and correspondence by Lilija Šica; photos and video materials.

Structure of the training session:

Part 1:

• What is family history and why it is important to interview one’s family members: transcultural and transgenerational aspects;
• Family history relationships with local and national history: the importance of individual and/or marginalised voices (historical background, role of oral history in post-Soviet countries, including the Baltic States);
• Family history forms: interviews, diaries and letters, autobiographies, a collection of family traditions and folklore (songs, narratives, recipes, wedding rituals, etc.), photo and document albums, etc.
• Family history opportunities and limits: potential research directions (examples from LNOH): (1) family portrait in life stories; (2) family history with regard to flight, exile and change of political regimes; (3) absence of family history due to political cataclysms, repressions, wars;

 

Part 2:

• Defining biographical interviews – life story or life history – and how to use them to achieve various goals;
• Doing biographical interviews and family history step by step: how to prepare, how to create an interview (lists of topics and questions that may be used in interviews), what to do with an audio recording after an interview, how to transcribe it and how to edit it for public presentation.
• Writing skills and approaches of memory writing (description, characteristics; how to overcome ” white sheet fear”). Examples of sources.

Part 3:

• Introducing the audience with Lilija’s story; its biographical, cultural and historical context; the aim of writing: goal and the target group (family, extended family, wider society); what was the main focus of her performance; and what can be learnt from her story in transcultural and transgenerational aspects;
• The goal of the interviewer; collaboration between narrator and interviewer: expected and unexpected results; various types of publication (book, multimedial presentation);
• Ethics and agreements between the author and interviewer and text editor – the responsibility of respecting the narrator’s or author’s rights at all stages of listening to a person’s memories and preparing to publish them. Examples of how to form written agreements with the narrator or author of a life story regarding the preservation and further use of his or her story.

by Maija Runcis.

One way of studying everyday family life in Soviet Latvia is to use records from people’s court in the Latvian state archive, especially files on divorces. In these files you can find information on families living conditions, housing, relations and emotions.

This is one transcribed case from October 1961, (file no 809, Fond 856, the Supreme Civil Court; first instance People’s court). It is a handwritten inquiry from a man to the People’s Court of Riga city, Lenin district:

Application!

 In 1947 January 25th my wife and I were registered as married at the city office in Riga. Our son who lives by his mother was born in May 1952.

It has been dissentions in our marriage since 5-6 years and it has been a lot of controversies between us. The conflicts started and developed mainly because of my wife’s bad nature and her subjection to her relative living in our apartment, and their bad gossiping against me. My wife accuses me constantly with unreasonable arguments causing new quarrels, which had forced me twice to leave her and live separate from my family. When I built our family house, I hoped that when it was built we could improve our relationship and live together. However, nothing went better. Our relationship continued to be bad even after we had built our family house and the quarrelling went on, so I left my family and broke off from my marriage for more than a year ago and it has not been renewed since that. My wife’s relatives are also living in our family house and they support her in her aggressiveness against me. 

I am convinced that our relationship has no possibilities to be repaired or normalized   and we have to walk our own way separately and finish our common life, divide our common household and our family house in two ideal parts.

Cultural and historical context for the source.

In 1944, the same year when the Soviet Red Army occupied Riga, Latvia got a new legislation on family and marriage. Only registered marriages were recognized to be legal, and divorce became subject to the court’s discretion. Children born out of wedlock were not guaranteed maintenance from the father and fathers had no rights and obligations vis-à-vis their children. According to the 1944 decree, biological fathers were not registered as such on the child’s birth certificate unless they were officially married to the mother. A lot of men left their partners for new ones, but without officially divorcing and remarrying. This law was in force until 1968.

It should be noted that the family decree had a very significant impact on people in general, not only children. Divorce and its consequensis was something that could materially and adversely affect the divorced couple’s career. The Communist Party organizations controlled each single divorce; they examined cases of drunkenness, negligence of children, and infidelity. For those who were not party members, these functions were performed by the local trade union workplace committees.

In the case above the husband divorced officially but he stayed in the same house because of housing shortage in Riga. The family lived in Riga in their own house with three rooms, all together 52 square metres. The household exists in 1961 from wife (43 years), husband (48 years) and a 9 years old son, and the wife’s relatives (it is not clear how many persons). The husband was unsatisfied with the family situation and he wanted a divorce, mainly because of conflicts between him and his wife’s relatives. In a letter to the People’s court he complained about the limited living space for him and his family and he asserted that the relatives didn’t like him.

From the court’s file we do know that he had met another woman (letters to the court from his wife) and we also got information on how the house was furnished and equipped.

Extract from a letter to the Supreme Civil Court from the husband:

During our marriage we built a house in Riga, Sejas iela nr 20, one floor house existing from three rooms, 52,82 square metres, worthy 3 928 roubles, and an outhouse worthy 380 roubles, all together worth about 4 308 roubles.

More over we bought during our marriage a “foreign” trademark piano, worth at least 500 roubles. The property can be distributable between us as follows: 

1. The ownership of the house should be parted in two equal ideal parts;
2. The piano I agree to leave to my wife if she pay me the half of the piano worth because this is not u subject that could be divided in practice.

The husband leaves the purchase from his following goods.

One twin-bed 130 roubles (rbl), writing-desk 40 rbl, bookshelves with bookcase 40 rbl, table, 30 rbl, cupboard 20 rbl. From our common life when married I’ve got nothing.

Relevance of the source for the study of family history in terms on intercultural and intergenerational aspects.

Among scholars, archival documents and records have been seen as passive resources kept in state repositories to be exploited for various historical and cultural purposes. Seen from another perspective – within the interdisciplinary field of memory studies – archives have been viewed as critical and problematic components of memory. In the context of wide-ranging social and legal systems this perspective has also highlighted the connection between archives, human rights advocacy and efforts to secure social justice. Looking at archives and records from a postmodernist perspective, however, we determine a more complicated picture. From this point of view, archives are established ‘by the powerful to protect or enhance their position in society’. In this sense archives are a tool for the powerful to control the individual and our common past. As a researcher, I have to be aware of these power relations as well as the multiple provenance of the archive: what kind of society created these documents, and what information do they provide about the social society of the past? What kind of relationships between the creators of the archives and society are visible or tacit in the archives?

From an ethical point of view, the use of public archival documents needs to be considered carefully. The Soviet archives mostly contain the holdings of official public bodies, but these papers also contain mention of a great many personal names and information about individuals who today, in post-Soviet society, might be completely opposed to the idea of being reminded about their past.

The first photo is the decision on the house dividing; the second one is a handwritten letter from the wife to her former husband and the third one is a notice in the newspaper that informs about the divorce between the couple.

 

by Anni Reuter.

Pietari Jääskeläinen (born 1879) was exiled to Siberia in an Easter night 1931 with his family. His crime was cultivating a relatively prosperous farm in Ingria, Keltto, only 20 kilometers from Leningrad. The family was labeled as kulaks, rich peasants, as “elimination of the kulaks as a class” was organized in Soviet Union.

He belonged to the Finnish minority, which also caused problems. Ingrian-Finns were Lutherans in the atheist country and spoke Finnish, not Russian. In the Soviet Union of the 1930s anything Finnish or religious became dangerous.

Pietari (age 51), his large family that included 12 members and many other families from Ingrian Keltto were deported in the cattle wagons into the unknown. This railway trip took ten days. There were over 40 persons in one wagon with their luggage, without any proper sanitary possibilities. They were given only three times food, but luckily they had some food with them.

 

In these inhuman conditions, they journeyed to Krasnojarsk in Siberia as they later discovered. Pietari wrote home in the 13^th of May, 1931:

Greetings from the Hell of Krasnojarks!

