SHARED SPACE, VARIED LIVES: FINNISH-RUSSIAN INTERACTIONS IN DACHA
COUNTRY, 1880s-1920s
By
Kitty Wing On Lam

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
History – Doctor of Philosophy
2013

ABSTRACT
SHARED SPACE, VARIED LIVES: FINNISH-RUSSIAN INTERACTIONS IN DACHA COUNTRY,
1880s-1920s
By
Kitty Wing On Lam
This dissertation examines the Russian summer house (dacha) communities in southeastern
Finland as a site of diverse social interactions from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the
twentieth century. It covers the period from the 1880s to the mid-1920s because it seeks to address how
Finnish-Russian social, economic and cultural contacts were significant in the political context of Finnish
nationalists’ resistance to Russian authority and Finland’s transition to independent statehood after the
Russian empire’s collapse. This project investigates why the dacha, entrenched in Russian thought as a
symbol of Russian middle-class status, also became a physical and mental meeting place for Russians and
Finns from various social backgrounds. Dacha communities in Finland were heavily concentrated in the
Karelian Isthmus, a region within a few hours reach by train from St. Petersburg, Russia’s imperial
capital. This meant that interaction between dacha-goers from Russia and Finnish-speaking inhabitants
formed an integral part of the social landscape. These summer house settlements therefore offer a lens
through which to examine how social boundaries were created, sustained, and destabilized. This case
study is illuminating because Finns and Russians came into contact with each other in a space that was
generally seen as part of the personal, private sphere; yet, these contacts also resonated in the public
context of community. By examining intercultural exchanges in a specific spatial setting, and asking how
imperial imaginings of particular places intersected with everyday social realities, this project prompts us
to reconsider issues of nationality, identity, and state-building from an alternate perspective that than of
Russian authorities’ efforts to control recalcitrant minorities.
	
  
	
  
	
  

Copyright by
Kitty Wing On Lam
2013

	
  

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My most sincere gratitude goes to my advisory committee chair, Dr. Lewis Siegelbaum,
for his guidance throughout my graduate studies at Michigan State University. I would also like
to thank the other members of my committee, Dr. Keely Stauter-Halsted, Dr. Leslie Moch, Dr.
Gordon Stewart and Dr. Charles Keith, for their continued support during the dissertation writing
process. I am also grateful to Dr. Jason Merrill from the Department of Linguistics and
Languages for serving as the Dean’s representative on my committee. I would like to give my
thanks to Dr. Timo Vihavainen, Liisa Byckling and Natalia Baschmakoff for taking the time to
discuss my project while I was conducting research in Helsinki.
I wish to acknowledge the librarians and archivists who assisted with my research: Terri
Miller from Michigan State University Libraries, Dmitry Tartakovsky from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Slavic Reference Service, Irina Luukka from the National Library
of Finland’s Slavonic Library, Liisa Lehto from the Finnish Literature Society, and Sergei
Pogreboff from the Russian Philanthropic Society in Finland. I also owe my gratitude to the staff
at the various archives and libraries where I have conducted my research.
Finally, I would like to thank the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki for providing
institutional support during my research trip to Helsinki from January to March 2010.

iv
	
  

PREFACE
Parts of this dissertation appear in recently published peer-reviewed articles. Tables 1 and
2 and parts of Chapter Three are included in “For whose Common Good? The Russian
Philanthropic Society in Finland and the Challenges of Russian Language Education in Late
Imperial Russia,” Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, vol. 1,
no. 2 (2012), 255-283. A part of Chapter Six is published as “Homes across the Border: Russian
Summer Houses in the Karelian Isthmus and the Finnish State, 1917-1927.” Journal of
Borderlands Studies, vol. 27, no. 3 (2012), 331-343.
Transliteration of Russian names and words in this dissertation, with the exception of
widely recognized names, follow the Library of Congress system if the original source is in
Russian. Russian names appearing in Finnish language sources are transliterated according to the
Finnish standard. Russian words written according to pre-1918 orthography are transliterated as
if they follow post-1918 orthographic conventions.
Naming conventions for places in Finland follow the modern-day Finnish standard, with
a few exceptions. Swedish names for the Finnish cities Viipuri, Turku and Tampere (Vyborg,
Åbo, Tammerfors) are used for narrative that refers specifically to the pre-1917 period. Finnish
names for these three cities are used for narrative referring to the post-1917 period. Helsinki will
remain the name used for the Finnish capital city throughout this dissertation.
	
  

v
	
  

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------vii
LIST OF FIGURES ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------viii
INTRODUCTION --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1
CHAPTER 1
Dacha Settlements in Finland and Questions of Empire -----------------------------------------------35
CHAPTER 2
Everyday Encounters and Interdependence through Dacha Space -----------------------------------78
CHAPTER 3
Cultural Bridge Building through the Dacha ----------------------------------------------------------113
CHAPTER 4
Crime and Terror in the Dacha Zone: Society and Security in Finland 1905-1917 --------------152
CHAPTER 5
Refuge in the Dacha Land: Ethnicity and Refugee Management -----------------------------------203
CHAPTER 6
The Afterlives of Abandoned Homes: Russian Dachas in the Karelian Isthmus and the Finnish
State, 1920-1927--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------237
CONCLUSION --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------265
APPENDICES ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------274
Appendix A – Figure 1: Map of Vyborg Province, 1897 -----------------------------------275
Appendix B – Figure 2: Map of the Frontiers of Finland, 1595-1812 --------------------276
Appendix C – Figure 3: Map of St. Petersburg and environs ------------------------------277
BIBLIOGRAPHY -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------278
	
  

	
  

vi	
  

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Population of Finland according to mother tongue ------------------------------------------11
Table 2: Population of Finland by number of individuals born in Russia -------------------------- 12
Table 3: Vyborg Province Land Owned by Foreigners ------------------------------------------------51
Table 4: Number of Russian Summer House Registered with Vyborg Province Local Parish
District Chiefs, 1892 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------52

	
  

vii	
  

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Map of Vyborg Province, 1897 --------------------------------------------------------------273
Figure 2: Map of the Frontiers of Finland, 1595-1812 -----------------------------------------------274
Figure 3: Map of St. Petersburg and environs ---------------------------------------------------------275
	
  

	
  

viii	
  

Introduction

Antti Leskinen grew up in the 1890s in a Finnish-Russian border town that was a popular
place for affluent St. Petersburgers to establish summer houses, known in Russian as the dacha.
Fluent in Finnish and Russian, Antti was able to communicate with Russian-speaking guests who
frequented his father’s variety store in the town. After the Bolshevik Revolution, he assisted
1

Russian speakers seeking refuge in his village by serving as a translator. Finnish historiography
informs us that when Finland was part of the Russian Empire, Finnish and Russian speakers
rarely interacted with each other. Migrants from Russia clung to the Orthodox Church as their
2

center of public life. Russian artists, musicians and writers contributed heavily to Finnish
3

culture, but never felt they belonged in Finland. Imperial policies limiting Finnish autonomy in
4

the early 1900s gave Finnish nationalists cause to label Russians as the enemy “other.” Antti
Leskinen’s experiences demonstrated nonetheless that Finnish-Russian interaction persisted in
spite of political and ethnic tensions.

1

Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS KRA), Sirkka Karskela, KE 28:
5773-5985.	
  
2
Natalia Baschmakoff and Marja Leinonen, Russian Life in Finland: A Local and Oral History
(Helsinki: Studia Slavica Finlandensia, 2001), 22.
3
Temira Pachmuss, A River of Moving Tears: Russia’s Experience in Finland (New York: Peter
Lang, 1992), 231.
4
Timo Vihavainen, ed., Dva Lika Rossii (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 2007), 24. Outi
Karemaa argues that propaganda to alienate Russians as the enemy “other” took root in Finland
between 1917 and 1923. See Vihollisia, vainoojia, syöpäläisiä: venäläisviha Suomessa 1917 –
1923 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1998).
1

The narrative of Finnish political history posits Finland’s incorporation into the Russian
Empire in 1809 as a monumental step for Finnish national development, since the Finnish
political, economic and cultural institutions developed rapidly under Russian rule. This situation
took a negative turn towards the latter half of the nineteenth century, when Tsarist bureaucrats
came to see Finnish nationalism as a threat to the Russian Empire’s internal security, and enacted
centralizing measures in Finland that provoked Finnish nationalist resistance against the
autocracy. The legacy of Russification has contributed to a narrative that treats conflict between
Russian governing officials and Finnish political leaders as the central focus of the story on
Finnish-Russian relations. In this historiography, Finnish-Russian social and cultural exchanges
in everyday life remain peripheral to the larger story of Finland’s transition from an autonomous
part of the Russian Empire to an independent state. Because Russian imperial subjects were a
numerically small minority in Finland, and never attempted to formally colonize Finnish lands,
much of the story on Finnish-Russian interactions is told from the point of view of high-level
governance. Quotidian encounters between Finns and Russians figure into the larger political
picture only when they support the Finnish nationalists’ accounts of Russia as a seemingly
benevolent governing power that guaranteed the existence of the Finnish state only to renege on
earlier promises.
This dissertation reconsiders this narrative by examining the Russian summer house
5

6

(dacha) communities in the Karelian Isthmus as a space for diverse social interactions. The

5

A variety of terms denote places where dachas were popular. The dacha settlement (dachnyi
poselok) refers to a place occupying a small swath of territory designated specifically for
recreational summer homes. The dacha village (dachnaia derevnia) was essentially a peasant
village where urbanites rented property from local inhabitants, and the dacha location (dachnaia
mestnost') was usually an estate or a village where the dacha was the main type of dwelling but
2

Karelian Isthmus is a region in southeastern Finland bordering Russia that alternated between
Swedish, Russian and Finnish administration over several centuries. Its population included
7

people from various ethnolinguistic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds. This region’s
proximity to St. Petersburg attracted migrants and visitors from Russia. Interaction between
dacha-goers from Russia and local Swedish- and Finnish-speaking inhabitants formed an integral
was not originally intended for dacha use. See Stephen Lovell, Summerfolk: A History of the
Dacha 1700-2000 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 60. In this dissertation I use the terms
dacha place or dacha community to encompass dacha locations and dacha settlements, since
towns and villages in the Karelian Isthmus such as Terijoki and Kuokkala had characteristics of
both forms land use. Figure 3 is a modern day map showing the locations of the most popular
dacha communities in the Karelian Isthmus. Both the pre-1948 Finnish place names and post1948 Russian names are provided with this map.
6
The Karelian Isthmus is part of the historic Finnish province of Viipuri, which is located in
southeastern Finland. Further distinctions in terminology referring to Karelia are as follows:
Russian Karelia is a region in the northwestern reaches of the Russian Empire, between the
northern shores of Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega and the White Sea. During the nineteenth century,
it was administered by the Russian empire, and was not a part of the autonomous Grand Duchy
of Finland. Finnish Karelia, which Finns sometimes refer to as Northern and Southern Karelia, is
located in eastern and southeastern Finland and includes the historic provinces of Kuopio,
Mikkeli and Viipuri (until Viipuri Province was ceded to the Soviet Union in 1944). See the
maps in Figures 1 and 2.
7
The territory of the Karelian Isthmus belonged to the Vyborg Province, an administrative
region that had been passed between Swedish and Russian rulers several times from the
eighteenth to the twentieth century. Historically, this area was a part of the Swedish kingdom
from the fourteenth century, when the fortress at the city of Vyborg was first built, to the
eighteenth century. In the seventeenth century, the Swedish King Gustav Vasa brought the
region under the influence of the Lutheran Church, and the border between the Swedish kingdom
and Russia became the boundary between the Lutheran and Orthodox worlds. At the beginning
of the eighteenth century, Russia’s defeat of Sweden in the Great Northern War resulted in the
Treaty of Nystadt (1721), in which Sweden ceded the territories of Vyborg, Kexholm, and
Ingermanland to Russia. Further administrative changes followed after Finland’s incorporation
into the Russian Empire as an autonomous Grand Duchy. In 1811, reorganization of
administrative structures led to the reincorporation of the Vyborg province into the Grand Duchy
of Finland. See Kimmo Katajala, “Cross-border Trade in Karelia,” in The Flexible Frontier:
Change and Continuity in Finnish-Russian Relations, ed. Maria Lähteenmäki (Helsinki:
Aleksanteri Institute, 2007), 75 and David Kirby, A Concise History of Finland (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 42-43. E.A. Balashov, Karel’skii peresheek: zemliia
neizvedannaia, kraevedcheskoe izdanie (St. Petersburg: Geza Kom, 1996) chronicles the history
of the Karelian Isthmus. See Map 2.
3

8

part of the social landscape. The dacha communities offer a lens through which to examine how
social boundaries were created, sustained, and destabilized. They challenge the singularity of
cultural entities such as Finns and Russians.
This project investigates why the dacha, entrenched in Russian thought as a symbol of
Russian middle-class life, also became a physical and mental meeting place for Russians and
Finns from various social backgrounds. These encounters occurred in a space that was often seen
as part of a personal, private sphere yet they also resonated in the public context of community.
By examining intercultural exchanges in a specific spatial setting, and asking how imperial
imaginings of particular places intersected with everyday social realities, this project considers
issues of nationality, identity, and state-building from a perspective other than that of
Russification. It also revisits these issues from beyond the context of Finnish nationalists’ antiRussian backlash after the empire’s collapse. This project therefore contributes to current
research on cross-cultural interactions in empire- and nation-building processes by integrating
the historiography on governance in multiethnic polities with insights on individuals’ everyday
experiences. It argues that hostility and harmony coexisted in Finnish-Russian interactions
because dacha life embodied complex ambiguities embedded in the wider context of ethnicity,
class and other social and cultural identities.
The political context of this narrative is Finland’s regime change from an autonomous
province within the Russian Empire to an independent state. I trace the extent to which these
political changes and the nature of Finnish-Russian contacts affected each other. Since the

8

Some of the dacha users were in fact Finns who resided in St. Petersburg. See Vilho
Hämäläinen, Karjalan kannaksen venäläinen kesäasutus ja sen vaikutus Suomen ja Venäjän
suhteiden kehitykseen autonomian ajan lopulla (Tampere: Tapereen Yliopisto, 1974), 30-31.
4

intense transformation of Karelian Isthmus villages into dacha places for Russian visitors began
in earnest in the 1880s, it is illuminating to examine the significance of inter-group ties that
developed from that time onwards. My narrative ends in the late 1920s because a series of
legislations dramatically limited foreigners’ (especially Russians’) rights in Finland. Nativist
groups with a specifically anti-Russian agenda gained widespread popularity towards the end of
the decade and significantly changed the outlook of Finnish society and politics in the 1930s and
40s. Finnish-Russian contacts after the 1920s merit treatment in a separate study.

Theoretical Framework
Several sets of theoretical perspectives inform the analysis in this dissertation. This
project uses concepts related to imperial formations and processes, and ideas on identity in
nation- and state-building terms to comment on social and political contexts of Finnish
nationalists’ struggle against Russian imperial authority. Finally, discussions on the significance
of space and place serve as the overarching theoretical setting for probing the complexities of
empire-, nation- and state-building processes.

Imperial Processes, Imperial Situations
This dissertation underscores the tensions in Russian administrators' attempts to reconcile
the empire’s heterogeneous population across vast stretches of territory with their desire to
systematize authority. Edward Thaden and Theodore Weeks have addressed this issue by
examining imperial-local relationships in Finland, Poland and the Baltic Provinces. Thaden
argues that the Tsarist government had no consistent policies for centralization. It relied on coopted elites of a different ethnic background than the titular ethnic group to maintain social
5

9

order. These elites sought to cultivate their regions’ separate ethnic identity, and attempted to
isolate local society from imperial influence. These efforts inadvertently led to the emergence of
new titular elites, who came to play an important role in the local social, economic, and cultural
10

life.

Similarly, Weeks argues that the Tsarist bureaucracy, rather than pursuing a consistent

Russian nationalist program, constructed policy in the Western borderlands in reaction to the
11

tensions of the empire’s non-national nature.

The Tsarist government carried out its

centralization efforts, referred to as “Russification” by people who felt oppressed by the
autocracy, in objectively different degrees in each territory. They were harsher in Poland, but
much milder by comparison in Finland. However, in all areas, titular and foreign elites alike
eventually condemned imperial policies as tyrannical.
Russia’s imperial relationship with subjects in the northwest differed from its relationship
with peoples in Siberia and the Caucasus. Michael Khodarkovsky has commented on Russia’s
colonization in the south and east as part of efforts to reorganize diverse peoples with different
12

notions of governance into state forms more familiar to imperial authorities.

Williard

Sunderland has argued that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Russian imperial
establishment saw the steppe as an alien, empty frontier zone that required colonization as a

9

In the Baltic Provinces, the German minority formed the social and economic elite in the
Estonian and Latvian lands, while in Finland the Swedish minority served as the elite over
Finnish tenant farmers and peasants.
10
Edward C. Thaden, Russia's Western Borderlands, 1710-1870 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984), vii.
11
Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification
on the Western Frontier, 1863-1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), 5.
12
Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 15001800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 48.
6

13

matter of state security and effective governance.

Similar to the European overseas empires,

Russian colonial expansion eastward was based on rulers’ belief that Russia had a right to the
14

civilizing mission in the far flung regions.

This mission was also embedded in thoughts on

economic advantages of trade and commerce for the Russian heartland; thus, imperial expansion
and conquest also involved a program for coopting local elites and integrating native legal and
15

economic procedures with Russian ones.

The contrast between methods and practices of imperial rule in different parts of the
16

Russian Empire shows that perceptions of empire as a state form are rather complicated.

Recent emphasis on studies of imperialism and colonialism has shifted away from defining what
empires are to what they do. Ann Stoler has argued that scholars should not treat empires as
concrete things but as situations and formations resulting from processes that produced different
17

degrees of sovereignty.

13

Imperial situations are “defined by the tensions, incongruity, and

Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 52.
14
Andreas Kappelar, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (London: Longman, 2001),
169.
15
Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of
the Soviet Union (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 24.
16
Incongruence of practices in different parts of an empire is not limited to the Russian case.
The place of Algeria in French imperial and colonial visions was quite different from that of
other French overseas colonies. Algeria had a status that made it an integral part of France, but it
was not automatically accepted as part of the metropole. As Gary Wilder has argued, France’s
imperial situations meant that territories, peoples, and governments did not align seamlessly with
each other. See The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between
the Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 7.
17
Ann Stoler, “Considerations on Imperial Comparisons,” in Empire Speaks Out: Languages of
Rationalization and Self-Description in the Russian Empire, ed. Ilya Gerasimov, Jan Kusber and
Alexander Semyonov (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 35. Stoler and Carole McGranahan define imperial
formations as "polities of dislocation, processes of dispersion, appropriation, and displacement"
7

incommensurability of the languages of self-description.”

18

That is, what role did imperial

visions of specific places play in everyday social realities? Although this dissertation is not
intended as a comparative study, asking this question about the relationship between the Russian
Empire and the dacha communities in the Karelian Isthmus has potential significance for other
studies that focus on empire as a process and as a situation.

Nation, State and Identity
Since Finnish historiography characterizes Finnish nationalism as a response to Russian
imperial authority, I also draw from theories on the relationship between nationalism, statebuilding, and identity. John Breuilly defines nationalism as a form of politics that is primarily
about power directly connected to control of the state. The nation exists with an explicit
19

character, prioritizes its interests and values, and must exercise political sovereignty.

Nationalist movements are therefore most successful when they are able to relate ideology to
specific political objectives.

20

Leaders of nationalist movements often seek to appeal to their

target audience in emotive ways to cement the bond between the nation and political objectives,
especially where state apparatuses are not fully developed. Eric Hobsbawm’s insistence that
nationalism derives frominvented tradition – “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or
and as “states of becoming, macropolities in states of solution and constant formation.” They use
imperial formations as an analytical category to investigate how empires were made and unmade
through active and dependent processes. See Carole McGranahan and Ann Laura Stoler,
“Introduction: Refiguring Imperial Terrains,” in Imperial Formations, ed. Carole McGranahan,
Peter C. Perdue and Ann Laura Stoler (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2007), 8.
18
Gerasimov et al., “New Imperial History and the Challenges of Empire,” in Empire Speaks
Out, 23.
19
John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 2-3.
20

Ibid., 17.
8

21

tacitly accepted rules...which automatically implies continuity with the past”

– is important for

understanding the intersection between politics and ideology.
Theories explaining how groups of people evoke cultural traditions to fuse the notion of
the nation to specific political objectives are compelling, yet they do not sufficiently explain how
different forms of identity, which are not exclusive to nationality, can at times overlap. Historical
actors most invested in nation- and state-building have sought to enumerate and measure identity
in a systematic fashion. Census categories such as native language and religion often stood for an
entire nation. The authors of census questionnaires, intentionally or inadvertently, designed
questions that allowed for individuals to identify with only one group. Gary Cohen and Pieter
Judson have remarked that the census in the Habsburg Empire at the turn of the twentieth century
only allowed for individuals and families to select one language as their mother tongue.
Bureaucrats interpreting census results were inclined to label people in the culturally diverse
Bohemian lands as either purely Czech or German, even though many respondents spoke both
22

languages with ease and came from families of mixed heritage.

Official figures only tell part of the story on social interactions. Data from the Statistical
Office of Finland’s general population census (Tables 1 and 2) indicated that there was a growth
in the number of Russian speakers and in the number of Finnish residents born in Russia at the

21

Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions, ” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric
Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1.
22
See Gary Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861-1914 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981) and Pieter Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the
Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
9

23

end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.

However, this information does

not permit us to distinguish between ethnic Russians and non-Russian minorities who were
subjects of the Russian Empire. These statistics do not indicate the length of time Russian-born
individuals had lived in Finland. Figures on the number of people who spoke Russian as a
mother tongue do not reveal how many of these Russian speakers were multilingual, nor do they
indicate whether they were of mixed Finnish-Russian parentage. It is not possible to determine
whether those who spoke Russian or were born in Russia were subjects of the empire or Finnish
citizens, since citizenship did not exist as a census category. Russian-speaking migrants from the
empire did not always become Finnish citizens once they moved to Finland. There were
approximately 6 000 individuals born in the Russian Empire who had acquired Finnish
24

citizenship by 1900.

Many more Russian subjects lived temporarily or seasonally in Finland,

but chose not to apply for Finnish citizenship. This did not necessarily mean that Finns were
isolated from Russian influences or vice versa. These census figures can only provide a partial
picture of the Russian presence in Finland at the end of the nineteenth century.

23

The Statistical Office of Finland has been conducting a general population census in 10 year
intervals since the first general census was introduced in 1870. See “History of Statistics in
Finland,” Statistics Finland, accessed July 16, 2012,
http://www.stat.fi/org/historia/index_en.html . The core of the Russian community in Finland
consisted of military and government officials, Orthodox clergymen, merchants, factory workers,
servants and members of the intelligentsia from Russia who moved to Finland throughout the
nineteenth century, and this Russian community grew to several thousand people. See
Baschmakoff and Leinonen, 22-23.
24
Baschmakoff and Leinonen, 23. See also Vihavainen, ed., Dva Lika Rossii, 19.
10

Table 1. Population of Finland according to mother tongue.
1880

1890

Region
Uusimaa
Turku/Pori
Häme
Viipuri
Mikkeli
Kuopio
Vaasa
Oulu

Total Population
Russian Speakers
202 806
1 606
344 649
117
221 360
22
301 975
2 219
167 310
121
256 420
61
358 480
46
207 782
3
Total
2 060 782
4 195

Total

1910

239 456
395 474
257 851
351 600
180 920
290 654
417 192
246 993
2 380 140

1 321
240
20
3 936
90
93
91
4
5 795

Total

1900

Uusimaa
Turku/Pori
Häme
Viipuri
Mikkeli
Kuopio
Vaasa
Oulu

297 813
447 097
301 272
421 610
189 460
313 951
460 460
280 899
2 712 562

1 432
109
4
3 960
187
196
46
5
5 939

Uusimaa
Turku/Pori
Häme
Viipuri
Mikkeli
Kuopio
Vaasa
Oulu
Uusimaa
Turku/Pori
Häme
Viipuri
Mikkeli
Kuopio
Vaasa
Oulu

376 218
426
499 332
204
342 321
83
521 469
6 197
198 829
86
333 777
182
514 940
160
328 311
1
Total
3 115 197
7 339
Source: Suomen väkiluvuntilasto (Finnish Population Statistics) SVT VI 9 (1880), 12-13; SVT
VI 22 (1890), 76-77; SVT VI 37 (1900), 78-79; SVT VI 45 (1910), 212-213.
11

Table 2. Population of Finland by number of individuals born in Russia.
1880

1890

25

1900

1910
Region
Present
Absent
Uusimaa
4 168
1 451
6 148
2 080
696
Turku/Pori
539
410
411
615
202
Häme
66
142
253
307
118
Viipuri
2 347
4 741
4 066
4 886
6 255
Mikkeli
184
348
953
222
1 137
Kuopio
404
977
1 227
466
716
Vaasa
92
224
367
350
397
Oulu
147
432
111
138
515
Total
7 947
8 725
13 536
9 064
10 036
Source: Suomen väkiluvuntilasto SVT VI 9 (1880), 32-33; SVT VI 22 (1890), 78-79; SVT VI 37
(1900), 92-93; SVT VI 45 (1910), 232-243.
More importantly, population statistics are limiting for measuring the size of the Russian
community in Finland because they do not reflect the emotive aspects of identity. Interethnic
contacts in family, social and economic relationships may have affected the extent to which an
individual thought of himself or herself as a Finn or as a Russian, and one may identify with
different cultural communities throughout the course of a lifetime. Rogers Brubaker has
suggested that scholars should separate thinking about identity as a category of practice – the
ways in which “it is used by ‘lay’ actors in some everyday settings to make sense of themselves”
– from identity as a category of analysis “used by political entrepreneurs … to persuade people
that they are ‘identical’ to each other and at the same time different from others.”

25

26

Reginald

The 1910 census introduced two new categories of individuals. The “Present” category
referred to individuals who were still living in the parish where they were registered at the time
of the previous census. The “Absent” category referred to individuals who as of 1906 no longer
lived in the parish towns where they were originally registered. See Suomen väkiluvuntilasto
SVT VI 45 (1910).
26
Rogers Brubaker, “Identity,” in Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory,
Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 62.
12

Zelnik’s study on an industrial strike in the Baltic Provinces, which features the autobiography of
Vasilii Gerasimov, a worker with who had a Russian name but spoke Finnish as a native
language, reveals the intricacy of identity as both a category of practice and a category of
analysis.

27

Gerasimov’s case points to the importance of examining how various meanings of

identity affected individuals’ everyday life.
I use the terms Russians and Finns, not because I accept them as bounded groups, but
because actors referred to themselves as such in memoir literature. Ethnicity is merely one
among several salient categories whose significance is situational and can vary. I therefore ask
how specific social, cultural and political settings invest categories with meaning in multiple
group contexts. Tara Zahra contends that scholars risk following nationalists’ example “by
idealizing borderlands as idyllic sites of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism or pathologizing
28

them as settings for inevitable conflict and violence.”

Scholarship requires a more rigorous

articulation of how people operated beyond, under, or through difference in particular times and
places. Focusing on state imperatives for distinguishing groups does not further comprehension
of the social networks that connected people from varying backgrounds. The foremost challenge
for scholars is to situate and interpret the multifaceted nature of inter-group dialogue. I seek to
further this line of inquiry by concentrating on the significance of interdependent ties, both in
times of peace and turmoil, and then contemplating the intersection of political contexts with
these relationships.
27

Reginald E. Zelnik, Law and Order on the Narova River: The Kreenholm Strike of 1872
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 9. Gerasimov was a St. Petersburg orphan. The
city’s foundling home sent him, as an infant, to Karelia where he was raised by Finnish peasants.
At the age of 11, the Kreenholm textiles factory recruited him for work.
28
Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the
Bohemian Lands (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 8.
13

Space and Place
Dacha space in the Karelian Isthmus is an ideal case for examining how tensions and
incongruities of imperial situations intersected with nationalist endeavors. Where did these dacha
places in Finland fit in the Russian imperial imagination? How were they envisioned in
locational and spatial terms? That is, what did it mean for dachas to be located in a place outside
of the regular reach of imperial legislation, and how did this situation intersect with daily
realities? The Karelian Isthmus was part of an autonomous Finland with limited direct political
connections to the Russian imperial core, but at the same time, this region was very tightly
connected to St. Petersburg through the thousands of St. Petersburg families that made their
secondary homes there in the summer months. This dichotomy raises interesting questions about
what St. Petersburgers envisioned as imperial space, and how the significance of the Karelian
Isthmus dacha places changed after the collapse of the Russian Empire and Finland's subsequent
establishment as an independent state. Discussions on the meaning of space and place shape the
theoretical framework on the relationship between empire and nation.
Finland’s contiguity to Russia is a spatial issue that poses a significant conceptual
challenge for comparative discussions on the meaning of empire, especially when juxtaposed
with the relationship between European overseas empires and their colonies. Alexei Miller has
commented that the competition between continental empires in Europe, which bordered each
other, were distinct from the political rivalries between maritime empires that did not share
29

contiguous space.

29

Land-based empires had more permeable boundaries and more ambiguous

Alexei Miller proposes, for example, that British decisions to support Muslim peoples in the
Caucasus against Russian rule would not have brought any significant consequences for British
rule over Muslims in its own empire. However, Austrian support for Polish nationalist
14

30

distinctions between center and the periphery.

However, the distinction between center and

periphery in the maritime empires may not be as rigid as we assume. Julia Clancy-Smith's study
of Tunis before and during French colonial rule characterizes the Mediterranean region as
“layered zones of contact…characterized by fluctuating degrees of internal social coherence
forged by high exchange densities, while remaining subject to ‘pushes and pulls’ from larger,
external forces.”

31

Thus, there were no fixed boundaries between European shores, the northern

fringes of the Ottoman Empire, and European colonial holdings in North Africa. As Cooper has
argued, both the maritime and continental empires coexisted in an increasingly interconnected
world. Sharp distinctions between these types of empire might hinder us from asking important
32

questions about the interrelated historical processes and contingencies.

The relationship between settlers and their spatial environment reveals much about
imperial and colonial situations. David Prochaska contends in his study of French settlers in the
Algerian port city of Bône that settler colonies were distinguished from other varieties of
colonial situations. In addition to colonial administrators and local peoples, settlers represented a
third significant social group. The implications and consequences of decisions made by settlers
are significant for the colonial situation in a particular setting. It is therefore important to
movements against the Russian empire would have called to attention the situation of Poles in
the Austrian empire. See “Between Local and Inter-Imperial, Russian Imperial history in Search
of Scope and Paradigm, ” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 5, no. 1
(2004), 18.
30
Gerasimov et al., Empire Speaks Out, 8. The authors have commented that the contiguous
empires are often depicted as entities based on formal autocratic rule and direct territorial
conquest. Maritime empires are seen as novel forms of territorial organization, where informal
colonial control and dense communication networks ensured their function.
31
Julia Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration c.
1800-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 11.
32
Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 23.
15

examine ways in which the formation of settler societies can be conceived of in the same way as
33

the formation of other social groups.

Studies on how imperial processes functioned in a

particular place helps us think about how empires were imagined in relation to contiguous as
well as noncontiguous territory.

34

Scholars have at times used the term “borderland” to discuss region-specific dilemmas in
35

the Russian Empire, even though the concept itself lacks definitional coherence.

Kate Brown,

by seriously contemplating the emotive, rather than political, meaning of place through the
“bottom up” social construction of cultures, illustrates how there can be multiple, overlapping

33

David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press1990), 9. The political context by which Russian dacha folk arrived
in the Finnish countryside differed significantly from the political impetus by which French
migrants settled in Algeria. In Prochaska’s study, the French and other European settlers in Bône
were segregated by socio-economic status and race. In the Karelian Isthmus, the dacha folk
embodied the idea of the middle class, but the boundaries of this group were rather ambiguous,
and the people who aspired to be part of this strata varied widely in wealth and occupation. The
racial element was not a factor in the Russian-Finnish relationship, since it involved Europeans
moving to other European lands. This is not to suggest, though, that Russian and Finnish
speakers saw each other as part of the same community. Colonial settlement in Finland was also
never a stated objective of Russian officials, unlike French designs for Algeria. However, like
the French in Bône, Russians also vastly outnumbered the locals in the Karelian Isthmus towns.
They also had significant influence on shaping the local landscape as well as social and
economic life. Using French settlement in Algeria as a reference point for examining Russian
dacha communities in Finland raises general questions about the role of space in
imperial/colonial processes.
34
Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire, 22.
35

In East European mental geography, as Lawrence Wolff and Maria Todorova have succinctly
argued, border areas are characterized either as zones of cultural-linguistic transition, or as
battlegrounds between apparently drastically different civilizations according to popular political
imagination. See Lawrence Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the
Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994) and Maria Todorova,
Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). These works discuss how
the notion of Eastern Europe came into existence as mental constructs, and how the mental
mapping of these regions was imbued with Orientalist meanings.
16

36

imaginings of borderland as a space.

In some cases, however, the term borderland is used

synonymously with the term periphery. Tuomo Polvinen’s Imperial Borderland focuses on the
animosity between some of Russia’s most conservative imperial bureaucrats and a growing
nationalist movement in Finland. Polvinen uses borderland as a spatial analytical framework to
emphasize the clash of cultures between Russians and non-Russian.

37

The idea of Finland as a

periphery, however, needs to be questioned since St. Petersburg was a mere 30 kilometers away
from the Finnish-Russian border. Although there was an official customs boundary between the
Grand Duchy of Finland and Russia, the Finnish mental map at times included some territories in
Russia. Karelia, for example, was at the center of competing Russian and Finnish claims.

38

Regional differences made it difficult to definitively determine where the heart of Finland was
located. Borderland as an analytical concept is therefore limited in enhancing our comprehension
of Finland’s place in the Russian Empire

36

Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 52.
37
See Tuomo Polvinen, Imperial Borderland: Bobrikov and the Attempted Russification of
Finland, 1898-1904 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995).
38
As Marina Vitukhnovskaia notes, Karelia was not a problem area for the Russian Empire until
the end of the nineteenth century, since its predominantly Orthodox population did not attract
much negative attention. Tensions over this territory arose in the late nineteenth century when
Finland began its economic and cultural expansion into the region. However, rather than siding
with either Finnish or Russian national projects, Karelians became increasingly drawn to their
own sense of regional identity. See “Karely na granitse konkuriruiushchikh natsional'nykh
proektov: sotsio-ekonomicheskie razlichiia rossiiskoi i finliandskoi Karelii kak faktor
natsional'noi politiki,” Ab Imperio, no. 1 (2003), 114. Another relevant case of contested territory
based on real or imagined stories about the indivisibility of a particular land to another polity is
Kosovo’s place in Serbian nationalists’ imagination. The notion that Kosovo had always been an
integral part of Serbia has fuelled territorial conflicts between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians. See
Julie Mertus, Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999).
17

A spatial approach is more insightful for examining how abstract concepts such as empire
and nation are translated into everyday experiences. In this project, I refer to place as a concrete
location where spatial practices and representations can be observed. Spatial practice refers to
the daily routines and networks that link people in particular locales. Spatial representation refers
39

to the way individuals identify and organize places according to specific activities.

Contextualizing dacha places in the Karelian Isthmus in spatial terms makes this project more
than just a regional study. This approach allows for the exploration of localized experiences and
phenomena that are more cosmopolitan in nature.

40

Studying the Russian dacha communities in the Karelian Isthmus through the prism of
space permits the questioning of rigid analytical categories common in studies of historical
change. For example, dacha life reveals the permeability of class boundaries. The dacha was
indeed a phenomenon that stemmed from the growth of the Russian middle class; however, the
variety of the individuals who sought a dacha lifestyle challenged the homogeneity of this socalled middle class. The dacha phenomenon also obliterates sharp distinctions between urban,
suburban and rural life because the dacha folk were primarily city people who sought refuge in
the countryside from the stresses of the urban environment. Finally, some Russian speakers who
established summer residences in Finland spent half the year or more in their secondary
countryside homes, and commuted to St. Petersburg for work. They thus blurred the distinction
between temporary and permanent residents, locals and visitors, native dwellers and immigrants,

39

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell,
1991), 38.
40
Mark Bassin, Christopher Ely, Melissa K. Stockdale, “Introduction: Russian Space,” in Space,
Place and Power in Modern Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History, edited by Bassin, Ely
and Stockdale (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 8.
18

and insiders and outsiders. What role did these hazy distinctions play in people's everyday lives
during times of relative tranquility and during times of political strife? Perceptions of these
permeable social boundaries are important for addressing socio-cultural exchanges.

Historiography on Russification and the Finnish-Russian Relationship

41

Russification occupies a significant place in historiography on the Finnish-Russian
relationship. Russification was a policy provoked by a reactionary mentality in Russian political
life, especially after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. This campaign involved the
curtailment of traditional rights, particularly with regards to self-government, in Russia’s western
borderlands. Scholars have made comparisons between the situations in Polish, Baltic, and
Finnish lands on the grounds that these territories had their own respective laws, customs,
institutions, social organizations and religions. Finland, for example, was allowed to retain most
of its political and legal institutions established by its former Swedish rulers. Because Peter the
Great and his successors who incorporated these territories into the Russian empire had intended
for the institutions in these lands to serve as models for the rest of the empire, imperial
authorities needed strong justification for imposing Russian norms on these recently acquired
territories. The ruling classes in these regions thus retained their special rights and privileges

41

This historiographical review deals with a selection of works most relevant for this
dissertation. For a more complete survey of Finnish history, see David Kirby, A Concise History
of Finland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), John Wuorinen, A History of
Finland (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), Eino Jutikkala and Kauko Piirinen, A
History of Finland (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1962), and Anatole G. Mazour, Finland
Between East and West (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1956).
19

well into the middle of the nineteenth century, when imperial governance took a more
42

conservative turn.

Edward C. Thaden’s edited volume, Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland,
offers a systematic analysis of similarities and differences in Russian policies in the western
fringes of the Russian empire. Contributors to this volume provide a complex view of
interactions between Russians and Germans, Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Swedes and other
minority nationalities in the region. Rather than treating Russification simplistically as an
ideologically driven campaign espoused by Great Russian chauvinists, Thaden and his
colleagues consider three different aspects of Russification: the unintended structural integration
of imperial center and periphery that resulted from changes made during the period of Great
Reforms, administrative necessities, and cultural considerations.

43

These interpretations allow us

to consider Russification in the context of modernity and modern statecraft.

42

Thaden, Russia’s Western Borderlands, 3 and 231. Janet Hartley has argued that Russian
Tsars’ plans to use institutions and social organizations in Poland and Finland as models for the
rest of the empire to imitate should not be taken too literally. She contends that Alexander I used
expressions such as constitution, nation, rights of man, and liberty without deep awareness of
their underlying meaning and significance. This meant that although Alexander acknowledged
rights and privileges of subject peoples, he did so only insofar as these provisions agreed with
the general imperial decrees and laws. See “The ‘Constitutions’ of Finland and Poland in the
Reign of Alexander I: Blueprints for Reform in Russia?” in Finland and Poland in the Russian
Empire: A Comparative Study, ed. Michael Branch, Janet Hartley and Antoni Maczak (London:
University of London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1995), 41-43. There are
also significant differences between these different parts of the western borderlands. Norman
Davies cites the growing strength of Polish nationalism after the three partitions of Poland as one
significant factor that made Polish nationalism more of a threat to imperial authorities than
Finnish cultural nationalism. Poland, as well as the Baltic lands, was in a much more precarious
strategic position for the defense of the Russian Empire. The ideology of pan-Slavism did not
apply in Finland or the Baltic lands. The strength of the Catholic Church and its widespread
reach in Europe was a concern that Russian authorities did not have about Lutheranism in
Finland and the Baltic Provinces. See “Prologue,” in Finland and Poland in the Russian Empire.
43
Thaden, ed., Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 8-9.
20

C. Leonard Lundin's study of Russification in Finland reveals that a more complex factor
than Russian nationalist ideology is required for explaining the course of Russification in Finland
at the end of the nineteenth century. He argues that while Alexander III was implementing more
centralizing policies in the Baltic provinces, he was initially inclined to accommodate Finnish
privileges to a certain extent because he did not see the Russian-Finnish imperial relationship as
one that needed serious reconsideration. However, when the Finnish Diet and Senate, the main
legislative and administrative bodies in Finland, became more confrontational in their dealings
with imperial authorities, the Tsar sided with his advisors. Russia’s precarious geopolitical
position in Europe compounded the problem: in the decades following the Crimean War,
supposedly neutral Sweden became increasingly drawn into British and German spheres of
influence. Strategic factors, combined with Russian officials' insistence that previous Tsars never
guaranteed Finnish autonomy, compelled Tsarist authorities to push forward with centralizing
policies in Finland.

44

Scholars of Finnish history maintain that while Russian authorities initially sought to
garner support from the local ruling elites as a strategy for maintaining political stability in
Finland, they came to see advantages in strengthening the role of Finnish speakers to mitigate
Sweden’s influence over the Grand Duchy.

45

Russian authorities encouraged the development of

a distinctly Finnish national culture. The nineteenth century Fennoman movement, which
derived its inspiration from Romantic nationalism via German lands and Scandinavia, promoted

44
45

Lundin, “Finland, ” in Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 379.
Jutikkala and Piirinen, A History of Finland, 202.
21

46

the Finnish language and Finnish folklore.

The paradox of Russification is that while the

imperial authorities were weary of the negative effects of Finnish nationalism on the integrity of
the empire, it was imperial authorities themselves who had cultivated Finnish cultural
nationalism during the early years of the empire’s reign in Finland.

47

Lauri Puntila treats Russification as relative to Finnish nationalism in the nineteenth
century. He traces the development of various nationalist parties in Finland, and focuses on their

46

Works of literary figures such as Elias Lönnrot, J.L. Runenberg and J.V. Snellman gained
widespread popularity among the educated Finnish reading public. Lönnrot founded the Finnish
Literature Society in 1831 as a vehicle to promote Finnish culture among the Swedish speaking
elite in Finland. In 1835, Lönnrot published the Kalevala, a collection of folk poems based on
oral traditions in eastern Karelia. Although the collection was initially poorly received, by the
middle of the century it was hailed by scholars as the epic of the Finnish people. In the 1840s and
1850s, Runenberg penned the series of poems, Tales of Ensign Ståhl, which recounted the
Russo-Swedish war of 1808-1809 and lauded Finnish heroism in contrast to Swedish
incompetency. Snellman is considered to be the father of modern Finnish nationalism because he
was active in galvanizing the educated classes to adopt and enhance the native language of the
Finnish-speaking masses.
47
Miroslav Hroch accounts for this narrative in his three-phase model of national development.
The first phase (middle of the eighteenth century to the 1820s) entailed a renewed concern by a
group of intellectuals for studying the language, culture and history of the suppressed minority.
During this period, intellectuals became increasingly interested in Finnish language and culture,
and this spirit prevailed after Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1809. Hroch
marks J.V. Snellman’s patriotic program from the 1820s to the 1840s as a significant landmark
for the beginning of the second phase, which involved galvanizing widespread public support for
the national movement. In the Finnish case, favorable conditions created by Alexander II helped
give the movement a mass character by the 1870s. Hroch considers the 1870s to 1880s as the
final phase, where national consciousness has become the concern of a broader segment of the
masses and the national movement began to have a firm organizational structure across the
national territory. The Finnish national movement was able to resist Russification because of the
political circumstances under which Finnish nationalism developed during the first two phases.
The degree of autonomy granted to Finland facilitated mutual interdependence among the
inhabitants of Finland, and this interdependence intensified when there was a need to defend this
autonomy from Russificatory programs. Animosity towards the Russian regime during the most
intense years of Russification helped bring Swedish and Finnish speakers together against a
common Russian enemy. See Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A
Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller
European Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 62-63 and 73-75.
22

fluctuation between cooperation and competition with each other in dealing with perceived
Tsarist oppression. First, he sets up the rise of Finnish nationalism as an impetus for
Russification policies. He argues that Governor General N.I. Bobrikov’s zeal in eradicating all
traces of Finnish autonomy was influenced by separatist sentiments he observed among the
minority nationalities. Puntila then addresses the response of various nationalist groups to
Russification. He traces the competition between the ‘Old Finns,’ a nationalist group that held a
more conciliatory stance towards the autocracy, and the Young Finns, who were discontent with
48

the Old Finns’ seeming inability to preserve Finnish autonomy in the face of Russian power.
This conflict brought to light the question of what it meant to be Finnish.

