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).