I write to you about our life here, about children’s destiny. Children are like sentenced to death. Those ten days we had to spend in the cattle wagons were too much for their health. We got food three times, but not the children, although they had promised us…

In this barrack there are 635 persons in one department… It is difficult to describe what I see and hear, but most difficult of all, what I feel. The floors, barrack beds, every corner and inch is crowded with people sleeping, and I can hear weeping, that is breaking my heart. Near to me, side by side, are two sick children sleeping and next to me rests a mother, who is so weak that she can hardly open her mouth, her five sick children near to her. The oldest daughter trying to take care of them. Their father has been sent to work somewhere.

Here is also two bodies looking like angels, one mother smiling. Over there you can see a woman who is crying again even if her teardrops dried out, but now again falling, because the death took away her three children in one night. Over there I would not like to turn your sight but there you can see six children sleeping like lambs in their stall. From them the death, like a wolf, has taken away their mother. In the middle of the night everybody wakes up to a terrible cry, when a child is calling after her dead mother. Mother! Mother! Mother!

 

The youngest member of the Pietari’s family, grandson Sulo, who was not even one year, died soon. Uncle Multiainen, who was already 74 years old, tried to escape, but he was captured and beaten up so badly, that it caused his death.

Death in the beginning of the exile was typical destiny for the young and the old, because they were easy targets for illnesses and were given hardly any food – only those who worked got decent proportions.

From Krasnojarsk the rest of the family moved to other exile destinations, to the town of Yeniseisk and later to a small village on the other side of the Yenisei River, which was badly struck by a famine.

After they survived the famine, family was ordered to move to a goldmine and forest area near the Stony Tunguska River. They started to work in the forestry and goldmine, cultivating the land in their free time. Youngest sisters Elsa, Helena and Susanna could go to school. At the same time their relatives were deported from Ingria to Central-Asia and Kola-Peninsula, where the conditions were very harsh.

In 1938 Pietari and his three sons Matti, Pekka and Simo were imprisoned from the exile. Only the youngest sons came back, but Pietari and his oldest son Simo died in a prison. Exile resembled prison in many ways – you were not free to move for example.

“It was like a home, but at the same time like a prison. Men were imprisoned from a prison. Only women and children were left,” told Eeva (age 22), Pietari´s daughter in her interview in 1972.

During his stay in the Siberian exile; Pietari wrote a lot: letters, diary and poems. By reading them, it is possible to get a vivid picture of life in Siberian exile, but also a view to ethnic, social and religious conditions and purges and how it felt to be far from home, often in a hostile environment. He wrote about early deaths in exile, sickness, hunger, hard work and repression, but also importance of the family, joy of life, holiday greetings and poems of history and longing.

In the letters and in the Siberian diary you find themes like hunger – food, purges – destinies of people, moving – housing and religion.

 

The History of Ingria and the Family Culminating in the Years of Stalin’s Terror

Finns have lived in Ingria, around Saint Petersburgh since the 17th century. The Finnish speaking and Lutheran minority in Russia had a rich cultural heritage, including oral folklore and poetry, now partly documented in the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic and the Kanteletar, a collection of Finnish folk poetry.

In the beginning of the 1600th century, a man called Simo, moved from the municipality of Jääski in Finland to Ingria, and he was given the name Jääskeläinen according to the place of his origin. He and his family members were peasants as most of the Finns back in those days. They were free peasants, but after Russian empire had occupied Ingria from Sweden, they became serfs, one kind of slaves.

In Russia, serfdom in its extreme form lasted until 1861. After that they became free peasants again until the collectivization of the land started in the end of the 1920s in the Soviet Union. In 1930 they lost their land for good. The collectivization and dekulakization policy made little economic sense in that it led to the removal of the most efficient farmers. A man-made famine was followed by it in 1932–1933.

Because of their ethnic background as Finns and social background as peasants, Ingrian Finns living in the Soviet Union became targets of Stalin’s repressions. Deportations, imprisonments, disappearances and executions of Finns fall especially between the years 1928–1938. Many was evacuated from Ingria during the Second World War. There was 140 000 Finns living in the historical Ingria in the beginning of 1900^th century. In 1940s the number of Finns had collapsed to 6000 persons.

Majority of the extended family Jääskeläinen was deported to Siberia, Asia and Kola Peninsula. Contacts between Finland and the Soviet Union collapsed and became risky. Majority of male relatives were imprisoned later because of political reasons – they were labelled as counter-revolutionary.

It is estimated that 32–40 million people died in Stalin’s purges altogether before the end of the World War II. Today we call purges as ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Many family members escaped from the exile, some even from the Soviet Union to Finland and Sweden. It started to be possible to “return” legally 1949 or after Stalin’s death from the exile. But it was impossible for them to move to Ingria and this is why the family members moved instead to Karelia and Estonia.

The Ingrians’ national awakening towards the end of 1980s and their remigration to Finland began in the 1990s. Today both the extended family Jääskeläinen and Ingrian Finns in general lives in diaspora.

 

How the Family Archive Came to Being?

Pietari’s son Juhani Jääskeläinen (born 1907) came to Finland from Ingria in 1925. He wanted to study in Finnish in a high school and later religion at the university, which were both impossible in the Soviet Union. He got a refugee status in Finland and later he started his studies at the university.

He received letters from home. Letters that told about the life of his peasant family in a communist country: collectivization, lack of food caused by it, confiscation of their land and property and repression against Lutherans and peasants labelled as kulaks.

Soon after having started to study in the upper secondary school of Käkisalmi, Juhani got a shocking letter from his uncle in 1931. His family was deported to Siberia. There was not any address to write them anymore nor any knowledge what was going to happen to them.

This piece of news were followed by letters about relatives’ early deaths in exile, sickness, hunger and terror, but also poems, photos, cards and best wishes.

“Dear cousin, I wish You Merry Christmas, but I have to shout: Are Finnish people going to die in Siberia, in Taiga, in Alma-Ata and behind Moscow, in the station of Jassakova!!! The destiny of a political prisoner has become terribly miserable. I send you here some letters, valued in the free conditions you are living.” 26. March 1932, an unknown writer

Already in the 1930s, Juhani started to gather a family archive and other research material on Ingrian Finns quite systematically. He even did interviews from 1967 onwards. Juhani took part in the civic movements in Finland that were against repressions in the Soviet Union, although he was afraid of the secret police and his own deportation back to the Soviet Union. He became a Finnish citizen and a priest.

After a long time, in the 1960s and 1970s, Juhani met his sisters who had been exiled to Siberia. They had been children when they got separated and they were already retired from their jobs when they met after the exile years. Almost 50 years had passed. Juhani Jääskeläinen was one of the first ones to write about the purges of Finns in the Soviet Union.

Today the family archive includes letters (from 1927), Pietari’s diary from Siberian exile, others diaries and notes, poems, interviews (from1967), photos, family trees and newspaper clips. The archive is today preserved primary by the family members. Because the extended family lives today in diaspora in Finland, Russia, Sweden and Estonia, are there archives in every country.

 

Pedagogical Potential of Ingrian Finnish Family History

Finns in Finland and Russians living in historical Ingria know little or nothing about Ingrian Finnish history. Through Ingrian Finnish family histories the history of Ingria could be made more visible.

History of Ingrians has been absent from history and school books in Finland. Family archives and oral histories maintain this forgotten history. Family histories and archives have a personal, historical and cultural value and could be studied at the university level.

Family history could be used also in education in order to add knowledge of Stalin’s terror and understanding the consequences of it in more personal level. Archival materials make it possible to approach history and culture as continuative life history experienced by real people, not as “national history”.