Lundin’s interpretation of Russification in Finland also includes internal political schisms
as part of the analysis. Lundin observes that in the latter half of the 19th century, Finland was
divided along three lines: one between rural landowners and landless peasants, one between
industrial workers and their bourgeois employers, and finally, the most important cleavage was
between the tradition political, economic and cultural elite consisting of a mostly Swedish
speaking aristocracy and a Finnish-speaking corps of bourgeoisie, intelligentsia and prosperous

48

L.A. Puntila, The Political History of Finland 1809-1966 , trans. David Miller (Helsinki:
Otava, 1974), 61 and 63. Osmo Jussila’s work also addresses Russification and the development
of Finnish nationalism in the same plane of analysis. He provides a narrative of Russification as
a restrained and pragmatic response to the dilemmas of integrating a vast empire. When the
Finns actively protested against imperial decrees, Tsarist authorities relied on the collaboration
of Finns whom Russian bureaucrats believed to be loyal to the empire. Within this narrative,
Jussila reveals the intricate relationship between Finnish politicians and Tsarist authorities, and
between the workers’ movement and the nationalist movement. When these intricacies are taken
into consideration, the direct effects of and reactions against Russification on Finland’s
immediate post-1917 development become more complicated. See Nationalismi ja vallankumous
venäläis-suomalaisissa suhteissa 1899-1914 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1979).
23

peasants who were rising in political importance.

49

By the last decade of the century, the

mounting tension between the Swedish-speaking conservative aristocratic camps and the
Finnish-speaking liberal camps kept Finland divided even as Russificatory policies became more
50

pointed.

Additionally, the landless peasants, a significant proportion of the disenfranchised and

disgruntled people, were particularly susceptible to Russian officials’ propaganda efforts. These
peasants bought into rumors, spread by soldiers in Finland and by itinerant peddlers from
Russian Karelia, that Russian support for parceling out land to the landless was contingent upon
the extension of Russian law into Finland.

51

Tuomo Polvinen further reveals the ideological conundrums that mired Russian officials'
attempts to centralize administration of multiple nationalities in the periphery. He argues that
Russia, as an aspiring imperialist power, sought a more unified internal policy in order to
compete successfully with the other European powers. For the imperial authorities, “separatism
in border territories could seriously jeopardize foreign policy, and therefore had to be

49

Lundin, “Finland,” in Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 399. Risto Alapuro’s
State and Revolution in Finland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 19-21 makes
similar assertions about these social cleavages in Finnish society. It is important to note that
while the peasantry was made up of mostly Finnish speakers, not all Swedish speakers in Finland
belonged to the land owning classes. At the end of the 18th century, most of the 15% of the
Swedish-speaking population of Finland was engaged in farming and fishing in the coastal
regions. Although land was an important indicator of wealth, because relations of production
were never completely feudalized in the Swedish realm, peasants did hold some property. This
meant that the nobility’s dominance was not as strongly based on landownership as in Central
and Eastern Europe. Instead, the nobility’s central role in bureaucracy was a stronger
contributing factor to their dominance.
50
Lundin, “Finland,” in Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 405.
51

Ibid., 416.
24

eliminated.”

52

Governor General N.I. Bobrikov saw the Grand Duchy as some strange

borderland where the local population actively sought to segregate the Russian population and
53

render the latter second class citizens.

Polvinen paints a picture of Bobrikov as a zealously

chauvinist imperial administrator committed to the idea of a “Russia, One and Indivisible.”

54

The above works deal with Russification as a political issue that mattered to the
population at large only when the elites were able to convince people that this imperial policy
was a threat to their way of life. The extent to which the tense political atmosphere of the late
nineteenth century actually intervened with everyday life in the Karelian Isthmus dacha places,
and the degree to which people considered dacha life as a Russian imperialist incursion into
Finnish territory remains to be explored. If Russification was seen by Finns as an oppressive,
imperialist course of action, how locals interpreted the economic and cultural benefits that came
with these dacha places, and the way they reacted to the mass displacement of Russians in
Finland after 1917, should tell us something about the way people made sense of empire, identity
and nation- and state-building.

Leisure and Culture in Finnish-Russian Contacts
Several seminal works on the dacha are relevant for this dissertation. Stephen Lovell’s
Summerfolk skillfully illustrates the rich history of the dacha, the Russian summer home, as a
social and cultural institution. Rather than accept the Russianness of the dacha as a given, Lovell
interrogates the social, cultural, and political contexts that made the dacha a particularly Russian
52
53
54

Polvinen, Imperial Borderland, 268.
Ibid., 74.
Ibid., 17.
25

phenomenon. He illuminates how the extraordinarily acute urban stresses in late imperial Russia
and the impossibility of recreating suburban enclaves similar to the ones that existed in Western
Europe contributed to the dacha’s popularity among Russian families of varying household
income.

55

He also emphasizes the lack of conditions necessary for the creation of a middle class

in Russia as a compelling reason for examining why the middle class label was so often applied
to the dacha dweller. In doing so, Lovell calls for a re-examination of political, economic, social
and cultural boundaries that colored perceptions of Russian life.
Anthropologist Melissa Caldwell addresses related issues in Dacha Idylls, a more
contemporary ethnographic study of Russian dacha life. Her work focuses on dacha life as a
central ordinary part of everyday life in Russia at different levels of society.

56

She uses literary

references from the late imperial period, personal interviews and participant-observer methods to
interrogate why Russians in the Soviet and post-Soviet era had such strong attachments to the
dacha. She considers why Russians see activities common in other cultures, such as connecting
with nature, cultivating hobbies and forming neighborhood networks, as unique to their own
society. In doing so, she demonstrates the peculiarity of the dacha as a Russian phenomenon in a
larger context of leisure and culture.
Studies on leisure in a Russian context are helpful for examining the significance of
Finnish-Russian contacts because dacha life is one among several aspects of social-cultural
exchanges in a recreational context. Louise McReynolds’ Russia at Play explores the growth of
leisure activities among the Russian middle class in the late imperial period as a reflection of the

55
56

Lovell, 6 and 61-62.

Melissa Caldwell, Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2011), 4.
26

evolution of Russians’ perceptions of themselves in society.

57

Her examination of theater life,

sporting activities and tourism reveals both cosmopolitan and national aspects embedded in
Russian middle class attitudes. Anne Gorsuch’s work on post-Stalin era tourism, although
focusing on a very different temporal and political context, is nonetheless insightful for
examining how travelers related to physical space and notions of the domestic and the foreign,
especially in a political entity that covered almost as much territory as the Russian Empire.

58

Neither of these works deals with the dacha in substantial detail, but they are influential because
they question the treatment of leisure and travel as marginal aspects of social and cultural
development.
Lovell and Caldwell raise interesting questions about the nature of dachas vis-à-vis other
cultures. If the dacha is indeed such a particularly Russian social and cultural phenomenon, what
did it mean for Russians to establish dachas in places where the local population did not share
their social and cultural legacy? How did non-Russians respond to the incursion of a particularly
Russian institution on their soil? These questions are important for examining the histories of
Finland and the Baltic lands since the nineteenth century dacha boom encroached upon these
territories. Scholars collaborating with researchers at the University of Helsinki have compiled
59

an edited volume that addresses the manifestation of dacha life in the Baltic region.

57

Louise McReynolds, Russia at Play: Leisure Activities at the End of the Tsarist Era (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2003), 4.
58
See Anne E. Gorsuch, All This World is Yours: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad after
Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
59
Natalia Baschmakoff and Mari Ristolainen, ed., Dacha Kingdom: Summer Dwellers and
Dwellings in the Baltic Area (Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2009).
27

Contributors to this volume also acknowledge the particularly Russian aspects of dacha life.

60

They emphasize Russian artists’, musicians’ and writers’ contribution to local towns in Finland
61

and the Baltic lands, and the inspiration that the seaside landscape offered these intellectuals.
These works examine the Russian dacha communities in the Baltic region as an accepted

outcome of St. Petersburg’s expansion, and they acknowledge the entrenchment of the dacha in
this region. However, they do not delve into the details of how these dacha communities
intersected with everyday aspects of local life.
Vilho Hämäläinen’s overview of the dacha phenomenon deals with the political
implications of Russian dacha life in Finland. His work underscores policies in the Grand Duchy
of Finland in the latter half of the nineteenth century that opened up opportunities for Russians to
acquire properties along the Gulf of Finland. Hämälainen examines how the political and
economic aspects of the dacha communities influenced political decisions in Finland. He
contends that Finnish political authorities made decisions out of the perception that the dacha
settlements in Finland were tied specifically to Russian imperial interests.

62

The presence of

these dacha communities and the question of whether Russian owners of Finnish property could
60

Nina Kauchtschishwili, “Dacha kak simvol russkoi zhizni” and Valentina Gavrishina,
“Dachnaia zhizn’ kak sotsiokul’turnoe iavlenie” in Dacha Kingdom. Kauchtschishwili examines
depictions of dacha life in Turgenev’s work as well as demands for dacha space among Russians
abroad. Gavrishina notes the way St. Petersburgers in the late nineteenth century increasingly
came to equate dacha life as a sign of better living conditions and upward mobility.
61
See Elena Hellberg-Hirn, “Dachnyi al’bom Chukokkala kak igra v kul’turu,” Maija Könönen,
“Joseph Broadsky’s Poem Kellomiaki: A Lived Landscape and a Symbolic World of Signs,” and
Sergei Issakov “Dachnye mesta na Narvskom vzmor’e: otrazhenie v literature in iskusstve,” in
Dacha Kingdom.
62
Vilho Hämäläinen, Karjalan kannaksen venäläinen kesäasutus ja sen vaikutus Suomen ja
Venäjän suhteiden kehitykseen autonomian ajan lopulla (Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto, 1974),
56. See also, and "Vanhan suomen venäläiset huvila asukkaat,” in Pauli Kurkinen ed., Venäläiset
Suomessa (Helsinki: Studia Slavica Finlandensia, 1984).
28

retain their property rights became a dilemma for authorities in independent Finland, especially
in their relationship with a post-imperial Russian state in flux.

63

These political questions in

Hämäläinen’s work do not address the everyday interactions in the dacha communities, but they
form an important backdrop for investigating issues of interethnic contact.
This dissertation relates to more recent research outside the field of political history that
deals more thoroughly with contacts between Finns and Russians. Ben Hellman has noted that in
the realm of arts and literature there was no lack of cultural bridge builders among Finns and
Russians. The achievements of Russian culture during the years 1809-1917 had richly rewarding
64

consequences for the Finnish cultural elite.

The benefits of Russian cultural life for Finland

notwithstanding, scholars of literature have also portrayed Russians as living lives parallel to
Finns in the Grand Duchy. Temira Pachmuss, for example, in emphasizing the rich legacy of
Russian literary figures in Finland, has commented that Russians were never integrated with the
65

native population.

These views suggest that a closer examination of actual contact points and

the nature of the Finnish-Russian cultural relationship is necessary for uncovering why, in spite
of bridge building efforts, some Russians still felt alienated from Finnish life.
Svante Kuhlberg’s edited volume on Russian commercial life in Helsinki emphasizes the
vibrancy of Russian merchant life in the Grand Duchy. Kuhlberg argues that the Russian
merchant community had been well integrated into Helsinki society since the beginning of the

63

Hämäläinen, Karjalan kannaksen venäläinen kesäasutuskysymys maamme itsenäisyyden
kaudella (Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto, 1983), 23.
64
Ben Hellman, “The Reception of Russian Culture in Finland,” in Finland and Poland in the
Russian Empire, 212.
65
Temira Pachmuss, A River of Moving Tears: Russia’s Experience in Finland (New York:
Peter Lang, 1992), 231.
29

nineteenth century. Russian merchants were often patrons of the arts, and made an important
contribution to cultural life in the city. In this manner, Russian entrepreneurs added to Helsinki’s
mosaic image.

66

While articles in this volume note the presence of Russian business life in

Finland, authors examine developments only within this community, treating it as apart from
rather than a part of the overall economic scene in Finland. I extend this examination of Russian
commercial life in Finland by illuminating ways in which the Russian summer house industry
and the business enterprises associated with it became an integral part of the local economy in
the Finnish countryside.
Recently, two volumes edited by Timo Vihavainen have also contributed to the growing
body of literature that acknowledges the presence of Finnish-Russian contact. The twin
publications, Venäjän kahdet kasvot(Russia’s Twin Faces) and Monikasvoinen Suomi (The Many
Faces of Finland), explore Finnish perceptions of Russia and vice versa.

67

These two books, the

fruitful result of collaboration between Russian and Finnish researchers, underscore several
significant areas for exploring Finnish-Russian dialogue at the end of the nineteenth century:
high culture, military life, commerce, and linguistics are a few examples. Contributors to these
two volumes argue that points of Finnish-Russian contact remained well into the 1920s and
1930s, and reinforced stereotypes that Finnish- and Russian speakers had of each other. Evidence
of these links indicates that the common trope of Russification as the one imperial strategy that
solidified antagonism between Finns and Russians is too simplistic to explain the trajectory of
66

Svante Kuhlberg, Venäläiset kauppiat Helsingin historiassa (Helsinki: Helsingin Venäläisen
Kauppiasyhdistyksen hallitus, 2002), 9.
67
See Timo Vihavainen, ed., Venäjän kahdet kasvot: Venäjä-kuva suomalaisen identiteetin
rakennuskivenä (Helsinki: Edita, 2004) and Olga Iljuha, Aleksei Tsamutali, and Timo
Vihavainen, ed., Monikasvoinen Suomi: venäläisten mielikuvia Suomesta ja suomalaisista
(Helsinki: Edita, 2009).
30

Finnish-Russian relations from the end of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth
century.
My analysis builds on efforts in the above-mentioned works to confirm the existence of
Finnish-Russian contact, and seeks to address the meaning of such interaction. I investigate how
these points of contact prompted individuals to question what constituted the boundaries of
belonging in a social and political community. My work contributes to the existing
historiography by illuminating ways in which social, economic and cultural interaction between
Finns and Russians complicated the notion of social boundaries at the end of the nineteenth and
beginning of the twentieth century. Although these interactions were somewhat limited, their
persistence suggests that boundary crossing can take place against dominant political currents,
and that attempts to limit these encounters have unintended consequences for both state actors
and for individuals at the grassroots level who attempted to initiate or respond to these contacts.

Outline and Chapter Organization
The first chapter of my dissertation, “Dacha Settlements in Finland and Questions of
Empire,” investigates the intersection of spatial and political aspects of the imperial situation in
Finland. It considers the extent to which the growth of Russian dacha places in Finland was part
of a larger imperial experience. It surveys nineteenth-century travel accounts to probe whether
visitors to the Karelian Isthmus considered the villages in the region as suburban extensions of
St. Petersburg. It employs documents from the Russian Council of Ministers to trace how the
massive flow of Russian subjects to an autonomous province in the empire exposed
contradictions and tensions in various aspects of imperial rule.

31

Chapter Two, “Everyday Encounters and Interdependence through Dacha Space,”
examines interstitial spaces for social contact. It explores different kinds of economic
relationships and their significance for interethnic exchanges. Memoirists recounted fights
between Finnish and Russian pupils but also numerous instances where Finnish farmers sold
produce to Russian visitors. Newspaper advertisements indicated that wealthy Russian families
often sought Finns for hired help. Police reports suggested that Finns did not always side with
their ethnic kin when squabbles with Russian neighbors arose. These sources substantiate ways
in which interdependent relationships can be both sources of cooperation and tension between
local Finnish villagers and summer visitors from Russia.
The third chapter, “Cultural Bridge Building through the Dacha,” is an examination of
the dacha zone as a cultural space. It investigates how various social and cultural institutions
such as religion, voluntary society, and the artistic milieu mediated interethnic ties. I examine
church documents from Orthodox and Lutheran parishes in the Karelian Isthmus, literary
anecdotes, and memoirs to address how ethnic stereotypes were reinforced or deconstructed
through cultural institutions. I argue that cultural institutions and practices can strengthen ties
between diverse groups of people, but they can also lead to a community’s isolation and
reinforce inaccurate stereotypes of other groups of people.
The fourth chapter, “Crime and Terror in the Dacha Zone,” examines the dichotomy of
banality and volatility in dacha space. It examines why the Karelian Isthmus dacha communities
played dual roles as sites of leisure and respite and as preparation grounds for clandestine
political activities. This chapter is set in the context of the rise of revolutionary terror and the
political turmoil of the 1905 Revolution in Russia. It reveals how Finland’s legal position in the

32

Russian Empire, combined with the nature of social interactions associated with dacha life in
Finland, contributed to the duality of the Karelian Isthmus dacha places.
I further explore the dichotomy between stability and uncertainty in the Karelian Isthmus
dacha communities in the penultimate chapter, “Refuge in the Dacha Land: Ethnicity and
Refugee Management.” This chapter examines the effects of the intersection between politics
and personal relationships. From 1918 to 1922, war and revolution in both Finland and Russia
produced scores of refugees fleeing from Russia to Finland and vice versa. The summer house
settlements in the Karelian Isthmus became the center of activity for authorities attempting to
68

manage the tide of refugees and displaced peoples.

I adopt Peter Gatrell’s consideration of

refugees as a group whose predicament “was created not just by objective circumstance, but also
by the gaze of politicians or professionals who sought in various ways to order refugee life.”

69

I

analyze letters individuals sent to aid agencies to investigate the role of ethnicity and nationality
in determining criteria for allotting refugee assistance. This chapter explores the importance of
social networks for refugees’ survival in ways that government officials did not anticipate.
The concluding chapter, “The Afterlives of Abandoned Homes,” deals with the Karelian
Isthmus dacha places as contested space. I use property claim appeals to illustrate a concrete case
where previous ties between Finns and Russians complicated Finnish state governance in the
1920s. Interdependency between Russian subjects who owned property in the Karelian Isthmus
and the local Finns they encountered made it at times difficult for the Finnish state to expropriate
Russian-owned property without negative consequences for those Finnish citizens who had the

68
69

Max Engman, Raja: Karjalankannas 1918-1920 (Helsinki: WSOY, 2007), 83.

Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 8.
33

most regular contacts with Russian acquaintances. This chapter demonstrates that although by
the 1920s the number of Russians residing in Finland had declined dramatically, the effects of
their previous relationship with Finnish contacts continued to resonate.
Each of these chapters deal with some aspect of liminality associated with dacha life.
These ambiguities stem from broader uncertainties related to social mobility, national identity,
and empire- and state-building imperatives. Although dacha life was only one aspect of the
Russian existence in Finland, a closer examination of this life reveals that Finnish-Russian
interactions were far more central to Finnish nation- and state-building and the construction of
social identities than is accounted for in the historiography on the Finnish-Russian relationship.

34

Chapter 1 – Dacha Settlements in Finland and Questions of Empire

In Finland, the Karelian Isthmus became a prime location for the expansion of Russian
summer house (dacha) settlements from St. Petersburg at the end of the nineteenth century.
Since this region had been under both Swedish and Russian rule over several centuries, it offered
a complex setting for interethnic contact long before Finland was incorporated into the Russian
Empire as the Grand Duchy of Finland. This part of Finland was home to Finnish, Swedish and
Russian speakers who adhered to both Orthodox and Lutheran faiths. A small minority of
1

Karelian-speaking peasants also called this area home. Seasonal and permanent workers in both
agriculture and industrial enterprises resided there. Noble landowners and peasant leaseholders
lived in close proximity. The railway line between Helsinki and St. Petersburg ran through the
Isthmus; thus, the area served as a geographical and metaphorical corridor between Finland and
2

Russia. When the growth of the dacha settlements reached its height at the end of the nineteenth
century, their presence highlighted significant administrative dilemmas in the region.

1

Karelians are Finno-Ugric peoples that have historically resided in areas around Lake Ladoga.
They speak a language closely related to Finnish.
2
The railway line between Helsinki and St. Petersburg ran from Riihimaki, a station several
kilometers north of Helsinki, and the Finland Station in St. Petersburg on the north bank of the
Neva River. The line was constructed from 1868 to 1870 with funds from both the Russian
imperial treasury and the Finnish Senate. Russian authorities were responsible for constructing
the section of the railway line from St. Petersburg to Beloostrov, the last station on the Russian
side of the Finnish-Russian customs boundary. The Finnish Senate funded construction of the
remaining portions of the line. After its completion, Finnish transportation officials administered
the entire railway line until 1917, when Finnish authorities turned over the Russian portion of the
route to their Russian counterparts. Finnish rail traffic was properly connected to the railway
system in the rest of the Russian Empire in 1913 when the construction of a railway bridge link
in St. Petersburg over the Neva River was completed. Over 11,000 Finnish workers were
employed for the construction of the St. Petersburg-Helsinki railway line. This project provided
much needed economic relief for a population that was still recovering from crop failure and
widespread famine between 1866 and 1868. See E. A. Balashov, Karel’skii peresheek: zemliia
35

Recent scholarship on empire has underscored the importance of examining situations
where empire becomes visible, either because of its contradictory, uneven and unsystematic
3

heterogeneity, or as a result of conscious attempts to make it more manageable and rational.
This chapter explores how these dacha settlements exposed particular dilemmas of imperial
governance in political, spatial and legal terms. The Russian Empire functioned through a

complex system of differences based on territory, ethnicity and religion. Ann Stoler and Carole
McGranahan have argued that while imperial formations may have presented themselves as fixed
cartographies of rule, the workings of empire were in reality far more complex. Designated
boundaries were not the sole factors in which empires operated, nor were they the absolute
4

markers of governance and legitimacy. For example, the Grand Duchy of Finland had a separate
citizenship regime, and subjects of the Russian Empire had to apply for citizenship in the Grand
5

Duchy in order to access the same civil rights as their Finnish peers. Since territory constituted
just one of several reference points in the ideology and practice of empire, regions should
therefore be treated as historical categories that produced new narratives of self-description,

neizvedannaia, kraevedcheskoe izdanie (St. Petersburg: Geza Kom, 1996), 31-32, and David
Kirby, A Concise History of Finland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 109.
3
Ilya Gerasimov, Jan Kusber and Alexander Semyonov, ed., Empire Speaks Out: Languages of
Rationalization and Self-description in the Russian Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 25. See also
Ann Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter C. Perdue, ed., Imperial Formations (Santa Fe:
School for Advanced Research Press, 2007).
4
Ann Laura Stoler and Carole McGranahan, “Introduction: Refiguring Imperial Terrain,” in
Imperial Formations, 6.
5
Prior to 1809, when Finland was a province in the Swedish realm, all Finns were considered
Swedish subjects and citizens. After Sweden ceded Finland to the Russian Empire in 1809, a
separate citizenship was established to distinguish Finns from Russian subjects. Subjects of the
Russian Empire “could acquire Finnish citizenship only according to the Finnish law of
naturalization. The law thus placed the Russians in the same category with other aliens.” See
John H. Wuorinen, A History of Finland (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 123.
36

rather than as products of present day geographical mental mapping that reproduce binaries of
6

empire or nation-centric boundaries.

The newer historiographical impulses on the imperial experience can be applied to the
Russian Empire’s relationship to the Grand Duchy of Finland. While an official customs
boundary separated Finland from other parts of the empire, the geographic markers of this border
7

were not the sole indicators of Finland’s unique status within the empire. This customs
boundary was given meaning when combined with other legal and political factors that guided
imperial governance. This situation served as an example of how “gradations of sovereignty and
8

sliding scales of differentiation” served as a hallmark feature of imperial formations. The Grand
Duchy of Finland and its inhabitants were rarely referred to as colonized or conquered peoples,
but this did not mean that Finland’s autonomous status was fixed and taken for granted. When
the intersection between the political, social and territorial aspects of empire is taken into
consideration, a more complex picture of how subjects experienced empire emerges.
6

Gerasimov, Kusber and Semyonov, ed., Empire Speaks Out, 13-15. See also Jane Burbank,
Mark von Hagen and Anatolyi Remnev, Russian Empire: People, Space and Power
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007) for another discussion of territoriality within a
larger theoretical framework on empire.
7
The customs border between Russia and Finland was originally removed in 1808-1809, but
was reinstated in 1811 to avoid having goods from the rest of Europe enter Russia via Finland
duty-free. See Erkki Pihkala, “The Finnish Economy and Russia, 1809-1917,” in Finland and
Poland in the Russian Empire: A Comparative Study, edited by Michael Branch, Janet Hartley
and Antoni Maczak (London: University of London School of Slavonic and East European
Studies, 1995), 155-156 for more specific detail on the Finnish-Russian customs regime. The
Sestra/Rajajoki River served as the natural boundary in the Karelian Isthmus between Finland
and Russia, and it also served as the geographical marker for the Finnish-Russian customs
border. According to Kimmo Katajala, this border transformed into a modern customs system,
with many inspection stations established to regulate the flow of people and goods between the
Grand Duchy and the Russian Empire. See “Cross-Border Trade in Karelia from the Middle
Ages to the October Revolution 1917,” in The Flexible Frontier: Change and Continuity in
Finnish-Russia Relations, ed. Maria Lähteenmaki (Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2007), 82.
8
Stoler and McGranahan, “Introduction: Refiguring Imperial Terrain,” 9.
37

The expansion of the dacha settlements into the Karelian Isthmus offers an interesting
case for examining the spatial imagining of territory in an imperial context. Throughout the
entire period of Russian rule, even during the height of administrative and cultural Russification
at the beginning of the twentieth century, Russian colonization of Finland in the purest sense of
the term – the establishment of settler colonies – was never an explicit goal of imperial
9

authorities. At the same time, the transplant of a very distinctively Russian middle class social
and cultural institution to Finnish soil easily lent itself to accusations of Russia’s imperialist and
colonialist designs for Finland, especially by Finnish nationalist contemporaries who saw the
presence of these dacha settlements as a threat to Finnish political autonomy. To what extent did
these dacha settlements represent or advance Russian imperial interests? In what ways did they
expose the problems and contradictions of imperial governance? How did these dilemmas
translate into social reality?
9

Edward Said distinguishes imperialism, “the practice, the theory, the attitudes of a dominating
metropolitican center ruling a distant territory,” from colonialism, “the implanting of settlements
on distant territory.” He argues that these two terms are closely related because colonialism often
stems from imperialist impulses. See Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books,
1993), 9. Willard Sunderland has commented that the complexities in late imperial thought in
Russia about the issue of colonization stemmed from the fact that the Russian lexicon had two
words that described similar processes: colonization (kolonizatsiia) and resettlement
(pereselenie). Kolonizatsiia referred “to the physical act of settling on ‘new’ land as well as to
the more overarching process of incorporating this land into orbits of colonial or imperial rule.”
The term colony (koloniia) referred to European settlements in non-European territories. In the
Russian case, this term referred to military and commercial establishments in borderland regions,
or to entire borderland regions not meant to be fully integrated into the empire proper but were
areas for potential economic exploitation. Pereselenie referred strictly to peasant resettlement
from the interior to the borderland areas specifically for agricultural reasons. However, the
distinction between these two terms became increasingly blurred in the latter decades of the
twentieth century because many of the territories to which resettlement took place were also
regions that imperial authorities saw as potential areas that the empire could exploit to further
Russia’s economic growth. See “The 'Colonization Question': Visions of Colonization in Late
Imperial Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 48, no. 2 (2000), 212.
Sunderland’s monograph, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian
Steppe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), analyzes the evolution of the concept and
processes of colonization from the Muscovite era to the late imperial period.
38

According to Vilho Hämäläinen, the Russian dacha settlements spread spontaneously into
Finland at a time when Finnish-Russian relations were relatively peaceful in the 1880s. Russian
property ownership in the Karelian Isthmus had its roots in the 1870s, when the Finnish Senate
sold land owned by the Finnish treasury to wealthy Russian nobles for private, individual
ownership.

10

Towards the beginning of the twentieth century, however, imperial military

authorities increasingly feared that St. Petersburg was under threat from the expanding German
military forces. They began to see the Karelian Isthmus shoreline as a vital strategic territory that
needed to be taken under control. Authorities therefore used the protection of Russian summer
residents in the Karelian Isthmus as a pretext for making territorial demands on the Grand Duchy
of Finland and incorporating the three parish districts with the highest number of Russian-owned
properties, Terijoki, Kivennapa and Uusikirkko, as part of the St. Petersburg Province for
11

military reasons.

In this sense, geopolitical perspectives on territory affected space because

external exigencies linked dacha life in the Karelian Isthmus to imperial authorities’ strategic
imagining of space. Jane Burbank and David Ransel have argued that not all people were
concerned with empire at the same time. Imperial regulations did not govern every aspect of
subjects’ lives, and a narrative of empire cannot be forced upon all constituent parts.

12

I contend

in this chapter that some aspects of empire were more relevant than others for the establishment
and growth of the dacha settlements. In turn, the increasing popularity of these dacha settlements

10

Vilho Hämäläinen, Karjalan kannaksen venäläinen kesäasutus ja sen vaikutus Suomen ja
Venäjän suhteiden kehitykseen autonomian ajan lopulla (Tampere: Tampereen Yliopisto, 1974),
30-32.
11
See Hämäläinen, “Karjalan kannaksen venäläisen huvila-asutuksen poliittinen,” Historiallinen
Aikakauskirja, vol. 67, no. 1 (1969), 5-19.
12
Jane Burbank and David Ransel, ed., Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 339.
39

in the Karelian Isthmus gave empire meaning particularly when they exposed the tensions
resulting from incongruence in imperial governance.
This chapter begins by examining the significance of Russian migration to, and
settlement in, the Karelian Isthmus prior to the height of the dacha settlements’ expansion near
the end of the nineteenth century. This section explores some of the administrative dilemmas that
imperial authorities faced when managing the movement of people across territories with
different sets of legal arrangements. Next, this chapter addresses the spatial dimension of empire
13

by examining the extent to which late nineteenth century travel literature

depicted the Karelian

Isthmus dacha towns as suburban extensions of the imperial capital region, and how movement
of people across the Finnish-Russian customs boundary may have complicated such views. By
addressing descriptions of the Karelian Isthmus dacha zone in spatial terms, this chapter exposes
the ambiguities in the way people thought about the geographical expanse of empire. It also
reveals contradictory imperial assumptions bounded in specific experiences associated with
particular places. Finally, this chapter will examine the significance of Russian subjects’ limited
access to civil rights in Finland, focusing particularly on how this issue affected those who
owned property in the Karelian Isthmus, but only resided there on a seasonal basis.

Before the Dacha Boom
To gain a full appreciation of the dilemmas of imperial governance that the dacha
settlements in the Karelian Isthmus exposed, it is important to consider the social landscape in
the region prior to the proliferation of these settlements at the end of the nineteenth century. The
13

I define travel literature as any kind of writing that deals with the multiple aspects of travel.
This includes descriptions of journeys and destinations in travelogues, newspaper accounts of
travelers’ experiences, guidebooks for tourists and other types of travelers, and print promotional
materials for tourism.
40

Karelian Isthmus was never an empty space discovered by dacha people, collectively referred to
in the Russian language as dachniki. In addition to the native Finnish- and Swedish-speaking
peasants, different kinds of migrants from Russia have also lived there at various points over the
14

course of several centuries.

These migrants contributed to the variegated ethnic and social

backdrop in the region through their activities and their engagement with locals. The way these
groups of people complicated various aspects of imperial rule sets the scene for assessing the
significance of these leisure settlements for empire.
One group of imperial subjects from Russia who settled in the Karelian Isthmus prior to
the dacha boom at the end of the nineteenth century consisted of employees of factories owned
by Russian noblemen. Sestroretsk, a parish town located near the customs boundary between the
Grand Duchy of Finland and Russia, hosted a munitions factory that was established in 1718.
Another such factory town was located in Raivola vllage, a settlement that hosted an iron works
factory established by Count Saltykov from the Orlov region in 1802.

15

These towns provide an

intriguing perspective on the relationship between the Russian Empire, the autonomous Grand
Duchy of Finland, the imperial subjects who worked in these towns and their descendants who
remained in these locales. These factory towns were established prior to the region’s
14

For example, Kyyrölä (present day Krasnosel’skoe) was a village located in middle of the
Karelian Isthmus, about 110 kilometers away from St. Petersburg, that became a Russianspeaking enclave. The village’s Russian population were serfs from Jaroslavl’ and Kostroma
who were resettled there in the beginning of the eighteenth century, after Russia had acquired the
Vyborg Province from the Swedish kingdom. The Kyyrölä Russians were granted Finnish
citizenship after Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1809, and the Vyborg
Province was handed over to the Finnish administration. However, they maintained their own
language, religion and cultural customs. See S. Karelin, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii (St.
Petersburg: n.p., 1913), 59-60.
15
The workers at this ironworks factory were serfs from the Orlov region who worked for Count
Saltykov. Jyrki Loima, “Palstan haltijat puristuksessa: Raivolan venäläiskylä sisä- ja
ulkopoliittisena kysymyksenä 1889-1930,” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja, Vol. 101, No. 3 (2003),
418-430 provides an overview of the history of the Raivola village settlement.
41

administrative transfer to the Grand Duchy, thus the administrative changes affected the lives of
these workers and their descendents. The legal quandaries that this group of migrants and their
descendants faced remained unresolved when dacha dwellers began arriving en masse. The legal
status of two different sets of Russian residents in this town therefore came into political
question around the same time at the end of the nineteenth century.
In 1820, after Vyborg Province had been incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Finland,
the Raivola ironworks factory ownership switched to the imperial military authorities, and the
factory was connected to the same administration as that of the Sestroretsk munitions factory. An
agreement between the Finnish Senate (the main governing body in the Grand Duchy of Finland)
and Ministry of Internal Affairs stipulated that imperial subjects working in Russian-owned
enterprises located in the territory of the Grand Duchy would be permitted to reside there
permanently under the jurisdiction of Finnish laws. This arrangement was in place until February
1867, when the Senate and the Ministry of Internal Affairs finalized the agreement to transfer
administration of the Sestroretsk village from Vyborg Province to St. Petersburg Province. This
new administrative arrangement allowed workers who held jobs at either factory to live in
Raivola under special administrative authority. Under these conditions, workers residing in
16

Raivola lived on agricultural land provided by the factory administration.

This modified arrangement was designed to ease administrative dilemmas related to
industrial enterprises that were closely linked to Russian imperial economic and strategic
interests. The decision reflected imperial authorities’ preoccupation with resolving specific
problems that stemmed from territorial changes between the Grand Duchy of Finland and the
16

RGIA, f.1361 op.1 d.43, ll.3-5. Statement from the Finnish Senate to Governor General N.I.
Bobrikov, October 17, 1902 outlining the history of administrative arrangements for the Raivola
village.
42

Russian empire in the past century. However, this situation posed a new dilemma for workers
who moved between the Sestroretsk and Raivola factories. Both were under the same system of
administration in terms of ownership, but one of them was now located in a village under the
legal jurisdiction of a Russian province while the other was located in a village under Finnish
authority. In 1889, the Finnish Senate and the Vyborg Province Governor tried to remedy this
situation by giving permission to the Raivola factory workers to form their own autonomous
village district. According to this agreement, the residents could devise their own arrangements
for maintaining local order and safety, land and forestry management, sanitary measures and
assignment of public resources. Members of the village district could elect their own community
members to liaise with authorities from the Vyborg Province. The committee’s decisions were to
be submitted to the local provincial governor for final approval. If the board members were
17

dissatisfied with the governor’s decision, they could petition for an appeal within 30 days.

This

deal in theory offered a partial solution to the administrative difficulties.
In spite of this new arrangement, the Russian workers from the Raivola factory still did
not find the solution satisfactory, since this village district was only a de facto form of selfgovernance and did not have much legal weight. Although this village district could make
recommendations about certain aspects of public life, its residents were still bound by Finnish
law and local police authority. In September 1901, a group of 123 workers and former workers
from the Raivola ironworks factory sent a petition to Tsar Nicholas II, via the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, requesting that the village administration be transferred from the Kivennapa
parish district, in which it was then located, to the St. Petersburg Province. The petitioners

17

RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.512, ll.102-103. Vyborg Province Governor administrative order,
December 20, 1889.
43

argued that it would be more logical for both factories to be under the same territorial
18

administration.

The petition mentioned a list of various grievances affecting workers’ daily lives. Current
and former workers at the Raivola ironworks factory argued that that living under Finnish
administration caused them unnecessary duress. In spite of having settled in Raivola for several
decades, this group of people was still not familiar with Finnish legislation. They were not
exempt from paying the customs fees when traveling to and from St. Petersburg. The petitioners
also argued that the local Finnish inhabitants were not entirely friendly towards the Russian
workers, and local authorities were often unwilling to assist with their problems. Their biggest
complaint was that local Finnish authorities levied what the former workers considered illegal
taxes on the workers for use of local services such as hospitals and schools. The group argued
that it was unfair for them to pay these taxes since they never used these services. In their request
for the Raivola parish town to be transferred to St. Petersburg administration, the petitioners
mentioned that it would be easier for them to deal with practical aspects of life such as visiting
19

doctors, midwives, and medical clinics.

Not surprisingly, the Finnish Senate’s reaction to this petition was not positive, given that
political discussions in Finland at the time fixated on concerns about Russification and the
erosion of Finland’s autonomous status. A statement from the Senate to the Governor General
enumerated a host of reasons why Senate members were unwilling to accept such an
administrative change. The Senate reasoned that since the Raivola village was located farther
away from the Russian border than Sestroretsk, it would be logistically difficult to transfer its
18
19

RGIA, f.1361, op.1 d.43, l.2.

RGIA, f.1361, op.1 d.43, ll.19-21. Petition from members of Raivola Agricultural Community
to Emperor Nicholas II.
44

governance from its current Finnish parish district to the Russian province without significantly
disrupting administrative tasks in that district. New changes to territorial administration would
also complicate the situation for the Finnish residents of the village. While the Senate’s
statement acknowledged that imperial subjects were the overwhelming majority of the 2000
residents in the village, senators did not believe this was sufficient reason to consider major
administrative changes. The senators insisted that they could not ignore the situation of the 169
Finnish citizens who lived in Raivola. The report also pointed out that no fewer than 75 property
holdings in the village were owned by Finnish citizens, some of whom were Russian workers
who had taken Finnish citizenship. Some local Finnish farmers had also purchased part of the
ironworks factory’s land. Since these land holdings had been established under Finnish property
law, ceding village administrative authority to the Russian Empire might alter land holding
agreements, and create further complications.

20

Disagreement between the Finnish Senate and authorities in Russian imperial ministries
on the precise details pertaining to daily local administrative tasks underscored the ambiguities in
governance. Factories owned by imperial subjects, staffed by workers who came from Russia,
made up the majority of the inhabitants of a village in Finnish territory. It was not easy for
authorities to come to a conclusion on the political and economic rights of the village’s residents
that would be fair for both the minority and majority residents. It was also a complicated issue
because this discussion took place during a period when Russification was a volatile topic of
political discussion. Proposals initiated by Russian subjects concerning administrative changes in
Finnish territory likely evoked protectionist tendencies in the Senate’s reaction. Even though
20

RGIA, f.1361, op.1 d.43, ll.7-8. Statement from the Finnish Senate to Governor General N.I.
Bobrikov, October 17, 1902 outlining the history of administrative arrangements for the Raivola
village.
45

logistically it made sense for the Raivola villages’ majority Russian population to be able to live
under Russian administration, it became difficult for the Senate to ignore the urge to
accommodate the minority Finnish population in the village.
The village of Raivola is an interesting case because it was a community of Russian
migrant workers long before the influx of Russian visitors led to the establishment of a dacha
settlement in the same village. This was also a place where the Finnish-speaking population
formed a minority. As a Russian enclave within a region heavily populated by Finnish farmers
and peasants, it would be tempting to assume that the dacha dwellers who arrived at the end of
the nineteenth century blended seamlessly with the Russian workers. Although some of the
dacha people built their houses close to the Russian peasant workers’ homes, the petitioners did
not include the dacha dwellers in their communication with imperial authorities.

21

There is no

other direct evidence to indicate that the dacha folk and the iron works factory workers shared
22

similar concerns and supported each other in voicing their grievances to authorities.

The

number of landowners among the dacha dwellers from St. Petersburg continued to grow in the
last decade of the nineteenth century, but at the same time, they did not necessarily share the
same concerns as the peasant workers at the Raivola factory because the dacha dwellers were
mostly seasonal residents. This case shows that the uniformity of Russian communities in the
Karelian Isthmus towns should be questioned.
Another group of imperial subjects with a long standing presence in the Karelian Isthmus
should also be considered when examining the significance of legal differentiation based
21

The dacha settlement in Raivola was located four versts away from the railway platform, the
town’s locus. See Karelian, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii, 52.
22
See the brief summary of the Raivola settlement in N. Fedotov, Illiustrirovannyi putevoditel’
po dachnym, vodolechebnym i zhivopisnym mestnostiam Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1899),
15.
46

partially on territoriality. These were the Russian-speaking peasant traders from nearby
provinces who engaged in small scale agricultural trade and peddling in the Vyborg Province.
Although this group of people did not live permanently in Finnish territory, and affected the local
economy only on a minute scale, their transience underscored the lack of boundaries separating
subject people by ethnicity. The movement of these peasant traders and their contacts with
Finnish villagers exposed further policy dilemmas for governing authorities in the region after
the Vyborg Province’s reincorporation into the Grand Duchy of Finland.
For most of the nineteenth century, the legality of peasant trade across the FinnishRussian customs boundary remained vaguely defined. This was due to the perceived
insignificance of such activity. In March 1879, the Finnish Senate established a statute that
clarified the Finnish position on this issue. The statute stated that all Russian subjects wishing to
engage in small scale trade and peddling in Finland could be permitted to do so, providing that
they could prove they were Russian subjects with good moral standing in their home provinces.
At first glance this statute seemed to be favorable for the peasant traders since it designated their
legal rights to conduct their economic activities in Finnish territory. In practice, however, this
23

statute also raised several more practical problems.

In the early 1900s, communications between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the
Minister State Secretary of the Grand Duchy of Finland (the Finnish official liaison between the
Tsar, the Council of Ministers and the Finnish Senate) indicated that Russian authorities were
skeptical as to whether this statute encouraged peasant traders to continue their activities. A
Ministry of Internal Affairs memo to the Minister State Secretary in January 1901 explained that
the statute actually placed certain restrictions on peasant trade by requiring that the peasants first
23

RGIA, f.1291, op.45, d.2, l.1. Memo from the Minister State Secretary of the Grand Duchy of
Finland to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, January 5, 1905.
47

obtain appropriate documentation to prove their identity and their good moral standing. This
stipulation placed the responsibility of obtaining proper documentation on the peasants
themselves. Those unable to provide Finnish police such documents were considered to be
conducting illegal activity and were liable to arrest. Because these peasants were mostly transient
people, and did not often reside in the same place where they were born, it was often difficult for
these peasants to obtain the proper documentation required by Finnish authorities.

24

Although this issue did not pertain specifically to the dacha settlements, it nuances our
understanding of the Russian presence in Finland. Peasant peddling took place mostly in border
areas, particularly in East Karelia and in the Karelian Isthmus, and mostly under very informal
terms. This suggested that local people, whether Finnish- or Russian-speaking, engaged with
each other, and saw these transactions as a regular part of daily life. Research by Nils Storå
25

reveals these peddlers’ importance as cultural intermediaries in the border region.

Another

scholar has illustrated that in the first half of the nineteenth century, the peddler trade contributed
to economic vitality at the frontier, in spite of authorities’ arrest of individuals for violating
commercial law codes.

26

Peddler exchange among Russian, Karelian and Finnish peasants in the

Finnish-Karelian border region is an example of cultural exchange that took place outside the
purview of state control.
The fact that the Senate at the end of the nineteenth century initiated specific legal terms
under which this group of imperial subjects, who had a long history in the Vyborg region, could
24
25

RGIA, f.1291, op.45, d.2, l.2.

Nils Storå, "Ostkarelische Wanderhändler Als Kulturvermittler in Finnland.," Jahrbuch für
Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte, vol. 32 (1989) and "Vad Hade Ontrus I Sin Ränsel? Kring
Östkarelsk Gårdfarihandel I Finland," Historiska och Litteraturhistoriska Studier, vol. 70 (1995).
26
J. Vallinkoski, “Kaksi oikeudenkäyntiä reppureita vastaan 1847,” Kotiseutu, vol. 55, no. 1
(1964), 19-22.
48

engage in economic activities becomes more resonant when considering that at the same time,
27

more affluent Russian subjects were able to acquire immovable property in Finland.

This

brings up the question of the extent to which Finnish authorities saw Russian visitors and
migrants through the prism of relative social position. Did Finns and Russians have different
understandings of relative social standing? Was there special treatment for wealthier Russians,
and did this special treatment translate into hostility among Finnish residents against the
seemingly more economically influential Russian guests? To what extent did local Finnish
villagers consciously distinguish between different socio-economic categories of Russian
residents in their locales?

28

These questions are significant because the dacha was not strictly an

27

The notion of private property rights in the Russian Empire was relative new at the end of the
nineteenth century. Ekaterina Pravilova has noted the Russian Civil Code, established in 1835
was what Mikhail Speranskii had envisioned in terms of the notion of private property. Similar to
the French legal tradition, which was enshrined in Roman law, the Russian Civil Code in theory
recognized the right to private property. However, only nobles, merchants and clergy were
permitted absolute rights to private property. Use and disposal of land were the only kinds of
proprietary relations permitted for people outside of these social categories. See “The Property of
Empire: Islamic Law and Russian Agrarian Policy in Transcaucasia and Turkestan,” Kritika, vol.
12, no. 2 (2011), 356. While reforms made after the emancipation of serfs in 1861 technically
permitted peasants to claim part of the land to which they were previously attached, peasants
were not allowed to sell their land freely, and this situation led to a dependency of the peasantry
on creditors to pay off their loans for redemption. This is a point Yanni Kotsonis makes in
Making Peasants Backward: Agricultural Cooperatives and the Agrarian Question in Russia,
1861-1914 (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999), 17.
28
The boundaries of different social categories of Russian imperial subjects were rather difficult
to define because of changing social and political contexts. Elise Wirtschafter has commented
that in Russia since the reign of Peter the Great, social status was formally prescribed by
membership in a specific social estate, rank, and office legally prescribed in terms of tax and
service obligations. However, informal elements of social status identification included
occupational or educational differences within particular social categories. She has argued that
lack of clarity in these social designations meant that social status in imperial Russia was
actually quite indeterminate and flexible. The fluidity in social category definition also meant
that status was not necessarily tied to one’s economic standing or wealth. The ambiguity of
social status in Russia is best embodied in a group known as the raznochintsy, or people of
various ranks. See Structures of Society: Imperial Russia’s People of Various Ranks (DeKalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 1994), xii-xiii.
49

institute of the elite and the extremely privileged. Such questions prompt us to consider different
ways in which social mobility affected the nature of Finnish-Russian interaction in the dacha
communities. The issue of socio-economic status and interethnic contact will be taken up in next
chapter’s discussion of economic interdependency in interaction between Finnish and Russian
speakers in the Karelian Isthmus parish towns.

Dacha Space: Suburban Escape or Foreign Tourist Paradise?
Having examined the extent of Russian settlement in the Karelian Isthmus prior to the
height of the dacha boom, it is necessary to turn to a detailed discussion of the dacha as social
and cultural currency for Russian subjects. The political, social and economic profile of the
Vyborg Province contextualizes one important factor that contributed to the expansion of social
space for Finnish-Russian everyday interactions: the growth of Russian dacha communities that
linked the Finnish countryside to Russia’s imperial capital in St. Petersburg. The dacha had been
a socio-cultural institution among the Russian nobility since the seventeenth century, but by the
nineteenth century this phenomenon came to include a wide range of people in imperial Russian
urban society. Stephen Lovell has noted that by the last third of the nineteenth century most
Russian urbanites from craftsmen to office proletarians to aristocrats sought dachas.

29

With St.

Petersburg’s rapid growth due to industrialization, many of the city’s residents sought leisure
space outside the metropolis during the summer months to escape from the disorder of urban
society. Dachas soon dotted the Gulf of Finland shoreline in the Karelian Isthmus despite the
region’s location in the Grand Duchy of Finland, a part of the Russian empire that had a
significant degree of autonomy. Several centuries of political and economic ties between the
29

Lovell, Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2003), 68-69.
50

Vyborg Province and Russia paved the way for the development of dacha communities in the
Karelian Isthmus. By 1899, foreigners owned over 70,000 hectares of land in the Vyborg
30

province.

Table 3. Vyborg Province Land Owned by Foreigners
Year
Land Owned by Foreigners (hectares)
1890
59,462
1891
69,182
1892
59,524
1893
62,666
1894
71,077
1895
70,662
1896
67,195
1897
66,490
1898
70,484
1899
70,597
Source: Vilho Hämäläinen, Karjalan kannaksen venäläinen kesäasutus ja sen vaikutus Suomen
ja Venäjän suhteiden kehitykseen autonomian ajan lopulla (Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto,
1974), 99.

30

Official census records do not distinguish between Russian subjectsand other foreigners who
owned property in Finland. In 1892, local parish district chiefs in Vyborg province began
keeping records of Russian subjects who purchased or rented individual plots of land from larger
estates specifically for the use as summer homes. Records collected by Vilho Hämälainen show
that 4,312 Russian subjects registered with local parish district chiefs in Terijoki, Raivola,
Kukkala, Tyrisevä and Vammelsuu. These figures, however, only represent individuals who had
officially registered their properties with local authorities. Many more acquired property for
dacha use through more informal channels, or simply did not state summer house use as their
purpose for property purchase, and were thus not included in this set of data. See Tables 3 and 4.
51

Table 4. Number of Russian Summer House Registered with Vyborg Province Local Parish
District Chiefs, 1892.
Town
Number of Registrants
Terijoki
2,285
Raivola
706
Kuokkala
585
Tyrisevä
385
Vammelsuu
351
Total
4,312
Source: Vilho Hämäläinen, Karjalan kannaksen venäläinen kesäasutus ja sen vaikutus Suomen
ja Venäjän suhteiden kehitykseen autonomian ajan lopulla (Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto,
1974), 103
In the 1870s, the completion of the Helsinki-St. Petersburg railway line drew the Grand
Duchy of Finland closer to the Russian Empire in production and trade. It also directly
contributed to the dacha boom in the Karelian Isthmus in subsequent decades, since these new
transportation routes made this picturesque territory accessible to St. Petersburgers as well as to
Russians who worked in various cities and towns in Finland and the Baltic region.

31

During this

period, the Senate of the Grand Duchy of Finland even actively encouraged the sale of this land
to Russians. In 1891, the Finnish Senate passed a decree permitting Russian subjects from all
social estates, with the exception of those adhering to the Jewish faith, the right to purchase
property.

32

The Karelian Isthmus attracted middle class Russian subjects because the sale of land

in Finland was open not just to the aristocracy or nobility, but also to other social classes as well.
By contrast, in the rest of the Russian Empire, the majority of land at the end of the nineteenth

31

Natalia Bashchmakoff and Marja Leinonen, Russian Life in Finland: A Local and Oral
History (Helsinki: Studia Slavica Finlandensia, 2001), 29.
32
Finnish Acts and Decrees No.5, February 16, 1891.
52

century was still overwhelmingly held by the nobility, and it was more difficult for people of
33

lower social standing to acquire property.

Because the Karelian Isthmus was so attractive to prospective vacationers from Russia,
some towns sprang up in the 1870s and 1880s in places that had been sparsely populated.
Kellomäki, a tiny Finnish village located along the railway line between St. Petersburg and
Vyborg, grew rapidly as the site of a dacha settlement in the last decade of the nineteenth century
when St. Petersburgers began buying up land unsuitable for agriculture. Many buildings in this
34

locale were designed by prominent architects from the capital.

Schools, Orthodox churches

and theaters flourished in these parish towns as predominantly Russian cultural spaces for social
35

interaction.

The Russian Philanthropic Society in Finland (Russkoe blagotvoritel’noe

obshchestvo, hereafter RBO) opened a branch in the city of Vyborg within a few years of its
establishment in 1872, and it oversaw efforts to establish Russian schools and kindergartens in
smaller parish towns in the Karelian Isthmus.

36

Prior to the dacha boom in the 1890s and early

1900s, the only major railway station and customs checkpoint on the Finnish side of the border
was located at Terijoki. As rail traffic between St. Petersburg and these Karelian Isthmus towns
increased, transport authorities built more train stations, platforms and customs checkpoints near
these small villages on the Finnish side of the border.

37

The town of Terijoki blossomed during

the summer months. Kristina Rotkirch describes this town as “an area blessed with a mild
33
34
35

Lovell, 70.
E.A. Balashov, Karel’skii peresheek, 107.

While these cultural institutions were established by Russian speakers and had specifically
Russian characteristics, they also formed part of the social space for diverse Finnish-Russian
interactions. Chapter 3 will discuss the cultural aspects of dacha life in further detail.
36
See Sto let Russkomu blagotvoritel’nomu obshchestvu (Helsinki: VR Painatusjaosto, 1972).
37

Ester Kähönen, Entinen Terijoki (Kouvola: Teri-säätiö, 1982), 18.
53

climate and magnificent long sandy beaches which attracted people from all over Finland as well
as international summer visitors, among them mostly Russians from nearby St. Petersburg.” This
town was nicknamed the “Finnish Riviera,” and “was famous for its numerous spas, elaborately
carved wooden dachas and easy-going social life off and on the beach.”

38

In a span of a few

decades, the Russian summer vacationer had become part of the countryside landscape in the
Karelian Isthmus.
Stephen Lovell has argued that as a social and cultural institution, the dacha’s
development paralleled Russia’s urbanization and may be considered “a by-product of
urbanization thus analogous to forms of settlement elsewhere in developed world: suburban
zones colonized by the North American and European bourgeoisie, or indeed the country retreats
of leisure class.”

39

Did St. Petersburgers who frequented their dachas in the Karelian Isthmus see

this area as a foreign land, a borderland region, or simply as a suburban extension of St.
Petersburg? Spatial references to empire contribute to puzzling conceptual challenges. When
looking at the empire as a whole space, addressing constituent parts in terms of core and
periphery becomes problematic. Leonid Gorizontov has argued that the status of St. Petersburg
challenges these binary notions, since the position of St. Petersburg as an imperial center was not
40

universally accepted.

Karelia, including the Karelian Isthmus, is often referred to as an

outlying region (okraina), and the term is often associated with the idea of the imperial

38

Kristina Rotkirch, “Karelia through the Umbilical Cord,” in The Dacha Kingdom: Summer
Dwellers and Dwellings in the Baltic Area, ed. Natalia Baschmakoff and Mari Ristolainen
(Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2009), 400.
39
Lovell, Summerfolk, 1-2.
40

For Gorizontov’s full argument, see “The ‘Great Circle’ of Interior Russia: Representations of
the Imperial Center in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Russian Empire: Space,
People, Power (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
54

periphery. Yet the proximity of this region to the imperial capital is precisely what makes it
difficult to draw a concrete line between center and periphery. Julie Buckler has noted a similar
conceptual dilemma in discussing St. Petersburg’s relationship to its surroundings. She contends
that the use of terms such as environs (okrestnosti) and outskirts (okrainy) represent relationships
of inclusion and exclusion rather than concrete geographic locations.

41

The frequency with

which the dacha dwellers went back and forth between the Isthmus and the capital illustrates this
conundrum. The extent to which summer visitors from St. Petersburg considered their dacha
settlements in the Karelian Isthmus as rural suburbs of the growing metropolis and as an
extension of Russian territory is an intriguing question to pursue. It illuminates conflicting ways
in which Russian subjects saw the contiguity of empire as well as notions of the familiar and the
foreign.
Travel guides for tourists and dacha goers are insightful sources for addressing how
middle class Russians related to the Karelian Isthmus in emotive spatial terms. On the one hand,
this type of literature targeted people who were not particularly knowledgeable about this part of
the empire.

42

Travel guides are therefore limiting in what they can reveal about the people who

knew little about Finland. They also may not reflect the authors’ most sincere and astute thoughts
about Finnish life, since these guides were partially designed to promote travel to specific

41

Julie A. Buckler, Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2005), 158.
42
A few examples of these travel guides include A.A. Annikov, Putevoditel’ na Imatru (St.
Petersburg: n.p., 1887), G.A. Dzanshiev, Sredi balovnei i pasynkov prirody: vpetchatlenia i mysli
turista (Moscow: n.p., 1890), S.M Geikel, Kak puteshchestvovat’ po Finliandii (Vyborg: n.p.,
1914), K.B. Grenhagen, Putevoditel’ po vodolechebnym, dachnym i zhivopisnym mestnostiam
Vostochnoi Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1898), P.V. Gusev, Prakticheskii putevoditel’ po
gorodam, kurortam i zhivopisnym mestnostiam Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1908), S. Karelin,
Putevoditel’ po Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1913), V. Mainov, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii (St.
Petersburg: n.p., 1887), L.K. Timofeev, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii (Helsinki: n.p., 1915).
55

destinations and therefore provided only basic information. On the other hand, these guides were
read by people with an explicit interest in traveling to different parts of the empire, even if it was
for recreational rather than educational purposes. In the latter half of the nineteenth century,
tourism in Russia developed as a middle class phenomenon. The Crimea, home to many spas and
health resorts, was the locus of late imperial Russia’s travel industry. The advent of tourism in
43

the Baltic region was linked specifically to St. Petersburg’s growth.

Finland was one among

several attractive destinations for the typical bourgeois tourist, especially from St. Petersburg.
Travel guides were often one of the first sources of information for visitors to Finland, which
included both occasional tourists, people who regularly frequented the sanatoria and health
resorts in the Karelian Isthmus, and dachniki.
The content of travel guides is therefore suggestive for examining what writers thought
people should know about the Karelian Isthmus, as well as probing what preconceived notions
Russian travelers had of the region. As Louise McReynolds has observed, travel literature and
guidebooks were structured “in such a way that they prompted the reader to see him/herself
fitting into unfamiliar surroundings.”

44

In other words, they aimed to create the illusion of

familiarity out of mysterious places and situations. These books and pamphlets were also
compiled based on other travelers’ experiences, and they thus provide a clue to how people
attempted to make sense of the spatial relationship between the dacha zones in the Karelian
Isthmus and other parts of the Russian Empire.
A common theme across most travel guides on Finland is the emphasis on the different
rules and customs in Finland, and the fact that Russians in Finland did not have the same set of
43

Louise McReynolds, Russia at Play: Leisure Activities at the End of the Tsarist Era (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2003), 174 and 177-178.
44
Ibid., 182.
56

rights as Finns. One writer prefaced his travel guide with the remark that “the people, country,
nature, language and customs are all distinguished from that which exists in Russia.”

45

The

guides all mentioned the presence of an internal customs boundary between Finland and the rest
of the empire, and provided advice on how best to prepare for inspection at the customs
checkpoints. Many of these guides cited Russians’ inability to understand the Finnish and
Swedish languages as a reason for providing detailed information for prospective visitors to
Finland. These books and pamphlets often urged Russian travelers, as visitors to the region, to
respect these local rules. One travel guide, for example, made explicit reference to the notion that
Russian travelers to Finland were guests there. In this guide, the author did not make the
distinction between occasional tourists and dacha people who visited the Karelian Isthmus dacha
settlements on a regular basis. The notion of these towns as second homes for St. Petersburgers
was not always evident. Russian visitors were referenced as “travelers” (puteshchestvenniki), or
as “tourists” (turisty).

46

The author admonished travelers to behave with decorum, and to treat

the local people with respect. He commented that Russian tourists in the Karelian Isthmus towns
have tended to be too demanding of local people when visiting stores in the towns near the
railway stations and have ended up offending the locals. He suggested that the local people’s
47

attitudes towards the tourists and visitors depended on how the traveler behaved.

Although travel guides noted Finland’s special political status within the Russian empire,
and the language quite often referred to Finland as a particular land (strana), the literature
nonetheless emphasized Finland as a travel destination within the empire. Interestingly, some of
45
46

Geikel, Kak puteshchestvovat’ po Finliandii, 2.

Grenhagen, Putevoditel’ po vodolechebnym, dachnym i zhivopisnym mestnostiam Vostochnoi
Finliandii, 2.
47
Ibid., 5-6.
57

the travel guides promoted the cost-effective aspects of visiting Finland as opposed to other
destinations in Russia. One of the guide books even made an explicit comparison between travel
to Finland and to other popular tourist hotspots within the Russian empire: “One can travel to
Finland for three to four days with insignificant expenditures, but when one makes an excursion
to farther places, for example, to the Volga, to the Caucasus, and so on, tourists have to use up
more time and money.” The author also noted that while it was not entirely possible to directly
compare these vacation destinations, travelers’ impressions of Finland were just as nice as
recollections of other places.

48

The travel literature thus evoked a sense of imperial pride in

Russia’s vast expanse as well as the empire’s contribution to economic development in nonRussian territories. One guide mentioned that Finland offered many of the same comforts that
tourists would typically find in their journeys through foreign countries.

49

This comment is

intriguing because the author made a direct comparison to foreign lands while at the same time
implying that Finland was a place within the borders of the empire that could meet Russians’
travel desires. A different guide that specifically promoted visits to the Imatra waterfalls in
50

Finland explicitly referred to this landmark as “one of Russia’s finest picturesque attractions.”

Another travel publication commented on the economic Russification of communities in eastern
Finland that were the most popular with Russian tourists.

51

Much of the Russian economic influence on Finnish towns and villages stemmed from
the presence of dacha goers, especially during the summer months. Some of the travel guides on

48

Gusev, Prakticheskii putevoditel’ po gorodam, kurortam i zhivopisnym mestnostiam
Finliandii, 1.
49
Geikel, Kak puteshchestvovat’ po Finliandii, 1-2.
50
51

A.A. Annikov, Putevoditel’ na Imatru, 2.
S. Karelin, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii 37.
58

Finland, while generally recognizing Russian subjects as visitors, did indeed single out the dacha
locations as places where many Russian families had second homes during the summer months.
One guide, published in 1887, noted that in recent years the areas near the Terijoki and Kuokkala
railway platforms had become popular as places of summer settlement for St. Petersburgers.

52

The distinction between typical tourists and dacha folk was also evident in another travel guide.
L.K. Timofeev’s publication frequently referred to the dacha people as residents (zhiteli) in
several Karelian Isthmus towns.

53

In practical guide books published specifically for people wishing to find dachas in
Finland, there was a stronger emphasis on the notion of the Karelian Isthmus towns as places of
summer residence. Russian visitors were simply referred to as dacha folk (dachniki), rather than
as tourists or visitors.

54

This language implied a somewhat longer term presence of Russians,

especially St. Petersburgers, in these towns. One such guide mentioned that in recent years, it has
become increasingly difficult to find places to build or buy dachas in the towns near St.
Petersburg with a Russian population. The next available option, therefore, was for people to
find places in towns slightly further along the Finnish railway line where the Finnish-speaking
population lived. According to this dacha guide, these towns were just as suitable for building
summer homes.

55

Some regular tourist publications also allude to the sprawl of dacha properties

from St. Petersburg through Finnish territory. One such work, published in 1913, described the

52
53
54

Mainov, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii, 31.
Timofeev, 4.

Examples of these guides include N. Fedotov, Illiustrirovannyi putevoditel’ po dachnym,
vodolechebnym i zhivopisnym mestnostyam Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1899) and Tainino:
novaia dachnaia mestnost’ (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1911).
55
Fedotov, Illiustrirovannyi putevoditel’ po dachnym, vodolechebnym i zhivopisnym
mestnostyam Finliandii, 3.
59

St. Petersburg-Vyborg railway line as a route where recently constructed dachas with great views
of the seaside stretched “for many versts along the Gulf of Finland.” The writer referred to this
span of territory as a dacha zone (dachnyi raion), commenting that “each settlement [was]
practically indistinguishable from the previous.” He also noted that places in this region were so
56

close to the capital that many of the dacha people also stayed there through the winter.

These

travel guides implied congruence between ethnicity and territory, and made reference to Finland
as a different part of the Russian Empire, but did not necessarily describe the dacha zone as
particularly foreign.
The blurring of the foreign and the familiar in travel literature indicated that travel guide
writers saw dacha culture as a significant aspect of St. Petersburg urban life. One guide even
referred to Terijoki, located 50 kilometers from St. Petersburg, as a “dacha city” (dachnyi gorod)
that swelled to 40,000 Russian residents during the summers.

57

Although the dacha can be seen

as an alternative lifestyle to the stresses of the urban environment, a clear distinction between the
urban, suburban and rural cannot be easily drawn. As Lovell has stressed, the dacha also had
many vestiges of urban life and thus can also be viewed as an effort to “transplant urban
58

civilization beyond the city.”

These guides therefore implicitly acknowledged dacha culture as

a noticeable aspect of urban experiences.
Travel guides, however, offer only a partial view on the significance of the Karelian
Isthmus towns as summer settlements for the St Petersburg middle class. Given their objective to
provide tourist information and attract visitors to the destinations, it is not surprising that these

56
57
58

S. Karelin, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii, 48-49.
Timofeev, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii, 4.
Lovell, Summerfolk, 4.
60

narratives often romanticized the dacha zone as an idyllic place. These guides described the
Karelian Isthmus towns as peaceful, attractive places with fresh air. They emphasized public
safety, the rarity of public drunkenness and poverty, and the regular enforcement of law and
order by the village police. They depict native residents as friendly, accommodating folk who
welcomed the arrival of summer visitors.

59

Such depictions could be interpreted through a

framework of imperialist language. In characterizing this particular part of Finland as orderly and
peaceful, writers were possibly informing travelers from St. Petersburg that the unadulterated
natural playground was easily accessible to the metropolis’ residents without actually having to
travel to some exotic, primitive hinterland. These guides evoked positive emotions about the
Karelian Isthmus locales, but it was not always clear whether through the romanticized
descriptions they encouraged readers to think about these places as alternative homes.
Travelers’ own reminiscences about the Karelian Isthmus also indicated lack of
consensus among Russians on the extent to which the region was a foreign or familiar territory.
One traveler who wrote about his visit to Finland described his journey by train as such: “After
about an hour, one can admire the beautiful dacha architecture located among parks that are rich
in luscious vegetation, not far from the vicinity of the railroad…Further, until Vyborg, on both
sides of the railroad, coniferous forests stretch…In general, the route from St. Petersburg to
60

Vyborg appears uniform and indistinguishable.”

This traveler’s observation that Finns were an

honest people who had different habits and spoke an unfamiliar language, and his comment that
Finns loved their own land indicated he understood that Finland was not Russia. However, his
description of the landscape and the fact that he did not mention the customs inspection process
59

Fedotov, Illiustrirovannyi putevoditel’ po dachnym, vodolechebnym i zhivopisnym
mestnostyam Finliandii, 4.
60
N.S. Illarionov, Putevye zametki o Finliandii (Kharkov: n.p., 1886), 1-3.
61

required for all passengers on the St. Petersburg-Helsinki railway line suggested that he was not
spatially aware of where Russia ended and where Finland began. One tourist, who submitted a
travel description anonymously to the journal Novosti, hinted at the urban-suburban connection
between St. Petersburg and the dacha zone in the Karelian Isthmus. He commented that with the
approaching dacha season, all of St. Petersburg was preoccupied with the question of where in
the St. Petersburg environs people could find the right conditions for maintaining the dacha
lifestyle, given the city’s growing population. He remarked, “Such a corner exists. One could
61

find it a few hours away from St. Petersburg, in Finland.”

The writer expressed a sense that the
62

Karelian Isthmus dacha zone was a familiar space, even though it was located in another land.

Newspaper accounts offer similarly ambiguous views on the significance of dacha space
in Finland. One newspaper that catered specifically to dacha goers often published editorials that
referred to the Karelian Isthmus towns as a border zone. It emphasized the importance of these
dacha towns as summer homes for many St. Petersburgers. In reference to the town of Terijoki,
the newspaper mentioned that it was so close that it was practically a part of the St. Petersburg
sphere, but at the same time it was separated by a different language, culture, and religion, in
addition to customs controls. Although the dacha people’s primary interests lay at home in St.
Petersburg, the fact that many traveled to Terijoki for several consecutive years made it
61

Excerpt from the journal Novosti, 1901, No. 139 and 145, reprinted in Finliandskie
vpetchatleniia, zapiski turista (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1901), 1-3.
62
The mix of the familiar in the foreign is also prevalent in travel literature related to other
imperial and colonial situations. Victoria Thompson has noted that French renovations in the
Algiers port district can be seen as part of an attempt to visually impose a “natural” sense of
French authority on a newly colonized territory while attracting French tourism to the colony.
Many travelers were surprised by the familiarity of the landscape in the port city, even though
they also found the exotic natural aspects of the sea and the sun quite attractive. See “’I Went
Pale with Pleasure’: The Body, Sexuality and National Identity among French Travelers to
Algiers in the Nineteenth Century,” in Algeria and France, 1800-2000: Identity, Memory,
Nostalgia, ed. Patricia M. E. Lorcin (Syracuse: Syracuse University press, 2006), 22-23.
62

important for them to feel at home rather than as foreign guests. The editorial encouraged dacha
63

goers to form their own associations to discuss their needs with local authorities.

It was also

common to find letters to the editor where dacha dwellers expressed familiarity with the Finnish
environment. One letter writer claimed that the dacha goers often knew the most picturesque
64

places better than the locals did.

Dachnaia zhizn’, a popular magazine devoted to issues

concerning dacha life, reported that many local inhabitants in the dacha towns were actually exPetersburgers who had relocated to Terijoki, and were starting to turn the place into a real
home.

65

The terminology that newspapers used in reference to people leads to a variety of
assumptions. Most newspaper accounts of daily occurrences also employed the term “locals”
(mestnye) to refer to the Finnish villagers who lived in the Karelian Isthmus dacha towns. Ethnic
references to “Finnish” or “Swedo-Finnish” peoples were made when discussing what authors
believed to be ethnic traits based on common stereotypes. Newspapers tailored for people who
visited the dacha zones often referred to Finnish peasants as honest, hardworking folk, simple
and peaceful, who can be trusted as neighbors.

66

Russians were sometimes referred to as

travelers, but sometimes as visitors, or simply as dacha folk (dachniki), and rarely as settlers or
residents. They were identified as Russians when there was a need to emphasize the linguisticcultural differences between Finns and Russians. While the term “locals” did acknowledge the
permanence of the villagers who live there, it also left much to the imagination for who should
be considered a “local.” From these descriptions, it appeared that newspaper editors did not
63
64
65
66

Teriokskii dnevnik, June 9, 1913.
Teriokskii dnevnik, June 23, 1913
Dachnaia zhizn’, April 17, 1911.
Finliandskii vestnik, September 30, 1909.
63

identify the dacha towns strongly either as foreign tourist destinations or as places of secondary
settlement.
This combination of terminology indicates ambiguous views about the way the presence
of dacha settlements in Finnish territory was transmitted to the Russian reading public. The
inconsistent usage of ethnic and national categories and the prominence of the term “locals”
suggested that Russian observers writing about the Finnish dacha space envisioned Finland as a
place that could be both foreign and familiar, depending on the situation. When protests in
Finland arose over Russian schemes in the early 1900s to incorporate the dacha towns into the
St. Petersburg Province, newspapers catering to the dacha community urged readers not to be
caught up in the spirit of nationalist polemics that prevailed in the right-wing press. In contrast to
more conservative newspapers such as Novoe Vremya, which often pointed to the alienation of
Russians in Finland, these newspapers explained the administrative changes as necessary
logistical measures to ensure orderly local governance in the dacha zones, and not as a slate for
starting hostilities against Finnish neighbors.

67

These comments acknowledged differences

between local Finnish residents in the dacha towns the seasonal visitors from Russia, but did not
portray the relationship between these people as one where one group dominated the other.
The mixed messages in popular descriptions of Finland and the Karelian Isthmus as both
familiar and foreign is intriguing when juxtaposed with the official discourse on Finland’s
political status within the Russian Empire. Since the 1880s, educated conservatives with close
ties to government increasingly lamented the separateness of Finland from the Russian Empire
and lack of uniformity in Russian and Finnish legal provisions for protecting imperial subjects in

67

Finliandskii vestnik, November 30, 1909.
64

68

the Russian Empire.
zone.

69

1897.

70

Ministry of Finance publications referred to Finland as its own customs

Moreover, Finland was not even included in the first empire-wide population census in
Ample sources available to the Russian reading public emphasized Finland as a distinct

land; nonetheless, popular perceptions of Finland did not always correspond with the official
political discourse.
If emotive references to the Karelian Isthmus dacha settlements as an extension of St.
Petersburg suburbs remained vague, how did the practicalities of traveling between the
metropolis and the dacha zone affect people’s experiences? The customs inspection process is
one example where dacha goers seemed confused about the exact political-economic relationship
between Finland and Russia. The Grand Duchy of Finland was a part of the Russian empire, but
because of special arrangements with imperial authorities, it had a separate customs relationship
with the empire. The annual routine of visiting the dacha was different for St. Petersburgers
traveling to their vacation properties in Finland than for Moscow residents, who did not have to
traverse a customs boundary to travel to the outskirts of that city. The customs inspection process
for traveling from St. Petersburg to dacha settlements in Finland affected the summer visitors

68

Messarosh and Bobrikov have both written extensively about this topic. See P.I. Messarosh,
Finliandiia: gosudarstvo ili russkaia okraina? Znachenie osobykh uchrezhdenii finliandskoi
okrainy Rossiiskoi Imperii (St. Petersburg: V.V. Komarov, 1897) and Bobrikov, N.I.
Vsepoddanneishaia zapiska Finliandskogo general-gubernatora, 18981902 (St. Petersburg: Gos. Tip., 1902).
69
See, for example, P. Morozov, Finliandiia v torgovo-promyshlennom otnoshenii (St.
Petersburg: Ministerstvo finansov department torgovli i manufaktur, 1895), 61.
70
Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii 1897 g. (St. Petersburg: Izd.
Tsentral’nogo statisticheskogo komiteta Ministerstva vnutrennykh del, 1899). This census
included Poland and the Baltic lands, but excluded the Grand Duchy of Finland. In Finland,
statisticians began keeping census records in the 1870s.
65

significantly. Issues relating to customs controls between Finland and the rest of the Russian
Empire revealed how human mobility complicated territorial administration.
One travel guide mentioned that many of the dacha dwellers were not well informed
about the customs procedures involved in traveling between Russia and Finland. The author
noted that people were mostly unaware of information such as the kinds of goods they were
permitted to transport across the border, the customs duties that they had to pay on certain items,
71

and the overall inspection process.

Some of these dacha goers saw the customs inspection as

an absurdity, since they were traveling to places so close to home. A petition from a group of 129
dacha owners in the Terijoki parish district to the Minister of Finance in January 1881 stated that
many dacha dwellers in Terijoki and Kivennapa parish districts lived permanently in St.
Petersburg and traveled frequently to the Finnish towns for the summer. The petitioners argued
that the double Finnish and Russian customs inspection process inconvenienced them greatly
because of their frequent travels. They protested that the inspection procedures were
unnecessarily intrusive, since officials sifted through all of their belongings, including their
clothing and household items. They also complained that they could not take as much meat,
sugar, fruits and vegetables, coffee and spirits as they wished to Finland. The petitioners
suggested that a customs free zone should be extended all the way to Vyborg, since there were so
many dacha settlements between St. Petersburg and Vyborg. They requested that if a

71

N. Fedotov, Putevoditel’ po dachnym zavedeniiam v okrestnostiakh S. Peterburga i po
zheleznym dorogam (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1889), 118. Other general tourist guides that included
detailed information on the customs process include Geikel, Kak puteshestvovat’ po Finliandii,56, and Karelin, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii, 14-15.
66

reorganization of the customs zone was not possible, the dacha dwellers should instead be
exempted from customs controls.

72

Correspondence between the Department of Customs Duties and the Minister of Finance
revealed that government officials hesitated to treat this petition seriously. In a memo to the
Department of Customs Duties, the Minister of Finance opined that the chief of the St.
Petersburg Customs Office should not look further into the matter. His rationale was that
although there were many names on the petition, the petition did not represent the entirety of the
dacha dwellers. His comment reflected his belief that the petitioners were a numeric minority
among dacha goers in Finland. The minister suggested in his letter that those who did find
customs procedures so cumbersome should simply find dachas closer to St. Petersburg, so that
they did not have to travel to Finland for their summer vacations. He argued that any major
changes in customs procedures would have to be thoroughly investigated, since such changes
would likely affect a large number of Finnish inhabitants in the Karelian Isthmus towns who
traveled frequently to St. Petersburg. The issue would have to be put forth to the Finnish Senate
for debate. Changing the internal borders between Russia and the Grand Duchy was no small
matter, and it would require cooperation from Finnish authorities. The minister concluded that
the concerns of a small group of dacha enthusiasts did not warrant such immediate action. The
minister also determined that moving the customs border to Vyborg would not necessarily solve
the problem, since there were other Russians living Finnish towns and cities much farther away
from the customs border. Any changes to the customs border region now would have a much
farther ranging implication for Finland, since imperial authorities would then have to
72

RGIA, f.21, op.1 d.15, ll.1-2. Petition from dacha owners in Terijoki parish district to the
Minister of Finance, January 1, 1881. One travel guide noted that some of the household goods
that dacha folk brought with them to their dachas in Finland included bicycles and sewing
machines. See Timofeev, Putevoditel’ po Finliandii, 2
67

contemplate the significance of Russians, however small their number, living in Finland beyond
the border region.

73

Interestingly, the Minister of Finance also noted that there were Russian subjects living in
border areas near Austria, but in those regions, the residents did not complain about the
inconvenience of customs inspections as the Terijoki dacha people did. This case suggests that
the dacha dwellers who signed this petition thought of Finland’s autonomous status in abstract
terms. Some of them possibly considered Finland to be a mere provincial extension of the
Russian Empire where inhabitants happened to speak a different language. Others might have
accepted Finland’s special status within the empire, but were not cognizant of how this condition
functioned on a practical level. That the dacha owners assumed their petition could prompt
authorities to make significant changes to the customs zone suggested a superficial
understanding of the delicate relationship between Finland and the empire.
The descriptions of Finland and the Karelian Isthmus in travel guides and other types of
travel literature reveal several layers of ambiguity in the conceptualization of recreational space.
The dacha fit into a grey area between urban, suburban and rural life. References to the dacha
lifestyle in the travel guides indicate that definitions of dacha space in the late imperial Russian
context was rather fluid. The line between the foreign and familiar is also unclear. The dacha
dwellers were traveling to places that required them to pass through a customs boundary, and
they established their out-of-town residences in a region where locals did not speak their
language. At the same time, they created communities in Finland that were based on a
particularly Russian middle-class cultural institution. The extent to which they saw their dachas
in Finland as suburban extension of their urban experiences in St. Petersburg cannot be
73

RGIA, f.21, op.1, d.15, ll.3-5. Letter from the Minister of Finance to the Department of
Customs Duties, January 29, 1881.
68

determined, yet references to the dacha communities in Finland as typical dacha locations
indicated that the notion of Finland as a foreign land was not always the most influential
reference point when discussing Finland. Travel descriptions reveal that the notion of empire,
however vague among travel guide writers, colored their perceptions about Finland.

Seasonal Visitors and Access to Local Rights
As the practice of vacationing in Finnish towns became more established and the number
of St. Petersburgers acquiring properties in the Karelian Isthmus increased in subsequent
decades, the legislative differences between Russia and Finland began to affect the residents of
the dacha settlements more directly. One of the dilemmas that came to the forefront of press and
government attention from the beginning of the twentieth century to the eve of the February
revolution was the differentiation of rights and obligations between Finnish citizens in the Grand
Duchy and imperial subjects in Russia. It is premature to discuss the concept of state and
national citizenship as we understand it in the modern day context, since scholars have already
noted that the concept of Russian citizenship was based more on one’s rank in society, and that
the emphasis of citizenship was much more about obligation to the state than individual civil
rights, hence the differentiation in terminology between subjecthood (poddanstvo) and citizen
74

(grazhdanstvo).

However, contemporary officials were aware that access to civil rights was

indeed different for those registered in the Grand Duchy as Finnish citizens and those who were
considered subjects of the Russian Empire. It is instructive to investigate the extent to which the
rights of dacha owners in the Karelian Isthmus towns were included in this discussion.
74

A special issue of Kritika examines this question. See Eric Lohr, “The Ideal Citizen and Real
Subject in Late Imperial Russia,” Kritika, vol. 7, no. 2 (2006), 173-194, Jane Burbank, “An
Imperial Rights Regime: Law and Citizenship in the Russian Empire,” 397-431, and Alfred
Rieber, “The Problem of Social Cohesion,” 599-608.
69

Jane Burbank has argued that “an imperial dimension of Russian legal thinking was the
assumption that all peoples possessed their own customs and laws. Incorporating these
distinctive customs and laws into official governance was a means to enhance order and
productivity in each region of the empire.”

75

There was no exception to this mentality when the

Grand Duchy of Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire. Imperial authorities
understood that respecting Finnish-Swedish legal traditions established prior to Finland’s
incorporation into the Russian Empire was a key component of eliciting cooperation from the
local elite. How should this legal arrangement apply to subjects who moved frequently? This was
a particularly vexing question for Russian subjects who lived in Finland.
Robert Schweitzer has noted that by the end of the nineteenth century, the terms of
Finnish autonomy had developed such that Finnish citizenship had to be a pre-requisite for
access to civil rights in the territory of the Grand Duchy.

76

This meant that acquisition of civil

rights was dependent upon an individual’s ability to adopt citizenship in the Grand Duchy. For
many imperial subjects, this task was complicated by several factors. First, Finnish legislation
required Russian subjects to be released from imperial subjecthood before they could be
considered for citizenship. From both the Russian and Finnish perspectives, authorities wanted to
ensure that acquisition of Finnish citizenship could not be used as a means to evade
responsibilities to the Russian Empire.

75
76

77

Second, according to a Finnish statute from 1819,

Burbank, “An Imperial Rights Regime: Law and Citizenship in the Russian Empire,” 401.

Robert Schweitzer, “Government in Finland: Russia’s Borderland Policy and Variants of
Autonomy,” in Finland and Poland in the Russian Empire: A Comparative Study, edited by
Michael Branch, Janet Hartley and Antoni Maczak (London: University of London School of
Slavonic and East European Studies, 1995), 91
77
RGIA, f.1276 op.18, d.21, l.14. Finnish Senate report on citizenship, June 12, 1906. The
report mentioned that only Russian males over the age of fifteen, who have either completed
70

amended in 1839 and 1859, one had to satisfy a minimum residency requirement of three years,
and demonstrate intent to live in a parish in the Grand Duchy. Finally, those wishing to seek
citizenship in Finland must demonstrate good moral standing, and the capacity to support
78

themselves and family members without relying on public assistance funds in Finland.

The administrative Russification of Finland that began in earnest in the beginning of the
twentieth century posed problems for imperial authorities. In a variety of reports on the Russian
subjects’ rights in Finland, Russian officials investigating the citizenship question repeatedly
pointed to the unequal differentiation in legal status between Russian subjects in Finland and
Finnish citizens in the empire. These reports noted that Finns could easily migrate to the Empire
and enjoy the same rights as Russians, not only in terms of property rights but also in rights to
participate in public office and the right to vote in local elections. They did not have to forfeit
their Finnish citizenship for these entitlements. Russian subjects, however were treated
practically on the same basis as foreigners in Finland, with the slight exception that Russian
subjects had a far greater range of rights with respect to property acquisition than other
79

foreigners.

I will deal specifically with the relationship between property ownership and access to
local rights, since this aspect of the citizenship question related most directly to dacha people. In
the context of European empires in the nineteenth century, this situation of Russian dacha
owners in Finland had no direct parallel, since the autonomous status of Finland within an
imperial polity was rather unique. Finland inherited a legal regime of property ownership from a
their terms of military service with honorable discharge or have been officially exempt from
military duties, would be eligible to apply for Finnish citizenship.
78
RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.21, l.11. Excerpts from Finnish Senate statement, 1858.
79

RGIA, f.1276, op. 18, d.21, l.74. Letter from the State Secretariat of the Grand Duchy of
Finland to the Minister of Internal Affairs, February 21, 1907.
71

polity that had a much more developed constitutional structure.

80

Whereas Europeans who

sought private property in overseas colonies altered the local norms on property rights and
economic practices, in the Russian-Finnish case, Russian possession of property in Finland
prompted debates in Russian imperial political circles on the relationship between property,
citizenship and subjecthood.

81

Moreover, the expansion of Russian dacha property possession

into Finland occurred because of economic exigencies rather than through direct encouragement
and sponsorship from imperial officials in Russia.

82

80

The specific nature of the legal relationship

The notion that the peasantry in Finland could have hereditary rights to land holdings on
former Crown lands that had been converted to freehold farms had become regular practice
under Swedish law by the early eighteenth century. On the eve of Finland’s incorporation into
the Russian Empire, Finnish peasants enjoyed the right to purchase freehold land from the
nobility. The peasant land situation differed in the Karelian Isthmus, which was the part of
Finland that had already been ceded to Russia in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Peter
the Great had granted a third of the land in this region to Russian nobles. When this region was
reintegrated with the rest of Finland as part of the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809,
Nicholas I had declared the endowed lands as nobility leaseholds in 1826, and Finnish peasants
became leaseholders on these property. This situation changed in 1867 when the Finnish Senate
began buying these estates from the Russian nobility and distributing them to peasants, though
the Senate amended legislation in the 1870s to permit Russian nobles to buy whatever land that
had not been leased to peasants. For a more detailed account of property law in Finland under
Swedish and Russian administration, see Eino Jutikkala, “Tenancy, Freehold and Enclosure in
Finland from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century,” Scandinavian Journal of History vol.
7 (1982), 339-344, and “Origin and Rise of the Crofter Problem in Finland,” Scandinavian
Economic History Review, vol. 10, no. 1 (1962), 78-83.
81
C.A. Bayly has noted the development and evolution of contract law in Britain at the end of
the eighteenth century, when applied in British colonial possessions, led to dramatic changes in
the conceptualization of property in southern Asia and southern Africa. See Imperial Meridian:
The British Empire and the World: 1780-1830 (New York: Longman, 1989), 6. Similarly,
Antony G. Hopkins has contended that the realignment of property rights in British overseas
colonies was related to the desire to root British economic, political and cultural influence in the
non-European world. This was particularly crucial in order to maintain imperial pressure over
rivals in the industrial era. See “Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain’s Annexation of
Lagos, 1861,” Journal of Economic History, vol. 40, no. 4 (1980), 778.
82
Balashov, Karelskii peresheek, 33. St. Petersburgers did not need persuasion from officials to
seek dacha property farther away from the city. In other European contexts, European officials
made concerted efforts to initiate an official colonization program to attract reluctant migrants
72

between the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and the Russian Empire made plausible
solutions for resolving ambiguities in Russian property ownership in Finland even more difficult
to find.
The relationship between property ownership and citizenship was a complicated one.
Acquisition of citizenship in the Grand Duchy posed an interesting dilemma for imperial subjects
who regularly resided in Finland during the summer months. According to the strict letter of the
law, they did not meet the requirements for Finnish citizenship because they did not reside full
time and permanently in Finland. At the same time, though, many of these dacha folk owned
immovable property with significant value in the territory of the Grand Duchy, and local
decisions in the parish towns had potential to affect the dacha dwellers’ lives. When officials in
the Ministry of Internal Affairs reviewed the Senate’s discussion on this issue, they noted that the
Diet had originally suggested that Russian subjects who owned real estate in Finland for three
years or more would satisfy citizenship application requirements, without having to be formally
released from Imperial subjecthood. However, the Senate had rejected this condition on the
grounds that it would make citizenship too much of a commodity to be purchased along with
plots of land. If citizenship was tied to property ownership, it might discourage Russian property
owners from selling their property if they believed their access to civil rights in Finland might be
revoked. Senate members feared that such a provision would have a profound influence on the

from the core to the periphery. In French Algeria, for example, military land grants to ex-officers
and civilian land provision schemes initially failed to persuade French citizens to settle and
populate Algerian cities. See Julia Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in
an Age of Migration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 88.
73

Karelian Isthmus parish towns because it would make many of the seasonal visitors who owned
property in the region eligible for citizenship, even if they did not reside there full time.

83

Although the decision to ease requirements that permitted property owners to acquire
citizenship in the Grand Duchy was dropped, the issue of partial access to civil rights for
property owners was revisited in July 1910. Correspondence between Finnish Governor General
F.A. Zeyn and the Ministry of Internal Affairs discussed the prospects of registering imperial
subjects who were not Finnish citizens but who owned property in the Grand Duchy in the local
electoral district lists. This new proposal, if approved, would allow those who owned immovable
property in the territory of the Grand Duchy for more than one year to be eligible to vote in
elections to the Finnish Diet. This discussion involved weighing out the pros and cons of
granting these rights to Russian subjects who were not Finnish citizens. The Governor General’s
summary of Senate discussions noted confusion in distinguishing between local Finnish citizens
and Russian subjects who had partial access to local rights, and other foreigners who did not
have any form of civil rights in Finland. Senate members, however, also noted certain
advantages to including these foreigners in the electoral district lists. Since these lists were used
by tax collectors each year to ensure that people were making their payments, this would
streamline the record keeping tasks for keeping track of the Russian dacha owners’ tax
84

payments.

This case demonstrated that some members of the Finnish Senate recognized the

economic significance of Russian property owners in Finland.