Researching family history is one way to understand for example how the history of one generation affect also the following generations. The Ingrian Finnish family history could be used as an example of researching the own family.

UNIVERSITY LEVEL
Possible questions could be: How to reach and to interpret archival materials? What the historical context means? How do the people remember, privately or publicly, individually or collectively?

Example 1. Oral history / Sound recordings
Jääskeläinen’s family archive contains sound recordings, oral history and life stories from 1967. Some of them are interviews, some of them are recordings of family meetings. It is needless to say, that these make differing contexts for narration. How do they differ? What do they tell? How do they tell stories, individually or collectively? Do the family members use “I” or “we”? Whose voice do you reach?

Example 2. Letters and diary
What and how did the family members write? What words were used and why? Can we interpret the letters with the information we have? What information is/can be lost from our perspective?

How does letters and diary communicate? What happens when one genre changes into another? How to interpret?

Example 4. Gaps and silences
Were there things that nobody wrote or talked about? What is missing from the archival material? Why? What was too sensitive, horrific or dangerous to be written down? Are there classical or biblical myths and narrative formulas in the archival material? How do they affect interpretation?

 

In discussions it is possible to ask: Who writes history? Who owns history? How is history created or invented? How to write history?

Published histories are always interpretations and they need to be complemented, contradicted and re-written. From whose perspective is history created?

 

HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL
Pietari’s and his brothers Anttis’ life stories have been used in Finnish high school history education. You can find their family and life stories in Edu.fi – Education portal for teachers in Finland. Wider use would need publication of diary, interviews and letters.

Pietari’s and his family’s deportation >> LINK HERE

Antti’s and his family’s destiny in Soviet Union >> LINK HERE

Holocaust Memorial Day, in Finnish Vainojen uhrien muistopäivä, Memorial Day of Purges is celebrated on the 27th of January. Celebration of the day underlines the value of human rights and the right to remember. The Holocaust Day in Finland could contribute to the theme of Finnish victims of wars, purges and genocides.

Some questions that could be used:

• What were the differences between Hitler’s and Stalin’s terror? Where there something in common?
• Which were the consequences of deportations and terror for the individual, the family and the group she or he belongs to?

 

ADULT EDUCATION
How to create a family archive? Why to create a family archive? (See separate document.)

• How to use public archives? How and where to donate a family archive?
• How to write a family history?
• How archival materials could be used as background material for creative or biographical writing?

 

ALL LEVELS

• How to research your own family? How to make an interview and collect other material for family history?
• What ethical aspects should be taken care of in collecting and using archival materials? See for example Oral History Society UK http://www.ohs.org.uk/ethics.php   UK data Archive http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/create-manage/consent-ethics
• Materiality of archival sources? Materiality is an important attribute of archival material. For example Pietari Jääskeläinen’s diary is an impressive artifact. How it felt to write a diary in the exile, how was it to carry that diary, hide it from the secret police GPU and to worry about losing it? Even if the content of the diary was digitized, aspects of materiality would not be easily transmitted online.

 

 

 PICTURES

The exile destinations of Jääskeläinen family in 1930s: from Ingria to Kola-Peninsula, Central-Asia and Siberia.

Family Jääskeläinen in Keltto, near Leningrad 1921, before terror.

Sisters in Siberia 1931

A letter from Siberia, 1933  

Pietari’s diary from Siberia (1931-1937)

 

 

FURTHER READING:

Applebaum, Anne: Gulag. A history of the Soviet Camps. Penguin Books, 2003.

Litvinenko Olga & Riordan James: Memories of the dispossessed. Descendants of Kulak Families Tell their Stories. Bramcote Press, 1998.

Peltonen, Ulla-Maija: Memories and Silences: On the Narrative of an Ingrian Gulag Survivor. In: Memories in Mass Repression. Ed. Adler Nanci et al. Transaction Publishers 2009.

Inkeri. Historia, kansa, kulttuuri. Toim. Nevalainen, Pekka & Sihvo, Hannes. Suomalainen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1992.

Sihvo, Jouko: Inkerin kansa 60 kohtalon vuotta. Tammi 2000.

www.inkeriliitto.fi (Ingrian Society in Finland)

www.inkeri.com (Ingrian Culture Society)

by Yulia Gradskova.

The case is based on the interview conducted in Moscow, 28.02.2014. I interviewed K (born in 1929) in her apartment. I asked her to tell me her family history in connection to their housing conditions. Thus, in this case, the interview from the beginning had to be used for research of the Soviet formal and informal institutions of housing in 1945-1980s.

K was born in Moscow, in a Jewish family. Her parents moved to Moscow from Odessa in the 1920s. K was born in a house in the center of the city, before 1917 the house, most probably, was used for accommodating servants working in the big house nearby. There was a cold water, toilet and a stove in the house.

 

Historical Background

The historical background for this text is the Soviet history of the 1930s-1980s. The family becomes a victim of the Stalin’s repressions of the late 1930s. K’s father, an engineer at the Moscow plant, get to be arrested in 1937 and sent to GULAG (to Magadan) for 10 years. According to the Soviet legislation of that time, after  being released from GULAG, a person was not allowed to live in central cities, in particular, in Moscow. That is why after K’s father comes back in 1947, he is immediately demanded to return to Magadan to live there. This legislation was changed only after Stalin’s death. K’s father could return to Moscow only after 1956 – the year of the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party when the new Soviet leader, Khrushchev partly criticized Stalin’s crimes.

Anti-Semitism was present in the Communist Party, but the last years of Stalin’s life are characterized by a particularly strong anti-Semitic campaign (early 1950s).[1] Even if anti-semitic campaign slowed down after the Stalin’s death, It influences K’s possibilities of finding job in Moscow hospitals after she finished her medical education in the mid-1950s.

The registration – propiska – was introduced in Moscow and other big Soviet cities in 1932.[2] It was an institution of control over the population movements, in particular, against those who wanted to escape the kolkhoz. Usually it was impossible to find a job without such a registration.  Not rarely, propiska could be obtained through bribes and frauds. In K’s story, in order to get such a registration for her husband, the family makes efforts for finding a person, connected to police. K’s extended family was trying to help her though bribing that  person in order K’s husband (born in another city) could move in with her in Moscow. However, in 1957 the local registration regulations were slightly changed and K’s husband was registered legally.

In the Soviet Union families did not have legal right for a separate housing, but each person, individually, had right to an amount of squire meters (around 5 m2 in big cities).  When this number of meters was below the norm, the person, family or part of family could be registered by the municipality or work place as those who is “waiting for improvement of the living conditions”. However, usually the line of those waiting for improvement was not moving forward, many Soviet people were in such a line for more than 20 years.

 

The story shows that in the case of K, family solidarity and mutual help of the members of extended family to each other was crucial for protecting family’s small living space (two rooms), for providing the new family members (like spouse or children) with the possibility of living together and for improvement of family’s housing situation in the 1960s. The early return of two members of the extended family from voluntary evacuation during the Second World War helped to the whole family to protect the family rooms from other people – “to save” the living space as it was said in the interview. Family was also ready to support K’s return from city R. to Moscow in the mid-1950s and to find money and connections in order to provide her husband with Moscow registration. Finally, the family was ready to help each other collecting money for cooperative apartment in the 1960s in order to prevent K’s father from returning to the same overcrowded communal apartment after his last sentence in prison.

In order to preserve the anonymity of my informant I use only one letter of her family name. The names of some cities in her story were also substituted by just one letter.

This story could be useful for research on everyday life under the Soviet rule. The story could be used in the university courses dealing with family history.