83

RGIA, f.1276, op. 18, d.21, l.42. Report from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Council
of Ministers, June 27, 1907.
84
RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.312, l.9. Governor General F.A. Zeyn’s report on Senate discussions
regarding the registration of Russian property owners in the local electoral district lists, October
11, 1910.
74

The new proposal represented a step forward in acknowledging the local rights of those
from the Russian Empire who made significant economic contributions to the Grand Duchy.
What remained ambiguous was the notion of a residency requirement in order to be eligible for
citizenship. This issue most affected the Russian dacha visitors. Although they had a regular,
yearly presence in the territory of the Grand Duchy, they straddled the boundary between
permanent residents and local visitors. Access to basic civil rights such as being able to vote in
local elections were important for them because they could participate in the decision making
processes that could affect their stay in the Karelian Isthmus during the summer months. Those
who owned immovable property had a slight advantage over those who did not, since their
presence on tax collection records made it easier for Finnish authorities to quantify their presence
in Finland. The notion of access to civil rights, therefore, also became a class issue. Russian
dacha visitors of a lower social standing did not qualify for the same rights to engage in
important questions on local governance.
The relationship between the political discussion on Russian dacha owners’ access to
civil rights in Finland and dacha people’s every day existence is still difficult to gauge. On the
one hand, access to civil rights may have given the seasonal visitors a greater sense of belonging
and a closer political connection to Finland. According to Finnish legislation, Russian subjects in
Finland could not work in the medical profession without special permission from the local
governor. Since the process of obtaining this permission was often onerous, this generally meant
that there were very few available doctors in the dacha communities who were able to serve the
seasonal visitors. The lack of access to medical services was something that dacha visitors
complained about when they wrote letters to the editors of popular newspapers. Additionally,
property owners were required to pay local taxes even though they rarely used public resources

75

such as schools and hospitals.

85

On the other hand, without significant sources to prove

definitively that lack of access to local political rights posed significant obstacles for dacha
owners’ daily lives when they visited the Karelian Isthmus, it is difficult to establish the
significance of changes to Russian subjects’ access to civil rights in Finland for dacha folks.

Nick Baron has noted that the classical interpretation of the Russian Empire has always
been linked to the notion of imperial space – Russia’s territorial expanse. The “new spatial
history” that has recently emerged adds to this interpretation by addressing how geographical
86

issues intersected with locales of everyday experiences.

These intersections show that binary

categories of description such as urban-rural and foreign-domestic do not always exist in
opposition to each other. These categories overlap, and in some specific contexts, they can even
coexist.
This chapter has explored the intersection of spatial interpretations of territory, political
understandings of geography, and everyday experiences at the local level in order to illustrate
different ways in which the constant movement of Russian subjects between Finnish and Russian
territory underscored complex dilemmas in imperial administration. The presence of Russian
migrants in Finland prior to the expansion of dacha communities in the Karelian Isthmus meant
that solutions to practical problems did not apply uniformly to Russian subjects as a whole. The
ambiguity of the Karelian Isthmus dacha zones as extensions of imperial space made certain
aspects of Finnish autonomy, such as the presence of a customs boundary between Finnish and

85
86

See, for example, articles in Moskovskie vedomosti, October 13 and October 19, 1899.

Nick Baron, “New Spatial Histories of Twentieth Century Russia and the Soviet Union:
Surveying the Landscape,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 55, no. 3 (2007), 378379.
76

Russian territory, more difficult for subjects to understand. Political discussions on whether
access to civil rights should be extended to Russian property owners in Finland further
complicated the notion of dacha people as part of the local social landscape in the Karelian
Isthmus. These administrative ambiguities set the context for examining the extent of
interdependent relationships between the dacha folk and local Finnish residents, a subject that
will be explored in the next chapter.

77

Chapter 2 – Everyday Encounters and Interdependence through Dacha Space
Lempi Vanhanen grew up near Terijoki in the early 1900s and always welcomed the
summer season because it meant the arrival of vacationers en masse from Russia to Terijoki,
which hosted one of the most prominent dacha settlements in the Karelian Isthmus. She and her
brother would visit the Russian speakers at their dachas to sell berries, crafts, and similar items.
The families she visited often invited the siblings into their houses for snacks, and gave them a
fair amount of money for the goods they hawked. She described them as friendly, civilized folk
1

who saw Finland as their second home. The Vanhanen siblings’ experience with Russian
neighbors raises larger questions about the nature of social interaction in these summer house
settlements. Why were some Finnish and Russian speakers more compelled than others to seek
contacts across linguistic and cultural divides? How did these encounters contribute to the local
social, economic and political environment, and how did they shape Russian-speakers’ sense of
belonging in these towns?
This chapter explores a variety of everyday encounters between the thousands of
Russian-speaking visitors that arrived in the Karelian Isthmus in the summer and the local
Finnish-speaking villagers from the 1880s to the beginning of the First World War. It examines
how these contacts contributed to instances of interdependency, cooperation and conflict. The
first part of this chapter underlines initial reactions to this region’s growing popularity as a
vacation destination and summer house settlement for subjects of the Russian Empire from
different social strata. Next, it probes the relationship between the dachas and the tourism
industry, and the extent to which dacha life straddled the boundaries between temporary,
leisurely visits and long-term residence. Subsequent sections study various relationships of
1

Finnish Literature Society Folklore Archives (SKS KRA), Lempi Vanhanen, ME S, 644.
78

economic interdependency between dacha people and Finnish- and Swedish-speaking residents
in the Karelian Isthmus towns. It concludes with a brief examination of the extent to which
crimes associated with the dacha industry contributed to interethnic hostilities. I contend that
interethnic tension and cooperation coexisted because people crossed multiple social boundaries
in their daily interactions. Rather than treating these interactions as signs of either harmony or
hostility between singularly defined social groups, we should consider how individuals attached
meaning to these encounters on a situational basis.

Initial Response to the Dacha Settlements
The initial Finnish reactions to the development of these Russian dacha settlements
varied. Residents described the pace of life in the Karelian Isthmus towns as slow and quiet prior
2

to the onset of the dacha boom. Agriculture, farming, fishing and forestry were the main
industries dependent on local natural resources. In the winter, logging became the staple of the
3

rural economy, along with transport of goods to Vyborg and St. Petersburg. In the countryside,
commerce and trade in consumer goods only played a minor role, since most of the region’s
business enterprises and services were located in Vyborg. The pace at which urban folk from the
imperial center moved into this picturesque countryside irked some local residents who were
protective of their environmental resources. Peasants at first reacted negatively to the summer
residence settlements because it altered the local landscape and disrupted their source of
livelihood in the lumber and fishing industries. Some residents complained that the dacha folk
2

See, for example, written testimonies by Otto Havia about the Kanneljärvi district, SKS KRA,
Otto Havia, KV2: 305, 1957, and Emil Nikkanen, who wrote about the town of Terijoki, SKS
KRA, Emil Nikkanen, KE 57, 12140-12160.
3
Marjatta Jauhiainen, ed. Muistan Kuinka Räisälässä...: Räisälän perinnettä (Helsinki: SKS,
1976), 76.
79

4

were occupying the paths and roads in a manner that blocked their access to the shoreline.

Many of these villagers were small farmers who had only managed to acquire their land in recent
decades. These locals sometimes saw the incursion of foreigners who sought property in the
Karelian Isthmus as a potential threat to their livelihoods because of the way the dacha people’s
activities affected the region’s economy.
In these small rural villages, it is plausible that residents would bond over their suspicion
and hostility toward newcomers. Nonetheless, it serves to bear in mind that the Finnish-speakers
in the Isthmus also quarreled with each other, and that their mutual suspicion of outsiders did not
necessarily negate fissures in their own communities. The interethnic dimension of hostility
should therefore not be taken out of proportion. It is equally important to challenge the notion
that these villagers were backward folk who rejected modern influences from the urban world.
Many of the Karelian Isthmus villagers traveled frequently to the markets in St. Petersburg, and
the experience opened them to a different world of knowledge. For decades, people from the
region had been migrating to St. Petersburg seasonally for work in the imperial metropolis’
burgeoning industries. The movement of itinerant workers connected the population of eastern
5

Finland with Russia and provided opportunities for interethnic contact. Farmers living close to
the Finnish-Russian customs border often sold agricultural products in St. Petersburg and its
6

surrounding areas. Men were frequently involved in the transport of goods, and women in the
Karelian countryside often earned money as wet nurses for children sent from St. Petersburg’s

4
5

Ester Kähönen, Entinen Terijoki: kylämuistoja (Kouvola: Teri-säätiö, 1982), 19.

Max Engman, “Migration from Finland to Russia during the Nineteenth Century,”
Scandinavian Journal of History, vol.3 no.2 (1977), 161.
6
SKS KRA, Riita Ampuja, KE Miehet 26-40. Adolf Susi, born in 1895 in one of these border
villages, came from a peasant family that made many such visits to St. Petersburg.
80

foundling hospital. According to Marjatta Rahikainen, the growing St. Petersburg industries sent
representatives to recruit child workers from the rural regions in the Karelian Isthmus, and some
7

children were also hired as apprentices by St. Petersburg craftsmen. The effects of these
contacts filtered back to the migrants’ home parishes, especially since the migrants were highly
transient and visited their places of origin at least occasionally. Moving to the city in search of
work gave these villagers a sense of agency, but this dynamic also changed when it involved
receiving foreigners. These circumstances complicated binary notions of conflict as an issue of
in-group versus out-group grievances.
Finliandskaia gazeta, the Russian language newspaper in Finland, printed a review of a
travelogue in 1900 that covered the writer’s reminiscences of his journeys through Finland in
recent decades. The author marveled at the increasing exodus of Russian families to Finland
during the summer. The travelogue described the relationship between local Finns and Russian
visitors in the borderlands as a mixture of openness as well as muted hostilities. On the one hand,
some Finns were thankful for the exposure to different cultural influences, but on the other hand,
they also complained about Russians blocking the main roads during the summers. In general,
8

though, the author remarked that Finns were getting better acquainted with the Russian visitors.
The observations in this travel account reflected wider questions about the general reception of
Finnish-speaking villagers to the rapid growth of the dacha settlements in the Karelian Isthmus
communities. To what extent did different social actors accept these changes, and how did their

outlook evolve over time? What did these attitudes reveal about peoples’ reception to change and
cultural diversity over the long term?
7

Marjatta Rahikainen, “Historical and Present-Day Child Labour: Is There a Gap or a Bridge
between Them?” Continuity and Change, vol.16, no.1 (2001), 147-148.
8
Finliandskaia gazeta, May 25, 1900.
81

Tourism and the Dacha Phenomenon
After the construction of the Saimaa Canal connecting Lake Saimaa to the Gulf of
Finland near Vyborg in the 1850s and the completion of the St. Petersburg-Helsinki railway line
in 1871, tourism to the Karelian Isthmus thrived because such transport infrastructure made it
easier for a wider selection of individuals to travel through the region. St. Petersburgers who
found their dachas in the Karelian Isthmus lived in the area part-time, and their presence was
more prolonged than that of tourists, but they could still be considered as part of the burgeoning
tourism industry in Finland. Since this group of people traveled to Finland mostly for leisure
rather than primarily for long-term settlement, it is insightful to use travel and tourism as a
starting point for discussing the dacha communities’ effects on this border region.
An examination of contemporary travel literature on Finland and the Karelian Isthmus
reveals that different aspects of the tourism industry can serve as a platform for Finnish-Russian
cultural exchanges while posing as potential foci for tension. The journey between Russia and
Finland was to be a springboard for discussing first impressions and stereotypes that travelers
formed, especially if they did not have prior contact with Finnish speakers living in the Empire.
One writer marveled at the efficiency of rail travel from Russia to Finland. He praised the
Finnish-speaking staff on these trains for their politeness and professionalism, complimenting
their ability to converse in basic Russian. He also lauded the Finnish-speaking passengers for
their orderly behavior and cleanliness. He implied that it was often the Russian passengers that
caused the most disturbances on these trains with their lewd manners, referencing newspapers
that mentioned the “infamous behavior” of St. Petersburg passengers on the Finnish trains.

9

Similar publications noted the propriety of Finnish staff on the trains from Russia to Finland,
9

G.A. Dzanshiev, Sredi balovnei i pasynkov prirody: vpetchatleniia i mysli turista (Moscow:
n.p., 1890), 170-174.
82

characterizing the Finnish-speaking workers as people of good morals.

10

Such examples of

travel literature offered a very positive description of travel through Finland. These reports,
however, were not the definitive assertion of travelers’ attitudes towards Finland and its
inhabitants. They should be seen as examples of one particular set of impressions that Russian
visitors to Finland had of their encounters with the host society.
Other travel writers hinted at more serious instances of disagreement between Russian
and Finnish speakers who encountered each other through the tourism industry. One writer
observed that there were repeated reports of misunderstanding between passengers from Russia
and the Finnish and Swedish speaking employees on the trains operating throughout Finland. He
commented that some Russian passengers were rude to workers, even though the staff on the
trains were generally polite towards the visitors. He noted that some passengers from a higher
social standing expected to be treated deferentially by the staff, and did not seem willing to
adhere to rules of conduct set for all passengers. As a result, the conductors often had to remove
these uncooperative passengers from the train car.

11

These observations offered insight into class

based sources of miscommunication between the Russian-speaking visitors and the Finnishspeakers they encountered. Divergent views on social conventions for individual and group
status affected Finnish-Russian interactions that cut across class lines.
The dacha places added a complicated dimension to the tourism industry because the
nature of summer house life straddled multiple boundaries between permanent residency and
temporary visits. The presence of sanatoria and convalescent homes in the Karelian Isthmus

10

P.V. Gusef, Prakticheskii putevoditel’ po gorodam, kurortam, i zhivopisnym mestnostiiam
Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1908), 4.
11
K.B. Grenhagen, Putevoditel’ po vodolechebnym, dachnym i zhivopisnym mestnostiam
Vostochnoi Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1898), 8-9.
83

dacha towns was one such example of how the boundaries between permanence and
temporariness as well as between necessity and leisure intersected. There were several of these
establishments in the Karelian Isthmus dacha zone, the most well-known being the Hallila
sanatorium, run by public authorities in St. Petersburg. Some of the visitors’ guides to Finland
also included information about obtaining permission from authorities to use these health
establishments. The details provided in some of the travel guides related to local businesses,
churches, medical services, schools, and prices for dacha properties. One guide even offered a
summary of Finnish legislation that might be important for longer term visitors, such as
information about local norms for employing domestic servants.

12

These details gave visitors a

more extensive look at life in Finland than was required for the average tourist.
The organization of associational life among Russian visitors to Finland further
contextualizes the blurring of boundaries between visitors and residents. A voluntary association
called the “Society for Tourists in Finland” was established in St. Petersburg in 1910 with the
goal of familiarizing Russian visitors with the country. One of the society’s aims was to raise
awareness in the Russian press about opportunities to travel to Finland, and provide practical
information to tourists. This society consisted of members living in different cities in Finland
who supplied the St. Petersburg bureau with information.

13

This detail is significant because the

society’s publications did not consist only of impressions from tourists, but also from permanent
Russian residents in some of the larger cities, as well as dacha owners who frequented the

12

See N. Fedotov, Putevoditel’ po dachnym zavedeniiam v okrestnostiakh s. Peterburga i po
zheleznym dorogam (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1889) and Illiustrirovannyi putevoditel’ po dachnym,
vodolechebnym i zhivopisnym mestnostiam Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1899).
13
Finliandskii vestnik, April 3, 1910.
84

Finnish countryside on a yearly basis. These travel guides were important sources of information
to help visitors from Russia navigate their interaction with local Finnish-speaking villagers.
Many dacha owners and other St. Petersburgers who rented properties in the Karelian
Isthmus also formed local residents’ associations in their respective towns. One such
organization, the Society for the Improvement of Kuokkala (Obshchestvo blagoustroistva
Kuokkala) was formed in 1901. The association’s charter stated that the group’s aim was to
improve the conditions of life in the town. Its activities included overseeing the cleaning of
streets, maintenance of public parks and squares, supervision of fire prevention and raising funds
for local schools and churches.

14

Another such organization was established in Terijoki in 1913

to discuss funding for public works. This group included members from the Finnish- and
Swedish-speaking business establishments, and thus indicated that Finnish and Russian residents
15

sometimes cooperated in their dealings with local affairs.

These associations were similar to

ones established by proprietors in the St. Petersburg countryside, such as the Society of Dacha
Settlements (Obshchestvo “dachnye poselki”), which aimed to facilitate property owners’
construction of summer houses as well as roads, bridges, bathhouses, gardens and other similar
infrastructure and amenities.

16

The blurring of lines between temporary and semi-permanent residence for dacha
dwellers was also evident in the kinds of complaints they made to local authorities about
dilemmas that concerned dacha life. One newspaper report noted that in Terijoki, the largest of
the summer house settlements, dacha dwellers were concerned about the amount of dirt and dust

14
15
16

Ustav obshchestva blagoustroistva Kuokkala (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1909).
Teriokskii dnevnik, September 16, 1913.
Ustav obshchestva “Dachnye poselki” (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1903).
85

in the air cause by increased traffic on the main roads. Dacha owners as well as store keepers
with property close to the main road complained to town officials that the problem prevented
them from carrying on with their summer activities, claiming that some neighbors had already
moved to other dacha settlements because they could not bear the situation. Local officials
informed the complainants that they had been searching for suitable solutions to the problem, but
did not have sufficient funds to clean the streets to their satisfaction. Several of the dacha owners
then offered to contribute to city council funds so that officials could continue to keep the streets
dust and dirt free for the duration of the summer.

17

This situation could be read as one where temporary visitors from Russia lodged petty
grievances against local city officials to express their dismay at the lack of services that the town
offered them. Some of the dacha owners felt neglected by Finnish officials in the dacha
settlements, but this case also suggested a deeper sense of local responsibility. There were
particular occasions where these temporary and seasonal visitors to the Karelian Isthmus towns
cared about local issues. Being able to participate in local decision-making was important to
them, and they had a stake in solving local problems, even if their presence in the towns was
limited. In the decades since the St. Petersburgers began flocking to summer houses in the
Karelian Isthmus, the dacha folk adopted a greater sense of belonging in the regions’ towns, and
sought ways to assert their place in local society.

17

Teriokskii dnevnik, September 6, 1913.
86

Interdependent Neighbors
Within the context of the tourism and dacha industry, economic interdependency
mediated different kinds of exchanges between Finnish and Russian speakers in the Karelian
Isthmus. The macro aspect of the Grand Duchy’s commercial ties with the Russian Empire is
well established in Finnish and Russian historiography. Russian writings on this subject tend to
emphasize the benefits this relationship bore for Finland. The re-orientation of Finnish economic
ties from Sweden to Russia allowed Finland to establish a competitive industry, which later
received access to markets in Western Europe. These commercial relations helped spark a
thriving Finnish economy and advanced Finnish business interests.

18

Finnish views stress the

more ambiguous financial outcome of Finland’s incorporation into the Russian Empire. This
political union should have encouraged mutual trade, but it did not necessarily promote equal
terms of trade. Although Russia allowed Finland to maintain the lower Swedish customs tariff
for goods from other parts of Europe, the protectionist members of the Tsarist regime eventually
demanded the imposition of a customs barrier against Finland for foreign goods entering Russia
via Finland.

19

Whether imperial economic relations were advantageous for the Finnish

population depended on the scale of economic activity one engaged in, and the specific
perspective from which one assessed the situation.
The micro effects of Finnish-Russian economic exchanges are worthwhile exploring
because they were immediately visible to individuals on a daily basis. An editorial from one
Russian newspaper commented that the local economy in the Karelian Isthmus was strongly
18

G. D. Kornilov, Russko-Finliandskie tamozhennye otnosheniia v kontse XIX - nachale XX v.
(Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo nauka, 1971), 23.
19
Erkki Pihkala, Suomen Venäjän-Kauppa vuosina 1860-1917 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum
Fennica, 1970), reviewed by Hugo E Pipping, “Trade between Finland and Russia in 18601917,” Scandinavian Economic History Review, vol.19, no. 1 (1971), 53.
87

dependent on different kinds of visitors from Russia. This editorial was published at a time when
imperial authorities were discussing the possibility of joining the three most prominent parish
districts for dacha settlements to the St. Petersburg Province under Russian jurisdiction. It
acknowledged the dramatic effect this move might have on the Karelian Isthmus region, since
20

the local economy was linked to the visitors from Russia.

The commentary mentioned that

when most St. Petersburgers wanted to take a short holiday without spending exorbitant amounts
of money traveling to the Volga or the Caucasus, they rarely went anywhere else except to
Finland. During the holiday seasons, trains were always packed with these travelers. Finnishspeaking residents in the Karelian Isthmus were keen to establish functioning relationships with
Russian visitors because the dacha communities ultimately brought significant material benefits.
Maria Lähteenmäki has observed that many Finns in Western Finland at the end of the
nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century migrated to North America in search of work,
but in the Karelian Isthmus, locals recalled that jobs were so widely available that few felt
compelled to venture to America.

21

Karelian Isthmus Finns migrated to St. Petersburg for work,

but some of this migration was seasonal and circular. Most of the residents did not stray far from
their home parishes, and those who did travel to the Russian side of the border were still able to
maintain regular contacts with friends and family in the Isthmus. One former Finnish-speaker
who lived near these dacha settlements considered the arrival en masse of Russians as a boon to

20
21

Rossiia, June 6, 1910.

Maria Lähteenmäki, Maailmojen rajalla: Kannaksen rajamaa ja poliittiset murtumat 19111944 (Helsinki: SKS, 2009), 311.
88

the Finnish villages. These dacha people brought capital to the local economy and made life
22

livelier.

Land and Property as Sites of Interethnic Exchange
Economic differentiation is often a source of interethnic hostility in societies where
ethnic and social cleavages mutually reinforce each other. To some extent, the perception that the
vast majority of the Russian visitors were extremely wealthy served as one source of tension
between Finns in the Karelian Isthmus and the Russian dacha dwellers. This perception was
partially a by-product of the Finnish Senate’s decision to sell land owned by the Finnish treasury
to wealthy Russian nobles in the 1870s. In that initial phase, a few of these nobles established
their lavish summer estates on this land.

23

In subsequent decades, an increasing number of less

affluent St. Petersburg residents also began to build or rent dachas in the region. By the end of
the nineteenth century Russians were moving into Finnish territory in such large numbers and at
such a rapid pace that the Finnish population became a minority during the summer months.
Finnish inhabitants in the seaside towns were gradually pushed from the shoreline as more and
more St. Petersburgers began to arrive.
The number of dachas in Finland increased in the early 1900s, thanks to further changes
in property laws designed to attract more foreign landowners. In 1903, the Finnish Senate passed
legislation that allowed Russian subjects to acquire immovable property in Finland, and more
importantly, administer it according to the same regulations valid for Finnish citizens, thus

22
23

SKS KRA, Otto Havia KV2: 305, 1957.

Vilho Hämäläinen, Karjalan kannaksen venäläinen kesäasutus ja sen vaikutus Suomen ja
Venäjän suhteiden kehitykseen autonomian ajan lopulla (Tampere: Tampereen Yliopisto, 1974),
30-34.
89

removing the last of the restrictions that barred Russians from establishing secondary homes on
24

the Finnish side of the customs border.

Some Russians purchased properties from Finnish

owners, while others rented summer dwellings from local Finns. For example, in 1903 a St.
Petersburg merchant purchased a part parcel of land in the Kivennapa parish that was owned by a
25

Finnish farming couple.

It is difficult to track the actual number of rented versus purchased

dacha properties because of inconsistencies in record keeping. When conducting their inventory
of land ownership county clerks only noted properties that were completely owned by Russian
subjects, and did not take into consideration Russian summer houses built on Finnish-owned
lands or on plots divided between Finnish and Russian owners. By 1917, the number of
dwellings used by Russian subjects as dachas in Vyborg province may have been as high as
12,000, with approximately 10 per cent of the actual land in Finnish ownership. It is worthwhile
to note that this growth in dacha settlements did not happen because the Finnish Senate and
officials from the Imperial ministries intentionally sought these developments. Rather, this spurt
occurred more or less spontaneously because of the desire for Russians to acquire dachas as a
26

status symbol.

Sometimes Finnish villagers resented the Russian visitors who purchased large properties
for flaunting their wealth. Some of the Russian landlords had elaborately ornate homes built on
their properties. A Russian proprietor whose son was a personal physician to the Imperial family
27

owned a 40-room mansion near Uusikirkko.

24
25
26
27

One memoirist described these homes as works of

Kähönen, Entinen Terijoki, 21.
LOGAV, f. 63, op.1, d.262, l.29-44. Rental contract, signed June 29, 1903.
Hämälainen, “Vanhan Suomen venäläiset huvila-asukkaat,”120-122.

Temira Pachmuss, A River of Moving Tears: Russia’s Experience in Finland (New York:
Peter Lang, 1992), 173.
90

art, many having between four and ten sections, with all kinds of flowers and plants in bloom in
28

the gardens. She recalled having feelings of awe whenever she saw these lavish homes.

Another Karelian Isthmus resident recalled that a few of her family’s neighbors expressed
misgivings about the presence of so many wealthy folks in their towns and villages boasting
29

about their expensive homes.

The differences in financial position between the Finnish peasants and some of the
wealthier Russian visitors only offer a partial explanation for tension between locals and
foreigners. Socio-economic status and ethnicity did not neatly overlap in a mutually reinforcing
way. The region had its own economic elite among Finnish and Swedish speakers, and the
Russian-speaking seasonal residents were not the only group who owned trendy homes in the
Karelian Isthmus. Several notable Finnish artists also purchased land and built grand summer
villas in the region. Modernist writer Olavi Paavolainen had a two-story villa with elaborate
30

gardens and ponds in Kivennapa.

Finnish- and Swedish-speaking socialites from Helsinki also

visited the Karelian Isthmus during the summers, and these Finnish members of urban high
society were almost as foreign to the rustic countryside as the Russian-speaking guests.
Sociologists and anthropologists have long acknowledged that cross-cutting social cleavages
have been a significant factor in maintaining social cohesion in many societies. Cross-cutting ties
materialize when individuals within a given community are embedded in a variety of social
networks. Since cross-cutting ties increase the potential for in-group division, they can serve to

28
29
30

SKS KRA, Lempi Vanhanen, ME. S. 644.
SKS KRA, Tilda Leskinen, Interview by Elsa Pukonen, series 1277, 1959.

Hannes Sihvo, “Summer House Settlements on the Karelian Isthmus as Described in
Literature,” Studia Slavica Finlandensia, vol. 16, no. 2 (1999), 241.
91

reduce the number of participants in potential intergroup conflicts.

31

Although this is a simplistic

model for explaining the likelihood of interethnic tension, it indicates that economic
differentiation among the Finnish and Russian speakers respectively should be taken into
consideration when addressing sources of hostility and cooperation.
When there was interethnic strife over economic differentiation, this scorn was usually
directed against Russians and other foreigners who were snapping up land in the Karelian
Isthmus.

32

It is worth considering that while the assumption that all of the dacha owners were

wealthy Russians persisted, available sources do not corroborate this postulation. Some of these
Russian dacha owners were actually foreigners who had become subjects of the Russian empire.
An inventory by Finnish land settlement authorities handed over to the Council of Ministers in
1915 listed the names of over 100 foreigners who had recently acquired Russian subjecthood and
who also owned property in the three parish districts of Kivennapa, Terijoki and Uusikirkko.

33

Some of these foreign property owners were also Finnish-speaking people who had moved to St.
Petersburg. This group of dacha owners consisted of retired military personnel and government
officials and clerical staff. Like their middle class Russian peers, this group of Finnish-speaking
migrants to St. Petersburg had also adopted the Russian dacha culture and found new ways of
profiting from the property of family members and relatives. The ambiguous ethnic identity of

31

Rosa Lehmann, “The Strength of Diversity: A Micro-history of Ethnic conflict and
Coexistence in Rural Southeast Poland,” Anthropological Quarterly, vol 82, no. 2 (2009), 513514.
32
SKS KRA, Ulla Manonen, E138: 4431.
33

LOGAV, f.290, op.1, d.46. This inventory included the names of the owners, the date that the
owner had passed into Russian subjecthood, and the date the property was purchased, along with
information about the land itself, including size and the buildings found on the property.
92

dacha dwellers, whether they were landlords or renters, made the interethnic dimension of daily
interactions in the dacha towns much more complicated.
Russian-speaking property owners, or those with Russian-sounding names, were targeted
because they were numerous and more visible. Nonetheless, some of the criticism was also
directed at both the Finnish- and Swedish-speaking upper-class. Local peasants were exasperated
by what they saw as lack of progress with agrarian reform. The overwhelmingly rural population
of Finland was in the throes of a land crisis in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when a
population surge led to an increase in the number of landless people. In comparison to Russian
peasants the Finnish farmers were better off, since the latter had not experienced serfdom, but
there was a perception among the poor farmers in Finland that the predominantly Swedishspeaking Finnish nobility wielded significant power over them and prevented their upward
mobility.

34

Because the Finnish Senate encouraged the foreigners to purchase land in Finland,

the peasantry interpreted government decisions as signs of the political upper class’s indifference
to lower class issues. Social class dilemmas added another layer of complication to the nature of
interactions between Finnish and Russian subjects.
Most Finnish farmers who were eager to sell or rent their property to foreigners saw their
decision as a financial necessity rather than as a conscious effort to facilitate foreign takeover of
the Karelian Isthmus. Villagers whose fields were too small to yield profitable crop found
brighter days when the dacha communities grew, since these villagers could sell or rent out parts
their properties to St. Petersburgers vying for dacha space. Locals came to recognize that the
Russian visitors actually sought to build summer houses on the sandy soil along the shoreline,
34

Viljo Rasila, “Agrarian Problems in Finland,” in Finland and Poland in the Russian Empire,
ed. Michael Branch, Janet Hartley and Antoni Maczak (London: University of London School of
Slavonic and East European Studies, 1995), 171-173.
93

land that was completely unsuitable for cultivation. They quickly learned to take advantage of
35

this situation.

Yrjö Seise came of age in the Karelian Isthmus towns in the 1880s, and as a

young adult, traveled frequently for various jobs to St. Petersburg, where he became acquainted
with middle class Russians who sought dacha properties. When Seise acquired his own property,
he traveled to St. Petersburg to arrange the sale of a parcel of his land to a Russian artist who
36

visited during the summer.

In some towns, the method of parceling out land actually worked to

villagers’ advantage when dealing with Russians who sought seaside property. In Seivästö, for
example, land was arranged longitudinally to allow as many people as possible to have access to
the coast. This enabled villagers to further subdivide their land and sell or rent parcels closest to
37

the shore to Russian dacha people.

A larger number of St. Petersburgers who visited the Karelian Isthmus during the summer
seasons could not afford to purchase their own dacha properties, and renting dachas was a
sensible option for most of these people. St. Petersburg newspapers from the last decades of the
nineteenth century to the eve of the 1917 revolutions often ran advertisements for the rental of
dacha properties, especially during the summer months. These ads indicated that dacha houses
and land plots existed in a variety of sizes and costs, depending on location, materials used for
these houses, and the property’s original use. One of the dacha price guides also offered
important information on the different types of dachas sought by St. Petersburgers. Some of the
properties available for rental were merely single rooms with minimal furnishing in a large
farmhouse located far away from the picturesque places. Others were more elaborate but modest

35
36
37

Kähönen, Entinen Terijoki, 22.
SKS KRA, Alvi Seise, KE 84, 17618-17635.
Raili Taberman, Seivästö: meri, mäki, majakka (Pirkkala: Seivästö-säätiö, 1999), 50.
94

dachas that had been converted from former farm houses. A few were large, extravagant dachas
38

with 10 to 12 rooms.

In many of these ads, the identity of the person placing the ad was not

revealed, but based on the details available, it appeared that some of the individuals renting out
the property lived in Finland, and some lived in the St. Petersburg environs. Because of the
popularity of dacha space in Finland, none of these ads ran in the St. Petersburg newspapers for
more than a few weeks at a time.
Many of those who did not own property in the Karelian Isthmus rented buildings from
local Finns that could pass as summer homes. Sometimes, this relationship led to
misunderstandings because rental properties were in such high demand and there were so many
Russians traveling between St. Petersburg and the Karelian Isthmus towns. One Russian speaker
got into a scuffle with his Finnish-speaking landlord when the latter refused to allow the former
to enter the house when there was one month remaining on the rental contract. In police reports,
the landlord explained that he had not intended to evict his tenant prematurely. He claimed that
he had planned to show the house to other potential tenants, and did not want the current tenant
39

to be present when potential tenants were viewing the property.

Such cross-class dimensions to

Finnish-Russian interactions make it problematic to assume that the basis of social tensions in
the Karelian Isthmus stemmed mainly from impoverished Finnish peasants’ resentment of
wealthy foreigners.

38
39

Fedotov, Putevoditel’ po dachnym zavedeniiam v okrestnostiakh s. Peterburga.

MMA Terijoen nimismiespiirin Kuokkalan poliisiaseman arkisto (Terijoki Parish District
Sheriff’s Office Police Archives for Kuokkala) IV Ab1, No. 37, March 29, 1908.
95

Service Industry
Many seasonal vacationers from St. Petersburg required local peoples’ services at their
summer homes. Some foreign property owners employed Karelian Isthmus villagers for their
construction projects. Ester Kähönen recalled that her father had a job building houses for some
40

of the Russian families.

As part of the yearly exodus of dacha folk from St. Petersburg to the

region’s seaside towns in the spring, many people took most of their belongings with them. The
railroad was the easiest way for these vacationers to travel, and local Finns anxiously awaited
their arrival so they could vie for business driving the Russian-speaking dacha visitors and all
41

their possessions to their summer homes.

Licensed taxi drivers registered with local district

authorities normally operated routes between the railway stations and the dacha houses for a
fixed price. Finnish farmers who wished to earn extra money often worked informally as
chauffeurs, and since these drivers usually charged lower fees, some of the less affluent dacha
42

visitors preferred their services.

Hermann Nylander remembered that during the summer

seasons, many of his friends made several roundtrips from the train station to the clusters of
43

dachas in one day.

Some of the wealthier of the Russian dacha folk employed a number of Finnish
farmhands, housemaids, cooks and other hired help to maintain their households during the
summer months. For many Finnish farming families living in the Karelian Isthmus, these odd

40
41

SKS KRA, Ester Kähönen, KE 39 8490-8496.

Valentina Gavrishina, “Dachnaia zhizn’ kak sotsiokul’turnoe iavlenie,” in The Dacha
Kingdom: Summer Dwellers and Dwellings in the Baltic Area, ed. Natalia Baschmakoff and
Mari Ristolainen (Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2009), 127.
42
Fedotov, Illiustrirovannyi putevoditel’ po dachnym, vodolechebnym i zhivopisnym
mestnostyam Finliandii, 8.
43
SKS KRA, Herman Nylander, interview with Elsa Pukonen (1984), 1270.
96

jobs in the service industry helped supplement the family income. One dacha guide summarized
Finnish conventions for the hiring of domestic servants. The book informed readers of terms
under which servants were normally employed and dismissed, appropriate salaries for services
44

rendered, and other aspects of the employer-employee relationship.

No evidence revealed

whether dacha dwellers and their servants actually followed these guidelines, but the fact that a
travel guide writer chose to include this information in his publication indicated that the service
industry was a significant point of contact between the seasonal visitors from Russia and local
Finnish villagers in the dacha settlements, and that some bosses and employees sought amicable
relationships with each other.
The fact that Finnish residents in the dacha settlements derived income from the Russian
visitors did not mean that they were always content to work for dacha folk. One particular
incident registered in local police records in Kuokkala suggested that Finnish workers sometimes
felt their Russian employers took advantage of their willingness to work. Seasonal visitors from
Russia did not always comprehend what aspects of life were important in these small parish
villages. The visitors at times went about their daily business oblivious to the way their activities
affected local practices. As a result, locals sometimes interpreted the visitors’ attitude as a sign of
their callous disregard for Finnish customs. These misunderstandings led to some disputes
between the locals and foreigners. Some Finnish workers in Kuokkala once made an official
complaint when a Russian developer insisted that the Finnish workers he hired continue
construction work on his villa complex on a Lutheran holiday. When the police investigated the
case, the Russian claimed that he was unaware that such a holiday existed, since he was not from

44

Fedotov, Putevoditel’ po dachnym zavedeniiam v okrestnostiakh S. Peterburga, 114-115.
97

the region.

45

Fortunately for all parties involved, this incident did not boil over into a major

conflict, since the Russian employer agreed to compensate his Finnish employees for having
worked on a religious holiday.
Robert Schweitzer has commented that it was “the petty grievances of Russians from St.
Petersburg, who felt themselves treated as foreigners in their holiday homes on the Finnish side
of the frontier, which set the public debate on Finnish statehood ablaze.”

46

Discontent with

Finland’s status as a constituent part of the Russian Empire, especially after Imperial authorities
revealed their plans to take over administration of several Karelian Isthmus districts, may have
played a partial role in disputes between Finnish and Russian residents in these areas. Police
reports indicated that a number of dacha goers lodged multiple complaints against local cab
drivers. A Russian baron once claimed that at the Kuokkala train station, he was offered a ride by
a Finnish taxi driver. Upon informing the driver of his destination, the driver spoke rudely to
him, impolitely addressed him in the informal “you” form, and gruffly told him that he should
walk instead. The local authorities responded by suspending the driver’s license for two
47

weeks.

Similar incidents involved dacha visitors who claimed that taxi drivers refused to serve

them or drive them all the way to their final destinations after they had already started the trip
48

from the train station to the summer houses.

Whether these Finnish drivers’ treatment of

Russian clients was politically motivated is impossible to detect through the police reports;

45

MMA Terijoen nimismiespiirin Kuokkalan poliisiaseman arkisto IV Ab1, No. 36, August 16,
1908.
46
Robert Schweitzer, “Government in Finland: Russia’s Borderland Policy and Variants of
Autonomy,” in Finland and Poland in the Russian Empire, 102.
47
MMA Terijoen nimismiespiirin Kuokkalan poliisiaseman arkisto IV Ab2, March 29, 1911.
48

See also MMA Terijoen nimismiespiirin Kuokkalan poliisiaseman arkisto IV Ab2, logs from
July 29, August 27, and August 27, 1911.
98

nonetheless, these cases alluded to the persistence of some resentment between Russian and
Finnish speakers who interacted with each other through the service industry.
Lack of clarity on the terms of employment and the rights of service workers also
contributed significantly to disputes between cab drivers and their passengers. One Russian
newspaper article reported that many dacha dwellers complained about local taxi drivers’
laziness and their refusal to perform all tasks that passengers demanded. The author informed
readers that certain sets of rules regulated the tasks that drivers were expected to perform, and
much of what dacha visitors demanded was not included in these regulations. The writer argued
that St. Petersburgers were prone to abusing the rights of Finnish cab drivers because they often
did not respect the rights of drivers when at home in St. Petersburg. The author published a
summary of these regulations, and implored readers to respect the rights of local workers.

49

These kinds of disputes illustrate different ways in which misunderstanding of local customs can
lead to interethnic hostility.
Finnish-Russian contacts in the health service sector related to some of the political
tensions stemming from different rights for imperial subjects in Finland. One important piece of
information that appeared in many of the travel guides on Finland was a listing of doctors
serving different towns. One newspaper also published lists of Russian-speaking doctors, nurses
and midwives serving the several dacha settlements in the vicinity of Terijoki.

50

Because

Russian subjects needed special permission to practice medicine in Finland, many of these
Russian-speaking doctors were actually Finnish citizens who had learned to speak Russian.
Visitors from Russia, especially those staying in the dacha towns for several months at a time,

49
50

Teriokskii dnevnik, July 20, 1913.
Ibid., June 16, 1913.
99

often sought out the services of these multilingual doctors, nurses and midwives. Little evidence
exists to shed further light on the exact nature of the relationship between these Finnish medical
professionals and their Russian clients, but Russian journalists often lamented that there were not
enough Russian-speaking doctors to serve the dacha folk in these locales.

51

This exemplified

how Finnish-Russian relationships that had proven to be neither particularly cordial nor
confrontational could have been construed as a political problem.
Networking became an important aspect of employment in the service industry. The
transience of both the Russian- and Finnish-speaking population in the Karelian Isthmus meant
employer-employee pairings changed frequently. Finnish-speaking gardeners, nannies and
maintenance workers often found jobs in several different Russian households. Because no
established system of hiring existed for a very informal sector of the local economy, people
relied on personal connections to put employers and employees in touch with each other. Dacha
dwellers usually referred their staff to each other so that they could find hired help in a timely
fashion.

52

Elviira Haapalainen, a Finnish-speaking farmer’s daughter born in a small Karelian

Isthmus village in 1889, worked as a maid in a Swedish-speaking household in Vyborg. Her
employers were well acquainted with a St. Petersburg family who owned a dacha in Terijoki.
When her Swedish-speaking employers no longer need her services, they referred her to their
Russian-speaking friends. Elviira began working for that Russian family soon after, and
developed a close bond with the members of the household, including the matron, from whom

51
52

Moskovskie vedomosti, April 26, 1890 and Novoe vremia, October 13, 1899.
SKS KRA, Lempi Vanhanen, ME. S. 644.
100

she learned to converse in Russian.

53

These social networks helped circulate jobs in the Karelian

Isthmus towns, and facilitated people’s exchanges with each other.
Villagers in the Karelian Isthmus who were able to communicate in Russian in addition
to their native language easily found jobs in the service sector. Some of the summer visitors
placed help wanted ads in the local Finnish newspapers and Russian newspapers in St.
Petersburg, and a number of these ads indicated a preference for multilingual (Finnish-Russian or
54

Swedish-Russian) workers.

People with the proper language skills were especially sought after

in service jobs that involved speaking with different people on a regular basis. Restaurants and
cafes in Terijoki and Vyborg often sought waitresses and waiters who could speak Finnish,
Swedish as well as Russian. Russian-speaking families looking for nannies sought girls who
spoke Finnish and Swedish, presumably so that the nannies could either teach their young
charges a few words in the local language or so that they could complete household errands that
55

required dealing with local non-Russian-speaking people.

This practice indicated that visitors

from Russia made a stronger effort to connect with the local inhabitants than stereotypes suggest.
Although the Russian-speaking population in the Karelian Isthmus towns equaled or
outnumbered Finnish speakers in the summer months, this alone did not guarantee that the
townspeople isolated themselves from each other based on linguistic boundaries. The Russian
visitors’ efforts to recruit multilingual workers indicated that having cultural brokers in their
midst was an important consideration.

53
54

SKS KRA, Aune Maria Sopanen, KE Naiset 3409-3422, p. 3410-3412.

Common newspapers where these kinds of help wanted ads appeared included the Russian
newspaper in Finland, Finliandskaia gazeta, and regional Finnish newspapers Karjala and
Viipurin sanomat.
55
See help wanted ads in Karjala, May 4 and May 31, 1911.
101

Local Commerce
The increasing number of dacha dwellers and tourists that visited the Karelian Isthmus
each summer enhanced commercial opportunities in the hospitality sector. Several of the travel
guides on Finland include numerous listings and advertisements of hotels in the region’s towns.
One publication commented that in recent decades, thanks to the growth of the tourist industry,
many hotels had sprung up in Vyborg.

56

These hotels catered not only to visitors passing

through the Karelian Isthmus on the way to other locations in Finland, but also to dacha dwellers
in nearby villages who wished to spend a few days going to concerts and theaters in the larger
towns. Some of these hotels were owned and operated by Russian-speaking entrepreneurs who
had resettled in Finland; others by local Finnish- and Swedish-speaking businessmen looking to
capitalize on expanded opportunities. These hotels in turn served as central points for other local
residents to profit from the summer visitors. According to one travel description, young boys
often loitered outside the hotels selling newspapers in various languages to the visitors. Nearby
cafes popular with the visitors also served as places where local entertainers could earn money.
Drivers and porters often gathered outside the hotels to solicit new clients.

57

In Terijoki, a

gambling house in the hotel district was a popular leisure place for dacha people. In addition to
the taxes that the town received from the operation of this enterprise, the gambling house
benefitted locals who operated nearby outdoor kiosks and cafes. Leisure establishments therefore
served as prominent crossroads of contact between local residents and several different kinds of
visitors to Finland.

56
57

Gusev, Prakticheskii putevoditel’, 23.
Ibid., 26-27.
102

The summer guests from the Russian Empire stimulated local commerce by opening
shops and bringing the St. Petersburg trade closer to local Finns in the Karelian Isthmus villages
and towns. Finnish businesses that existed prior to the growth of the dacha industry also profited
from new clients. A number of establishments run by local Finnish residents placed
advertisements in local newspapers in Vyborg and Terijoki. Some of these ads were printed in
the Russian language, suggesting that these entrepreneurs actively sought Russian-speaking
58

clients.

The increased demands for general consumer goods also encouraged locals to operate

their own stores. In 1897 there were 21 variety stores in Terijoki, of which nine were Finnishowned and 12 were Russian-owned. By 1911, there were 16 Finnish stores and 20 Russian
59

ones.

As the significance of farming diminished, many more inhabitants of the Karelian

Isthmus began to see trade in both agricultural and non-agricultural goods as a viable option for
earning money.
One local recalled that when the dacha season started up, there was much more activity in
the village markets, and one could find a much larger variety of goods in the shops.