 

Quotations and description of family history:

“Before the war we were living in the communal apartment and we were two families in a flat. Each family had two rooms. At that time we had not so big family: it was me, my mother, my grandmother, my aunt and her husband. It was so that in 1937 my father was arrested, but my mother was close to finishing her university studies and she was strongly advised (by friends) to leave Moscow.[3] Thus, after finishing her studies she accepted to be send (raspredelenie) to Kostroma.[4] That is why my aunt, she lived in G. by then, together to her husband came to live with us. And my mother lived in K., she lived there up to the war. Me and my grandmother were visiting her only during the school holidays. And the other family that lived in our flat, there were four of them, they were very calm. We had a very quiet communal apartment.”

During the war period the family moved to Ural by own decision (they were not evacuated there officially by the Soviet authorities, just moved in with their relatives who were evacuated there earlier).

“Me and my mother lived there up to 1944, but my aunt and grandmother left earlier in order to save our flat: it was a lot of rumors that these flats get occupied by the people who did not leave Moscow”.

However, to that moment the inhabitants of the flat have changed.  One of two rooms where the neighbors lived was now given by the authorities (podselena) to a family of three with a child, later on three more children were born to this family. After that K’s communal apartment stopped to be quiet, it is possible to understand from her story that the new neighbors were not trusted by K’s family.

In 1947 K finished the school and entered the Medical University. The same year her father finished his sentence in Magadan and came to visit his family. However he had to leave Moscow and return to Magadan (before that K’s mother and father spent 2 month together hiding in a countryside summer house near Moscow)[5]. In 1950 the Medical University was moved to R., a city not far from Moscow, and K had to start living in the dormitory there.

“The dormitory was very bad. There were 7 people in one room, we had 7 beds, but only three bed tables. ….The kitchen was on the first floor and we lived on the fourth. And it was supposed that  we would cook there. First we did it, but later, we made this – du you know what is zhuliki? It is a kind of special contact that you can put into the ordinary lamp. Thus we put an electric stove there”.

After finishing the university K started to work in a psychiatric hospital in the same city. At that period she lived in a former hospital building: former medical offices were transformed into temporary housing. After giving birth to a child in 1955 and spending 9 months in Moscow with parents, K returned to R. and had to stop her Moscow registration in order to continue living in her temporary housing in R. In 1956 her father came back and she could leave R.’ hospital due to her mandatory years of work in a particular place were finished. However, her Moscow registration (propiska) had expired. It was very difficult to get to be registered again in the room where her parents lived. K told that all of them, including her father who was now rehabilitated, wrote lots of letters stating that K’s housing in R. was only provisional (with toilet outside, etc.).  In her letters K stressed also that her relationships with her husband are bad (it was not true)[6] and she needs to move back to her parents’ flat. Finally, K had managed to get a registration and found a job in an ambulatory (due to anti-Semitism of the time it was difficult to find job in hospital).  When K’s husband was trying to move in with her, it was very difficult.

“I did not know that only wife could be registered together to her husband, not vice versa. Thus, when he came, immediately, the street cleaner (dvornik) or, may be the neighbor, that one with four kids (who lived at the same apartment), denounced him to the police. The police came and said that he should leave Moscow. I don’t remember, it seems that also in three days”.

Thus, K’s husband had to return to his home city, G. But K and her family started to look for new possibilities for getting propiska  for her husband. They found a person connected to police who agreed doing it for a sum of money. But, it was a Youth Festival (1957, Moscow[7]), the registration law was lightened and K’s husband was registered in her flat.

“thus all of us, 7 people, started to live in that flat. We had two rooms, but one room (we had one room that was 30 m2, another was 15) we divided it into three. “

Soon K’s second child was born. The family was on the waiting list for housing improvement but anything was happening. At that time K’s father who did not feel himself  psychologically not well after 20 years of GULAG, had a violent quarrel with the neighbors in the apartment, they called police and he was sentenced for 1,5 years.   The family decided that K’s father should not come back to the same flat: they must help to him. It was 1965 and K’s mother bought small two-rooms cooperative apartment, 24 m2. The flat was bought on the name of the father and it was his brother who came and signed the contract (father was in prison at that moment). In 1967 K’s family also entered into housing cooperative (with the help of relatives’ money) and moved into the apartment where I was taking my interview with her in 1967. K’s family paid for apartment during 13 years. As doctors, K and her husband could also teach evening courses in a professional school and to get an extra-income.

 

 

[1] Konstantin Azadovskii & Boris Egorov, From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism, Journal of Cold War Studies, 4:1, Winter 2002, pp. 66-80

[2] Tova Höjdestrand, The Soviet Russian production of homelessness: propiska, housing, privatization 2004, http://www.anthrobase.com/Txt/H/Hoejdestrand_T_01.htm

[3] The informant implies that her mother also could be arrested as a ”relative of people’s enemy”.

[4] According to the Soviet law those finishing university studies had to be dispatched (raspredelenie) to different parts of the Soviet Union where it was a demand for their qualification.

[5] Moscow inhabitants could rent some rooms or part of the house for summer if they have money. Such summer house (dacha) was rented privately, usually without state’s intervention, In this case K’s mother and father could live there for two months.

[6] The Moscow authorities were aware about overcrowded apartments and were doing everything possible for preventing more people to live in the capital. In the case K, she  presented her marriage as a “problematic” one and at risk to be ended soon. It allowed her to get to be registered “back” to Moscow.

[7] Moscow Youth Festival of 1957 supposed many foreigners (mainly from countries of the Soviet bloc) to come to Moscow. The presence of the foreigners influenced certain improvements in city maintenance and even in housing regulations.

by Jyrki Pöysä.

In the Northern corner of the city of Joensuu stands a sad representant of the local history of this small eastern Finnish town: the empty buildings of former restaurant-hotel Jokela and cinema Kino-Karjala.

 

Jokela in its present state; Photo Jyrki Pöysä

 

During its more glorious times the building was one of the centers of the Joensuu cultural and business life: journalists and local business men used it as a regular meeting place. Among the visitors to the hotel-restaurant are also said to be the front-row Finnish musicians and film people. (As an important source about the glorious times see the book Wanha Jokela (2002), which is a result of the oral history project by Jyrki Piispa and Eino Maironiemi; the interviews made by the project are archived at the Finnish Literature Society’s Joensuu Tradition Archives.)

From 1970’s up to the closing in the end of 2012 the restaurant was an important meeting place for local and national artists (musicians, writers etc.) and the university people (students, teachers, professors) of the small but fast growing University of Joensuu (about the oral history of the University of Joensuu see Makkonen 2004). During its last years the hotel-restaurant, called then Wanha Jokela (‘Old Jokela’), became also part of the local conflict about the importance and costs of saving urban heritage.

 

Local conflict of values: saving the restaurant; Photo: Jyrki Pöysä

 

Hotel-restaurant-cinema complex was owned and led by one family, the Inari-Turunen families. The ”first” member of the family and the founder of the family businesses was Heikki Inari (b. 1891). After his school years in Joensuu he worked at the Russian railroads up to the Finlands indepence in 1917. Before the October Revolution he was also working at the Finland’s Station in St. Petersburg. During these years he met his wife Maria Pauloff (b. 1894), who was a Russian by origin and who was educated in the famous Smolna girl school in St.Petersburg. The history of the Inari-Turunen family was not only a success story, but also a family tragedy. Heikki and Maria had only two children, son Olavi (b. 1921) and daughter Irene (b. 1925). Olavi died in the end of the second world war, at the age of 23. Olavi had participated the war as a volunteer.

 

The family of Heikki Inari having a dinner with other relatives or friends, Maria, Olavi and Irene on the right side of the table; photo published with a permission from the North Karelian Museum).

 

Irene was married in 1948 to an important Finnish choir leader and an economist Martti Turunen (b. 1902) who was then almost twice her age.The couple was childless: regardless of international specialists they could never get children to take hand of the family businesses. During their marriage Irene and Martti were living in Helsinki. After the death of her father Heikki in 1961 Irene had to take care of the family businesses, together with her husband Martti.

 

Maria (in the center), Irene (nearest to the right corner of the table) and Martti (on the utmost right) together with the restaurant workers having a party 6.11.1967; Photo from Anita Latola’s private archives

 

When Martti died in 1979, Irene had to run the businesses alone for the next almost 30 years. However, during her last years, due to evolving health problems, she was taken to official custody of the city of Joensuu. In her last will Irene donated the family possessions to the foundation Karjalaisen Kulttuurin Edistämissäätiö (KKES, literally ‘Foundation for promotion of Karelian culture’). When Irene died in 2008, the latest chapter in the family history took place.

 

The possessions of Irene Turunen the foundation received in 2008 in her last will; Screen captures from annual report of the KKES

The possessions of Irene Turunen the foundation received in 2008 in her last will; Screen captures from annual report of the KKES

 

Locally it was expected that the foundation would use at least part of 2,8 million euro family possessions to renovate the buildings of restaurant-hotel Jokela. However, after the investigations about the condition of the building the foundation decided to start planning a new building on the site of the restaurant-hotel-cinema complex. A complicated conflict of values arose, when the local activists didn’t accept this decision and founded the Pro Wanha Jokela Facebook-site to support the saving and restauration of the building. It is important to know, that it was also rumoured locally, that the last member of the family, Irene Turunen, had told as her inofficial last will, that the restaurant-hotel Jokela should be saved ”till the end of the world” (in Finnish metaphorically expressed as ”maailman tappiin asti”).

Seemingly due to the rumours and the complicated situation between the activists and the foundation the family history documents are still kept closed by the foundation, the legal heritor of all the family possissions. And this is where our story starts: how to study family history without standard family history documents, family archives, letters, diaries, scrapbooks or bookkeepings of the family owned businesses? Is it possible or ethically acceptable to study family history of a ”closed” family? Who owns the right for family history?

More family history: The rise and fall of Inari-Turunen families

The first member of the Inari-Turunen family, Heikki Inari,  was born in a small Eastern Finland’s village Kiihtelysvaara in 19.1.1891 into a family of 9 children. Heikki was the eldest son in the family. Heikki’s original family name was Venäläinen (Finnish for: ‘Russian’), but he changed it into Inari in 1910’s or 1920’s. It is not known why he chose this family name: Inari is a large lake in Northern Finland, famous for its deepness.

Heikki Inari came to study in school in the city of Joensuu in 1902, at the age of 10. The schooling years also meant living away from the family. The distance between Kiihtelysvaara and Joensuu is approximately 30 kilometers. In those times this was too long distance to travel daily by a young schoolboy. Heikki finished also the scondary school in Joensuu, though not without some problems with the matriculation examena. From 1911 he was working at the imperial railroads, first as a young station officer in Värtsilä and later for example at the Finland’s Station in St. Petersburg.

 

Heikki Inari’s educational history according the school matricle;
extract from the Joensuun poikalyseon matrikkeli 1927

 

Somewhere during Heikki’s years at the railroad he did also meet a Russian girl Maria Pauloff (born 15.6. 1894 in St. Petersburg), who had studied in Smolna girl school. This might have happened in 1917, when Heikki was nominated as a clerk at the railway station in St. Petersburg. Heikki and Maria got married in 1920. Maria was a daughter of Ivan Pauloff, a Russian state officer. Maria was seemingly from quite different cultural order than Heikki himself. The fate of the other Pauloff family members during the revolution and the muddled years right after that are not known. In the film Raja 1918 (2007) you can get some idea of these turbulent years.

Working at the raildroads does not make you rich. Perhaps as a railway worker Heikki was able to hear rumours and conversations between travelling businessmen about possibilities to become rich by investing to land and forest. Whatever the truth, during those years Heikki must have learned how to take advantage of the new economic possibilities of the 20th century. Before moving to Joensuu Heikki had already run some kind of business in land and forestry market in 1920’s. This is also said to be the main source of capital for his investments in Joensuu city (See: Piispa & Maironiemi 2004).

Heikki and his wife had two children, son Olavi Heikki (born 20.9.1921 in Käkisalmi, on the southern shore of lake Ladoga) and girl Irene Anna Maria (born 5.6.1925). In 1934 Heikki and Maria bought a lot and a shop at the margins of the city of Joensuu where they started the Cafe-Restaurant Jokela the same year in an old building made out of logs. On the site of the shop they built in 1939 a new hotel-restaurant-cinema -complex Jokela/Kino-Karjala. The architect for this new building was Aulis Hämäläinen, who worked also for the Finnish Tourism Association, and acted as the main architect for the present Hotel Pohjanhovi in Rovaniemi. On the same lot Inaris had already in 1936 built a block-of-flat, where they lived themselves and ran a public sauna in the basement of the house.

The construction of the hotel was connected with expectations of having the Olympic games in Helsinki in 1940 (actually, due to the II WW the games were cancelled). Foreign tourists coming to Finland were also expected to travel around the country and among others visit Eastern Finnish attractions, Koli mountains, Sortavala and Valamo monastery island on the lake of Ladoga. In those times Sortavala and Valamo were part of the Finland (the trains to Joensuu from Viborg and southern Finland came via Sortavala). In this light Heikki’s investments in new hotel-restaurant were quite reasonable and a good example of his trained nose for business. Movie theater Kino-Karjala, the second cinema in Joensuu, could also be seen as a sign of seeing the importance of rising popular culture and financial potentials of new urban leisures. The public sauna could be seen as an answer to the needs of local residents of Joensuu and also the (Finnish) hotel residents of the Hotel-restaurant Jokela. The cinema was closed at the end of 1980’s and used as a bingo and a flee-market during its last years. The sauna was closed already in the beginning of 1960’s, after the death of Heikki Inari.

The tragedy of the Inari-Turunen families consists of the total extinction of the family after two generations and five family members. The son Olavi died  because of war injuries already in the end of the second world war,  in 19.10. 1944 at a war hospital in Varkaus. At this time he was only 22 years old. He is buried at the local graveyard in the family grave of Inari-Turunen family. In the tombstone he is entitled a secondary school graduate (Finnish: ‘ylioppilas’) and a lieutenant. A fact worth mentioning is, that he is not buried at the nearby soldiers’ honorary graveyard. It took 17 years, when the next family member, Heikki Inari himself (died 21.9.1961) was buried to the family grave.

 

Olavi Inari’s educational history according the school matricle;
extract from the Joensuun poikalyseon matrikkeli 1990

 

It is not known where and how long the daughter of Heikki and Maria Inari, Irene Turunen, went to school. In 1948 she got married to a famous choir leader Martti Turunen (born in Viipuri), a friend of her father from the choir scene. Martti was 23 years older (he was born in 11.8. 1902) than Irene. After his death (29.4.1979) he was first buried in Helsinki, where he and Irene were living at that time. Later Irene had his remnants transferred to the family grave in Joensuu.

The couple did have no children. During her husband’s choir visits abroad Irene tried to find help for the problem, but without a result. It is not known, if the husband Martti Turunen was ever suspected or studied for the same problem.

The mother Maria Pauloff was living most of her life in Joensuu. After the II WW she was often seen visiting the grave of her son at the local graveyard. When Heikki Inari died in 1961, daughter Irene Turunen took hold of the businesses together with her husband Martti Turunen. The couple had apartments both in Helsinki and in Joensuu and had to travel between the cities every now and then.