60

The rising

demand for meat and dairy products in St. Petersburg proved profitable for the Finnish
countryside and Finns in the Isthmus wasted no time in selling their food to Russian summer
visitors. Juho Savolainen grew up in a farming family in Kivennapa. His family raised cows,
and prior to the dacha boom in his village, the family sold the meat in Russian markets because
customs officials did not collect duties on meat transported from Finland to Russia. By the time

58

For example, one sporting goods store ran ads regularly in Teriokskii dnevnik. Other
advertisements placed by Finnish businesses in that newspaper included a book store that sold
stationery as well as travel guides, and some Finnish works in Russian translation.
59
Kähönen, Entinen Terijoki, 34.
60

SKS KRA, Tilda Leskinen, interview with Elsa Pukonen, Series 1277, 1959.
103

Juho was old enough to take care of the family farm, dacha folk had started arriving en masse
from Russia. He no longer saw a need to travel all the way to St. Petersburg to sell meat, and
instead went to the nearby dacha hub in Terijoki, where there were plenty of customers.

61

The

expansion of the dacha industry shifted the site of business transactions in food and agriculture
closer to home for many of these Finnish-speaking Karelian Isthmus villagers.
For some Karelian Isthmus residents, their variety stores turned into family enterprises in
which every member of the household played an integral role. Lea Pyykkö’s family lived in
Ollila, a town that received a great number of Russian-speaking visitors in the summer because
of the sanatorium located there. The Russian summer visitors had brought so much revenue that
by May 1918 Lea’s father owned three different shops in the town. Her mother worked as a
cashier and bookkeeper for the family business, and the older children in the family helped out in
62

cleaning and stocking the stores. Antti Leskinen’s family ran its own variety store in the early
1900s in a village near the border with Russia, and often catered to Russian clients. On visits to
St. Petersburg the Leskinens bought back other consumer goods from the capital to sell at the
63

family variety store.

Maija Pihkanen, who grew up in the Uusikirkko parish district in the

1890s, recalled that her father and older brother frequently traveled to St. Petersburg to purchase
clothing, foodstuffs and other goods to supply their family friend’s variety store.

64

The presence

of the dacha folk fostered a spirit of entrepreneurship among locals, both Finnish and Russian,
and this environment encouraged locals to travel farther to acquire the goods that would
transform their village stores into thriving businesses.
61
62
63
64

SKS KRA, Bertta Lifländer, KE 44 9461-9473.
SKS KRA, Lea Pyykkö, KE 70, 14599-14617.
SKS KRA, Sirkka Karskela KE 28 5773-5985, interview with Antti Leskinen.
SKS KRA, Maija Pihkanen E234, interview with Elsa Pukonen.
104

What is remarkable about these intercultural exchanges is that they included cross cutting
class and ethnic ties. Stephen Lovell has noted that dacha folk consisted of people from a range
of economic and social statuses. In late nineteenth-century Russian society the growing urban
population often viewed dacha-going as a symbol of middle class standing. The definition of this
group, however, was fluid. The middle class included all those who “did not do physical labor or
perform menial service yet were not grandees or landowning nobles,” and the income boundaries
65

of this segment of society varied widely.

Some Russian artists, writers, and musicians who did

not receive regular wages considered themselves as part of the middle class, even though not all
earned more money than the Finnish farmers and craftsmen who worked in the dacha industry.
According to a study by Liisa Pyykönen, of the 1,683 Russian-owned properties in Terijoki in
1908, about 500 were owned by people of lower ranks. These people included government clerks
in the imperial bureaucracy, professionals, and other office workers.

66

The annual summer

exodus from Russia brought different classes of people to the Karelian Isthmus.
The Russian-speaking visitors’ varied economic base meant that Finnish-Russian
contacts were not limited to exchanges between people from a small economic niche. The dacha
people who flocked to the Karelian Isthmus towns also brought with them Russian-speaking
shopkeepers, gardeners, bakers, and other itinerant workers to fill all sorts of odd jobs. Some
Finns saw these workers as competition in the service industry. Many Russian landlords
preferred to employ Russians because they were willing to accept lower wages than Finnish
workers. Others were not as conscious of this workplace dynamic. Herman Nylander recalled
that many of the men from his village were working alongside Russians on construction projects
65

Stephen Lovell, Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2003), 4.
66
Hämälainen, “Vanhan Suomen venäläiset huvila-asukkaat,”121.
105

67

for wealthy land owners. Wages were decent, and workers usually got along.

Gradually,

though, the dacha folk came to hire more Finnish workers because the Finns had gained a
reputation for producing better quality results.

68

It was also likely that the Russian population

swelled so much within such as short time that the local Finnish population simply could not
supply the man power required to sustain the entire community of dacha visitors. This was
especially so, given that many local Finns also sought work in the St. Petersburg industries. The
arrival of Russian workers meant that there was a much wider range of cross-class interaction in
Finnish-Russian economic relationships than implied in historiography.

Criminality and Social Interactions in the Dacha World
The growth of the dacha settlements in the Karelian Isthmus was accompanied by an
increase in certain types of crime. Petty theft and robbery was a common occurrence in several
dacha towns. One Terijoki newspaper commented on the significant presence of petty thieves in
public places. The author noted that signs reading “Beware of Thieves!” used to be found only in
centrally located areas and crowded places, such as at the train station and on the trams. In recent
years, however, one could find these signs posted all over the town since theft and robberies
were becoming more frequent. The author lamented that locals had become so accustomed to
these thefts that they rarely thought anything of it, and often did not report the crimes. The writer
argued that the local police should be more vigilant in their efforts to prevent robberies.

67
68
69

SKS KRA, Herman Nylander 1270, interview with Elsa Pukonen.
Kähönen, Entinen Terijoki, 29.
Teriokskii dnevnik, September 6, 1913.
106

69

A subsequent editorial in the same newspaper also commented on the recent string of
thefts in the dacha settlements. The author mentioned two incidents where thieves stole jewelry,
silverware and dishware from dachas simply by climbing in through open windows at night. The
commentator opined that dacha folks did not always take the necessary precautionary measures
to thwart theft. He claimed that dacha folk neglected to watch out for their own safety as soon as
they arrived in Finland. He attributed this factor to the reputation Finns had as honest,
trustworthy people. He argued that this trait pertained only to the local Finns who had resided in
the region for a long time, and not to some of the newer arrivals. It was important for dacha
dwellers to keep up similar standards of precaution against theft because professional thieves
also traveled throughout the dacha settlements. The writer further cautioned that robberies and
70

other similar displays of immoral behavior could negatively affect the local people.

These press commentaries offer significant insights on the nature of Finnish-Russian
relationships from the micro to the meso level. The journalists writing about these crimes never
revealed the ethnic identity or origins of the thieves, and it is not known why the writers did not
make specific references to this particular detail. It is plausible that the general profile of the
thieves was too varied to make any concrete statements about their identity. Nonetheless, it was
implied through the articles that the thieves were not typical local residents, and it was quite
possible that many of these fiends were criminals from St. Petersburg traveling through the
dacha settlements along with the dacha people. In one case, a seventeen-year-old girl from
Kostroma employed at a wealthy St. Petersburg couple’s dacha tried to steal valuable small items
from the home, and fled after only three days of work. She was caught at the Terijoki train
station and detained by local police to verify her identity before being expelled to her home
70

Ibid., June 23, 1913.
107

71

province.

Police crime registers from the Kuokkala parish town from 1908 to 1916 indicated

nonetheless that there were no specific patterns to the ethnic origins of the thieves.

72

Vandalism of dacha property was a common petty crime where Finnish citizens tended to
be the main perpetrators. One property owner from St. Petersburg notified police that when he
first arrived at his dacha at the start of the summer season, he found that his garden had been
trampled through, and that several of the new trees he had planted in the previous year had been
73

uprooted.

One farmer from the Kivennapa parish district was caught knocking down fences at

the property of a St. Petersburg dacha owner. Local police were notified of the incident by
neighboring dacha owners who apprehended the perpetrator. Since one of the witnesses was a
Finnish resident, this particular case illustrated an instance where a Finnish-speaking local
74

defended the interests of a fellow property owner from Russia.

In a similar case, a Finnish

worker was brought to the police for destroying the fences at the property of a Russian dacha
owner. The report stated that the two men mutually agreed that the vandal would pay for the
repairs.

75

This incident is an example of Finnish and Russian neighbors resolving a conflict

through mutual agreement rather than an externally imposed solution. These examples suggested
that in some tense situations, neighbors were able to negotiate through their differences.
Some of the skirmishes and scuffles between Finnish- and Russian-speaking residents in
the Karelian Isthmus related more to alcohol-induced revelry and petty personal rivalries than to
interethnic hostility. Russian military servicemen from nearby bases often stayed in local villages
71
72
73
74
75

Ibid., June 30, 1913.
See MMA Terijoen nimismiespiirin Kuokkalan poliisiaseman arkisto, IV Ab1 to IV Ab6.
Ibid., IV Ab2, April 26, 1911.
Ibid., IV Ab3, October 24, 1913.
Ibid., IV Ab2, March 17, 1911.
108

when they were on leave. They explored the Karelian countryside and consorted with local
women. Young, prosperous Finnish men sometimes also sought the company of Russian women
who came with their families to the Karelian Isthmus towns during the summer. For the most
part, this brought Finnish and Russian families and friends together. Elena Dubrovskaia has
commented that Finns and Russians participated in local celebrations together, and marriages
between Russian military personnel and local Finnish women were not uncommon.

76

Other

times, this resulted in brawls between Russian and Finnish youths. In one case documented by
the Kuokkala police, three Russian cadets from a military training facility got into a fight with a
Finnish-speaking youth. The cadets were on their way to visit a local Finnish girl when they saw
a young Finnish man with one of their Russian female acquaintances. Witnesses reported that the
cadets were intoxicated, and provoked an attack on the young Finn.

77

Although there appeared

to be an ethnic element to this incident, it was likely equally provoked by the individuals’
alcohol consumption and temperament. Yet these were the very kinds of incidents that
newspapers claimed as cases of interethnic tension. During the First World War, for example, the
Finnish press claimed that Russian soldiers stationed in Finland behave crudely, and caused
disturbances in the city streets with their public drunkenness.

78

These sorts of press reports

contributed to negative stereotyping of Russian men as alcoholic troublemakers.

76

E. Iu. Dubrovskaia, “Rossiiskie voennosluzhashchie i naselenie velikogo kniazhestva
Finliandskogo v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny: predstavleniia, kontakty, protivorechiia,”
Istoricheskie Zapiski, vol 126 (2005), 285.
77
MMA Terijoen nimismiespiirin Kellomäen poliisiaseman arkisto (Terijoki Parish District
Sheriff’s Office Police Archives for Kellomäki) PAIII Aa3, May 16, 1913.
78
Dubrovskaia, “Rossiiskie voennosluzhashchie i naselenie velikogo kniazhestva
Finliandskogo,” 274-275.
109

One of the unintended consequences of the yearly dacha exodus was that the
underground sales in alcohol flourished. Prohibition was a policy that the majority of Finnish
political parties supported, and on several occasions between 1907 and 1914 the Finnish Senate
had tried to pass legislation banning the import and sale of hard liquor in Finland. Each time, the
79

bills failed to translate into law.

Nonetheless, police and inspectors in Finland attempted to

regulate the sale of hard liquor. However, in spite of these attempts to curb alcoholism, one
Russian newspaper noted that based on official sales records, alcohol consumption in Finland
was still quite high. Beyond authorized alcohol sales, many Finns living in the countryside near
80

the border purchased alcohol through the informal market.

Since visitors from Russia often brought liquor with them when they came to visit the
Karelian Isthmus towns, some unscrupulous individuals soon discovered that they could make
money in Finland by selling their extra bottles to the locals. Police records in the Isthmus towns
were filled with reports of public drunkenness and alcohol trafficking. The range of alcohol
smuggling related offences included transporting a few extra bottles of liquor that dacha people
claimed as refreshments for holiday celebrations, to instances where a ring of people organized
large scale illegal alcohol sales.

81

Some of these episodes were simply the result of overly rowdy

celebrations on the part of the Russian-speaking residents, as was the case when a police
constable in Kuokkala detained a Russian worker and his wife who were intoxicated in the

79

David Kirby, A Concise History of Finland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),
154.
80
Rossiia, April 9, 1910.
81

MMA Terijoen Nimismiespiirin Kuokkalan poliisiaseman arkisto IV Ab1, No. 42, April 16,
1908, and No. 49, April 30, 1908.
110

streets in the early hours of the morning.

82

Sometimes these cases escalated in public disorder
83

when intoxicated workers got into scuffles with each other.

It is tempting to assume that the erosion of social mores that accompanied the hustle and
bustle of the dacha season irked the Finnish population in these small towns and did much to turn
the locals against the seasonal visitors. However, both Russians and Finns participated in illicit
alcohol sales and smuggling of spirits from the Russian to the Finnish side of the border. Police
records indicated that the same relative proportion of Finns and Russians, based on their
percentage of the population, were fined for alcohol-related public disturbances. There was also
an even balance of Russians and Finns as witnesses to these incidents. Although there were some
instances of Finnish workers and peasants testifying against their employers or landlords for
smuggling, there were no discernable patterns suggesting that Finns accused only Russians of
84

being unruly and vice versa.

Some individuals may have been compelled by their ethnically

based prejudices to lodge complaints against neighbors who did not share a common language
and culture. However, it is just as plausible that petty economic grievances and individual pride,
rather than ethnic hatred, were the main catalysts for these complaints. Miscommunication
leading to minor disputes occurred in a variety of settings, but when these altercations involved
people of different cultural backgrounds, these incidents enticed the nationalist press to attribute
these skirmishes to interethnic hostilities, even though individuals involved in the disputes were
not particularly motivated by ethnic issues.

82
83
84

Ibid., IV Ab1, No. 32, August 22, 1908.
Ibid., IV Ab1, No. 33, August 30, 1908.

MMA Terijoen Nimismiespiirin Kuokkalan poliisiaseman arkisto IV Ab1, No. 53, May 10,
1908. In one police report, a worker claimed that his Russian employer sold four bottles of spirits
to other workers.
111

The dacha settlements located in parish towns in the Karelian Isthmus at the end of the
nineteenth century were neither idyllic sites of multicultural cooperation, nor were they
battlefields for open conflict between people of different cultural backgrounds. Depending on the
local context, the interactions varied. The rapid development of Russian dacha culture in these
towns and the influx of seasonal visitors to the region disrupted the local social and
environmental landscape, and were genuine sources of conflict and hostility between local
Finnish-speaking inhabitants and visitors from Russia. However, the mixing of people and
lifestyles also created ample economic and cultural opportunities for both Finnish and Russian
speakers in the region. These points of contacts suggested that people in these diverse towns did
not always see themselves as belonging to strictly defined social categories. They crossed social
boundaries frequently, and in doing so, they challenge the notion of singular, fixed identities.

112

Chapter 3 – Cultural Bridge Building through the Dacha

The dacha is both a social and cultural phenomenon. In the dacha communities in the
Karelian Isthmus, various forms of culture played a significant part in turning these places into
sites of complex social interaction. This notion carries diverse meanings in multiple contexts. In
Finland, the cultural sphere facilitated bridge-building between Finnish and Russian speakers.
However, it also fostered insularity, and was at times manipulated to create and reinforce
negative stereotypes of the “other.”
Culture is important for the study of interethnic contact because it informs us of the way
people see themselves in relation to others. The juxtaposition of the “self” and the “other” is
manifested through cultural symbols, since “the ‘identity work’ of nationalism is produced in a
1

social discourse and in symbolic interaction with different Others.” This quest for Russian
identity is further convoluted by the multinational nature of the Russian Empire, which had a
profound effect on the way Russians conceptualized nation. They used the term rossisskii to
denote an imperial identity, but associated the term russkii with an ethno-cultural sense of
Russianness. These two concepts, however, were not mutually exclusive. Indeed, as Olga
Maiorova argues, Russians often found it difficult to separate themselves from the language of
empire: “Empire was a stage where the Russian people’s historical drama unfolded…It served to
2

reinforce rather than to obliterate Russian national identity.” Since Russians also defined
themselves in relation to other Russians, cultural practices are important indicators of how
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
1

Elena Hellberg-Hirn, Soil and Soul: The Symbolic World of Russianness (Aldershot: Ashgate,
1998), 12.
2
Olga Maiorova, From the Shadow of Empire: Defining the Russian Nation through Cultural
Mythology, 1855-1870 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 5-6.
113
	
  

notions of groupness and belonging have been socially constructed in the broader search for
ethno-national identity.

3

The habit of defining the self against the other resonated not only in ethno-national terms,
but also in social terms. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, changing social hierarchies
also complicated the notion of Russian identity. The social and political reforms that began
during the Petrine era and continued through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to the
erosion of the nobility’s power, privilege and prestige, and the increasing presence of social
groups that did not fit the estate system. The raznochintsy, or people of various rank, embodied
the permeability of social categories in late imperial Russia. Social representations depicted this
group in multiple ways: as ambiguously defined social elements among the lower urban classes,
4

as folks that were neither peasant nor noble, and as non-noble but educated commoners. The
fluidity of social identity contributed to anxieties in fin-de-siècle Russian society, necessitating
the need to seek the roots of identity through the construction of otherness. In particular, the
emergence of two ambiguously defined middle groups, the petty bourgeoisie (meshchanstvo) and
the intelligentsia, was at the heart of social discord. The meshchanstvo emerged as an amorphous
group encompassing the lower urban strata such as artisans, laborers in skilled trades, and later
came to include professionals and merchants. The intelligentsia, a self-defined group of
intellectuals that saw itself as a “spiritual heir to the aristocratic traditions…aristocratic in spirit
and poor in means” came to see the meshchanstvo, who belonged neither to the aristocracy nor

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
3

Catriona Kelly, “Byt: Identity and Everyday Life,” in National Identity in Russian Culture, ed.
Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 152.
4
Elise Wirtschafter, Structures of Society: Imperial Russia’s “People of Various Ranks”
(Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994), 93.
114
	
  

5

the peasantry, as a group that undermined the romanticized common ideal. Commentary on the
6

social “other” became a constant theme in the literary discourse in the late nineteenth century.
Examining the dacha zone through a cultural lens allows us to consider how Russians
saw the dacha communities in Finland as specifically Russian spaces, and how these spaces
7

embodied the ideals and aspirations of the middle class. Moreover, what did this envisioning of
Russian middle class space mean when intellectuals constantly criticized middle class values
8

associated with everyday life as being radically non-Russian? As Vera Tolz has argued, part of
the confusion about Russian identity stems from the fact that “the limits of the Russian national
community could not be defined with certainty due to the country’s vastness and its continuing
9

expansion.” Since many educated Russians were well aware of Finland’s unique autonomous
status and the circumstances behind which it was incorporated into the Russian Empire, it is
difficult to claim that Russians generally saw Finland as an organic part of their national
community. At the same time, as I have argued in the first chapter, the expansion of the dacha
spaces into Finland and the common perception of the dacha area as a suburban outreach of
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
5

Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1994), 67.
6
Elena Hellberg Hirn, “Imperial Places and Stories,” in Imperial and National Identities in PreRevolutionary, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia, ed. Chris Chulos and Johannes Remy (Helsinki:
SKS, 2002), 39.
7
Finnish and Swedish speakers also have their own summertime cottage cultures, and they value
the summer cottage as an important aspect of respite while appreciating the wonders of the
northern natural environment. However, it is rather difficult to speak of such thing as a summer
cottage community. Finnish and Scandinavian peoples tend to build their summertime cottages
far away from urban civilization. They also prefer to retreat to remote areas where they are not
likely to encounter many other people. The isolation of cottage living in Finland is well
illustrated in Finnish novelist Tove Jansson’s 1972 work, The Summer Book, trans. Thomas Teal
(New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2008).
8
Boym, 68.
9

Vera Tolz, Russia: Inventing the Nation (London: Arnold, 2001), 164.
115

	
  

Russian cities mean that it is not entirely preposterous to consider whether some Russians saw
these towns and villages in Finland as part of Russian space. The notion of Russian space should
thus be situated in several different contexts beyond geopolitical boundaries. National, imperial,
and transcultural dimensions are important because addressing space in these contexts gives us
10

multiple lenses through which to examine Russia’s interaction with other cultures.

The dacha

communities in the Karelian Isthmus embodied all of these contexts. The dacha, as Steven Lovell
11

argues, is a specifically Russian social and cultural symbol of the aspiring middle class.

It can

have an imperial dimension because of its incursion into territories of people who did not see
themselves as truly belonging to the Russian polity. It is also transcultural because it brings
people of different ethnonational, religious and class backgrounds into contact with each other.
This chapter treats culture and leisure in the same analytical plane because the two
concepts combined reveal the interstices between the everyday and the extraordinary. It also
prompts us to consider territorial space not just in terms of the national, but also in terms of
social hierarchy. The idea of the everyday as a concept emerged from secularization in a
modernizing context, and it is also connected to the emergence of the middle class. It is, as
Svetlana Boym describes, “amorphous, unformed and informal, yet it is also the most
conservative mode of preservation of forms and formalities.”

12

Changing personal perceptions

of middle class identities in fin-de-siècle Russian urban society went in tandem with changes in
economic and political structures. Leisure – how people enjoyed themselves outside of the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
10

Mark Bassin, Christopher Ely and Melissa K. Stockdale, “Introduction: Russian Space” in
Space, Place and Power in Modern Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History, ed. Bassin, Ely
and Stockdale (DeKalb: northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 8.
11
Lovell, Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2003), 4.
12
Boym, 20-21.
116
	
  

context of work – offered people opportunities to imagine their roles in public and private life,
13

thus shaping individuals’ relationship to society.

In the nineteenth century, the concept of

culture also changed from an aristocratic social convention to common entertainment for the
masses. For example, the notion of the traveler as a nobleman journeying to far-away lands for
intellectual pursuit transformed into an image of the commercial tourists whose experience of
distant lands varied from that of their aristocratic predecessors. Leisure also broadened the
cultural sphere to include a wide range of public spaces beyond the theater and the opera house.
14

Theatrical journals proliferated because of increased mass interest in the theater.

The blending

of culture and leisure means that it important to address leisure as another aspect of everyday life
alongside the concept of work.
The assumption that the dacha was primarily a Russian summertime leisure pursuit thus
leads to the further question of whether the dacha should be accepted as a part of everyday
living. Melissa Caldwell has argued that Anton Chekhov’s literary works at the end of the
nineteenth century appealed to a broad spectrum of readers, among his contemporaries and
among modern-day readers, because his work dealt with the social issues reflected in the
everyday lives of ordinary folk with humor. He used dachas as a recurring setting in his work to
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
13

Louise McReynolds, Russia at Play: Leisure Activities at the End of the Tsarist Era (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2003), 4.
14
Ibid., 9 and 26. The critique of leisure as a part of middle class culture has loose parallels in
non-Russian cases. In Victorian Britain, leisure was part of a larger contested cultural space that
revealed social and political rifts. According to Mike J. Huggins, the Victorian middle classes
fostered the notion of respectability as a response to fears of the moral misuse of leisure.
However, this fear was targeted more at the workforce as well as at middle class youths than at
themselves. One of the main concerns in Victorian literature was the young unmarried male
spending time away from home where there were allegedly more opportunities to engage in
sinful behavior and hedonistic life. See Mike J. Huggins, “More Sinful Pleasures? Leisure,
Respectability and the Male Middle Classes in Victorian England,” Journal of Social History,
vol. 33, no.3 (Spring 2000), 586 and 590.
117
	
  

critique common social issues such as serf emancipation, industrialization and urbanization, and
the class tensions that resulted from these socio-economic changes. Caldwell contends that both
Chekhov and his contemporary, Maxim Gorky, displayed “shrewd awareness that dachas belong
to the realm of ordinary life, and as such are not immune to trials and conflicts that crop up
15

elsewhere in the course of everyday activities.”

The dacha was a setting for summertime

respite in fin-de-siècle Russia, but it was by no means an extraordinary retreat to isolationism
from all vestiges of “normal” urban living. Chekhov’s 1885 short story “Dachniki” illustrates
this aspect of dacha life. In this story, young newlyweds, Varia and Sasha, are taking a stroll near
the railway platform of their dacha town. They are admiring the tranquility of summertime
village life of the dacha to which they have escaped for the summer. A train approaches, carrying
the couple’s entire extended family who had decided to make an unannounced visit to the
newlyweds’ dacha. The two realize in horror that their idyllic summertime retreat to marital bliss
16

would be completely disrupted.

The dacha is thus a setting where those who engaged in

activities associated with dacha life encountered the full spectrum of rural and urban everyday
17

experiences.

Clifford Geertz defines culture as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings
embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means
of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
15

Melissa Caldwell, Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2011), 30 and 33.
16
Anton Chekhov, “Dachniki” (1885), from Sobrania sochinenii v dvenatsati tomakh (Moscow:
Pravda, 1985), reprinted at Publichnaia elektronnaia biblioteka, accessed December 10, 2012,
http://public-library.narod.ru/Chekhov.Anton/dachniki.html.
17
Caldwell, Dacha Idylls, 46.
118
	
  

18

life.”

In this chapter, culture is broadly defined to reflect the multiple symbols and experiences

that shaped community identities. It consists of theater, literature, music and art. It includes folk
festivals and other forms of popular entertainment. It also refers to public institutions that
inculcate a sense of shared identity and community, such as churches, schools, and voluntary
associations. Together, these different forms of cultural expression serve as an arena where
individuals turn the imagined components in Benedict Anderson’s definition of the national
19

community into lived experiences and processes.

The various ways in which people in the

dacha communities in the Karelian Isthmus experienced culture allow us to analyze how culture
can serve as a bridge that linked diverse groups together and simultaneously functioned as a wall
that further divided them.

Artistic Intelligentsia in Finland
The Russian artistic and literary elite had significant ties in Finland throughout the
nineteenth century. Liisa Byckling has noted that in the major urban centers in Finland, Russian
theater gained popularity among Finnish audiences with the establishment of the Alexander
Theater in Helsinki in 1880 and the Finnish Regional Theater (Suomalainen maaseututeatteri).
Finnish and Russian educated elites mixed in these settings, and enriched the cultural

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
18
19

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 89.

Benedict Anderson defines the nation as “an imagined political community - and imagined as
both inherently limited and sovereign” in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 1991), 6. Simon Franklin and Emma
Widdis argue that while it is fair to characterize notions such as identity and culture as social
constructs that are created through imagination, it is important not to dismiss these concepts as
not real. The texts, images and sounds that lead to the imagined identities and cultures are
nonetheless real, lived aspects of peoples’ lives, and thus they are real, cultural facts. See “All
the Russias…?” in National Identity in Russian Culture, 2-3.
119
	
  

atmosphere.

20

Ben Hellman has commented that the 1870s and 1880s was a fruitful time for the

introduction of Russian literature to the Finnish readership, since Finns born in Russia began
translating works by Pushkin and Gogol.

21

Leo Tolstoi’s personal circle of friends included

Finnish novelist Juhani Aho, artist Akseli Gallen-Kalella, and the Järnefelts, a family of
prominent Finnish writers, artists and musicians.

22

Finland’s most well-known composer, Jean

Sibelius, grew up near a Russian military garrison in Tavasterhus (Finnish: Hämeenlinna), a city
in central Finland, and professed that Russian influences were a significant part of his childhood.
His first violin teacher, for example, was Mitrofan Wasilieff, a Russian musician from the
23

Imperial String Quartet in St. Petersburg who came to teach at the Helsinki Music Institute.
Although Finnish politics was mired by divisive debates about the extent to which imperial

governance intruded upon Finnish national development, people in the cultural sphere were
much more receptive to cosmopolitan influences. Russian ideas were among many different
inspirations in Finnish cultural circles. The escalating tensions between Russia and Finland,

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
20

Liisa Byckling, “Russkaia kul’tura v zerkale finskikh teatrov na rubezhe XIX-XX vekov,” in
Dva Lika Rossii, ed. Timo Vihavainen (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 2007), 163.
21
Ben Hellman, “The Reception of Russian Culture in Finland 1809-1917,” in Finland and
Poland in the Russian Empire: A Comparative Study, ed. Michael Branch, Janet Hartley and
Antoni Maczak (London: University of London School of Slavonic and East European Studies,
1995), 205.
22
See Minna Turtiainen and Tuija Wahlroos, eds., Maaemon lapset: Tolstoilaisuus
kulttuurihistoriallisena ilmiönä Suomessa (Helsinki: SKS, 2010) on the relationship between
Tolstoy and his followers in Finland. John I. Kolehmainen, “When Finland’s Tolstoy Met His
Russian Master,” American Slavic and East European Review, vol. 16, no. 4 (1957), 534-541,
describes Finnish writer Arvid Järnefelt’s first meeting with Tolstoy in Moscow in 1899 and the
Finn’s fascination with the prolific Russian novelist.
23
Philip Ross Bullock, “Sibelius and the Russian Tradition,” in Jean Sibelius and His World, ed.
Daniel M. Grimley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 18. Sibelius also had contact
with Tolstoy and his Finnish disciples through marriage: in 1892, he married Aino Järnefelt, the
sister of brothers Arvid and Eero Järnefelt, who were both admirers of Tolstoy.
120
	
  

according to Philip Ross Bullock, “did not necessarily impede cultural contacts between the two
countries. Indeed, such contacts were indicative of a shared disdain for Russian autocracy.”

24

With the growth of St. Petersburg, many inhabitants from the bustling imperial capital
increasing looked westward towards Finland in search of their ideal summertime homes. A
number of writers, artists and musicians purchased property in the Karelian Isthmus, and spent
their summers and weekends there nurturing their creative work. The Karelian Isthmus towns
were hugely popular among the St. Petersburg artistic and literary elite and served as a meeting
place for Finnish and Russian artistic figures, since the beautiful scenery inspired the creative
intelligentsia. Hannes Sihvo has remarked that even prior to the dacha boom in the last decade of
the nineteenth century, the natural beauty of the region appealed to St. Petersburgers. He
characterized the Karelian Isthmus as “a veritable paradise, close to the metropolis,” with “a
25

lasting impression on the history of Russian art, especially modernism.”

In this sense, it is

appropriate to examine space as the objective reality of the physical environment. As Mark
Bassin, Christopher Ely and Melissa Stockdale have argued, the real existing features of the
physical environment were often loaded with strongly emotive significance, and they evoked
attitudes that strongly affected one’s attitude and behavior.

26

The growth of these seaside dacha

communities in the Karelian Isthmus thus contributed significantly to the dialogue between the
Finnish and Russian artistic intelligentsia, which was already well established by the end of the
nineteenth century. The Karelian Isthmus and its Finnish inhabitants were frequently referenced
in Russian cultural works. The Imatra waterfalls was the subject of one of Ilya Repin’s paintings.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
24
25

Bullock, “Sibelius and the Russian Tradition,” 17 and 20.

Hannes Sihvo, “Summer House Settlements on the Karelian Isthmus as Described in
Literature,” Studia Slavica Finlandensia vol. 16, no. 2 (1999), 237.
26
Bassin, Ely and Stockdale, “Introduction: Russian Space,” 8.
121
	
  

One of the protagonists in Anton Chekhov’s 1897 play Uncle Vanya, Professor Serebriakov,
mentions buying a small dacha in Finland with some of his remaining funds.

27

Playwright and novelist Leonid Andreev was among the group of prolific creative figures
who owned property near these seaside dacha communities in Finland. In the summer of 1907,
he purchased a small plot of land near Vammelsuu, a village located just outside the main dacha
settlement at Terijoki. He also purchased a small field from a neighboring peasant as a vegetable
garden. On his plot of land, he built a house with a stone foundation. He moved there in May
1908 with his son Vadim, even though the construction of the house was not yet fully
completed.

28

Unlike the dacha folk though, his stay at this property was more than just for

summertime or weekend leisure. From 1908 on, Leonid Andreev stayed at his home in
Vammelsuu semi-permanently. The environment at that location gave him great inspiration.
Vadim recalled in his memoir that this home gave off an air of grandiosity. The home was an
inspiring place to cultivate one’s artistic senses, and everyone who visited Andreev’s home in
Vammelsuu was inspired to write or take on other creative endeavors. Vadim’s tutor, for
example, was an aspiring writer who lived with the Andreevs in Vammelsuu for two years in
order to nurture his creative talents.

29

The high number of established and aspiring writers, artists and musicians from Russia
who visited their properties in Finland each summer made the Karelian Isthmus dacha
communities an ideal location for informal gatherings among the artistic intelligentsia. Ilya
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
27

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya: A Comedy in Four Acts, trans. Jenny Covan (New York:
Brentano’s Publishers, 1922), 59.
28
Vadim Andreev, Detstvo: Povest’ (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1963), 33. In his Finnish
property contract dated June 3/16, 1907, a larger plot of land in the area was divided
amongAndreev and three other Finnish landowners. RGALI, f.11, op.5, d.9, l.1.
29
Andreev, Detstvo: Povest’, 38-9.
122
	
  

Repin, who purchased a plot of land by the shores of the Gulf of Finland near the Kuokkala
railway station, built a house that he named the Penates. During the span of his stay in Kuokkala,
he hosted countless guests from the Russian artistic and intellectual community. His grandson
jokingly remarked in his recollection about life at the Penates that “at the Kuokkala train station,
there were not enough cab drivers: they were all snapped up by guests at the Penates. Rich and
30

poor, near or far, they were taken in by the host of the house.”

Until 1914, Repin hosted

numerous artistic evenings for his circle of friends. These creative minds spent many hours
sharing their opinions on recent theatrical productions and literary works.

31

Vadim Andreev also

recalled visiting Maxim Gorky at the latter’s family’s dacha in Neuvola, another nearby Finnish
village where Russians built summer houses.
Chukovsky at one of Repin’s gatherings.

33

32

The young Andreev had also met Kornei

In 1908, Chukovsky started renting a house near

Repin’s villa, and Repin extended invitations for his intellectual gatherings to his new

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
30

Gai Repin, “Penaty,” Mosty, no. 10 (1963), 398. Guests at the Penates included F.I. Shalyapin,
Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreev, A. Kuprin, and I.P. Pavlov.
31
Ibid., 400.
32
33

Andreev, Detstvo: Povest’, 113.
Ibid., 116-117.
123

	
  

34

neighbor.

Through these summer visits to Kuokkala, Repin and Chukovsky got acquainted
35

with each other and with other artists and intellectuals that Repin often invited to his residence.
The remarkable artistic collective in the Karelian Isthmus dacha communities is well
documented in Lydia Chukovskaia’s memoir about her childhood in Kuokkala. The Repin and

Chukovsky families lived in the same area and had a very close connection with each other. She
remembered that she and her brothers passed notes between her father and Ilya Repin almost
every day. She wrote that her father “couldn’t spend a single day without literature, without the
society of artistic and literary friends,” and his house at Kuokkala was the center of his artistic
and literary universe, where he had gotten acquainted with prominent Russian artistic figures.

36

According to Chukovskaia, her father was treated like a member of the Repin household at
Penates. Guests at the Repin household often visited the Chukovsky family later the same day,
and vice versa. These same guests often visited other artist and writers’ households, where they
discussed the current political and social atmosphere for artistic expression.

37

Chukovskaia’s

memoir reflects a very nostalgic view of life in the Karelian Isthmus villages.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
34

Repin also sought to have his group of artists and intellectuals meet in locations other than his
dacha. He described his intentions for establishing a circle (kruzhok) of debaters among the
dacha folk in Kuokkala. He planned for the group to meet once a month on the first Sunday at a
local guest house. He did not require for participants to prepare essays or presentations, but he
wished to discuss literature, art, philosophy and even politics during these meetings. See letter
from Repin to Chukovskii, July 6, 1909, in Repin I.E., Chukovskii K.I. Perepiska, 1906-1929
(Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006), 30.
35
Elena Hellberg-Hirn, “Dachnyi al’bom Chukokkala v kul’tury,” in The Dacha Kingdom:
Summer Dwellers and Dwellings in the Baltic Area, ed. Natalia Baschmakoff and Mari
Ristolainen (Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2009), 100.
36
Lidia Chukovskaia, To the Memory of Childhood, trans. Eliza Kellogg Klose (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1988), 57.
37
Ibid., 59.
124
	
  

Temira Pachmuss has commented in her work on Russian writers in Finland that the
1840s was the high point of friendly cultural relations between Finns and Russians in the realm
of high culture. Russian nobility often exchanged visits with prominent members of the Finnish38

Swedish aristocracy, and high ranking Russian officers often attended Finnish balls.

However,

as the propaganda efforts in Finland for resisting Russian rule increased, negative attitudes of
some Finns towards anything associated with Russia created insurmountable tensions between
Finns and Russians. The more the Finns disparaged Russian life and culture, the more Russian
speakers resented the Finns and saw them as a rebellious people who were ungrateful for the
significant Russian contributions to the development of Finnish culture. Pachmuss writes, “The
Finns, in turn, were offended by this behavior, which resulted in criticism by the Russians of
them.”

39

Pachmuss attributes this tension to some Russian elites’ sense of isolation in Finland,

especially after 1917 when Finland seceded from the defunct Russian Empire, and local politics
40

became increasingly hostile towards Russian emigrants.

Pachmuss’ observations only provide a partial view of Russian experiences in Finland.
The vibrant dacha communities in the Karelian Isthmus indicated that not all Russian artists and
writers in Finland felt the same sense of isolation at all times. Many of the Russian artistic
intelligentsia in Finland directly contributed to a lively theater and arts culture in Finland. This
culture was accessible not only to the artistic elite, but to the wider public as well. The summer
season in Terijoki and other Finnish towns that had a strong presence of dacha folk were packed
with public performances such as plays, operas, and concerts. These events were advertised in
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
38

Temira Pachmuss, A River of Moving Tears: Russia’s Experience in Finland (New York:
Peter Lang, 1992), 5.
39
Ibid., 13-14.
40

Ibid., 172.
125

	
  

the Russian-language newspaper in Finland, Finliandskaia gazeta, St. Petersburg publications
about the dacha zones in Finland such as Teriokskii dnevnik, local and regional Finnish
newspapers such as Karjala and Viipurin sanomat, and major newspapers in the St. Petersburg
region such as Sankt Peterburgskie vedomosti and Novoe vremia. There was no lack of cultural
events for Russian speakers to attend, and Finnish speakers knew about opportunities to
participate in Russian cultural developments.
Some Russian writers and observers were well aware of developments in Finnish cultural
life, and wrote about them in Russian journals and newspapers. One newspaper article in a
publication catering to the dacha communities commented on the significance of folk poetry in
the development of Finnish culture. The columnist discussed the Kalevala, linguist Elias
Lönnrot’s compilation and translation of a series of folk stories in the Karelian region that came
to be known as Finland’s epic, as a significant part of the “Golden Age” of Finnish folk culture.
He argued that the Finnish people’s love of music and folk poetry had not waned within recent
years. He used the first song festival in Jyväskylä, an eastern Finnish town, in 1886 as an
41

example of the recent proliferation of interest in the cultural life of peasant folk in Finland.

In

one Russian language journal devoted to Finnish studies, a reader’s letter to the editor of the
journal called for more linguistic specialists to examine Finnish manuscripts so that scholars
42

could investigate specific links between Finnish and Russian vocabulary.

Some publications

also reviewed Finnish literary works, and commented on the relationship between these works
and Finnish life. One such review discussed fictional works by Finnish writers about the Finnish
peasantry. The reviewer mentioned the pattern in Finnish literary works for discussing Finnish
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
41
42

Teriokski dnevnik, “Finliandskie pevecheskie prazniki,” June 9, 1913.
“Eschë iz oblastii finno-russkikh kul’turnykh otnoshenii,” Finliandiia, February 10, 1910.
126

	
  

peasants and their aspirations to own more land. He commented on the way some of these works
depicted Finnish peasants as simple folk, while juxtaposing the peasantry with the cunning
merchants. This review showed that some Russian observers were aware of the social cleavages
in Finnish society and the stereotypes Finns perpetuated about each other.

43

Finns and Russians also made honest efforts to promote understanding of each other
through cultural events. One such event was the Finnish song festival held in Terijoki in June
1913. According to one Russian newspaper, the song festival’s purpose was to promote peasant
folk culture in Finland, and generate pride in the cultural life of peasants in Finland.
Additionally, Karelian peasants were also scheduled to perform and showcase various aspects of
their culture. To generate more interest in Finnish folk culture, festival organizers had arranged
for Finnish musicians, singers and dancers who were renowned in Europe to perform. Although
the festival was aimed at the local Finnish population and promised to celebrate their lives, the
Russian author of this article about the folk festival commented that the event should catch the
44

attention of the dacha folk.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
43
44

“Finskii krestianin po proizvedeniiam finskikh pisatelei,” Rossiia, June 25, 1910.

Teriokskii dnevnik, “Finskie pevcheskie, muzykal’nye sportivnye prazdnestva,” June 9, 1913.
It is important to point out that the newspaper article describing this festival distinguished
between Finnish and Karelian folk culture. The study of ethnography of the peoples in the
Russian Empire proliferated in the latter half of the nineteenth century, thanks to the efforts of
the Russian Geographical Society. Maria Leskinen has noted that Russian ethnographers who
studied Karelians were careful to differentiate Karelian from Finnish peasant culture, and this
distinction was noted in popular ethnographic publications. For examples, ethnographers often
commented on some of the similarities between Karelian peasant culture and Russian peasant
culture in the northwestern reaches of the Russian empire. They noted that many Karelian
peasants, similar to Russians, followed the Orthodox faith, while Finnish peasants mostly
followed the Lutheran faith. See “Suomalaisen kuva 1800-luvun lopun populaareissa
etnografisissa esityksissä,” in Monikasvoinen Suomi: Venäläisten mielikuvia Suomesta ja
suomalaisista, ed. Olga Iljuha, Aleksei Tsamutali and Timo Vihavainen (Helsinki: Edita, 2009),
60-61.
127
	
  

Russian elites also participated in their share of promoting Russian cultural events that
bridged the gap between Russian and Finnish speakers. One group of Russian playwrights, artists
and performers even organized their own Russian summer theater in Finland. In the spring of
1912, this group, which included symbolist artist Nikolai Sapunov, theater director Vsevolod
Meyerhold, and writer Aleksandr Blok, wanted to honor Swedish playwright and novelist August
Strindberg, who had recently died in May that year. The group chose Terijoki as the location for
their independent theater because it was a place that was easy for many from among the Russian
artistic elite to reach. Additionally, Finland had the added advantage of having a close
relationship with Sweden. The members observed that a good number of improvisation theater
troupes performed there.

45

The group chose a casino as the site of their theater. A local Finnish-

Swedish businessman, V.I. Jonker knew some members of this group, and leased out this
property to the theater group for a portion of the profit from ticket sales. He did so even though
the group had forewarned him that this theater was only meant as an experiment, and would not
generate significant revenue from shows put on for the dacha public. The group nonetheless had
a good impression of Jonker, and formed an amicable working relationship with him in their
endeavors to establish their theater.

46

This example of artistic endeavors demonstrates the

significance of intercultural contacts.
For almost a month after initial plans were made for this summer theater, the members of
the group planned and rehearsed performances in St. Petersburg, even though many of the
directors and performers lived in the dachas in Finland. Almost all participants in the organizing
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
45

V.A. Piast, Vstrechi (Moscow: Izdatel’svo federatsiia, 1929), 235. Vladimir Alekseevich Piast
was a poet and translator who was also one of the summer theater organizers.
46
V.P. Verigina, Vospominaniia (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo iskusstvo Leningradskoe otdelenie,
1974), 174. Valentina Petrovna Verigina was an actress who participated in the Terijoki summer
theater.
128
	
  

group, however, agreed to move to Terijoki during the summer, and together they rented a dacha
where they could all live together to discuss their craft.

47

Meyerhold, one of the key organizers

of the group initially was reluctant to live with the rest of the summer theater collective in
Terijoki. In the end, however, he agreed to make the move, as long as the rest of this group
consented to his coming and going from the dacha as he pleased.

48

Living in the dacha for the

entire summer, the novelists, playwrights and performers developed a sense of camaraderie and
created a tight knit artistic and literary community in the dacha settlement. Even long after the
production had finished, Sapunov remained in Terijoki. In this sense, these intellectuals
participated in the construction of their own community.
The theater’s opening performance was scheduled for July 14, 1912. The event was well
publicized in local newspapers as well as in newspapers and journals in St. Petersburg. As a
result, many guests and members of the audience came from St. Petersburg to attend the opening
performance, and the grand opening of the theater was celebrated among the Russian community
in Finland, local Finnish residents in Terijoki, and Russians in St. Petersburg.

49

After the

premier, many St. Petersburg publications reviewed the performance, and the feedback was
mostly positive. One editorial even commented that the theater group had managed to generate
enough interest to fill almost the entire concert hall!