After Martti Turunen died in 1979, Irene became the sole head of the businesses. Her mother Maria Pauloff died in 12.5.1986. During her last years Irene (Irene died 20th of January in 2008) lived alone in Joensuu, mostly at the family house, a block-of-flats behind the restaurant-hotel Jokela.

Open questions

Lots of interesting questions arise because of the interesting history of the family. Many questions can’t be answered due to the missing family archives. An interesting question is also, whether  there are any other ways to give answers to these questions? Other historical sources or maybe oral sources? Reminiscences of persons, who personally have met Irene or other family members?

* Was it typical for a boy from Kiihtelysvaara to go to school in Joensuu? What does this tell us about his parents social situation?

* How did Heikki gather the capital for his investments in Joensuu?

* How did Heikki and Maria meet? Did Maria know Finnish? (Heikki apparently knew Russian because of his work at the railroad)

* What was the language of communication within the family of Inari? Finnish? Russian? How much Russian culture Maria taught to her children?

* Why is Olavi not buried in war heroes’ part of the Joensuu graveyard?

* What kind of education did Irene receive? Was she planned to act as a future director of family   businesses after Olavi’s death?

* What were the mutual roles of Martti and Irene Turunen regarding the family businesses after the death of Heikki Inari in 1961?

* How important or well-known the Inari-Turunen families were on the local and national level? Do newspapers mention the important birthdays (60’s, 70’s) of the family members? Are there any obituaries of the family members in local (Karjalainen, Karjalan maa) or national (Helsingin Sanomat, Uusi Suomi) newspapers?

 

It is possible to find answers to these questions also without standard family historical sources. In the following map there are some suggestions for archives, museums and sites of memory, where you could start the search for a deeper understanding of this interesting business family.

 

Walking tour:
archives and sites of memory

 

Map of Joensuu with suggestions about places where to start

1. The building of former hotel-restaurant Jokela at the corner of Niskakatu and Torikatu

2. The family grave of Inari-Turunen families at the Joensuu graveyard

3. Finnish Literature Society’s Joensuu tradition archives at the university campus (Yliopistokatu 6). Oral history interviews with the customers of Jokela restaurant. In the same building you can also visit the provincial (historical) archives of Joensuu.

4. The university library at the university campus (Yliopistonkatu 4). Research literature about Martti Turunen’s career as a famous Finnish choir leader.

5. The main library of Joensuu (Koskikatu 25). Newspaper articles (on microfilm) from different years. Research and literature about the North Karelia.

6. The Joensuu Art Museum (Kirkkokatu 23). Former boy school of Heikki Inari and his son Olavi Inari.

7. The North Karelian Museum Carelicum (Koskikatu 5). In museum collections there are some photos and items from the family of Inari-Turunen received before the beginning of the conflict.

8. City archives of Joensuu (Penttilänkatu 7-9)

 

The family grave at the graveyard in Joensuu; Photo: Jyrki Pöysä

The house of the Provincial Archives of Joensuu at the university campus; Photo: Jyrki Pöysä

 

The Joensuu Art Museum; Photo: Jyrki Pöysä

 

Carelicum; Photo: Jyrki Pöysä

 

 

FURTHER READING:

Facebook: Ravintola Wanha Jokela (https://fi-fi.facebook.com/pages/Ravintola-Wanha-Jokela/214809975205686)

Häyrynen, Antti (2008): Sinivalkoiset äänet. Ylioppilaskunnan laulajat 1883-2008. Helsinki: Otava.

Javanainen, Riikka (2013): Suojella vai ei? Rakennussuojelun päätöksenteko. Hotelli-ravintola Wanhan Jokelan ja Jyväskylän Shellin huoltoaseman suojelupäätökset. Pro gradu -tutkielma, Jyväskylän yliopisto, museologia.

Kaarlenkaski, Taija & Kupiainen, Karoliina & Pankamo, Heidi & Pyykkönen,

Pirita & Pöysä, Jyrki (eds.) (2005):  Joensuun paikat. Joensuu: Suomen kansantietouden tutkijain seura.

Makkonen, Elina (2004): Muistin mukaan. Joensuun yliopiston suullinen historia. Joensuu: Joensuun yliopisto.

Marvia, Einari (ed.) (1966): Suomen säveltäjiä, II. Porvoo: WSOY.

Piispa, Jyrki & Maironiemi, Eino (2002): Wanha Jokela. Joensuu: Ilias.

Pulkkinen, Maire (ed.) (1958): Suomalaisia musiikin taitajia. Esittävien säveltaiteilijoiden elämäkertoja. Helsinki: Oy Fazerin Musiikkikauppa.

Rautio, Tommi (director) (2014): Oothan vielä. A documentary film about Jokela

(See: https://fi-fi.facebook.com/pages/Dokumenttielokuva-Wanhasta-Jokelasta-ty%C3%B6nimell%C3%A4-Oothan-viel%C3%A4/453985414657931)

Oral sources
Interviews with Anita Latola

Pedagogical relevance
 The internet pages are aimed for two groups of young people:

* School-children: learning about the history of their their native town Joensuu, especially about the local business history. Pages could also be seen as part of the larger project Joensuun paikat (‘My places in Joensuu'; see: Makkonen 2004). A possibility for learning about the local cityscape and the local museums and archives. The graveyard as an archive of the history of local families. Suited also for the Joensuu international sccondary school because of the language (English).

* Students at the university (history, ethnology, folklore, geography, sociology etc): Learning about how to go deeper in the history of a new residence with the help of research, libraries, archives and the practice of doing oral history with the help of interviewing. Possibility to learn about the ethical and legal questions around family history: to whom belongs family history? Who owns the rights to family history, if the family has extincted? An interesting case in cultural heritage and the legal ownership of family history. Suited also for foreign students because of the language (English).

 

 

 

 

by Rutt Hindrikus.

We all remember our own personal past. It lives in our memory in the form of an hazy story or a cluster of stories. Converting such a cloud into a narrative is often very difficult and complicated. Photos are sometimes like little ready-made narratives of family history.

Elin: is the central figure of the story. In the archive there are many  photos of her mother, grandmother, relatives,  and an old photo of her grandfather in his student days with his brothers and parents.

 

Who are the members of Elin’s family ? Herself, her mother and grandmother, three women of different  generations.

Elin’s grandfather Ernst Enno (1875-1934) was and Estonian poet, journalist,  and  teacher.
He married Ella Saul in 1909. In November 1910  their  daughter Liki was born.
Liki married  Enn Toona.
Elin was born in Tallinn on July 12^th 1937.

FOTO Elin’s birth certificate

 

Elin: „At that time I did not know anything about my grandfather, the poet. I knew him only as “black Papa” by the dark, stern profile he presented a top his statue. When my grandmother and I walked around Haapsalu, we often stopped by the statue (on the Evening Lagoon) to rest our legs. Hers were old, mine were short. We tired easily. Sitting there countless times, my grandmother told me about  “Ernie”, who had died young because he had had a “poet’s soul”.

FOTO EKLA…28548 Ernst Enno’s monument _Black papa

Elin seldom saw her parents. They were actors. Elin lived with her grandmother Ella Enno, who  was an artist. She had studied painting  in Tartu and in 1913 and 1914 at the Atheneum in Helsinki, Finland.This was unusual for women in Estonia at the beginning of 20th century. She “lived” for her art.  Elin  recalls:

I lived in Haapsalu with my grandmother, whom I called Mämmä and her sister, my great-aunt Alma, whom I called Tätä.
We were always together,  my grandmother and I:  weeding in the garden, /—/, walking along the Promenade , or going to the open air market.