50

Cultural performances like these were

common in the Karelian Isthmus, especially during the summertime. These events added an
element of elite culture to the simple pace of life in the dacha communities.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
47
48
49
50

Piast, Vstrechi, 236.

Verigina, Vospominaniia, 178.
Piast, Vstrechi, 239.
Verigina, Vospominaniia, 179.
129

	
  

Interestingly, this artistic culture as a lived experience did not necessarily always draw
Russian speakers closer together. The dacha is therefore an interesting setting for discussing
social divisions among Russian-speakers in general. Some of these Russian artists and writers
did not consider themselves to be dacha folk, even though they lived in communities that were
heavily dominated by dacha people. Russians like Chukovsky and Repin, who had no ancestral
ties to the region but nonetheless considered both their residences in the Karelian Isthmus and in
Russia to be their homes, were reluctant to be considered dacha folk. The boundaries between
the dacha people and Russian speakers who lived in Finland permanently were blurred precisely
because of the fact that some dacha people came to be long term residents and established
permanent households in Finland.
Some Russians like Chukovsky and Repin, who lived in Finland year-round, developed
an animosity towards the seasonal visitors from Russia and preferred not to associate with them.
According to Lydia Chukovskaia, the contrast between families like hers and the dacha-going
families who lived in Kuokkala only during the summer was “the idleness of the dachniks and
the intense busyness of Kornei Ivanovich, his friends and acquaintances.” She made a very sharp
distinction between the leisure activities of the artistic intelligentsia and the common dacha folk.
She commented that poetry recitations, seaside visits, and outdoor strolls were leisure activities
that her father and his friends did in order to enrich the mind. These activities “in no way
resembled the diversions of the dachniks, especially the ladies, who could spend whole days on
the beach turning themselves from one side to the other with complete seriousness…then in the
evenings parade back and forth on the station platform in expectation of unexpected

130
	
  

51

meetings.”

This disdain for the dacha people reveals a noticeable divide between the artistic

elite and the petty bourgeoisie (meshchanstvo).
The gulf between the petty bourgeoisie among the dacha folk and artistic people who
sought inspiration from the dacha setting reflected the anxieties that the growth of mass
consumer culture in the urban milieu provoked. The unsettling awareness that the old order of
the estate system no longer matched the economic realities of nineteenth-century urban society
also accompanied the proliferation of mass consumerism. By the end of the century, the
merchant category had emerged as a potential harbinger of social change. Those who classified
as merchants came from multiple old estates, including both peasants and the petty bourgeoisie.
While social change was unfolding in Russia, there were still many obstacles to real social
mobility, including the conservative outlook of the wealthier merchants and the former nobility
who eschewed the changes that could erode their prestige in society.

52

Intellectuals distrusted

new cultural forms that emerged with these social changes in society, namely, mass
consumerism and mass entertainment. They saw the emergence of these cultural forms as
phenomena that eroded moral pursuits of elite culture and disrupted the stereotypical image of
53

unadulterated folk (narod) culture.

The dacha, as a cultural institution that was heavily associated with the growing and
variegated middle class, was heavily criticized by some members of the elite because the spread
of dacha life dovetailed with wider social changes that made values of urban life much more
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
51
52

Chukovskaia, To the Memory of Childhood, 58.

Louise McReynolds and Cathy Popkin, “The Objective Eye and the Common Good,” in
Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution 1881-1940, ed. Catriona Kelly and David
Shepherd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 73.
53
Steve Smith and Catriona Kelly, “Commercial Culture and Consumerism,” in Constructing
Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution, 112-113.
131
	
  

ubiquitous. Steven Lovell has noted that the dacha both stood apart from and was a part of urban
recreation. He has commented that popular dacha magazines often featured advice columns on
home improvement and home décor, gossip reports, and boulevard press stories of sexual
exploits with locals. In other words, the dacha “predisposed city folk to relaxation, diversion and
54

domestic consumption.”

Julie Buckler has noted that dacha life before the 1840s was mainly

associated with the elite as part of this group’s creative leisure environment. By the middle of the
nineteenth century, the dacha began to stand more sharply against the notion of the proper
country estate. The dacha became associated in periodical literature with the urban, commercial
contamination of rustic peasant life.

55

The intelligentsia’s critique of the divide between the growing group of professional
people who aspired to achieve the middle class dacha lifestyle and the working people of social
orders is also evident in fin-de-siècle Russian literature. Maxim Gorky’s play Summerfolk
(Dachniki) lampoons the stereotypical frivolous dacha folk who waste their summers away
trying to keep up with the trivial conventions of middle-class living. Gorky commented on this
social divide through the lens of the disdain that local townspeople of the working order held
towards the dacha folk. In Act II of the play, the two watchmen, Pustobaika and Kropilkin,
observe the new cohort of dacha folk who have arrived at the Bassoff family’s summer house.
Pustobaika complains of the dull homogeneity of city folk who flock to the countryside estates in
droves during the summer time: “Summerfolk are all alike. I have seen hosts of them, these five
years. To me they are like bubbles in a puddle of water, they swell and burst.” Pustobaika and
Kropilkin also mock the dacha-goers’ pathetic attempts at staging a performance:
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
54
55

Lovell, Summerfolk, 98.

Julie Buckler, Mapping St. Petersburg, 169 and 171.
132

	
  

Kropilkin: I never saw the gentry act. I suppose it’s funny? Have you seen them?
Pustobaika: Yes, many times. I have seen many sights.
Kropilkin: How do they do it?
Pustobaika: Very simply. They dress up in other men’s clothes and say – all sorts of
things, – just what suits them best. – They shout and bustle about as though they
were doing some work – they make believe they’re angry and deceive one another.
One makes believe he’s honest, – another that he’s clever, or unhappy…Whatever
56
suits ‘em, they act.
Later in Act IV, Pustobaika continues to chastise the dacha folk for their lack of civility
and their utter disregard for maintaining a minimum standard of public behavior: “Look at this
rubbish! Heathens! Just like drunks, these summerfolks! Wherever they go they clutter up; but it
is for the likes of us to pick up after them.”

57

Gorky demonstrated through the literary medium

how in the dacha places, people can share physical spaces yet live significantly varied lives.
The emergence of the distinction between dacha folk and other Russian-speakers in
Finland indicates that experiences of social and cultural life in Finland were never static but
always changing. This contrasting description of the artistic intelligentsia and the common dacha
folk also reveals that the mental divide among Russians of different social backgrounds was
further perpetuated by the dacha setting. This divide is related to the concept of byt and the
intelligentsia’s interpretation of it as the equivalent of frivolous domesticity and a mark of the
idle, private sphere lifestyle of the petty bourgeoisie. As Catriona Kelly has argued, “Russian
intellectuals themselves understood their ascetic intolerance of byt as egalitarian, as a gesture of
solidarity between the intelligentsia and the working class.” For writers of humble background
like Chukovsky, the pettiness and frivolity of the bourgeois dacha folk was a contrast to constant

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
56

Maxim Gorky, Summerfolk: Scenes from Life, trans. Aline Delano, in Poet Lore: A Quarterly
Magazine of Letters, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn 1905), 23.
57
Ibid., 86.
133
	
  

intellectual productivity.

58

Russians themselves were just as efficient as Finns at stereotyping the

lives of the thousands of dacha people who visited the Karelian Isthmus each year. The dacha
folk formed their own community in the Karelian Isthmus, but the Russian artistic intelligentsia
also formed their enclave in that setting.

Institutions and Associations
As the dacha settlements in the Karelian Isthmus became more reputable as an ideal
leisure home location, and as Russians began staying longer in the Finnish towns and villages,
they began to make more concrete plants to establish their own cultural institutions. As
mentioned in Chapter Two, the Society for the Improvement of Kuokkala (Obshchestvo
blagoustroistva Kuokkala) was a popular civic association among the dacha folk. Many members
of the Russian artistic community belonged to this society, and used this society to develop
social ties with the local Finnish- and Swedish-speaking population. Natalia Nordman-Severova,
Repin’s companion, encouraged Chukovsky to join this association when the writer first thought
of moving to Kuokkala in 1908.

59

Dacha people established many other community institutions

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
58

Catriona Kelly, “Byt: Identity and Everyday Life,” 155-156. The term byt can include
everyday life, material culture, private life, domestic life and other aspects of daily existence. See
Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1994) for a more detailed explanation of the term byt. In the context used by
Chukovskii and other intellectuals, byt was interpreted as something related to consumerism and
mundane quotidian problems associated with modern progress. Likewise, Lovell has also
commented that the dachniki were often the subject of ridicule and were lampooned for their
association with all sorts of vices. Criticism against this group was part of a widespread distaste
among elite intellectuals “for ‘unproductive’ use of the land, for physical idleness, and for
private property.” See Lovell, Summerfolk, 4-5.
59
Letter from Natalia Nordman-Severova to Kornei Chukovskii, May 8, 1908, in Repin I.E.,
Chukovskii K.I. Perepiska, 1906-1929 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006), 23-24.
Nordman-Severova told Chukovskii of an upcoming meeting where the association’s board
134
	
  

such as schools, churches, theaters and sports clubs.

60

These cultural establishments are

important for understanding interethnic contacts because they give us a glimpse of how the small
Russian community in Finland set the boundaries of belonging. In order to understand how the
Russian residents in these seaside towns related to local Finnish villagers, it is crucial to reflect
on the ways in which Russians defined themselves in relation to other Russians.
Sports clubs were common summertime leisure associations in these dacha communities.
Dacha-goers from Russia formed their own associations to promote sport, not only in a
competitive atmosphere, but also to encourage healthy living. The Terijoki Sports Club
(Teriokskii sport-klub), for example, had a board that met regularly to deliberate on the club’s
activities and functions. At one meeting, the board discussed initiatives specifically directed at
younger people. Board members expressed interest in promoting sport, not only as leisure
activities, but as part of the dacha people’s daily routine for maintaining one’s good health. The
board also suggested organizing games and tournaments between sports clubs in Terijoki and
surrounding towns to promote friendly relations between dacha dwellers in different locations
61

between St. Petersburg and Vyborg.

This club was not unlike other voluntary associations in

late imperial Russia that encouraged active community involvement in its own activities, as well
as generating community interests in others’ physical well-being. In Finland, Russian migrants
established other kinds of voluntary associations such as reading circles, temperance societies,
and various charities to foster a sense of community.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  

planned to discuss the question of establishing a kindergarten, “a question that could closely
affect you.”
60
Gai Repin, “Penaty,” Mosty, no.10 (1963), 393.
61

Teriokskii dnevnik, “Teriokskii sport-klub,” June 23, 1913.
135

	
  

Some of these voluntary society activities were not limited to Russian speakers. The local
Finnish-language newspaper in Terijoki reported the establishment of a youth group in Kuokkala
in 1909. The newspaper reported that the founders of this group were dacha goers from Russia
who had based the activities of this organization on ones that already existed in Russia. This was
a group for boys and girls from age seven to 14, and its aim was to promote physical culture and
general well-being. Activities included outdoor exercises, backyard games, and short excursions
so that youths could learn to appreciate their natural environment. The group also organized
reading circles, sing-alongs and dances for young people. Most importantly, the group was open
to children and youths of all nationalities. The paper reported that registration for this group for
the upcoming summer was already starting in St. Petersburg, and urged local youths to sign up
for this club as well.

62

This type of club is intriguing because its openness to members from different cultural,
linguistic and religious backgrounds stood in sharp contrast to the polemicized debate in both the
Russian and Finnish press about the need to isolate youths from the undesirable influences of
outsider groups. For example, one contributor to Finliandskaia gazeta complained that children
of Russian families in Finland were becoming too accustomed to the Swedish and Finnish
languages through their contacts with local servants in their household. He was convinced that
these youngsters lacked proper exposure to their mother tongue and would soon lose their
connection to their mother country.

63

One columnist in a local Finnish newspaper argued that

children living in the border regions were at risk because of the spread of Russian schools.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
62
63
64

“’Lastenmajaakka’ niminen yhdistys perustettu Kuokkalaan,” Terijoki, July 17, 1909.
Finliandskaia gazeta, September 15, 1900.
Viipurin sanomat supistus, July 10, 1909.
136

	
  

64

The

presence of groups like the Kuokkala youth club indicates that interethnic cooperation was
possible amidst the incredibly tense atmosphere of nationalist confrontation.
Russian social clubs and voluntary associations were not limited only to activities among
the dacha folk who only stayed in Finland during the summer months. It is also important to
recall, as mentioned in Chapter One, that the Karelian Isthmus had a high number of Russianspeaking residents even before the dacha boom in the 1880s and 1890s. Many of these Russian
families had lived in the Karelian Isthmus for several generations. They, too, were interested in
matters pertaining to Russian community and identity. However, since these families were
permanent residents whose primary purpose for living in the Karelian Isthmus villages was not
seasonal leisure and respite, their ideas of community were understandably different from that of
the summer folks. Their social and cultural needs also differed. The stronger presence of Russian
speakers in these villages during the summer time affected more than just their relationship with
local Finnish villagers. It also impinged upon the structure and purpose of existing Russian
cultural institutions.
One of the changes to Russian cultural establishments was the development of Russian
language schools. Russian voluntary associations were heavily involved in establishing schools
for Russian speaking children in Finland. The Russian Philanthropic Society in Finland (RBO)
sought to provide funding for education in Russian-language primary and secondary schools to
help foster a sense of solidarity among Russian migrants from the empire at the end of the
nineteenth century. The RBO’s regional branch in Vyborg, established in 1872 when the
organization was first founded, eventually dealt with issues related to the establishment and

137
	
  

maintenance of Russian schools in the whole Karelian Isthmus region, including the dacha
districts.

65

The extent to which dacha goers saw this organization’s activities as relevant for their
own lives is debatable, since many of them lived in Finland only in the summer months, and thus
did not always see education as an urgent matter. Yet as more and more dacha folk began to stay
in the Karelian Isthmus year round, there was more interest in establishing Russian language
schools in these towns and villages as a cultural institution to instill a sense of Russian identity
among youths who ended up living permanently at these locations. Some members of the artistic
intelligentsia who lived in the dacha zone were supportive of attempts to establish Russian
schools in the region. Repin and Chukovsky, for example, were heavily involved in the
organization of a Russian folk school in Kuokkala. The school’s founder even asked Repin to
take over the as the chairman of the Kuokkala folk school committee, a position he declined.
However, he still sought to increase interest among the artistic folks in the school.

66

Repin and

Chukovsky’s attempts to generate interest in Russian education in the dacha zone therefore
muddled the boundary between Russians in the Karelian Isthmus dacha zone as temporary,
seasonal residents and as more permanent residents who began to see the significance of
community action in their new environment.
These Russian language schools were not originally meant to foster intercultural
communications, but in the Karelian Isthmus, where the Russian presence was so strong, some
savvy Finnish-speaking villagers saw an advantage in having Russian language schools in their
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
65

National Archives of Finland Russian Philanthropic Society (KA RBO) Archive, F5, “Otchёt
o dvadtsatipiati letnei deiatel’nosti Russkogo blagotvoritel’nogo obshchestva v Finliandii 18721897.”
66
Letter from Repin to Chukovskii, December 20, 1909, in Repin I.E., Chukovskii K.I.
Perepiska, 34.
138
	
  

towns and villages. To a certain extent, these schools also helped facilitate interethnic contacts
through the younger generations. Some Finns and Russians who intermarried chose to send their
children to Finnish schools while others desired Russian-language education for their offspring.
In the Finnish parish towns in the Vyborg province, where the intermingling of Russians and
Finns had a longer history, some children with one or two Finnish speaking parents went to
Russian schools. There were several Russian schools established in the 1880s that included both
Finnish and Russian-speaking pupils. The Terijoki Russian School, established in 1885, accepted
children baptized in both the Orthodox and Lutheran Churches. The teachers at this school
usually came from the Orthodox seminaries, although some also graduated from the pedagogy
schools in St. Petersburg.

67

Although the Russian schools mostly catered to Russian speakers who did not intend to
stay in Finland permanently, they actually helped some local Finnish villagers give their children
68

a Russian language education.

For some Finnish-speaking Karelian Isthmus villagers, their

contact with people from Russia prompted them to get acquainted with Russian language and
culture. For example, Solomon Muurinen, who grew up in a small village in the Uusikirkko
parish district in the early 1900s, pursued schooling in St. Petersburg. There, young Solomon
learned Russian quickly, and worked as a store clerk on Vasilievsky Island. When he returned to

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
67
68

Finliandskaia gazeta, August 15, 1901.

For example, a summertime kindergarten that opened in Kuokkala in 1911 was established in
part with funds from a Russian summer theater. During the first summer of its operation, the
kindergarten accepted 40 children who were from the families of domestic servants and day
laborers employed in the dacha industry as well as children of local Finnish- and Swedishspeaking residents. About half of the children enrolled in the kindergarten were Finnish and
Swedish speakers. See Repin I.E., Chukovskii K.I. Perepiska, 24, n2.
139
	
  

69

Finland, he opened a general store in his village.

Others even attempted to enroll their children

in Russian schools in spite of the anti-Russian rhetoric that permeated different segments of
Finnish society. Viljo Susi’s father lived in the Karelian Isthmus and worked on construction
jobs for Russian employers. This experience fuelled his desire for Viljo and his sibling to have
some Russian language education. The Susi children began going to a nearby school that offered
70

some Russian language classes.

Another Finnish-speaking couple from the Karelian Isthmus

also thought it was important for their son to learn Russian, and managed to secure a spot for him
in one of the two Russian language schools in the Kellomäki parish.

71

That the RBO included

these people in its allocation of funding indicated that this voluntary society did not necessarily
adhere to a narrow definition of Russianness based exclusively on language, birthplace,
nationality or formal citizenship. Personal acquaintances and networks was an important key to
widening the RBO’s influence among the Finnish population.
Cultural development of Russian life in the Karelian Isthmus dacha communities was not
simply limited to the realm of voluntary associations and public activism among the more
socially aware members of dacha society. Imperial government officials also claimed a stake in
Russian cultural life in Finland. Interestingly, one of the areas that the Council of Ministers in
Russia took notice of was the establishment of sanatoria and workers’ social halls in Finland.
One news editorial published in 1910 pointed out the recent interest among Ministers in
enhancing these social spaces for Russians to gather in Finland. However, the editorial also
lamented that the Council of Ministers was not making as great an effort in promoting Russian
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
69

Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS KRA), Maire Pöyhönen KE 77
15958-15972.
70
SKS KRA, Viljo Susi, KE 86, 17935-17944.
71

SKS KRA, Emil Nikkanen KE 57, 12140-12160.
140

	
  

cultural life in Finland, especially in high culture. It emphasized the renewed need for Russian
ministers to pay closer attention to helping develop Russian culture in the borderlands.

72

This

article illustrates a sense of detachment the Russian population in Finland felt from local Finnish
cultural developments. It also underscores the enormous pressure that the Russians placed on
their own government officials to support Russian cultural life in non-Russian parts of the
empire. Thus, the issue of culture should not be seen as detached from the issue of political
tension between the Russian imperial center and constituent parts.
Religion was another aspect of culture where institutional life intersected with the dacha
communities in the Karelian Isthmus. The Orthodox Church was an important cultural institution
for Russian speakers, since Orthodoxy was such an entrenched aspect of Russian identity. As
Sergii (Stragorodskii), the archbishop of the Orthodox Diocese in Finland from 1905 to 1917,
remarked, “Faith has contributed so much to Russian nationality that if a Russian ceases to be
73

Orthodox, then he loses so much of his inner content that he ceases to be Russian.”

The

presence of Orthodox churches in the dacha communities was important because it “supported
74

the spiritual needs of Russian Orthodox people living among the mass of non-believers.”

Similar to the establishment of Russian schools in Finland, the founding of Orthodox churches
proliferated with the increased arrival of dacha folk from Russia. One dacha resident writing for
the Orthodox Church journal Tserkovnyi vestnik remarked in 1894 that the Russian summer
population in the Karelian Isthmus had grown so quickly in recent years that the nearby churches
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
72
73

“Otnoshenie Soveta Ministrov k kul’turnomu razvitiiu Finliandii,” Rossiia, April 15, 1910.

“Zapiski religiozno-filosofskikh sobranii,” Novyi put’ (April 1903), 61-63, quoted in Simon
Dixon, “Sergii (Stragorodskii) in the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Finland: Apostasy and Mixed
Marriages, 1905-1917,” Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 82, no.1 (2004), 54.
74
Tserkovnyi vestnik, July 13, 1895, 893.
141
	
  

had long been overgrown. More than ever, expansion of churches was needed.

75

Terijoki, the

most prominent of the dacha communities in the region, quickly became the center of Russian
church life among seasonal visitors, drawing in worshippers from near and far, including other
dacha locations in the region. The writer expressed hope that in the near future the diocese of
Finland would succeed in establishing more churches everywhere in the Finnish villages, and
76

that they would become clearly visible symbols of Russian life.

Indeed, the strong presence of

dacha folks in the Karelian Isthmus led to the establishment of more churches. The Kellomäki
Orthodox parish, for example, was established in 1906 from donors’ funds. It was located near
the Kellomäki railway station, and was also affiliated with the local Orthodox parish school,
which had educated a total of 95 students by 1915.

77

The church was a cultural establishment

that offered dacha folk a social and spiritual meeting ground.
The presence of institutions such as Orthodox schools and churches, however, did not
mean that Russians had a unified platform for expressing pride in their own culture. On the
contrary, these institutions often exposed the divisions within Russian society and underscored
the gulf between Russians of different occupational or economic strata. The RBO, for example,
did not serve Russians equally in its efforts to support Russian-speaking children’s education in
their mother tongue. Although its official mandate was to provide financial assistance to Russian
families lacking the means to send their children to Russian language schools, a closer
examination of the kinds of people who received funds from the RBO reveals that the
organization did not always include all disadvantaged Russians in its allocation of financial
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
75
76
77

Tserkovnyi vestnik, July 7, 1894, 424.
Tserkovnyi vestnik, July 13, 1895, 894.

Regional Archives of Mikkeli (MMA) Kellomäen ortodoksinen seurakunta (Kellomäki
Orthodox Parish) II BA 1, Vedomosti v tserkvi v Kellomiaki za 1915 godu.
142
	
  

assistance. It did not regularly serve the illiterate peasant population or small craftsmen and
artisans, since the organization dealt mainly with written requests for financial assistance. Some
Russian professionals were aware that efforts to expand Russian language education often
neglected this group. One editorial about the state of Russian school affairs in Finland
underscored that the Russian population in Finland was much more significant than officials had
estimated. In addition to military personnel, merchants, and people of high society, the
editorialist pointed out that numerous rural craftsmen and industrial workers were involved in
local trade and industry, particularly in the Vyborg province. The writer called for the Imperial
78

government to pay more attention to the needs of these Russian workers.

Likewise, the Orthodox parishes in Finland did not serve all Russian speakers equally.
Part of the problem was that the Orthodox diocese in Finland was very small, and was
administered by a small group of priests spread across a large swath of territory. In 1904, for
79

example, Orthodox parishioners in Finland numbered only 53,589, excluding Russian troops.

In this case the distance between Russian-speaking Orthodox followers who lived permanently in
the Karelian Isthmus villages and the summertime visitors was most evident in the structure,
organization and activities of these parishes. At one church council meeting in the Kellomäki
parish in 1908, council members discussed the requests of parishioners who stayed in the town
during the winter months. These residents expressed the desire to have access to church services
year round; however, the group wanted the funding for the extended services to come from the
budget set aside for the summer months. One of the church council leaders commented that
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
78
79

Finliandskaia gazeta, March 7, 1912.

Dixon, “Sergii (Stragorodskii) in Finland,” 55. It is unclear whether this figure included the
seasonal visitors from Russia who owned or stayed in dachas in the Karelian Isthmus during the
summer months.
143
	
  

without the consent of residents who resided in the town only during the summer, it was difficult
to make decisions about keeping local churches opened year round. Other council members
opined that the absence of the dacha people during the winter months should not prevent the
remainder of the parishioners from making decisions about church services in the winter. At the
80

same time, they recognized that funding issues affected the summertime residents equally.

Because interfaith marriages were common in Finland, especially in the Karelian Isthmus
where ethnic diversity was evident even before the arrival of the dacha folk, both the Lutheran
and Orthodox churches served as important interlocutors between Finnish and Russian speaking
peoples. The Orthodox parish in Kuokkala, for example, was active in promoting stronger ties
between Finnish- and Russian-speaking members. In addition to Russian language literature, the
parish also distributed church bulletins in Finnish. One of them advertised a Finnish-language
church news publication aimed at improving relations between believers who came from
different ethnolinguistic communities. The contents of this periodical included religious stories,
biblical texts, reports from church catechism teachers, and other stories on Orthodox life in
Russia, Finland and abroad. The editorial board of the publication included Finnish- and
Russian-speaking Orthodox parishioners, and it sought to establish branch offices in some of the
81

major cities in Finland where there was a strong concentration of Orthodox believers.

Religious holidays and festivals were also important arenas in which Orthodox parishes
reached out to people of other faiths. In 1893, for example, the visit of the archbishop to Terijoki
was celebrated with much pomp and circumstance. Upon his arrival at the train station in
Terijoki, he was greeted by a delegation of permanent residents who were deeply familiar with
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
80

MMA Kellomäen ortodoksinen seurakunta II CA 1, Minutes from the meeting of the
Kellomäki Orthodox Church Council, August 27, 1908.
81
MMA Kellomäki ortodoksinen seurakunta II EC1, “Aamun Koitto” poster, 1917.
144
	
  

church affairs. Dacha folks also actively participated in welcoming the archbishop. He was
invited to a parishioner’s dacha, where he dined with other summer visitors. More importantly,
church services over which the archbishop presided drew other local people’s attention. These
other locals included Finns of the Lutheran faith as well as other foreign visitors who were
82

curious about Orthodox liturgy.

One observer noted that at one church festival that took place

in Terijoki, the performance of the church choir, made up of dacha folks and artists from the
Imperial Opera in St. Petersburg, attracted Lutheran and Catholic audiences from neighboring
83

villages.

Intermarriage, however, was a controversial subject for ecclesiastical and political
authorities to handle, and was itself a source of tension between parishioners and officials.
Archbishop Sergii was convinced that Orthodoxy faced a serious struggle in the face of the
Russian empire’s multiethnic and multiconfessional nature. Apostasy statistics both confirmed
and disproved his theory: between 1905 and 1907, there were 1,493 cases of Orthodox to
Lutheran conversions documented in the Finnish diocese, but these numbers declined after 1907.
Mixed marriages, on the other hand, gave Orthodox officials much cause for concern because
they had significant consequences for the way children with parents from both faiths could be
baptized. For this reason, Sergii endorsed a strict stance on interfaith marriages, insisting that
special permission be obtained.

84

Yet daily activities of the Orthodox parishes in the Karelian

Isthmus indicate that local parishioners and clergymen tended to view mixed marriages as a

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
82
83
84

Tserkovnyi vestnik, July 7, 1894, 423-424.
Tserkovnyi vestnik, July 13, 1895, 893.
Dixon, “Sergii (Stragorodskii) in Finland,” 59 and 66-69.
145

	
  

positive way to reach new people of different cultural backgrounds rather than as a threat to the
sanctity of their faith.

Culture, Stereotypes and Interethnic Hostilities
Because the Karelian Isthmus was located on the physical and metaphorical border of
two cultures, nationally-minded people came to view the area as a site for competing
nationalisms. The sources of tension between the Finnish and Russian residents in the region also
became a launch pad for nationalist ideologues to spread their agenda. Not only was there
tension between the Finnish villagers and the dacha folk from Russia, but some among the
Swedish intelligentsia in the Vyborg province also felt uneasy about the incursion of a Russian
intelligentsia that might erode their influence in the region. Already by the end of the nineteenth
century, the locals had become oriented towards St. Petersburg rather than western Finland. The
local peasant culture, both socially and economically, derived from the St. Petersburg
environs.

85

Finnish nationalists sought to defend the territory from this Russian invasion.

Advocates of further centralization and Russification saw Finnish nationalists' anti-Russian
rhetoric as justification to call for further measure to protect the position of Russians in the
Grand Duchy of Finland.
Some of the quarrels between the permanent residents of the Isthmus and the summer
visitors from Russia can be attributed to cultural misunderstanding. The Isthmus was a mixture
of Finnish and Russian, Lutheran and Orthodox influences, but individuals did not always
understand or accommodate others whose social experiences were rooted in another set of daily
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
85

Sihvo, “Summer House Settlements on the Karelian Isthmus,” 236-237.
146

	
  

routines and habits. As Hannes Sihvo notes, several novelists in the early twentieth century
depicted linguistic and ethnic problems between the diverse permanent and seasonal inhabitants
in the Isthmus.

86

Arguments did sometimes surface between Lutheran and Orthodox villagers,

but it is important to challenge the assumption that religious institutions served as incubators of
national culture. As noted at the end of Chapter Two, the Karelian Isthmus, however diverse it
was at the end of the nineteenth century, was not always a melting pot of cultural influences or a
peaceful site of mutual support. Potential for conflict or cooperation depended on the context of
specific situations. The case illustrated in Chapter Two of a group of Finnish workers in
Kuokkala who complained about a Russian employer who forced them to work on a Lutheran
holiday is a strong example of disputes that originated from a specific situation of cultural
87

misunderstanding.

Since Russian influence on the Karelian Isthmus towns had grown stronger by the start of
the twentieth century, Finnish elites worried about the effects of this Russian incursion on
Finnish identity. According to Evgenii Balashov, the territory had been so thoroughly Russified
that the cultural scene in the Karelian Isthmus was completely incomprehensible, especially to
Finns from the central regions of Finland. The local language was peppered with Russian terms,
and Orthodox churches came to outnumber Lutheran ones.

88

One editorial in a regional

newspaper discussed the economic and cultural Russification of Vyborg province. It referenced a
recent article from the conservative Russian newspaper Novoe vremia boasting of widespread
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
86
87

Ibid., 236.

MMA Terijoen nimismiespiirin Kuokkalan poliisiaseman arkisto IV Ab1, No. 36, August 16,
1908.
88
E. A. Balashov, Karel’skii peresheek: zemlia neizvedannaia – Iugo-Zapadnyi sektor (St.
Petersburg: Neva, 2003), 33-34.
147
	
  

Russian influence on the region, such as the common usage of the Russian ruble (instead of the
Finnish currency) and the alleged willingness of local farmers to communicate in Russian. The
Finnish newspapers claimed that these changes amounted practically to a Russian takeover of
89

property and economy in the region, and had significantly altered the local power dynamics.

These concerns of Finnish observers on the negative influence of Russian dacha folk on
the life of Finnish villagers in the Karelian Isthmus related to a broader context of tension
between Finns and Russians at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.
Observers in Russia were well aware of Finnish animosities towards Russian culture. One
literary review published in a Russian newspaper discussed a novel by a Finnish writer named
Ilmari Pitänen on the subject of students in Helsinki. The author of the review emphasized the
students’ discontent with Russian influence in Finland; these youths didn’t have working
knowledge of Russian, and considered national issues important.

90

Some Russian observers also

perpetuated negative stereotypes of Finns. In one editorial on Finnish people’s morals, the
columnist condemned the common occurrence of prostitution, especially in the larger cities.

91

The context of Russian incursion into Finnish life was quite different in other parts of
Finland, for example, in Helsinki, where most of the city’s Russian-speaking residents lived
there more permanently, and where the Russian elite tended to have more sway over public life
even though they did not have the same legal rights as Finns until 1911. But the juxtaposition of
Finnish-Russian animosity in the large Finnish cities and in the dacha communities in the
Karelian Isthmus villages is nonetheless important to note. At times, cultural issues were
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
89
90
91

Viipurin sanomat supistus, July 23, 1908.
“Finliandskie studenty,” Rossiia, June 8, 1910.
“Nravstvenost’ naseleniia Finliandii,” Rossiia, July 25, 1910.
148

	
  

incorporated into the larger polemic about Finnish-Russian imperial relations, the perception of
Russia as an oppressive imperial power, and Finns as recalcitrant nationalist agitators. Novoe
vremia’s perspective on the Finnish song and culture festival, for example, addresses the festival
as part of a larger ploy by Finnish nationalists to incite anti-Russian agitation. One commentary
in the dacha newspaper Teriokskii dnevnik, however, refuted these claims by writers at Novoe
vremia. The Terioksii dnevnik writer claimed that this description of the folk festival as an antiRussian demonstration was completely unfair. The writer argued that as soon as Finns had
started to develop their own literary culture, new measures established by the recent Governors
General seemed to have taken away these advances. He argued that under such circumstances, it
was understandable for a people to want to take pride in their national culture. It was normal for
each nation to celebrate its own language and customs. The author expressed hope that once
political and economic tensions between Finland and Russia had dissipated cultural bridges
92

between Finnish and Russian peoples would soon be restored.

Not all of the cultural stereotypes and nationalist rhetoric in the Finnish and Russian
press, however, contributed to animosity between Finnish villagers and dacha folk from Russia.
Maria Lähteenmäki has observed that some Finns in the Karelian Isthmus described the Russians
in a positive light. The Russians’ generosity was one common theme. Primary accounts in
Lähteenmäki’s work refer to the hearty wages Russian employers gave to Finnish workers.

93

N.

Fedotov’s guides on dacha zones in Finland also described Finns positively. Local Finns in the
Karelian Isthmus villages were “honest, hardworking, strong, and obedient with good moral

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
92
93

Teriokskii dnevnik, June 16, 1913.

Maria Lähteenmäki, Maailmojen rajalla: Kannaksen rajamaa ja poliittiset murtumat 19111944 (Helsinki: SKS, 2009) 311.
149
	
  

character.” Fedotov also expressed admiration for the way Finns regarded each other as equals in
94

social rank.

Beyond these descriptions Finns and Russians had of each other, one can find many other
more examples of friendly relations between Finns and Russians. As mentioned in Chapter Two
Lempi Vanhanen and her brother often visited the dacha folk in the evenings, when most
residents would be at home entertaining guests. She remembered that the families she visited
were mostly friendly. Even after her family moved from the village to Vyborg, she continued to
see her Russian-speaking neighbors in the city in a positive light. Her grandmother taught her
some phrases in Russian and she often learned Russian songs from children in her
95

neighborhood.

Other Finnish speakers in the Karelian Isthmus recalled that they often played

with Russian children who came to the towns each summer, and learned to communicate with
each other in a mixture of Russian and Finnish.

96

97

friends and neighbors to their dachas as guests.

Some Russians even regularly invited Finnish
An opera singer from St. Petersburg who lived

in a large dacha near Solomon Muurinen’s family home invited Solomon’s sister to see her
98

shows in St. Petersburg on several occasions.

These experiences illustrate the myriad

possibilities for interethnic contact through the cultural realm.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
94

N. Fedotov, Illiustrirovannyi putevoditel’ po dachnym, vodolechebnym i zhivopisnym
mestnostiam Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1899), 5.
95
SKS KRA, Lempi Vanhanen, ME S. 644.
96
97
98

SKS KRA, Ulla Mannonen, E138: 4431, 1937.
SKS KRA, Ester Kähönen, KE 39, 8490-8496.
SKS KRA, Maire Pöyhönen, KE 77, 15958-15972.
150

	
  

This chapter has shown that culture is an important lens through which to examine the
dacha communities in the Karelian Isthmus as discursive spaces. These spaces offered rich
potential for diverse social interactions between Russian-speaking dacha folk who visited during
the summer, long-term Russian-speaking residents, and Finnish-speaking local villagers. A close
reading of the role of the artistic intelligentsia in nurturing elite and popular culture in the dacha
zone and the role of institutions and voluntary associations in helping dacha folk establish their
cultural centers near their summer residences show that there were mixed messages in the
relationship between culture and interethnic contacts. On the one hand, the cultural sphere
provided ample opportunities for Finnish-Russian bridge-building, and allowed for people from
diverse backgrounds to exchange ideas. On the other hand, culture can be politicized and
polemicized as much as any other aspect of society. This process can serve to further isolate
groups of people from one another and contribute to disparaging stereotypes about those who did
not belong. More importantly, this examination of culture has shown just how permeable the
boundaries between the in-groups and out-groups were.

151
	
  

Chapter 4 – Crime and Terror in the Dacha Zone:
Society and Security in Finland 1905-1917
On the evening of July 18, 1906, Mikhail Herzenstein, one of the founders of the
Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party and a prominent Duma representative, was walking
through the woods near his dacha in Terijoki with his wife and daughter when an assailant shot
and mortally wounded him. Eye witnesses could do little to identify the assailant, and immediate
attempts to apprehend him were futile. The assailant and his accomplices, by taking their plans to
the seemingly peaceful environment of the Finnish countryside, succeeded in catching their
1

victim off guard. The right wing Union of the Russian People (Soiuz naroda, hereafter SRN),
the group responsible for the assassination, was not the only one committing crimes of a political
nature in Finland. One female operative in the Socialist Revolutionaries’ militant arm helped run
an explosives laboratory in Terijoki by posing as a housemaid who worked at a Russian-speaking
2

family’s dacha. St. Petersburgers in late imperial Russian society thought of the dacha places in
Finland as idyllic spaces where they could forget the social and political tensions in the capital,
but public acts of political violence such as Herzenstein’s assassination, along with the flurry of
clandestine activities orchestrated by different political groups in the Karelian Isthmus prompt us
to reconsider whether the dacha communities in Finland were so isolated from politics in Russia
after all.
In Russian culture, dachas have been recognized as places of respite and leisure.
Summertime activities such as trips to the beach, excursions to attractive natural landmarks,
hikes in the forest and social hours with neighbors were characteristic of dachas and similar
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
1
2

“Ubiistvo M. Ia. Gertsenshteina,” Novoe vremia, July 20, 1906.

Valentina Popova, “Dinamitnye masterskie 1906-1907 g.g. i provokator Azef,” Katorga i
ssylka, no. 33 (1927), 55.
152
	
  

recreational spaces. The dacha was also a quiet, peaceful place at which artists, writers and
musicians could harness their creative talents. As seen in Chapter Three, a vibrant artistic
atmosphere was typical in the dacha places in Finland. Peace and tranquility, however, was only
one image that the Karelian Isthmus dacha places evoked. Beneath the veneer of mundane
village life, dacha places provided amenable conditions for hatching political protests.
Each group that operated in the Karelian Isthmus dacha places had different ideological
aims, and different attitudes towards the Russian autocracy, but saw similar advantages in
orchestrating their activities in this particular setting. These places were attractive for two
primary reasons. First, they were located in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, which
meant that Tsarist authorities had limited power to prevent and disrupt illegal operations.
Second, the nature of dacha life itself altered expectations of what constituted normal or
abnormal activities and behavior. The liberal Kadets fled to the Finnish dacha locations after a
major political protest failed because these places sheltered them from police scrutiny when they
needed to devise a new plan of action. The Russocentric Union of the Russian People, which
supported autocratic rule, did not need to flee to Finland to escape government oppression.
Instead, these right-wing radicals saw the Karelian Isthmus dacha locations, which many liberal
politicians frequented, as prime hunting grounds for eliminating their own political enemies. The
Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks used dachas in the Karelian Isthmus as remote
hiding places while they plotted acts of terror against the regime. All of these groups, regardless
of their views on the Tsarist regime and outlook on political violence, exploited legal ambiguities
between the Grand Duchy of Finland and the Russian Empire, and benefited from less intense
security presence in places known more for rest and relaxation than for high profile crimes.

153
	
  

These factors altered the picture of these Karelian Isthmus dacha places as carefree villages
where symbiosis between local Finnish residents and seasonal guests from Russia flourished.

The Karelian Isthmus: A Liberal Mecca
St. Petersburg dacha goers and Finnish villagers did not usually associate the dacha
places in Finland with any particular social or political movement. Liberally oriented Russians
who vacationed in the Finnish dacha towns, however, attributed specific political and emotive
meaning to these places partly because of Finland’s autonomous status within the empire and the
legal-political traditions it inherited from the Swedish realm. When Russia annexed Finland, the
Tsar’s first priority was to secure the loyalty of the existing nobility in Finland. Imperial
authorities accepted a central administration that was run by a Senate composed of Finnish-born
members. They also established a Diet as the main legislative body. This organ was modeled on
the Swedish four-chamber Diet that included a Peasant Estate with its own voting powers. After
the initial session to acknowledge Finland’s incorporation into the Russian empire, the Diet did
not convene again until 1863. This form of self-rule was nonetheless unrivaled anywhere else in
3

the empire, with the exception of the Kingdom of Poland before the 1830-31 uprising. When
the late nineteenth century Tsars became increasingly hostile to the social and political reforms
implemented by their predecessors, liberal intellectuals gradually came to see Finland as a
democratic haven. Many educated Russians of liberal orientation saw dacha life in Finland as a
welcome escape from the political realities in Russia. Maria Vitukhnovskaia-Kauppala refers to

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
3

For more details on the basic structures of Finnish governance in the early years of its
incorporation into the Russia Empire, see Edward C. Thaden, Russia’s Western Borderlands
1710-1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) and Risto Alapuro, State and
Revolution in Finland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
154
	
  

the dacha settlements in the Karelian Isthmus, and Terijoki in particular, as a “mecca for Russian
intelligentsia.”

4

The Russian liberal intelligentsia had the added benefit of moderate support from several
Finnish liberal public figures. Leo Mechelin, a Finnish law professor who served in the Senate
from 1882 to 1890, had consistent ties with several prominent Russian liberal thinkers, including
jurist B. N. Chicherin and D.D. Protopopov, a St. Petersburg publicist who lived in Terijoki
during the 1890s. It was during his residency in Terijoki that Protopopov learned Swedish and
discussed constitutional matters with some of the Finnish-Swedish liberal bourgeoisie who
visited from nearby Vyborg. Mechelin had also been acquainted with I. V. Gessen, editor-inchief of the liberal journal Pravo and newspaper Rech’, since 1898. These informal political
connections between Russian and Finnish liberals turned into more concrete action in the early
1900s when Governor General N.I. Bobrikov began taking measures to restrict Finland’s
autonomy. In 1903, Bobrikov exiled a number of Finnish political leaders known for their
opposition to the autocracy. This coincided with attempts by more radically minded liberals in
Russia to form the Union of Liberation, the predecessor to the Kadets. Members in the Union of
Liberation began courting the Finnish liberal opposition in their endeavors to bring substantial
5

constitutional changes to the Russian government. This alliance was tentative because some
Finnish opposition members were not fully satisfied with the Russian liberals’ stance on
Finland’s role in a future democratic Russia. However, from 1903 to 1904, Mechelin did draft a
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
4

Maria Vitukhnovskaia-Kauppala, “Kurort kak arena politicheskikh batalii: ubiistvo Mikhaila
Gertsenshteina i protsess nad ego ubiitsami, 1906-1909,” in Dacha Kingdom: Summer Dwellers
and Dwellings in the Baltic Area, edited by Natalia Baschmakoff and Maria Ristolainen
(Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2009), 205.
5
William R. Copeland, The Uneasy Alliance: Collaboration between the Finnish Opposition
and the Russian Underground, 1899-1904 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1984), 63, 89
and 163n4.
155
	
  

proposal for a Russian constitution, which he allowed the Kadets to use as part of their political
platform.

6

Connections to Finland benefitted the Russian liberals when conservative imperial
officials significantly inhibited their ability to bring about political change through legal
channels. Some members of the liberal intelligentsia owned or rented dachas in the Karelian
Isthmus towns. M.M. Vinaver, another influential Kadet leader, was one among several Russian
liberal politicians who frequently traveled between St. Petersburg and his dacha in Finland.
Several other Duma deputies were already living at their dachas in the Karelian Isthmus in the
summer of 1906 when they learned of the Prime Minister’s impending decision to dissolve the
7

Duma. T.V. Lokot, a representative from the first Duma, recalled that many of the deputies
were preparing to leave their dachas in Finland and return to Russia for their legislative duties
8

when news of the Duma’s imminent dissolution caught them by surprise. The dacha places
where many deputies were already residing became more than just leisure territory and
summertime vacation destinations. They suddenly held prime potential as gathering places close
enough to the imperial capital for Duma deputies to reach yet outside of Russian security agents’
legal jurisdiction.
When Prime Minister Petr Stolypin dissolved the Duma just prior to a session due to be
held on July 10, 1906, a significant group of liberal deputies took action in Finland. One-third of
the Duma deputies, many of whom were Kadets, traveled to Vyborg to convene their own
session on the evening of July 9. At this meeting, the deputies published a general appeal to the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
6
7

Ibid., 168-169.

M.M. Vinaver, Istoriia Vyborgskogo vozzvaniia,(Prague: Izdanie Partii narodnoi svobody,
1917), 9 and 14.
8
T.V. Lokot, Pervaia Duma (Moscow: Pol’za, 1906), 301.
156
	
  

population to engage in passive resistance, which came to be known as the Vyborg Manifesto.