We had a grand piano in the living-room, /—/  There was always someone playing the piano.  We lived quietly, slowly and harmoniously to the strains of  Chopin, Beethoven, and Bach.

Elin’s father was an artist through and through; he was a good man, but not a family man. He had risen to the very top of his career in theatre.

 

 Elin’s memoir: I grabbed a handful of grass and ran into the street after him.  When I reached him I stuffed the grass into his jacket pocket.

“What’s this,” he asked?

“Nothing,” I told him seriously. “But when you next put your hand into your pocket you will remember that you are my father and that you have a daughter.”

When I came back to Estonia in 1990 I heard that my father had kept a small plastic bag of dried grass on his desk, all of his life

In the fall 1944 ELIN’s mother and grandmother with Elin fled to Germany, Elin’s father has not come with them because he has a new family.

After the war ended there were about 7 million refugees in Germany. Most of them were dispersed into displaced persons camps. Elin’s  mother, grandmother, and Elin ended up at Meerbeck, near Hannover.

We all remember our own personal past. It lives in our memory in the form of an hazy story or a cluster of stories. Converting of such a cloud into a narrative is often very difficult and complicated. It seems to me that photos are the easiest to describe, and for structuring a life-story narrative, photo albums are the best. They are sometimes like ready-made narratives of family history.

What I mean by family story is a text or cluster of texts that centers not on an individual but the story of a kinship network or the stories of many representatives of the same family.  I see two ways of writing a family story: first, one narrator gathers together the stories of many people, either by recording their different voices on tape, or assembling the thoughts and views of various family members as seen in their letters or other autobiographical texts.  The result is the  collective „I“, an entity consisting of different points of view. The other possibility is that one individual writes down the biographies of various family members as longer or shorter narratives, but presents them all from one narrative point of view.

Elin’s life story   begins with an account of her first trip to Estonia. She knows  the previous generations in her family through their stories told for several times. All the stories are connected with Estonia.

Who are  in Elin’s family ?/kes moodustavad Elini perekonna/ Mother and grandmother, the three women of different generations.

Elin’s father has not come with them because he has a new family.

In Estonia she has relatives –the most important  was   aunt Alma(grandmother’s sister).

Grandmother has told very much about the other relatives who were already dead or lived somewhere in Estonia.  All these stories were parts of  Family  history. There was a very important  person –  her grandfather –actually it was Grandfather’s statue, Black Papa.

Elin’s case is a special case. She fulfilled her wish to  write her grandfather’s history . Monograph’s (?) title is  Rõõm teeb taeva taga tuld,  it is a verse from  Ernst Ennos poetry. We can see this book as a ideal family history. IT starts   with chapter Ennode päritolu ja perekond  and ends with Family tree. It consists all kind’s of rumors and legends what were told in family,     the most intriguing among them was the rumor, that local baron was the real father of one predecessor.. Such cases were not rare but such rumors are very common too.

Sellejuures on see raamat korralik kirjandusajaloolisest traditsioonist lähtuv biograafia

A book of that kind needs  much more archival sources than we have demonstrated.

But that book is itself an archival source for the new generationes.

Elin’s  story is a good example to speak about  war and peace and about life in different countires..

 

After the war ended in 1946, Elin her mother and grandmother ended up at Meerbeck, near Hannover. The camp was actually a village which had been turned into a DP Camp as punishment for the villagers.  (It  happnes in the British zone).

In May of the  year 1947 the mother signed an  contract to work in an English hospital.  The questions regarding that period of Elin’s life (like why was she living in the hospital woods and why was she not allowed to further his education?) –  was cleared up in 1999 when she was reading old newspapers and came across articles that had been written at the time her  mother went to England. “ Newspaper “Eesti Teataja” on 5^th February  1947 wrotes “Baltic Swans fly to England”  The jobs were for women between the ages of 18 and 45 in  hospitals, sanatoriums, orphanages and nursing homes. Mother signed up  for five years. Gandmother and Elin  remained in Meerbeck until March 1948, when  grandmother also signed up (she was 69 years old by then), to work in the hospital sewing-room. The hospidal was  Ida Hospital, Cookridge, Yorkshire.

One of the characteristics of exile is the loss of one’s previous status. English society was very hierarchical, and the “fall” was very steep for most of the refugees. . Nobody knew about Estonia or where it was, this country did not exist. And, as it did not exist, the labourers from there were simply liars. Elin very well remembers such attitude towards them.

At that time, the so-called Eleven Plus exam segregated children into two groups at the age of eleven. Any child who did not pass the 11+ exam was denied further education. Elin arrived in England in March 1948; the test was held in two months, which was too short a period for learning the language. Her new homeland designated her for the labour force

Starting at the age of 15, Elin had to work at a textile mill together with other foreign workers. For the next three years she got up half past four every morning. She secretly attended some educational courses and received a stipend to an acting school in London. This was a private school, since public education was still closed for her. She found work in TV and got some film roles. Finally, she could leave the hardships behind, and she also got rid of her Yorkshire accent. In a few years she was even able to find a good position in the BBC.

In 2008, Elin Toona published a book about her grandmother with title  Ella. Despite the radiant figure of Ella Enno , it is a sad book. For the first time, Toona is talking about the events in her life she has never before touched upon or which she has only briefly mentioned. Toona’s private life has had some crazy turns, she has twice been married to a millionaire. The first time, she escaped from her husband after a few weeks of living together in Hong Kong. Her husband’s family had threatened her and she realised that she did not fit into the lives of rich people of this kind. During her escape through India and Iran she met an American journalist who became her second husband; with him she liveed in the USA. She is not yet ready to write detailed memoirs of this period of her life. These problems can still be found in her fictional text, and it is not difficult to realise that the hidden autobiographical undercurrent in The Last Daughter of Kaleviküla originates from this period. After the death of her second husband, Toona lived for a while in a camper in Florida, had a job and spent time writing. The title of her latest book is Into Exile.

She recalls: As a child of refugees, I had no role models for a conventional life or a proper family. People married to get to America or Canada, they put their “bread into one cupboard”, to live cheaply.

HER best friend was her grandmother.

About her mother she writes: I  did not know my mother until I was an adult.  We had lived together only briefly and as a child I had always referred to her as “my friend”. We became really good friends in London and very close until she had her first stroke in the summer of 1975.

 

Elaborate pedagogical relevance on the resource, relating it to one or more pedagogical cotext:

High school, adult education, museum education. concrete plans how this material can be used for teaching

Küsimused: kes on Elin Toona (tekstist lähtudes)? Miks ta põgenes kodumaalt ?  Miks oli Elini kõige parem sõber  ta vanaema ?

Missuguse  perekonna lugu  peaks käsitlema enne kõike ?

Otsige Google’it kasutades internetist Elin Toona kohta 6 lauset.

Otsige välja Elin Toona raamat „Into Exile „(2013), mida majandusväljanne „ The Economist” peab 2013 aasta parimate raamatute hulka kuuluvaks.

 

by Leena Kurvet-Käosaar.

The case study is based on the correspondence across the Iron Curtain of two sisters, Helga Sitska (1914-1989) and Aino Pargas (1922-2000) between Estonia (then the Soviet Socialist Republic of Estonia) and UK and the USA. Helga Sitska was my maternal grandmother and Aino Pargas my greataunt. Their correspondence, both sides of which have been preserved, consists of approximately 450 letters, cards and postcards. The correspondence is today preserved at the Sitska family home in Tartu and kept by my mother. I have her approval to use the correspondence for research purposes.