9

Between July 7 and 9, numerous Kadets traveled from St. Petersburg to Terijoki, where they met
up with colleagues already vacationing at their dachas to determine the manifesto’s
parameters.

10

From this location, these deputies continued to organize their plans for action after

the manifesto failed to garner widespread support. A.I. Fenin, a civil engineer who
unsuccessfully sought election to the Duma as a Kadet representative from the Iuzovka region in
southern Russia, happened to be living in Vyborg with his family at the time of the manifesto. In
his memoir, he expressed excitement about meeting with numerous acquaintances who were
Kadet deputies in the Duma. His recollection of the events of July 1906 revealed an atmosphere
11

of anxiety and anticipation in Vyborg and other surrounding Finnish towns.

As the events of

that summer unfolded, the Karelian Isthmus dacha places became visible hubs for political
activity rather than areas where politically minded dacha goers had occasional conversations
about the state of affairs in Russia.
The dacha places in the Karelian Isthmus served a second function as a sanctuary for the
Duma deputies who signed the Vyborg Manifesto. Return to Russia was risky because Russian
authorities could mete out harsh punishments on the participants. Pavel Miliukov, one of the
principal organizers, recalled that Duma deputies believed rumors that those who had signed the
manifesto would be arrested upon their arrival in St. Petersburg.

12

These deputies had reason to

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
9

Shmuel Galai, “The Impact of the Vyborg Manifesto on the Fortunes of the Kadet Party,”
Revolutionary Russia, vol. 20, no. 2 (2007), 200-202.
10
Vinaver, Istoriia Vyborgskogo vozzvaniia , 15.
11
12

A.I. Fenin, Vospominaniia inzhenera (Prague: n.p., 1938), 173.

P.N. Miliukov, Vospominaniia, vol. 1, edited by Boris Elkin and Michael Karpovich (New
York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1955), 406. Donald C. Rawson also mentioned that Kadet
Duma deputies had heard rumors in Vyborg that angry loyalists would attack them as soon as
157
	
  

be apprehensive: judicial authorities in St. Petersburg had initiated criminal proceedings against
those who signed the manifesto right away on July 16, and even those who did not return to St.
Petersburg were tried and given prison sentences in absentia.

13

Staying in Finland to wait out the

political storm remained one of the few viable options for Kadet deputies who wished to
maintain their freedom and continue with their political activities. The conservative newspaper
Novoe vremia reported that Duma deputies involved in drafting and signing the manifesto
considered it imperative to establish themselves in Finland. Some deputies returned to their
dachas in the Karelian Isthmus after the manifesto was issued, others stayed in hotels in Vyborg
14

and surrounding towns, while a handful returned to St. Petersburg.

Miliukov and his family

stayed at his dacha near Terijoki in the months after the Vyborg Manifesto. He recalled that party
members who remained in Finland organized secret meetings in Terijoki, and these meetings
were always held at a colleague’s dacha. Party members who attended these meetings were
cautioned to arrive separately, lest they be under surveillance of political police agents operating
in Finland.

15

The Herzenstein Case and the Union of the Russian People
The Vyborg Manifesto and the Kadets’ attempts to continue their political campaigns
from Finland contributed directly to one other significant incident that propelled the ostensibly
quiet dacha places in Finland into headlines of Russian newspapers: the assassination of Kadet
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  

they returned to Russia. See Russian Rightists and the Revolution of 1905 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), 133.
13
Galai, “The Impact of the Vyborg Manifesto on the Fortunes of the Kadet Party,” 202-203.
14
15

Novoe vremia, July 11, 1906.
Miliukov, Vospominaniia, 417.
158

	
  

Duma deputy Mikhail Herzenstein. The reading public first heard of Herzenstein’s assassination
in the days after the incident. According to a report in Novoe vremia, news of the murder spread
quickly in Terijoki, both among Finnish locals and Russians who were there for their annual visit
to their dachas. This newspaper’s account of the murder mentioned that the police did not
succeed right away in apprehending the shooter. Two bystanders who first heard the shots gave
chase, but the assailant had already fled into the woods. The reporter commented that it was
relatively easy for the culprit to hide in the forests.

16

Herzenstein’s assassination in Finland was significant because it was emblematic of the
volatile political struggle between different groups vying for influence over Russia’s governance.
The Union of the Russian People, a prominent right wing group that espoused anti-liberal
rhetoric and aggressive action against the liberal opposition, orchestrated the assassination.
Members of this group saw liberals and moderate socialists as a greater threat to the imperial
order than even the revolutionaries, and the Vyborg Manifesto further antagonized them. The
group decided to make an example of Herzenstein, one of the first deputies to sign the
manifesto.

17

Interestingly, the assassination drew as much attention to the confusing gaps in the

legal order between Russia and Finland as to the enmity between liberals and staunch
conservatives and the questionable judicial standards for prosecuting crimes committed by
supporters of the monarchy.
The investigation of the crime was painstakingly slow. Finland’s special status within the
Russian empire complicated efforts to determine how Finnish and Russian authorities would
proceed with investigation and prosecution. Authorities were slow to act, and many of those
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
16
17

“Ubiistvo M. Ia. Gertsenshteina,” Novoe vremia, July 20, 1906.
Rawson, Russian Rightists, 132-133.
159

	
  

involved in planning the attack had a chance to flee or go into hiding.

18

The Kadets immediately

made accusations against the Black Hundreds, a loose umbrella movement of right wing
extremists, which included the SRN. Pavel Miliukov, one of the Kadets’ leaders, discussed in his
memoir the emergence of the Black Hundreds as a terrorist force to eliminate revolutionaries
during Alexander III’s reign. He discussed the fear of reprisals by the Black Hundreds on himself
and other prominent liberals including Vinaver and G.B. Iollos.

19

The Black Hundred movement

was quite active in the northwestern reaches of Russia in its efforts to suppress nationalist
20

activism among Karelians in Russian Karelia.

Since Finns considered Karelians to be their

ethnic kin, and the Finnish Lutheran Church played an active role in claiming the Karelians’
loyalty, the Black Hundreds’ efforts to quash Karelian nationalism occasionally brought some of
21

its members into Finland.

The numerous extremist groups associated with the Black Hundreds

had widely varying views on issues such as land reform and workers’ rights, but they were
22

united in their hatred of the liberals as well as Jews.

When Finnish police finally began

investigating the crime, evidence incriminating the SRN indeed surfaced. Further inquiry by

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
18
19
20

Vitukhnovskaia-Kauppala, “Kurort kak arena politicheskikh batalii,” 211-212.
Miliukov, Vospominaniia, 413.

As mentioned in the introduction, Russian Karelia is a region in the northwestern reaches of
the Russian Empire between the northern shores of Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega and the White
Sea. During the nineteenth century, it was administered by the Russian empire, and was not a
part of the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland.
21
Marina Vitukhnovskaya, “Cultural and Political Reaction in Russian Karelia in 1906-1907:
State Power, the Orthodox Church, and the ‘Black Hundreds’ against Karelian Natinoalism,”
Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 48(2001), 24.
22
Jacob Langer, “Corruption and the Counterrevolution: The Rise and Fall of the Black
Hundred,” (Ph.D. Diss., Duke University, 2007), 2 and 68. See also S.A. Stepanov, Chernaia
Sotnia v Rossii 1905-1914gg. (Moscow: Rosvuznauka, 1992) for further detail on the Black
Hundred’s campaigns against the liberal bourgeoisie.
160
	
  

Finnish police finally led to charges against several members of the SRN.

23

The trial of the

suspects, which included N.M. Iuskevich-Kraskovskii, the leader of the SRN’s paramilitary
group (druzhina), began in January 1907 in a Finnish district court in Kivennapa, a village
known more for the dacha lifestyle that St. Petersburgers brought than high profile criminal
cases.

24

The murder trial was noteworthy not because of the victim’s renown or the perpetrators’
notoriety, but because it presented significant problems of jurisdictional authority in the FinnishRussian relationship. Although the victim and perpetrators were imperial subjects, according to a
provision added to the Criminal Code in 1826, Russian natives who committed crimes in Finland
were to be tried in Finland. Finnish authorities had the right to request that suspects who had
already returned to Russia be extradited to Finland for trial.

25

Jane Burbank has stated that “with

legally defined exceptions, criminal actions arising in the Grand Duchy of Finland were
26

exempted from the rules of the Criminal Code.”

Apparently, the murder of a prominent

Russian political figure did not qualify as a legally defined exception, and the issue of extradition
was left to negotiations between the Russian Minister of Justice and Finnish judicial authorities.
At first glance, Russian authorities appeared to cooperate with Finnish legal officials and
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
23
24

Rawson, Russian Rightists, 133.

The URP’s documents show that its founder and leader, A.I. Dubrovin endorsed the
assassination. He put Iuskevich-Kraskovskii, in charge of planning the actual attack. The
assassination itself was carried out by a group of four operatives. See A. Chernovskii and V. P.
Viktorov, eds., Souiz Russkogo naroda: po materialam chrezvychainoi sledstvennoi komissii
vremennogo pravitel’stva 1917 g (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1929), 44-45.
25
RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.17, l.42. Bulletin on Criminal Code regarding crimes committed in
Finland by Russian subjects, 1826. This bulletin was included in the Council of Ministers’
Committee on Finnish Affairs file on the investigation and trial proceedings of the Herzenstein
murder.
26
Jane Burbank, “An Imperial Rights Regime: Law and Citizenship in the Russian Empire,”
Kritika, vol.7, no.3 (2006), 411.
161
	
  

complied with legislation regarding the prosecution of Russian subjects in Finnish courts. A
letter from Minister of Justice I.G. Shcheglovitov to Minister of Internal Affairs Petr Stolypin
indicated willingness to follow the proper protocol. Shcheglovitov offered his justification for
turning over the accused to Finnish authorities: “Because the murder was committed in Terijoki,
in the territory of the Grand Duchy, all affairs related to the assassination must be conducted by
Finnish authorities according to Finnish law. Likewise, crimes committed in Russia by citizens
of the Grand Duchy should be investigated by local officials where the crime was committed.”

27

Some extremists in support of the autocracy demanded that authorities change this
judicial arrangement and bring the Herzenstein murder trial back to Russian courts. Several
members of the Russian Assembly (Russkoe sobranie), a group of loyalists with similar aims to
the SRN, sent a letter to the Minister of Justice expressing their objections to holding the trial of
Herzenstein’s alleged assassins in Finland. The petitioners voiced concern that Russians tried
under Finnish courts would lose their right to be judged according to the laws of the empire, laws
with which Russian subjects were more familiar. They opined that Russian subjects would not
receive a fair trial in Finland because the trial might be hampered by false witness testimony and
by Finnish officials’ bias. They argued that this situation should not be tolerated because having
imperial subjects prosecuted by the courts of a separate realm undermined the credibility of the
Tsar’s power in Russia and further eroded subjects’ faith in Russian imperial authority.

28

In spite of these objections, Shcheglovitov did not initially comply with these demands to
transfer the trial to Russian courts. This decision appeared to reflect the Minister of Justice’s
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
27

RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.17, l.9. Letter from the Minister of Justice I.G. Shcheglovitov to
Minister of Internal Affairs Petr Stolypin, no date.
28
RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.17, l.13. Letter from Kazan Department of the Russian Assembly to
the Minister of Justice, August 25, 1906.
162
	
  

commitment to upholding the principle of Finland’s autonomous status in the empire, but it also
revealed his awareness of logistical issues. When SRN representatives made similar requests to
transfer the murder trial to St. Petersburg, he reiterated the provisions in the Criminal Code that
allowed for Russians who had committed crimes in Finland to be prosecuted under Finnish
29

laws.

While acknowledging that there were imperfections in the Finnish courts, he also

emphasized that “transferring all cases from Finnish to Russian courts would raise practical and
unnecessary burdens.”

30

This statement indicates that the decision not to transfer the trial to

Russia had as much, if not more, to do with Russian officials’ reluctance to deal with the hassle
of such a move as their sensitivity to Finnish autonomy.
Other aspects of the trial revealed gaping inconsistencies in Russian authorities’ respect
for judicial procedures in Finland. The trial dragged on for over two years because the
defendants’ attorneys kept stalling, using a variety of technical reasons related to the legal
relationship between Finnish and Russian courts. One of the contentious legal issues plaguing
this trial was the supply of witnesses.

31

There were not many individuals in Finland who could

positively identify the culprits and confirm their involvement in the crime. One key witness was
a Russian Gendarme officer stationed at the Terijoki railway station who allowed several militant
members of the SRN posing as Russian political police agents to stay at his home several days
prior to the murder.

32

Some other witnesses claimed that suspicious figures were following

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
29
30

RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.17, l.15-17. Shcheglovitov to Petr Stolypin. No date.

RGIA f.1276, op.18, d.17, l.58. Letter from Shcheglovitov to Petr Stolypin, September 18,
1909.
31
Rawson, Russian Rightists, 133.
32

Ian Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek: The Tsarist Secret Police in St. Petersburg, 1906-1914
(Helsinki: SKS, 2002), 281.
163
	
  

33

Herzenstein near his home in the days before the murder.

Beyond these vague testimonies,

Finnish prosecutors required corroboration from members of SRN to confirm the assassination
plans. When Finnish officials subpoenaed key representatives from the group to testify in the
trial, Russian officials refused to comply with the request.
Correspondence between the Governor General in Finland and the Minister State
Secretary for Finland illustrates the complications on the issue of extraditing witnesses. A few of
the individuals initially arrested in Finland in connection with the murder had informed police
that other SRN members were aware of the assassination plot. Finnish prosecutors therefore
sought those named in the statement as witnesses. The Governor General, the Tsar’s personal
representative in Finland, questioned whether Finnish legal experts had mounted a sufficient case
to keep the investigation in local courts while judicial authorities in St. Petersburg were debating
the appropriateness of producing witnesses for trial in Finland. He argued that since this
evidence was not presented in the presence of Russian authorities, and the signatures of the
accused could not be certified, Russian officials had no reason or need to comply with Finnish
requests that the persons named by the original defendants be detained for questioning. If,
however, these witnesses could provide more details for the case, then such details should be
34

presented to the Russian judicial authorities for further investigation.

The Minister State

Secretary, the highest ranking Finnish official responsible for liaising with the Tsar and Russian
officials in St. Petersburg, informed the Minister of Justice that it was unreasonable and
impractical for the accused to present their testimony once more in front of Russian authorities

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
33
34

Vitukhnovskaia-Kauppala, “Kurort kak arena politicheskikh batalii,” 210.

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.53, l.8. Letter from the Governor General to the Minister State
Secretary for Finland, December 31, 1906.
164
	
  

simply for the sake of verification, and insisted that Russian authorities take immediate measures
to detain these witnesses for testimony at trials in Finland.

35

Part of the rationale for Russian officials’ refusal of the request to send Russian witnesses
to Finland for trial related to their concerns about the Finnish authorities’ true intentions for the
witnesses named in the testimony of the accused. The Minister of Justice expressed his confusion
over the grounds on which the witnesses were to be sent to Finland, and he demanded assurance
from Finnish authorities that Russian witnesses would have their rights and interests protected if
they were to testify in Finnish courts. He reiterated that he would not enter into discussions on
36

this issue until Finnish authorities had clarified their objectives in summoning the witnesses.

Russian officials never did comply with these demands to supply key witnesses, and subsequent
attempts by Finnish authorities to summon the testimony of A.I. Dubrovin, founder of the Union
of Russian People, also failed. The trial did eventually lead to conviction of some individuals
involved, but upon an appeal by SRN members directly to Nicholas II, whom many considered
sympathetic to the group’s cause, the Tsar quickly pardoned the convicted.

37

The Herzenstein

murder trial and Tsarist officials’ inaction at ensuring that perpetrators would be punished for
their crimes showed that the imperial security apparatus tolerated and even condoned the illegal
political activities of the right. Ian Lauchlan has argued that throughout the Herzenstein affair,
the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Police Department failed to completely divorce
themselves from the extremism that right wing groups exhibited. He has even argued that some
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
35

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.53, l.9. Letter from the Minister State Secretary for Finland to the
Minister of Justice, January 2, 1907.
36
RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.53, l.16. Letter from the Minister of Justice to the Minister State
Secretary for Finland, January 10, 1907.
37
Rawson, Russian Rightists, 133-134.
165
	
  

members of the political police were directly involved in hindering Finnish judicial authorities’
38

efforts to prosecute the culprits by protecting those connected to the accused.

The Herzenstein assassination had broader political significance that connected Finland
to the rest of the empire. The Karelian Isthmus was not the exclusive territory of the liberal
intelligentsia in late imperial Russia. Other political groups also operated in the Karelian
Isthmus. By sending operatives to murder Herzenstein in Terijoki, the SRN played a role in
tarnishing the peaceful reputation of the Karelian Isthmus dacha places. It is true that Finland
was never a hub of the SRN’s activity, nor was it a particularly important target for the group’s
violent acts. Don C. Rawson has noted that rightist groups were mostly concentrated in the
central provinces, where these groups’ promises to restore law and order was attractive in places
plagued by chronic agrarian crises. Rightists were also prominent in the western borderlands,
where constant religious, linguistic and other cultural disputes between Russians and numerically
significant national minorities such as the Poles and Jews provided a natural cause célèbre for the
39

right’s nationalistic campaigns.

However, Herzenstein’s murder demonstrates the importance

of not assuming that the intense political rivalries simmering in Russia were contained within the
Russian provinces.

Russian Security Police Response to Revolutionaries Activity in Finland
Russian officials at the beginning of the twentieth century increasingly came to see
Finland as a dangerous hiding place and breeding ground for activities that could disturb the
political order in Russia. These concerns were directed mostly at those aligned with socialists
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
38
39

Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek , 281-282.
Rawson, Russian Rightists, 75.
166

	
  

and other revolutionary groups. Files from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Police
Department indicate Russian security officials’ alarm about dangers that Finland posed as a
popular hiding place for revolutionaries, where they could plot to destroy the autocracy
unimpeded. As Peter Waldron has argued, Stolypin’s plan to strengthen the imperial
government’s authority in Finland was directly related to his alarm at revolutionaries’ use of
Finland as a meeting place. Imperial officials had grave concerns about terrorists committing
crimes in St. Petersburg and then escaping to nearby Finnish villages, where the imperial police’s
40

authority was limited, to evade arrest and prosecution.

These concerns were not merely the irrational fears of a group of paranoid security
officials in Russia. In addition to the moderate liberal intelligentsia, radical revolutionary groups
from Russia also used Finnish towns as their base of operation. Like their liberal rivals, socialist
groups saw Finland’s status in the Russian empire and the fact that Russian security agents had
limited authority in Finland as an advantage for staging subversive activities. Interestingly, the
Russian Social Democrats and other socialist groups gained their strongest support in Finland not
from the Finnish Social Democrats, but from the ranks of Finnish constitutionalists.

41

Similar to

their right wing adversaries in the SRN, radicals in the socialist camps endorsed the use of
violence to achieve their goals. Yet the Russian political police’s activities targeted revolutionary
movements much more so than the right wing groups.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
40

Peter Waldron, “Stolypin and Finland,” Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 63, no. 1
(1985), 45.
41
Steven Huxley, Constitutionalist Insurgency in Finland: Finnish “Passive Resistance”
against Russification as a Case of Nonmilitary Struggle in the European Resistance Tradition
(Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1990), 210-211. In fact, prior to 1905, the Finnish Social
Democrats kept a very isolationist stance in order to protect its own position as a legitimate
political party, and it was only after the Revolution of 1905 that Finnish Social Democrats began
actively seeking contacts with Russian socialists.
167
	
  

Revolutionaries’ use of Finland as a place for planning seditious activities spanned from
the beginning of the 1900s through the February Revolution in 1917. David Kirby emphasizes
Finland’s role as a hiding place and escape route for enemies of the autocracy. He comments: “A
short train journey would take the wanted revolutionary into a part of the Empire where a
different code of law prevailed, and where a strong tradition of constitutionalism flourished.” He
also remarked that Finland “provided a convenient bolt-hole, but it was also a place for hatching
plots and holding conferences.”

42

Lenin, for example, visited Finland 26 times from 1901 to

1917, and often sought refuge in the Karelian Isthmus dacha places, where he had acquaintances
and could follow up on developments in St. Petersburg. After the London International
Conference of Social Democrats Lenin and his wife sought to evade the political police and
43

stayed at the home of an acquaintance who lived in a small village in the Karelian Isthmus.
Socialist groups also published and disseminated propaganda texts via Finland. The Social
Democrats used Finland as a smuggling point for distributing revolutionary literature from

Western Europe to Russia. Iskra, one of the party’s publications, was published in Finland at the
end of 1901. The Bolshevik newspaper, Proletary, was published in Vyborg in 1906-1907 before
it ceased its run.

44

More ominously for Russia’s security police, revolutionary organizations established
militant wings that hatched many of their plots from the Karelian Isthmus dacha places near the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
42

David Kirby, “The Finnish Social Democratic Party and the Bolsheviks,” Contemporary
History, vol. 11 (1976), 181.
43
Raili Taberman, Seivastö: meri, mäki, majakka (Jyväskylä: Gummerus, 1999), 47-48. Lenin
suomalaisten muistelmissa, ed. Tuure Lehen (Helsinki: Kansankulttuuri, 1969) includes Finnish
socialists’ brief reminiscences of Lenin’s stays in Finland from 1905 to 1907 and in 1917.
44
Michael Futrell, Northern Underground: Episodes of Russian Revolutionary Transport
through Scandinavia and Finland (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 53-54.
168
	
  

Russian border. The Bolsheviks’ technical combat group (boevaia tekhnicheskaia gruppa) was
established in January 1905 to prepare for armed rebellion.

45

Its leaders frequently traveled

between Finland and Russia to avoid detection. For example, N.I. Burenin preferred to travel by
horseback between villages along the Finnish-Russian railroad, and once he reached a dacha
place in the Karelian Isthmus with a smaller police presence, he traveled by train to Vyborg with
other group leaders. Through his frequent travels, he became acquainted with Finnish railway
staff member Otto Malm and took Finnish lessons from him. Malm also connected Burenin with
46

other Finns who were able to help the organization with arms transport.

As Anna Geifman has

remarked, although the Finnish border areas were the least directly affected by revolutionary
terror among Russia’s western territories, lax law enforcement and willingness of locals to assist
47

made the revolutionaries feel like “fish in the water.”

The Socialist Revolutionaries’ combat group (boevaia organizatsiia) was also active in
Finland. In 1905, the organization’s leaders decided to transfer two of its dynamite production
workshops (dinamitnye masterskie) from France to Finland. Both were located in dachas near
Terijoki. In 1906 the workshop organizers had its temporary headquarters at a hotel owned by a
Finnish activist in the Finnish town of Imatra. One of the SR operatives, Valentina Popova,
remarked that the location gave them the feeling of freedom and complete safety, at least for a
short time. Popova credited Finnish limitations on Russian security police activities in Finland
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
45

S.M. Pozner, “Deiatel’nost’ pervoi boevoi organizatsii s.-d. Bol’shevikov,” in 1905: Boevaia
gruppa pri TsK RSDRP(b) 1905-1907 g.g., stat’i i vospominaniia, ed. S.M. Pozner (Moscow:
n.p., n.d.), 1.
46
N. Burenin, “Organizatsiia ‘Boevoi tekhnicheskoi gruppy,’ 1901-1904 g.g.” in 1905: Boevaia
gruppa pri TsK RSDRP(b), 42 and 51.
47
Anna Geifman, Thou Shall Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993), 31.
169
	
  

for giving the workshop leaders an advantage in avoiding arrest. For example, when Russian
security police came to Imatra to search the hotel where the dynamite workshop leaders and
other operatives within the combat group stayed, they could not do so without the presence of
Finnish policemen because the hotel was owned by a Finnish citizen.

48

SR activists were

confident that sympathizers among the Finnish government and local police would warn them of
impending police raids and government decisions to extradite suspected radicals to Russia in
time to plan a proper escape.

49

Writers for the conservative newspaper Novoe vremia lost no time in pointing out the
proliferation of revolutionary activity in Finland. One editorialist commented that weapons and
arms such as revolvers, pistols, bombs and other explosives were being confiscated on a daily
basis. The writer wrote about police efforts to stop the clandestine storage of weapons with
alacrity: “Reading the chronicles every day, the gullible might think that the revolutionary
bandits would gradually and successfully be disarmed, and there will soon be a time when the
revolutionaries will not have a single revolver left.” The writer warned that this line of thinking
was erroneous and dangerous. “The destructive means of the revolutionaries has not and will not
be exhausted since they have invented all kinds of cunning ways to hide and obtain arms.” He
lamented that revolutionaries had been smuggling arms on seafaring vessels, and “neither at the
50

shores of Finland or Lake Ladoga have we succeeded in detaining one arms transport.”

These

comments reflected the attitude among Russian conservatives that Finland’s autonomous status
posed a security risk for the empire.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
48

Popova, “Dinamitnye masterskie 1906-1907 g.g. i provokator Azef” Katorga i ssylka, vol. 33
(1927), 53, vol. 34 (1927), 51, and vol 35 (1927), 66.
49
B.V. Savinkov, Vospominaniia terrorista (Kharkov: Proletarii, 1926), 165.
50

“Gde revoliutsionery khraniat oruzhie?” Novoe vremia, August 30, 1906.
170

	
  

The Ministry of Internal Affairs observed developments in Finland, particularly in
Vyborg province where many of the dacha villages and settlements were located, with a critical
eye. After 1901, the Ministry expanded its Security Section’s competencies in Finland. The
headquarters of the Northern District Security Section, as part of the St. Petersburg Security
Section, had influence over political investigations conducted by the Finnish Gendarme
Directorate and the Finnish Railway Gendarme Directorate located at Finnish border points and
surrounding areas. Gendarme officers supervised secret agents in surrounding areas and in
military garrisons.

51

These Directorates were very active in Finland, particularly in Vyborg

province, well into the First World War. Russian officials regularly reviewed the number of
security officers stationed in Finland. A recommendation in 1904 pointed to the necessity of
replenishing the Gendarme staff at Finnish posts three to four times a year. It was also important
for higher level officials to inspect customs stations that were operated by lower-ranking staff
members several times a year to ensure that customs procedures and inspection of passengers
and goods across the border were followed.

52

Finland was a significant point of contact between

the Russian empire and Western Europe, and Russian security officials directed much attention
to ensuring that inspections along the Russian-Finnish border ran smoothly, and that individuals
traveling to and from the empire via Finland were scrutinized.
Surveillance and heightened security controls at border crossing points between the
Finland and Russia were significant parts of the operational mandate for the Finnish Railway
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
51

Lauchlan briefly describes the role of the Finnish divisions of the political police within the
larger structure of the Special Department, while John Daly, The Watchful State: Security Police
and Opposition in Russia 1906-1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004) makes
several references to the Russian political police’s presence in Finland at the beginning of the
twentieth century.
52
GARF, f.494, op.7, d.1, l. 594. Circular from the Finnish Gendarme Directorate, May12,
1904.
171
	
  

Gendarme Directorate and the Finnish Gendarme Directorate, which were departments of the
Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Police Department. Instructions issued to Gendarme staff
on passport control at border crossing points stipulated that officials must scrupulously inspect
people and goods moving in both directions. No passengers suspected of carrying dangerous
materials should be allowed to traverse the border. Inspection of passengers’ literature was also
an important prerogative for Gendarme officers. Staff members were instructed to confiscate
53

books, pamphlets and other reading material inciting seditious action.

The instructions also

specified that Gendarme officials were responsible for deciding whether literature that did not
appear to contain obvious political meaning should be returned to passengers without censorship.
The instructions listed diaries, almanacs, calendars, dictionaries, scientific texts, travel guides
54

and prayer books as texts that fell under this category.

The minutia of the details listed in

instructions for Gendarme officers indicated that security officials considered the smuggling of
illicit reading material to be a significant threat to the political order in the empire, and that
Finland was a particularly troublesome area for these kinds of transgressions.
In addition to border crossing inspections, Russian political police also prioritized
surveillance of suspected revolutionaries during their sojourn in Finland. Russian revolutionary
groups set up bases of operation in Finland, but for the most part Finnish revolutionary groups
were not particularly active in providing direct assistance to Russian revolutionaries.

55

The

Bolsheviks had a brief alliance with Kagal, a group of Finnish radical constitutionalists that
directed the underground passive resistance to Russian rule. Kagal, in spite of its roots in the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
53

GARF, f.494, op.1, d.21, ll.20-22. Instructions to the staff of the Finnish Gendarme
Directorate on passport control, May 1904.
54
GARF, f.494, op.1, d.21, l. 30. Ibid.
55

Kirby, “The Finnish Social Democratic Party and the Bolsheviks,” 181.
172

	
  

passive resistance movement, was involved in the Bolsheviks’ ill-fated attempt to smuggle arms
to Finland and Russia on the SS John Grafton in the spring of 1905. The Finnish Active
Resistance Party, led by journalist Konni Ziliacus, was the most active in aiding the Russian
revolutionaries in armed struggle and orchestrating terrorist acts against Tsarist authorities after
the 1905 Revolution. This group was particularly crucial in distributing contraband literature.

56

The personal nature of these contacts between Russian revolutionaries and their Finnish
supporters made it crucial for Russian security agents to scrutinize these individual relationships.
Ministry of Internal Affairs officials were convinced that Russian revolutionaries were
rather successful in planning their operations in the Finnish countryside. One internal report
listed a number of meetings that revolutionary parties held in Finnish territory, many of which
took place in the Karelian Isthmus dacha places: the Socialist Revolutionaries’ combat group met
in April 1907 in Kuokkala; in June the St. Petersburg section of the Social Democratic party held
its meeting in Terijoki, and the general meeting of the party convened in the same place in July;
the Socialist Revolutionaries also met in Terijoki in September. The report also alleged that
several political crimes committed in Russia, including the December 1906 murder of St.
Petersburg city governor von der Launitz (who was allegedly sympathetic to the SRN’s causes)
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
56

Copeland traces the attitude of the Finnish opposition movement towards Russia’s antigovernment groups from 1899 to 1904. Copeland argues that the Finnish movement “underwent
a distinct metamorphosis from firm suspicion to active sympathy within a time period of only
five years.” He divides the transformation into two periods: 1899-1902 represented the formative
phase, while 1903-1904 signaled official cooperation between the Finnish and Russian
movements. See The Uneasy Alliance, 16. Antti Kujala describes Kagal’s role in the John
Grafton affair as an alliance of convenience, and characterizes the cautious approach the Active
Resistance Party took towards the Bolsheviks. See “The Russian Revolutionary Movement and
the Finnish Opposition, 1905: The John Grafton Affair and the Plans for an Uprising in St.
Petersburg,” Scandinavian Journal of History, vol.5 (1980), and “Finnish Radicals and the
Russian Revolutionary Movement, 1899-1907,” Revolutionary Russia, vol.5, no.2 (1992). Steven
Huxley contextualizes Kagal’s role, within a larger context of pacifist opposition against the
autocracy. See Constitutionalist Insurgency in Finland, 148-152.
173
	
  

were “planned to the minutest detail” in Finland. The report also alleged that Russian
revolutionaries connected to the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democratic Party managed to set
up a laboratory to test explosives in a Karelian Isthmus village. It claimed that St. Petersburg
police had uncovered the existence of a terrorist cell in Kellomäki, a small parish town adjacent
to Terijoki, where members sought to murder political figures through use of explosives. Many
of these revolutionaries had taken up residence in various hotels and safe houses in Vyborg and
surrounding areas. The report concluded that dangerous revolutionaries were “engaged in
systematic propaganda among local forces,” and had formed organizations to plan agitation and
57

prepare terrorist acts in the empire in places beyond Finland.

These reports were compiled from data supplied by spies working for the Finnish
Gendarme Directorate.

58

Their accuracy must be taken with caution, since these reports were

meant to draw attention to the Russian security agents’ concerns about subversive activity in
Finland. As Antti Kujala has noted, while spies and informants were recruited from among the
local Finnish population, most locals eschewed any kind of association with the Russian police.
The Finnish Gendarme Directorate “was forced to recruit the majority of its agents from amongst
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
57

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, l.1. Report from the Minister of Internal Affairs to Minister State
Secretary for Finland, December 5, 1907.
58
The Police Department regularly used spies to penetrate revolutionary organizations in
Russia. Evno Azef , the head of the Socialist Revolutionary Combat Organization, was a
notorious double agent who had been working for the security police since 1893. While in
service to the police, he also allegedly played a leading role in orchestrating the assassinations of
Minister of Internal Affairs V.K. Plehve in July 1904 as well as several other prominent imperial
officials. See Abraham Ascher, P.A. Stolypin: The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 70-75, Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill, 232-237,
and L.G. Praisman, Terroristy i revoliutsionery, okhranniki i provokatory ( Moscow: Rosspen,
2001). As leader of the SR's combat organization, he oversaw some of the organization's work in
Terijoki, and met with operatives in the Karelian Isthmus on several occasions. The Finnish
Gendarme Directorate, however, was not quite so successful in recruiting such high profile
informers.
174
	
  

the drunks, petty criminals and mentally disturbed elements of Finnish society. Agents quickly
59

discovered the kind of information their superiors wanted and set about providing it.”

Nonetheless, these reports illustrated the extent to which officials in the Ministry of Internal
Affairs associated Finland’s special status with specific threats to the empire.

Camouflage in the Dacha Places
When considering the uniqueness of dacha places as locations that offered cover for those
plotting against the ruling regime, it is worthwhile to use political crime in urban spaces as a
reference point. In order to get their message across to a large audience, terrorists needed to
commit their acts in places where their actions would be memorable enough to affect a large
number of people. The city, with its dense population, offered such an arena for activists to
deliver their message. For terrorism to be effective, “it required both the densely populated urban
spaces with a modern infrastructure and public and a tightly bonded community to sustain and be
60

sustained by its memory.”

In addition to being a medium for broadcasting a political creed, the

city also served as a tool for masking perpetrators’ identities. Claudia Verhoeven, through her
analysis of Dmitry Karakozov’s assassination attempt on Alexander II in 1866, has argued that
the urban environment in St. Petersburg offered a cloak of anonymity to aspiring terrorists.
Karakozov took advantage of St. Petersburg commoners’ practice of gathering at the gates of the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
59

Kujala, “The Policy of the Russian Government Toward Finland, 1905-1917: A Case Study of
the Nationalities Question in the Last Years of the Russian Empire,” in Emerging Democracy in
Late Imperial Russia, ed. Mary Schaeffer Conroy (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1998),
162.
60
Lynn Ellen Patyk, “Remembering ‘The Terrorism’: Sergei Stepniak-Kravchinskii’s
Underground Russia,” Slavic Review, vol.68, no.4 (2009), 761. For a more comprehensive
definition of revolutionary terrorism in late imperial Russia, particularly on the distinction
between the motivations and tactics of different revolutionary groups, see Anna Geifman’s Thou
Shall Kill.
175
	
  

Summer Garden to catch a glimpse of the Tsar in order to execute his plan. He was not
apprehended until after he had already fired his shot because he was able to blend in with fellow
commoners in the city. Verhoeven credits Karakozov as the first of the nihilists to use the urban
crowd as a cover, and subsequent generations of revolutionary activists had to acquire that skill
61

to succeed in carrying out their plans.

In some ways, the dacha place can serve as both a medium for communicating a message
and as a device for concealing unlawful activity. Like the urban environment, the dacha offered
both, but in very different manners. The dachas were located in a more rural setting, but the
settlements that housed these secondary homes were not isolated villages “amid the monotony of
the boundless steppes and the sea of peasants” that Vera Figner had described.

62

The dacha

places, which hosted a growing number of urbanites from bourgeois and merchant backgrounds,
were not completely detached from the city. They were located within reasonable distance from
the cities, usually no more than several hours away by train. As Stephen Lovell has remarked,
the dacha was “an exposed and precarious outpost of urban civilization in an overwhelmingly
rural and under civilized country.”

63

The dachas were still very closely connected to the city, but

the dacha goer usually decided how often and in what capacity he or she engaged with city
affairs.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
61

See Claudia Verhoeven, The Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity, and the Birth
of Terrorism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 108-127.
62
In her memoir, Figner points to the futility of committing terroristic acts in the rural village,
since their isolation meant that there was no mass audience to observe the effects of these acts.
See Vera Figner, Zapechatlennyi trud: Vospominaniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow: Mysl’, 1964),
quoted in Patyk, “Remembering ‘The Terrorism,’” 760-761.
63
Lovell, Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2003), 87.
176
	
  

If the effectiveness of terroristic acts depended on the ability of perpetrators to provoke a
sense of fear in places with a particular symbolic meaning for a large number of people, the
dacha place, in a sense, mimicked one of these locales. As a site of leisure, the dacha represented
an area of peaceful respite for thousands of urbanites. Acts of political violence in places where
city folk least expected them could deliver a powerful message.

64

Herzenstein’s assassination

near his dacha in Terijoki served as one such example of politically motivated violence that had a
shocking public effect. The dacha places in the Karelian Isthmus were well reputed, since they
“had none of the public disorder that characterized Russian locations.”

65

Vandalism, petty theft,

alcohol-induced fights and occasional robberies were the extent of felonies dacha folks
experienced. Visitors from St. Petersburg had good impressions of the Karelian Isthmus towns as
66

crime-free places.

That such a heinous transgression as the murder of a high profile political

figure could happen in such a peaceful town shocked both local Finnish residents and the liberal
intelligentsia who sojourned there.
On a practical level, the dual nature of the dacha settlement as an outpost of urbanity and
as a quiet retreat from the norms of urban life also played into revolutionary terrorists’
advantage. The very nature of dacha life, combined with Russian authorities’ limited reach in
Finland, made the dacha settlements in the Karelian Isthmus ideal locations for coordinating
underground activity. Bolshevik agent S.M. Pozner remarked that it was so common for
Russians to purchase or rent dacha space in Finland that two Bolshevik operatives, using false
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
64

Verhoeven has argued that as part of the spatial dimension of terrorism, “at any moment,
otherwise familiar territory can be estranged when, suddenly, an undetected (disguised,
camouflaged) enemy appears out of nowhere, acts and disappears again.” See The Odd Man
Karakozov, 106.
65
Lovell, Summerfolk, 112.
66

Teriokskii dnevnik, September 6, 1913
177

	
  

passports, were able to pose as a married couple and purchase dacha property for use as an
explosives laboratory.

67

Valentina Popova remarked that the idyllic countryside surrounding the

dachas frequented by Socialist Revolutionary activists provided a good front for operating their
explosives production workshop. She commented that in the summer of 1905, more families than
usual sought to visit dacha places in Finland to escape the political tensions brought on by
revolutionary unrest that year. It was relatively easy for her contact in the organization, Sasha
Sevast’ianova, to pose as a housemaid traveling to the dacha zone with a bourgeois St.
Petersburg family. In fact, she even evaded arrest in St. Petersburg by posing as the maid at the
68

house where her colleagues were apprehended by security police agents.

Other Bolshevik

agents once got through border inspections on the train journey between Finland and Russia by
dressing in typical summer travel attire and posing as vacationers. One of the party organizers
recalled that associates traveled from Western Europe to the dachas near Vyborg posing as
69

tourists from Tyrol.

The remoteness of these Finnish villages also played to the revolutionaries’ advantage.
A. Ignatiev, a member of the Bolshevik technical combat group, used a dacha in a small Karelian
Isthmus village as a place to store the group’s cache of arms. He recommended the location since
his family lived there and knew the area well. The village was located not far away from the
Russian border, not directly on the railway, but just off the main road between St. Petersburg and
Vyborg. It was well connected to all stations along the Finnish-Russia railway to Vyborg. This
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
67

S.M. Pozner, “Iz istorii boevoi tekhniki, shkola v Kuokkala,” in Pervaia boevaia organizatsiia
Bol’shevikov 1905-1907 g.g., ed. S.M. Pozner (Moscow: Staryi Bol’shevik, 1934), 233.
68
Popova, “Dinamitnye masterskie 1906-1907 g.g. i provokator Azef,” Katorga i ssylka, no. 33
(1927), 55-56.
69
N.I. Burenin,“Organizatsiia ‘Boevoi tekhnicheskoi gruppy’ 1901-1904 g.g.,” in Pervaia
boevaia organizatsiia Bol’shevikov, 42 and 55.
178
	
  

meant that the local conditions provided both the seclusion and convenience for arms
70

transport.

There was no shortage of dachas in remote forested areas for setting up clandestine

operations. The original SRs explosive school in Kuokkala was moved to a nearby village when
agents got a tip from Finnish acquaintances in the local police that Russian security agents were
suspicious of the activities in the Kuokkala dacha.

71

The malleable social hierarchies in the dacha places in Finland also contributed to the
ease that subversive activists felt in Finland. Unlike the cities, the dacha settlements were also
places of informal sociability. These places accorded people more freedom to ignore or subvert
formal social conventions, and there were more avenues for interaction between people from
disparate backgrounds.

72

Prosperous Finnish families often invited Russian acquaintances to

stay at their homes when the latter were visiting multiple towns and villages in the Karelian
Isthmus. The constant coming and going of people rarely raised alarm. When Popova and
Sevast’anova were traveling through the Isthmus to reach the SRs explosives laboratory in a
more remote location, they stayed with a Russian contact who rented a dacha from a Finnish
landlord. The two women simply told the landlord that they were guests of the Russian baron
who was a tenant in this home.

73

These kinds of visits were considered the norm in dacha social

circles, and few stopped to question these frequent visits.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
70

A. Ignatiev, “Vospominaniia organizatora,” in Pervaia boevaia organizatsiia Bol’shevikov, 77
and 89.
71
Pozner, “Iz istorii boevoi tekhniki, shkola v Kuokkala,” in Pervaia boevaia organizatsiia
Bol’shevikov, 238.
72
Lovell, Summerfolk, 101.
73

Popova, “Dinamitnye masterskie 1906-1907 g.g. i provokator Azef,” Katorga i ssylka, no. 33
(1927), 56.
179
	
  

Such informality allowed for a certain degree of anonymity, since it became more
difficult to determine what was appropriate of interaction between people of different social
standing. In Finland, in particular, different tiers of the social hierarchy were not as distinct as in
Russia. Peasants were an important element of local life, and a few even amassed considerable
wealth. It was not uncommon to see local peasants mingling with prominent businessmen. This
was an important component of Finnish village life in the dacha locations, where locals in all
sectors of the economy reaped in the financial benefits of hosting seasonal vacationers from
Russia. Ignatiev, who knew some Finnish, relied on Finnish workers he knew at his dacha village
74

to help him conceal weapons at a local farmhouse.

Another Bolshevik operative once hid

explosive materials at the home of a Finnish acquaintance who was a local furniture maker. He
and his Finnish accomplice worked out elaborate plans for emergency transport of these
75

explosives in case of detection by authorities.

These kinds of contacts that reached across

conventional social boundaries made it more difficult for authorities to anticipate and identify
behavior that seemed out of place.
Surveillance of individuals was therefore important to Russian authorities because for the
most part, Russian revolutionaries forged contacts with their Finnish counterparts on a personal
level. It was the mundane, everyday nature of these personal connections between Finns and
Russian revolutionary activists in the seemingly idyllic setting of the dacha town that made these
contacts so potent. The quotidian aspects of personal exchanges in places of leisure lent a shroud
of anonymity to the revolutionaries’ radical plans. Russian security agents concerned about the

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
74
75

Ignatiev, “Vospominaniia organizatora,” in Pervaia boevaia organizatsiia Bol’shevikov, 78.
V. Smirnov, “Rabota v Finliandii,” in Pervaia boevaia organizatsiia Bol’shevikov, 85.
180

	
  

difficulty in deciphering the meaning behind these personal relationships saw an urgent need to
scrutinize daily activity and individual contacts in the rural towns.

Dilemmas of Imperial Governance: Cooperation with Finnish Authorities
By the beginning of the twentieth century, multiple features of Finland’s position within
the Russian empire contributed to the vagueness of imperial authority in Finland, a factor that
made Finland an advantageous home base for groups wishing to operate outside the confines of
imperial laws. The Finnish Senate acted as the central governing apparatus that oversaw judicial
matters. Most branches of administration such as finance and education were not subject to
Russian ministerial control. A special Minister State Secretary for Finland was in charge of
liaisons between the Senate and the Tsar. Russian ministers were required to consult the Tsar if
they devised policies that were likely to affect the Grand Duchy of Finland. A specific customs
and currency boundary clearly separated Finnish territory from Russia. Most importantly,
Swedish laws prevailed in Finland, and legislation could not be made or amended without
consent of the Diet.