Illustrative material: photos of the letters and envelopes, photos of Helga Sitska and Aino Pargas. For ethical reasons, all photos of the letters have been taken so that the text of the letter in unintelligible. The contents of the letters is mediated only via a selection of translated quotes.

 

 Aino’s Letter

 

Birthday card to Aino

 

  Aino’s livingroom wallpaper samples

Aino’s livingroom wallpaper samples (this should also go with question nr 3 where I discuss how the sisters maintained a close bond by sharing their everyday life experience with each other)

 

Photo 7: Aino and Helga in Washington DC. In 1969, the first time they met after parting in 1944 (here I would like to add excertps from Aino’s letter where she wirtes about her last memory of homw and her mother before she left Estonia in 1944.)

 

Work in progress on the letters.

(My) work in progress on the letters, systematizing, identifying themes (This would go with a section where I talk about my work process on the letters, also problems and difficulties

 

 

My great-aunt Aino Pargas (1922-2000) fled Estonia in 1944, after the war settled down in UK, moved to the US in 1958, lived most of her life there Maryland and worked for the Library of Congress. Aino’s husband was a German POW in the Soviet Union for 6 years. They reunited in 1950.

My maternal grandmother Helga Valgerist-Sitska (1914-1989) studied law at the University of Tartu before WW II, had three children, and was for many years considered unemployable for political reasons by the Soviet regime. Gradually, she found employment in the field of the Soviet equivalent of real estate law and worked for Tartu municipal goverment. It is not possible to completely identify the exact beginning of the correspondence between the sisters. Among the preserved letters there are some letters by Helga Sitska to Aino Pargas from the year 1948 that were among Aino’s possessions, yet there are no responses to Helga. Most probably Aino’s letters were confiscated by the Soviet authorities or she did not reply to them. Systematic correspondence started in the late summer or fall of 1956 and continued until the spring of 1989 when Helga Sitska died.

 

As travel into and from the countries behind the Iron Curtain was severely restricted, the sisters were able to meet only a few times during their whole lifetime and letters became their primary medium of communication, the sole vehicle for the intimate dynamics of sisterly affection, where lives lived on two continents in vastly different sociopolitical and material contexts were not only represented through the correspondence, but in a way lived within the possibilities and boundaries of the medium.  The correspondence makes visible different agendas and influences (sociopolitical, family-oriented, national, gendered, intimate) that intertwine and shape the correspondence and ultimately the nature of the relationship itself.
As such, the correspondence is far from exceptional as for thousands of families who were separated by the World War II and the change of political regime in Estonia this was a common (and the only available) means of keeping during the Cold War period. Such correspondences have not been systematically collected by Estonian memory institutions. However, for instance the Archives of Cultural History in the Estonian Literary Museum preserve various ‘across the Iron Curtain’ correspondences between men and women of letters and public intellectuals. Taken together, these correspondences provide valuable information about possibilities of communication during the Soviet period, level of trust that was established between the corresponding parties, ways of dealing with issues of censorship, etc. From the more narrow perspective of family history, the dynamics of correspondence between family members is of primary interest. However, correspondences between family members are not widely available for research or other kinds of public use. Firstly, at the present moment, many the corresponding parties have died and the correspondences may not have been preserved at all. The preserved correspondences are in family archives and cannot be accessed for research purposes. The current correspondence therefore constitutes a unique textual evidence of dynamics of communication across the Iron Curtain, yet this it is important to bear in mind that this correspondence is also part of a family archive and can (selectively) be accessed only because of the overlapping of different positions that I represent: that of a family member and that of a researcher.

The correspondence provides rich and multifaceted insights into different strategies of developing and maintaining sibling intimacy. Intergenerational importance of the letters for strengthening family ties can be seen in the text of the letters themselves as well as the reading process and reception of the letters in my family. In the letters, the sisters use past memories of their childhood and youth and memories of their parents to build up and maintain a close bond with each other. Through the letters a family bond is also created between Aino and Helga’s children (Aino had no children of her own). Helga provides detailed updates of the lives of her three children to Aino and Aino responds with comments to Helga as well as with letters and gifts to her niece and nephews. Later, my generation was also successfully included in the correspondence.

Intercultural aspects of the correspondence include the ways in which the sisters mediated their lives in two very different political systems to each other, an aspect that, at least over the first years, was subject to Soviet censorship and awareness of this can be traced in the letters. In her letters, Aino provided detailed descriptions of her life in UK and later in the US, focusing not only on her life but also on society and culture at large, way of life, fashion, nature etc. Although Estonia and Tartu were familiar to Aino, in her letters, Helga strove to describe the changes that had taken place during the war and the following years. Both sisters often rely on familiar places, attitudes and aspects of life and then proceed to elaborate on a new experience or a change. Over the years, when Aino settles down comfortably in Maryland in the USA and starts perceiving the US as her home, a tension is created between the sisters as Helga, my grandmother finds it impossible to accept that any other country than one’s native land can be called home.

 

Here I try to include some brief examples of different aspects of the correspondence and elaborate on them

In one of her first letters my grandmother writes:

Your letter arrived on Sept 20 (1956). What a wonderful surprise: all these long years of silence and now, at last, your letter. …Twelve years ago you were suddenly lost in the turmoil of war. We thought that you had perished … I sit here and write as the midnight is drawing near and a beautiful symphony is playing on the radio. No words can describe how I feel. What can I write in just one letter? I should write a book, not a letter.

A Bundle of Aino’s Letters 

On October 22, 1956, Aino reponds to Helga:

It is so hard to believe that after so many years I am receiving a letter from home again. I am looking again and again at the photos of you and your childrenand no words can express how dear you are to me.

Grandma’s First Letters

 

As the sections of quoted letters demonstrate, a strong desire to reestablish and recover intimacy between the sisters can be found already in the very first letters. Over the years, the correspondence developed its own textual strategies for creating intimacy and its evolvement in time makes visible the ways in which the epistolary medium catered for the needs of maintaining and developing these intimate exchanges as well as where it seemed to have failed. From my readings of mostly the letters of the 50’s and 60s, three main different strategies of creating intimacy have emerged:
1) reliance on common memories
2) verbal confirmation of closeness that also involves epistolary exchanges concerning photos
3) different ways of familiarizing each other with the details of everyday life and with the cultural contexts of their life.

Here I add examples and themes, e.g.
1) reliance on common childhood memories,
2) ways of integrating Aino into Helga’s family life
3)ways of sharing everyday life,
4 mediating cultural change (Helga) and specificity (Aino)

This resource can be used for different pedagogical purposes for different levels of education, yet the purpose would be roughly the same:
to promote awareness of one’s own family history,
to encourage people to conduct research into their own family history,
to identify new sources and to frame them both in immediate familial context as well as wider cultural contexts.

The source can be used to demonstrate that the concept of the archive is not limited to official national memory institutions but can be used in more fluid and informal contexts within the framework of one’s family.

 

Description how the resource could be used for teaching/learning purposes

A Bundle of Helga’s letters

Here I will add a description how the resource could be used for teaching/learning purposes. It will be more or less one task to start with – to think about and to look for/ask for  family documents and sources that facilitate intergenerational and intercultural exchange.
For university level teaching, the task would be to think about more general theoretical issues concerning intimate recording and reading of lives and see if and in what manner these relate to students’ own family histories.
For adult/museum education the focus could be on one kind of source  – the letter or the correspondence and the during training, participants would be shown examples of different family correspondences and correspondences across the Iron Curtain.
The training could consist of two sessions: one where they are familiarized with that type of source and the second where they find similar sources within their own family and discuss the process of looking for them, what they have found (also what could not be found)  and the importance of the sources. Along the same lines, a training session can also be organized for schoolchildren but the explanations and tasks should be simpler.