76

The ambiguity of this relationship severely limited imperial authorities’

range of action in pursuing political criminals in Finland. Abraham Ascher asserts that the
cordial nature of the relationship between Finnish and Russian authorities crumbled in the 1890s
because Russian authorities increasingly came to see Finland as a security risk. He specifically
named the inability of Finnish authorities to proscribe revolutionary activity as a catalyst for this
deteriorating relationship. Even more troublesome for Russian authorities was the Finnish

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
76

Robert Schweitzer, “Government in Finland: Russia's Borderland Policy and Variants of
Autonomy,” in Finland and Poland in the Russian Empire, A Comparative Study, edited by
Michael Branch, Janet Hartley and Antoni Maczak (London: University of London School of
Slavonic and East European Studies, 1995), 91.
181
	
  

police’s sympathy for revolutionaries, and the ample support local activists gave to socialist
operatives.

77

Provisions for Finland’s autonomy changed when Governor General Bobrikov issued the
so-called February Manifesto in 1899, which made references to initiating common legislation in
areas concerning both Finland and the empire. The February Manifesto also laid the groundwork
for reducing the power of the Senate and the Diet to consultative capacities.

78

The Revolution of

1905 in Russia was a significant turning point in Finnish-Russian relations. The general strikes in
Russia in October were slow to reach Finland despite the proximity of the Finnish border to St.
Petersburg, the hub of the revolutionary unrest. Nonetheless, when Finnish workers finally began
to strike 10 days later, Finnish towns and villages quickly mobilized in protest against imperial
79

designs to further integrate Finland into the empire.

Under enormous pressure, the Tsar issued

an imperial decree that suspended Bobrikov era acts and returned the Finnish-Russian legal
relationship back to the status-quo ante, meaning that the Russian gendarmerie no longer had a

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
77
78

Ascher, P.A. Stolypin, 304.

See Document 48, “The ‘February Manifesto,’ 15 February 1899,” in Finland and Russia
1808-1920, from Autonomy to Independence: A Selection of Document, ed. David Kirby
(London: Macmillan Press, 1975), 80-81.
79
Alapuro, State and Revolution in Finland, 114-115. It is important to note the Revolution of
1905 in Finland was also expressed in specifically anti-Russian terms. Working class activism
was a significant component of the strikes in October-November 1905, but these strikes were
also fused with a Finnish nationalist element. Also significant is the fact that for the most part,
these strikes and demonstrations in the cities and the countryside were not violent; there were no
expressions of desire to overthrow the Tsarist government. This was a factor contributing to
Nicholas II's decision to appease Finnish demands to repeal Bobrikov's policies. See Toivo U.
Raun, “The Revolution of 1905 in the Baltic Provinces and Finland,” Slavic Review, vol. 43, no.
3 (1984), 464-465.
182
	
  

full range of powers in the Grand Duchy.

80

This factor was significant in revolutionaries'

decision to operate in Finland in the wake of the 1905 Revolution.
Clandestine political activity in Finland underscored legal conundrums for imperial
officials, and throughout the last two decades of the Russian empire’s existence, devising better
methods to keep track of and bring to justice political enemies in Finland remained an urgent
policy matter for imperial authorities. As one possible solution to Russian officials’ inability to
conduct proper investigations of revolutionary activity in Finland, the Council of Ministers’
Special Committee on Finnish Affairs (Osoboe soveshchanie po delam Velikogo kniazhestva
Finliandskogo) recommended introducing military authority in Vyborg province in 1907. Along
with this proposal, the ministers also suggested establishing larger military units on the outskirts
of the Vyborg province as a buffer that could protect St. Petersburg from any unrest that might
unfold in Finland.

81

Advocates of this measure argued that the implementation of military

authority would ensure the smooth operation of railways for transport of goods, enable political
police to monitor smuggling more closely, and allow Russian military tribunals to oversee legal
proceedings for crimes against the state.

82

These measures were part of the Council of Ministers’

proposed solution to the so-called “Finnish Question.”
Not surprisingly, the Finnish bourgeois public did not react well to conservative
Russians’ discussions of Finnish autonomy at the end of that decade. Much of the criticism of the
autocracy at the time stemmed from revelations that the Council of Ministers was considering the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
80

See Document 72, “The November Manifesto Granted by the Tsar, 1905,” in Finland and
Russia, 115.
81
RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.54, l.9. Report from the meeting of the Council of Ministers Special
Committee on Finnish Affairs, October 18, 1907. The report was dated November 3, 1907.
82
RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.254, l.8-9. Letter from the Finnish Governor General to the Minister
of Military April 2, 1910.
183
	
  

incorporation of three Finnish parish districts where many Russians’ dachas were located into the
83

St. Petersburg province.

One anonymous Russian author of a political pamphlet expressed

frustration at the Finnish public’s inability to understand that decisions to reorganize
administrative jurisdiction in the Vyborg Province was a question of security for Russia. The
author argued that the Tsarist regime’s measures in Finland were directed primarily against
revolutionaries in Russia, and not against the Finnish population at large. Russian authorities
advocated for the division of the Vyborg Province because they had to make Finns understand
the proximity of the border to Finland meant that Russian revolutionaries could easily hide in
84

Finland.

The Finnish public, however, did not easily accept proposals to impose military

authority in parts of Finland or rearrange administrative boundaries. Some Finnish villagers in
the Karelian Isthmus even refused to do work that supported the Russian dacha industry as a
85

method of protest.

In October 1907, the Council of Ministers convened the above-mentioned Special
Committee on Finnish Affairs to debate questions specific to the Grand Duchy of Finland. The
discussions at this meeting reflected the frustration of government ministers over Finland’s
special status as an autonomous entity within the Russian empire. To many of the ministers, this
arrangement was akin to the Grand Duchy being a separate state with no ties or obligations to the
Russian empire. This special arrangement, the officials believed, was what made it so easy for
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
83

The Finnish newspaper Karjala ran an article on August 31, 1907about rumors surfacing in
St. Petersburg that Russian ministers were preparing a committee to look into the amalgamation
of Vyborg Province with Russia. Throughout the winter of 1907 and spring of 1908, Finnish
newspapers commented regularly on Russian discussions of this issue. See Vilho Hämäläinen,
Karjalan kannaksen venäjäinen kesäasutus ja sen vaikutus Suomen ja Venäjän suhteiden
kehitykseen autonomian ajan lopulla (Tampere: Tampereen Yliopisto, 1974), 173-174.
84
Okhrana russkikh interesov v Finliandii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1910), 7.
85

Some examples of these protests are illustrated in Chapter 2 of this dissertation.
184

	
  

Finnish officials to dismiss Russian concerns over the proliferation of revolutionary activity in
Finland. In fact, the ministers argued, other foreign states such as Germany and Sweden have
been much more thorough in taking measures against revolutionaries, leaving the ministers no
doubt that had Finland still been a Swedish province, the fight against the revolutionary terrorists
86

would have been much more successful.

To make matters worse, Stolypin did not trust

Russia’s Governor General in Finland, N.N. Gerard, whom he thought was sympathetic to the
Finnish separatist cause. Although the Governor General, appointed by the Tsar, was supposed to
represent the autocracy’s interests in Finland, Stolypin did not believe Gerard was doing enough
87

to ensure that Finnish officials were acting against Russian revolutionary terrorists.

The issue

of security in Finland brought to the forefront the dilemmas associated with Finland’s status
within the Russian empire. The elusiveness of revolutionary groups operating in the dacha places
near the Finnish-Russian border was at the heart of imperial officials’ anxieties. For these
reasons, exchanges between Russian and Finnish officials over measures to apprehend suspected
revolutionaries were most intense from 1906 to 1908.
In the wake of the 1905 Revolution, imperial officials’ insecurity was clearly expressed
in the Council of Ministers’ assessment of the situation in Finland. The ministers were keenly
aware of previous examples of Finnish animosity towards and resistance against Russian
88

decrees, and this awareness colored their judgment on Finnish issues.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
86

The ministers’

RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.57, l.5. Report from the meeting of the Special Committee on Finnish
Affairs.
87
Antti Kujala, “The Policy of the Russian Government Toward Finland,” 148-149. Gerard
served as Governor General in Finland from December 1905 to February 1908.
88
The more memorable instances of Finnish defiance of Russian decrees stemmed from the
period of N.I. Bobrikov’s tenure as Governor General. When Bobrikov introduced several
regulations for enacting imperial legislation in Finland in February 1899, which later became
185
	
  

discussions touched upon the support that Finnish organizations gave to the rebels of the 1905
revolution, which included the delivery of weapons in Finland to revolutionaries and the spread
of anti-government propaganda among local Russian troops. The Council also pointed to the
extradition agreement with the Finnish Senate as an issue that hampered the political police’s
ability to pursue revolutionary fugitives in Finland. The Finnish request that Russian officials
provided ample documentation before a Russian accused of crime in Finland could be transferred
to Russia for trial was cited as a noteworthy area of disagreement between Finnish and Russian
authorities.

89

The sharing of competencies between the Finnish Gendarme Directorate, which was a
division in the Ministry of Internal Affairs Police Department, and local Finnish police was a
significant bone of contention between Russian and Finnish officials. Within the backdrop of
escalating political tension, there was little room for amelioration in the relationship between
Finnish and Russian police. The Russian political police often pressured Finnish post offices to
conduct mail perlustration, and Finnish police officials, accustomed to operating within the

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  

known as the February Manifesto, many Finns saw these regulations as a direct infringement on
Finnish autonomy. Historians of Finland have generally attributed the birth of widespread
resistance to Russian rule to reactions against the February Manifesto and subsequent decrees.
For example, the military service law of 1901, which introduced selective conscription of
Finnish citizens for the military, resulted in prolonged passive resistance. See Kirby, ed., Finland
and Russia, 69-70. In 1904, a disgruntled student, Eugen Schauman, assassinated Bobrikov.
Although he acted alone, many within the passive resistance movement hailed the assassination
“as the deed of a selfless patriot.” See Kirby, A Concise History of Finland (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 141. In October-November 1905, a general strike in the
name of Finnish nationalism spread across the country, affecting much of the country’s
infrastructure. See C. Leonard Lundin, “The Storm Breaks and Rages,” in Russification in the
Baltic Provinces and Finland, ed. Edward C. Thaden (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1981), 444.
89
RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.57, ll.5-8. Ibid.
186
	
  

confines of Finnish law, refused to accept directions from their Russian counterparts.

90

Russian

security officials were keenly aware of the gendarme staff’s difficulty in taking action to deter
terrorist organizations in Finland due to legal constraints. They were concerned that Russian
gendarmes might even be put in a position of harm in Finland because they were targets of antigovernment activists’ scorn and because of the Finnish officials’ negative attitude towards any
form of Russian authority.

91

Officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs became increasingly

concerned about the rising animosity of the Finnish population towards imperial rule, and this
sense of alarm contributed directly to the Gendarme Directorate’s desire to clarify grounds on
which its officers were to cooperate with local Finnish authorities in the towns and cities where
the subdivisions of the Finnish Gendarme Directorate were stationed.
Russian officials desired to hold Finnish authorities responsible for the proliferation of
clandestine political activities in Finland, especially in the border zones. The Council of
Ministers repeatedly voiced its security concerns to Finnish governing representatives. The
ministers issued lengthy letters to the Minister State Secretary of the Grand Duchy of Finland
detailing Russian officials’ opinion on the matter. In one such report, Russian authorities accused
Finnish officials of foot dragging in assisting Russian political police with apprehending
individuals and groups suspected of committing crimes against the Russian state. In spite of a
ruling by the Finnish Senate in November 1906 to tighten performance requirements of Finnish
police in investigating major cases involving political crimes, Russian representatives claimed
that it took too long for Finnish police to transfer powers to imperial authorities in order to make

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
90
91

Futrell, Northern Underground, 54-55.

RGIA, f.1276, op.18, d.57, l.22. Report from the meeting of the Special Committee on Finnish
Affairs.
187
	
  

timely arrests of the revolutionaries in question.

92

Russian officials’ frustration at their inability

to break through the complex and organized web of revolutionaries’ organizations in the Finnish
countryside translated into hostility towards Finnish authorities.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs proposed a number of measures to strengthen the
competency of imperial police officials. These proposals included provisions that would require
local Finnish police in different parish districts to report the addresses of suspicious individuals
living in Finland to imperial police authorities. Finnish police were to routinely approve Russian
political police officials’ efforts to conduct search and seizure at the homes of Russian subjects
suspected of crimes against the state, and Russian police were to be given permission to detain
the suspects without objection from Finnish police. Those arrested by Finnish police at the
request of Imperial authorities were to be turned over right away to imperial police. Finally, if
the investigation of a Russian subject suspected of crimes against the state implicated a Finnish
citizen, then details of the case related to the Finnish native were to be transferred to imperial
officials, with notification to local police.

93

These measures may have reflected the typical

relationship between local police in Russian provinces and the security police, but in Finland,
these proposals threatened Finland’s autonomy.
In a response to the Ministry of Internal Affairs lengthy list of proposed measures to
strengthen Russian police competencies in Finland, the Minister of State Secretary only agreed to
some vaguely defined measures. These included the responsibility of Finnish authorities to take
proper steps to remove from Finnish territory Russian subjects suspected by imperial authorities
of participating in terrorist activities, promises to transform and reinforce Finnish police so that
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
92

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, ll.2-3. Letter from the Council of Ministers to the Minister State
Secretary for Finland, December 5, 1907.
93
RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, ll.6-8. Ibid.
188
	
  

Finnish constables can be more efficient at conducting searches and arrests, and a pledge to
encourage closer interaction between Finnish and Russian police on criminal investigations.

94

Furthermore, the Minister State Secretary explained that since 1903, Finnish authorities had
made every effort to strengthen police forces in Vyborg Province, where revolutionaries seemed
to be most active. In the dacha settlements in Terijoki, Kuokkala, Kellomaki and Ollila, for
example, the Finnish police bureau established two more police commissioners, two police chief
constables, seven regular constables, seven supervisory constables, and authorized the activities
of other detectives.

95

Finnish authorities believed they were already doing everything possible to

curb the activities of revolutionaries who allegedly carried out their plans unhindered in the
remote rural areas in eastern Finland.
Russian authorities were reluctant to accept the Minister State Secretary’s claims that
Finnish officials were doing their best to strengthen security in the border zones. The Governor
General underscored several shortcomings that he felt Finnish authorities still needed to address.
He noted that although a previous decree by the Finnish Senate in November 1906 gave
provincial governors in Finland the power to arrest and expel individuals at the request of
Imperial authorities in relation to crimes committed in Russia had been done little to deter the
criminals. He pointed out that Finnish police was slow to adopt the necessary measures
96

stipulated by the decree, which meant that political criminals were able to evade justice.

According to one report from the Finnish Gendarme Directorate, when Russian gendarme
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
94

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, l.21. Letter from Minister State Secretary to Minister of Internal
Affairs, December 31, 1907.
95
RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, l.23. Ibid.
96

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, l.29. Letter from the Governor General of Finland to the Minister
State Secretary, January 18, 1908.
189
	
  

officials accompanied Finnish police to conduct a search of a suspect’s home, the local police did
not conduct a timely search of all the rooms in the suspect’s apartment while police officers were
interviewing his wife. During that time, the suspect was apparently able to destroy all
incriminating evidence that would have linked him to a crime against the state. The Ministry of
Internal Affairs report also cited another case where Finnish police failed to conduct a proper
search of a suspect’s home due to the landlord’s absence. The Minister of Internal Affairs
proposed that the Finnish police should be required to send regular reports to imperial officials
about the performance of Finnish police, and indicate whether local police followed proper
procedure for arrest of suspects accused of conducting revolutionary activity. He bluntly warned
that if the Finnish Senate still insisted on debating the issue of the rights of imperial police in
Finland, Russian authorities may need to take special action. Emergency measure might need to
be placed to limit the threat of revolutionaries “who remain unimpeded just a few hours away
from the residence of the monarchy.”

97

Interestingly, these criticisms of the Finnish police's

incompetency made no reference to apprehending terrorists from the right. These discussions
about the inability of Finnish officials to mete out justice to revolutionary rebels occurred at the
same time as the trial of Herzenstein's assassins were going on. Yet there was no mention in
Russian documents about the great lengths Finnish officials went to prosecute the SRN members
responsible for the murder despite constant foot-dragging by SRN lawyers. The pressure that
Russian authorities put on their Finnish counterparts to tighten security indicate that Russian
security officials were concerned primarily with revolutionary activities, and were willing to
overlook transgressions by extremists from the right.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
97

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, ll.45-46. Letter from Minister of Internal Affairs to the Minister
State Secretary, February 1, 1908.
190
	
  

The Finnish Senate rebutted the Russians' accusations in a report issued by a committee
dealing with Russian affairs. The Senate committee claimed that police, at least in the Vyborg
Province, had already complied with requests from imperial authorities to take stronger measures
regarding Russians accused of crimes against the state. They gave the example of a case from the
previous year where the police in the Vyborg Province carried out the search and arrest of four
individuals in Terijoki, Kellomäki and Kuokkala as requested by Russian authorities, even
98

though details and facts about their case were insufficient for police action.

The Senate report

noted a few other successes by Finnish police in uncovering revolutionary plots: eleven people
were recently arrested in a dacha in Kivennapa, where material for manufacturing bombs was
discovered; in July 1907, Vyborg city police raided a house where a Socialist Revolutionary cell
was publishing incendiary literature. In December of the same year, police in Terijoki raided a
Finnish watchmaker’s house which served as a warehouse for storing revolutionary publications;
police in Kuokkala and Kellomäki also discovered explosive material hidden along the
shoreline.

99

The Senators acknowledged that there had been several cases where efforts to detain
suspected revolutionaries had been unsuccessful. They admitted that in one case, a Russian
subject arrested for holding meetings to incite revolutionary activities managed to escape from a
provincial jail where he was held.

100

There were some individuals among local police squads in

the dacha places who assisted revolutionaries. This did not mean, however, that the police force
in Finland as a whole was complicit in abetting the outlaws’ activities or that the police were
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
98

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, l.72. Report from the Finnish Senate to the Finnish Governor
General, March 21, 1908.
99
RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, l.73. Ibid.
100

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, l.74-75. Ibid.
191

	
  

indifferent to the severity of the situation. Finnish authorities, both local and provincial, were
aware of the disadvantages police faced in detecting and preventing these political crimes. The
Senators’ report emphasized that Finnish authorities did not object in general to the Ministry of
Internal Affairs proposal to enhance Russian security forces’ competencies in Finland. For
example, the Senate agreed that Russian subjects held for crimes against the state specified in
previous circulars should be extradited to Russia no later than the day after the request for
extradition had been made as long as there were significant grounds for the arrest. In such cases,
Finnish officials would not interfere with the procedure. Russians who had not acquired Finnish
citizenship at the time of their arrest would lose their right of residence in Finland. However, the
Senate insisted that Finnish police should have sole power to carry out all arrests, and
investigation of Finnish citizens implicated in revolutionary plots should always remain in the
hands of Finnish authorities. Other provisions in the Ministry of Internal Affairs proposal
101

required further clarification before the Finnish Senate could discuss the issue.

Exasperated by Finnish legislators’ refusal to deal with revolutionary activism in a
manner satisfactory to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Stolypin intensified efforts to curb
Finnish autonomy between 1907 and 1909. The democratically elected Finnish Diet was
dismissed repeatedly over its refusal to support Russian proposals. For example, Stolypin
dissolved the Diet in March 1908 because its members had voted against the Finnish Senate’s
decision to comply with the Russian government’s request to hand over Russians suspected of
political crimes to Russian administrative courts.

102

Many members of the Finnish Senate

eventually resigned over increasing pressure from the Council of Ministers to fund an expensive
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
101
102

RGIA, f.1361, op.1, d.59, l.76-77. Ibid.
Ascher, P.A. Stolypin, 309.
192

	
  

railway bridge over the Neva River in St. Petersburg that would connect the Finnish and Russian
railway lines. Stolypin took the opportunity to appoint a new, reorganized Senate composed
mainly of Russified Finns.

103

Finally, on June 10, 1910, the Duma passed Stolypin’s bill

stipulating that all questions affecting the interests of the Russian Empire were to be handled
only in St. Petersburg. In essence, this law denied Finnish political organs the power to act on
and initiate legislation that Russian officials deemed to be of empire-wide interest, including
104

selected questions relating to judicial affairs.

In spite of the tightening of imperial legislative control over Finland, the Finnish threat to
the empire was far from subdued. In the wake of Stolypin’s June 1910 law, Finns became more
united than ever in their opposition to Tsarist measures. Revolutionaries continued to urge
Finnish workers to side with them in the revolutionary struggle against Tsarist authority.

105

The

Police Department did not cease taking precautionary measures in Finland. The Finnish
Gendarme Directorate continued to gather intelligence in Finland and supply information about
alleged terrorist and revolutionary plots to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Although much of
this information was exaggerated, and even fabricated, in order to attract the attention of Russian
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
103

C. Leonard Lundin, “Finland,” in Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 446447.
104
Kirby, ed., Finland and Russia, 123. The Kharitonov Commission was a 1909 FinnishRussian committee charged with the task of resolving differences in the judicial-legal
relationship between Finland and Russia. The Russian members of the committee espoused the
following viewpoint: “The fundamental laws of the Empire have the same validity in Finland as
in other parts of the Empire. Fundamental laws provided for Finland are valid only for its
internal affairs.” The Stolypin law of June 1910 was based on the Russian reports from this
committee. While the points on the legal affairs was broad enough to give Russian officials more
leeway in determining which legal issues, such as extradition and prosecution of Russians who
committed political crimes in Finland, were to be treated as affairs of interest to the Empire. See
Document 79, “Résumé of the viewpoints of the Finnish and Russian Members of the
Kharitonov Committee on Russo-Finnish relations,” in Finland and Russia, 129.
105
Kirby, ed., Russia and Finland, 124.
193
	
  

ministers who had begun to lose interest in Finnish affairs, this factor did not render the Police
Department’s continued operations in Finland irrelevant.

106

The fact that up to the eve of the

Fist World War there were still security officials willing to believe that the Finnish countryside
was a haven for Tsardom’s enemies underscored the effect that previous accounts of
revolutionaries’ activities had on Russian security thinking.
Anxieties over security in Finland resurfaced during the First World War. Records of the
Finnish Gendarme Directorate in 1916 showed that of the 188 Gendarme officers stationed in
Finland, 29 were stationed permanently at the military garrison in Vyborg. Additionally, 101
107

permanent and temporary staff worked at the Terijoki department.

Russian political police

representatives in Finland made further attempts to augment their competencies in Finland. The
chief of the Finnish Gendarme Directorate proposed in 1915 that questions of cooperation
between members of the Russian security police and local authorities over border security should
be revisited. He argued in favor of establishing an official agreement with local governors that
would give security police from the empire sole jurisdiction over search and inspection of
individuals suspected of espionage in border regions. He insisted that Russian officials and local
government organs needed to limit the rights of foreigners in Finland. He also suggested
widening local authorities’ obligations to Russian security officials to include providing
information on people who crossed the border illegally into Finland or those who planned to flee

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
106

Kujala notes that an investigation of the Finnish Gendarme Directorate in 1912 revealed that
a number of reports of rebellious plans by opposition groups were forged by opportunistic
agents. See “The Policy of the Russian Government Toward Finland,” 161-162.
107
GARF, f.495, op.1, d.11, l.12, Report of the Chief of the Finnish Railway Gendarme
Directorate, September 18, 1916 and ll.34-35, Report of the Finnish Railway Gendarme
Directorate, November 5, 1916.
194
	
  

the territory of the empire via Finland.

108

The Gendarme Directorate chief’s proposals indicated

that Russian security officials increasingly doubted Finnish officials’ willingness to take
necessary measures to detect elements in Finland that were harmful to the imperial regime.
This mood of anxiety was also evident in the Russian security police’s observations of
the general disposition of the Finnish population and the situation of the Grand Duchy during the
war. The Chief of the Finnish Gendarme Directorate’s observations of Finnish attitudes towards
Russian officials presented a grim picture. He commented that Finland was an area of potential
danger to the empire because revolutionary agitators traveled along the same railway networks as
the ones that supplied Russian military garrisons in Finland. In addition to the threat from
Russian revolutionary groups, imperial administrators in Finland also had to contend with
Finnish youths who received military training in Germany and Sweden. The Gendarme chief
opined that such developments were undoubtedly a part of the “traitorous” movement growing in
Finland. He estimated that about 1500 to 2000 of these youths had already returned to settle in
Finland, with approximately 200 to 300 of them living in the Vyborg Province. This situation
posed a threat to the Russian capital, and it was therefore necessary to keep surveillance of the
109

population to keep track of movements of seditious groups.

Even though this small group of

German-trained youths that supported the independence movement had very little else in
common with the radical revolutionaries besides overthrowing the autocracy, the presence of
both these groups in the same Finnish towns further aggravated Russian security agents’
frustration at their incapacity to make arrests in Finland.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
108

GARF, f.494, op.3, d.1, l. 3. Secret circular of the Finnish Gendarme Directorate, March 6,
1915.
109
GARF, f.494, op.1, d.5, ll.1-5. Observations of the Chief of the Finnish Gendarme
Directorate on the local population in Finland, September 23, 1916.
195
	
  

Political Context in Late Imperial Russia
The flurry of clandestine political activities in the Karelian Isthmus dacha locations had
its roots in the rising tide of violence and terror in nineteenth century Russia. This deluge began
in the 1860s with the attempted assassination of Alexander II, and although the revolutionaries of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were very different from the assassins of the
earlier days, terror became an entrenched part of late imperial Russian political life. Both radicals
on the left and extremists on the right resorted to murder and other violent acts to eliminate their
political opponents and send their public message. Some liberal supporters of constitutionalism
abhorred these practices and insisted on making their political demands heard through peaceful
means. This had been the intent behind the plans for the Vyborg Manifesto. Others from the
110

liberal camp, however, tacitly condoned terroristic acts from left-wing agitators.

Public

displays of violence such as Herzenstein’s murder and the proliferation of subversive activities
such as the organizing of socialist terrorist cells should be understood in the context of escalating
social and political tensions in late imperial Russia.
The first decade of the twentieth century, the temporal focus of this chapter, was one in
which news of revolutionary violence permeated the public sphere in Russia. Although the group
responsible for Herzenstein’s assassination, the Union of the Russian People (Soiuz russkago
naroda), claimed to mete out justice in defense of Tsardom rather than against it, this sensational
incident should not be cast aside from the larger narrative of politically motivated violence that
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
110

The Kadets did not participate in or outwardly endorse terror as a political tactic, but also did
not take an active stance in condemning the terror tactics of the Socialist Revolutionaries and the
Bolsheviks. According to Anna Geifman, Kadet rhetoric implicitly justified left-wing terror
under the intolerable political conditions in Russia. Kadets tended to see terrorists as victims of
an oppressive regime, and took an active stance in pursuing political amnesty. See Thou Shalt
Kill, 216.
196
	
  

swept across Russia. In a decade when both extremist groups that supported and opposed Tsarist
authority increasingly turned to assassination of prominent political figures to stake their claim
111

over Russia’s governance, Herzenstein’s murder was significant for several reasons.

First, the

act was committed in a part of the Russian empire that was located very close to the center of
political action, a mere 50 kilometers away from St. Petersburg. At the same time, Finland’s
special status within the Russian empire made Finland administratively aloof from Russia.
Finland’s criminal justice system differed from that in use in Russia, and this meant that efforts
to pursue and prosecute the culprits depended on cooperation between Finnish and Russian
police authorities. Second, this assassination was one of numerous incidents that contributed to
the notion of the Russian dacha places in Finland as magnets for individuals and groups with
seditious intentions. The drama of Herzenstein’s assassination unfolded while radical socialists
were scheming to wreak havoc in St. Petersburg.
Finnish towns that were popular destinations for Russian dacha goers became a growing
security threat to an imperial regime that was already battling widespread unrest in the heartland
and elsewhere in its borderlands. Socialist groups were arguably even more active in Finland.
The autocracy’s security apparatus thus saw Russian socialist organizations operating in the
idyllic Finnish countryside as an ominous force that, combined with the growing Finnish
opposition movement, could be deadly for the regime’s longevity. The Russian political police’s
inability to properly quash this threat due to the legal obstacles that Finland’s autonomy posed
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
111

Rawson offers a systematic analysis of the most prominent right wing monarchist groups that
emerged in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. He discusses both the assassinations
planned by revolutionary groups and rightists groups. See Russian Rightists and the Revolution
of 1905. John Daly details the intensification of terrorist activities throughout the early months of
1906. See The Watchful State, 24 and 37. Norman Naimark’s Terrorists and Social Democrats:
The Russian Revolutionary Movement under Alexander III (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1983), details the influence of the Populists’ terrorist acts on the Social Democrats and the
Socialist Revolutionaries.
197
	
  

frustrated imperial officials. These factors gave Russian authorities a new sense of urgency in
finding ways to further integrate Finland with the empire.
The continuing escalation of political unrest across Russia at the beginning of the
twentieth century contributed to the chaos within the Russian political police system. Fredric S.
Zuckerman’s work describes a highly centralized political police network plagued by a myriad of
circulars and orders, leaving many provincial and local Gendarme Directorates aimless with lack
112

of direction from the capital.

Jonathan Daly attributes chaos in the Police Department to the

fact that Russia was severely undergoverned, with incoherent lines of communication across a
large swath of territory. He also notes that the empire’s western borderlands, including Finland,
were the least controlled and most prone to harboring revolutionary sympathies.

113

Tsarist

ministries’ concerns with the spread of revolutionary terror in Finland should be viewed in the
context of the chaotic organization of Russia’s political police ever since this organ began
conducting surveillance in Finland. The Police Department’s mandate in Finland was not
analogous to its activities in foreign departments in Western Europe because Finland was
technically a part of the Russian empire. At the same time, the Police Department’s range of
action in Finland was limited because of Finland’s legal status within the empire. Interestingly,
few scholars have made a systematic study of the Russian security police’s operations in Finland
and analyzed the significance of Finnish autonomy for these operations.

114

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
112

Frederic S. Zuckerman, The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society, 1880-1917 (New York:
New York University Press, 1996), 154.
113
Daly, The Watchful State, 5.
114

The Russian political police’s operations in Finland are not included in either Zuckerman’s
study of the political police in Russia or his study of the Russian secret police in Western
Europe, The Tsarist Secret Police: Policing Europe in a Modernizing World (London: Palgrave,
2003). Charles A. Ruud and Sergei A. Stepanov, Fontanka 16: The Tsar’s Secret Police
198
	
  

The attempted assassination of Stolypin on August 12, 1906 at the Prime Minister’s
dacha on Apteka Island, located near St. Petersburg in the Neva River, did not help soften
Russian security officials’ perception of Finnish dacha places as havens for terrorists. Although
the bomb that exploded at Stolypin’s dacha failed to kill the Prime Minister, it killed his daughter
and resulted in many casualties. The Russian press’ response to the attempt reflected a pervasive
sense of crisis. One St. Petersburg newspaper commented: “The attempt left a large and heavy
impression not just in Russia but also abroad. At its extreme, the estimates of the damage of this
attempted attack have been passed on by word of mouth in St. Petersburg.” The writer set this
assassination attempt in a larger context of Russians’ response to the recent rash of politically
motivated murders of government officials: “Whether order is achieved through the state Duma
or through reforms at the Duma’s calling, as long as the political killings do not stop, one cannot
even dream of what creative work could be done.”

115

Commentary in Novoe vremia depicted a

Russian political arena under siege: “Across the expanse of Russia every day we are besieged
116

with death caused by revolutionary malice that is emboldened by the streams of blood.”

Another newspaper editorial condemned the political message of the perpetrators: “Russian
society cannot relate to the recent terrorist acts committed in the name of liberating ideas without
a feeling of horror. These kinds of bloody acts cannot be valued.”

117

Although Stolypin’s dacha

was located on Russian soil, the idea that prominent government officials could be attacked at
their secondary homes in places they perceived of as their refuge from the stress of imperial
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  

(Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1999) traces the history of the political police
(okhrana) as a special section within the Police Department, but does not make specific mention
of political police operations in Finland.
115
Peterburgskii listok, August 13, 1906.
116
117

Novoe vremia, August 13, 1906.
Peterburgskaia gazeta, August 13, 1906.
199

	
  

politics was not lost on officials.

118

Crimes against the state committed in places that were

considered sites of leisure only served to heighten officials’ sense of alarm at the rising political
turmoil that had potential to threaten the integrity of imperial authority. Up until 1908, imperial
officials had reason to be concerned about the underground revolutionary operations in the
Karelian Isthmus.
The wave of revolutionary violence subsided by 1909 thanks in part to Stolypin’s
hardline approach to hunting and punishing the government’s adversaries and in part to
oversights within the ranks of the revolutionaries.

119

Combat groups associated with the SRs and

Bolsheviks had already abandoned their stations in Finland by the end of 1908.

120

Yet imperial

officials’ preoccupation with Finland as a launching pad for subversive activities never quite
faded away. In the twilight years of the Russian Empire’s existence, the legacy of political
violence that accompanied the Revolution of 1905 still resonated for Russian security officials
who kept a close eye on developments in the Karelian Isthmus towns and villages.

The picture of the Karelian Isthmus dacha zone in this chapter stands in stark contrast to
the image of the idyllic, benign nature of daily social and cultural interactions in the dacha towns
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
118

Stolypin himself alleged that the attempt on his life was planned in Finland. See Ascher, P.A.
Stolypin, 310.
119
Beginning in 1905, the government began placing many regions across the empire under a
state of martial law or extraordinary security, and military courts were given the authority to try
political crimes. The revolutionaries themselves blamed Stolyin’s harsh measures for their
failures. Furthermore, the revelation in 1909 that Evno Azef was a double agent significantly
damaged the SRs morale. Other revolutionaries still pursued terrorism as a viable strategy, but
these acts were much more infrequent after the so-called Azef affair. See Geifman, Thou Shalt
Kill, 227, 231, and 236-237.
120
Kujala, “Policy of the Russian Government Toward Finland,” 160. Since the stringent
measures against revolutionaries made it extremely difficult to carryout there acts of terror
successfully in Russia, planning these acts in Finland became moot.
200
	
  

illustrated in Chapters Two and Three. The assassination of a prominent Russian political figure
in Terijoki was a sobering reminder that violent crime did happen even in the most serene places.
Disagreements between Finnish and Russian authorities over policing the dacha zone, as well as
the increased surveillance of individuals in these towns cast a pall over these summer vacation
destinations. Evidence of clandestine political activities in these localities eroded the image of
the Karelian Isthmus as a rural utopia unspoiled by political unrest in St. Petersburg. Granted,
personal testimonies by villagers in these towns indicated that people, for the most part, carried
on with their daily lives relatively unhindered by police surveillance. Contacts between Russian
revolutionary activists and Finnish citizens sympathetic to their cause were strong in this region,
but because most of these relationships were kept secret, they did not appear to disrupt everyday
life in these towns in obvious ways. Even in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution and the
Kadets’ ill-fated attempt to incite popular civil disobedience through the Vyborg Manifesto in
the summer of 1906, Russians continued to flock to the Karelian Isthmus for their annual
vacations. Local Finnish villages continued to profit from daily economic exchanges with their
Russian acquaintances. This did not mean, however, these interactions remained completely
untouched by the tensions between Russian and Finnish authorities. Finnish residents in these
towns responded negatively to Russian plans to incorporate their towns into Russian regional
administration. The presence of radical revolutionaries in these Karelian Isthmus towns
complicated the image of these places as mere vacation destinations. Many of the middle class
St. Petersburgers may have found the towns in eastern Finland attractive because they saw the
region as a nicer, more peaceful extension of imperial suburban space. Revolutionary activists,
however, saw the Karelian Isthmus as an attractive location precisely because they saw it as a
space apart from and outside of imperial authorities’ reach.

201
	
  

The chaotic situation after 1917 lent further fuel to the notion that the Karelian Isthmus
dacha locations, which became a transit corridor for people fleeing from both Finland and
Russia, were ripe grounds for breeding subversive elements. White émigrés and members of the
defeated White armies settled temporarily in Finnish towns in the 1920s, thus posing a concern
121

for Soviet security officials.

The Finnish government, reeling from the effects of a bitterly

divisive civil war, was particularly suspicious of the scores of people who flocked to Finland
claiming to be fugitives from Bolshevik oppression. Finnish officials feared the prospect of
Bolshevik operatives hiding amongst these refugees. As will be seen in Chapter Five, these fears
significantly affected the way the post-independence Finnish government dealt with the refugee
crisis from the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution to the late 1920s.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
121

The Russian General Military Union (Russkii Obshche-Voinskii Soiuz, or ROVS) was a large
White émigré organization that was active during the interwar period. One of its branches was
located in Finland. See Paul Robinson, The White Russian Army in Exile 1920-1941 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 100. Lazar Fleishman notes that the OGPU’s investigations
revealed intent by members of ROVS to launch an intervention against the Soviet Union. See V
tiskakh provokatsii. Operatsiia 'Trest' i russkaia zarubezhnaia pechat' (Moscow: NLO, 2003),
178.
202
	
  

Chapter 5 – Refuge in the Dacha Land: Ethnicity and Refugee Management

In the spring of 1923, Anna Karlson wrote a letter to Finnish authorities in charge of
refugee aid through a Finnish-Russian translator. She disclosed that she was a Russian-speaking
subject of the defunct Russian Empire who was born in the Grand Duchy of Finland. In her
youth, she had moved to St. Petersburg, where she married a Finnish citizen. When civil war
broke out in Russia she fled to Finland along with her husband, her mother, and her child. Soon
after their arrival in Finland, her husband abandoned the family. She wrote, “I have a poor
command of the Finnish language and have not succeeded in finding work, and because of that, I
cannot support my child and my invalid mother in the country of my birth. I respectfully ask you
1

for help to ease my family’s burdens.” Although Karlson had very few personal ties to Finnishspeakers beyond her absent husband, she nonetheless appealed to Finnish authorities for
assistance at a time when many within Finnish political circles regarded Russians with suspicion.
Did her mention of Finland as her birth country and her marriage to a Finnish citizen indicate a
conscious effort to garner sympathy from aid officials? What meaning did territorial space and
geopolitical borders hold for individuals thrown into the crucible of war and revolution? What
did this example reveal about the way political context affected individuals’ identification with a
particular community?
This chapter investigates the ethnic dimension of refugee management in Finland from
1918 to the mid-1920s, when the number of people fleeing revolution and civil war in Russia
climaxed. I examine the correspondence between refugees, displaced persons and aid agencies to
probe how definitions of nationality or ethnicity affected the plight of those seeking refuge in
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
1

National Archives of Finland (KA) Finnish Interim Economic Committee Archive (SVTK) Ea3
Folder 3. Letter from Anna Karlson to SVTK representatives in Helsinki, March 17, 1923.
203
	
  

Finland. Ethnicity and nationality were slippery categories for identifying refugees and displaced
peoples because of the diversity among these groups. These people’s daily activities prior to the
onset of political strife rarely required that they identify themselves by such categories.
Examining the way refugees and displaced persons identified themselves in their communication
with aid agencies allows us to see different ways in which individuals employed the language of
ethnicity as a category of practice.
The analysis in this chapter offers some insight into the power dynamics that affected the
lives of those displaced by political crises. Who had the power to decide how aid should be
distributed, and how did individuals’ social, cultural and political identities factor into these
power dynamics? Maria Lähteenmäki has remarked that strict surveillance of the Russian
population in Finland began immediately after the Finnish Civil War in 1918, and
contemporaries justified the scrutiny of Russians in eastern Finland as part of the ethnic battle
2

between Finns and Russians for control over towns in the Karelian Isthmus. Max Engman has
noted that after 1917, Russians who lived temporarily in Finland became foreigners without
3

protection. Their security was further threatened in the spring of 1918, when Finnish authorities
planned to remove the Russian population from eastern Finland to cleanse the border areas of
4

Russian influence. By 1919, nearly 12 000 Russians had applied for permission to remain in the

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
2

Maria Lähteenmäki, Maailmojen rajalla: Kannaksen rajamaa ja poliittiset murtumat 19111944 (Helsinki: SKS, 2009) 299.
3
Max Engman, Raja: Karjalankanns 1918-1920 (Helsinki: WSOY, 2007), 61.
4

Engman, Raja, 67. In May 1918, the Finnish Senate issued an order to begin mass deportation
of Russian subjects who had not acquired Finnish citizenship. The deportation orders were
revoked shortly after because of widespread protest from the prominent members of the Russian
business community in Finland.
204
	
  

Viipuri (Vyborg) Province, and their fate was in the hands of government officials reviewing
these petitions.

5

It is easy to surmise from the secondary literature that Finnish government agencies had
the sole power to decide who could remain in Finland and who must leave, who should receive
aid and who should not. It is equally tempting to assume that government decisions always
disadvantaged people who identified as Russians. However, by adopting such myopic views one
risks neglecting individuals’ capacity to recognize the fluidity of identity categories. Although
Russian émigrés in Finland often lamented their social isolation in Finland, this sentiment did not
apply to all Russian speakers in Finland. Some had established ties with Finnish speakers
through years of social interaction, while others formed family connections with Finnish
acquaintances through marriage. Like the nationally indifferent people in Tara Zahra’s study of
Czech and German identities in Sudetenland, both Finnish and Russian speakers employed
6

nationality as a category of practice to suit their daily realities. I argue that Finns’ and Russians’
intricate social networks complicated the use of nationality, ethnicity and citizenship as
bureaucratically defined categories for allocating aid to those displaced by political instability.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
5
6

Ibid., 90.

Tara Zahra uses the term “national indifference” to describe several different kinds of behavior
among Czech and German speakers in the Bohemian lands at the beginning of the twentieth
century. She argues that for some individuals, this entailed complete absence of national
loyalties. Some individuals also switched “sides” in nationalist politics depending on political
and social circumstances. Others may have considered themselves Czechs or Germans in a
nominal sense but rejected the broader demands of nationalist politics. See Kidnapped Souls:
National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2008), 4-5. Pieter Judson has made similar arguments in his work on Austria’s
linguistically mixed regions. For example, he has observed that some peasants who supported
nationalist associations often did so for non-national purposes, such as gaining access to farming
provisions. See Guardians of the Nations: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial
Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
205
	
  

The experience of refugeedom prompted some individuals to think of ethnicity and nationality in
ways they had not previously envisioned.
Finland’s refugee crisis in the early 1920s was linked to a larger European-wide context
of population displacement and statelessness resulting from the First World War. There were
countless instances in the past when people fled their homelands due to warfare and political
turmoil, but the post-First World War situation differed from previous refugee movements in
several ways. Claudena M. Skran has argued that the interwar refugee waves dwarfed the others
in both size and scope. The scale of revolutionary changes and political upheavals that stemmed
from the end of the First World War and the collapse of Europe’s contiguous empires produced a
mass exodus because a larger proportion of people were involved in effecting these social and
political changes. Furthermore, the swift development of immigration controls after 1919 made it
7

extremely difficult for refugees to settle indefinitely in a new country.

The two political revolutions in Russia in February and October 1917 displaced people in
unprecedented scales because the social, political and military conflicts that resulted from the
twin revolutions affected a large segment of the population in the Russian Empire. In the
aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917, many subjects of the defunct Russian
Empire fled their native country to escape persecution from the Bolshevik forces, or simply to
seek refuge from the hardships and turmoil of living in a war-torn society. As a group, the
refugees from the former Russian Empire did not necessarily form a unified whole. The majority
of those who left, whether motivated by personal safety or political choice, objected to Bolshevik
rule in Russia. They saw themselves as constituting a temporary “Russia Abroad” that could
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
7

Claudena M. Skran, Refugees in Interwar Europe: The Emergence of a Regime (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995), 14 and 17. Eugene M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and
Population Changes 1917-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948) characterizes the
refugee as having acquired a specific place in interwar migration patterns.
206
	
  

pose as an alternative to the existing political regime in Russia until the Bolsheviks could be
ousted from power. A small minority of the refugees came to regret their decision to leave
Russia and later sought ways to return home. Some also remained in Europe while refusing to
8

identify with the so-called “Russia Abroad.” Many of these individuals were not accepted as
citizens of either the new Soviet polity or the European states to which they fled. George
Ginsburgs has noted that from 1917-1921, Russians in exile after the Bolshevik Revolution were
de facto stateless people, since they “repudiated the new regime and were in fact repudiated by
their country of origin, which turned its back on them and granted them neither admittance nor
9

protection.” However, they were still de jure Russian citizens, since Bolshevik authorities
considered documents issued by the Tsarist government and Provisional Government as valid
evidence of Russian citizenship. Decrees of the Council of People’s Commissars of the
R.S.F.S.R. in 1921 and 1924 essentially amounted to the involuntary de-nationalization of
10

former subjects of the Russian Empire living abroad who did not apply for Soviet citizenship.

The plight of Russian refugees in Finland resonates with a larger debate on boundaries,
state sovereignty, and the politics of belonging in the era of the nation-state. The Russian exiles’
situation underscored the problems of statelessness at a specific historical moment when tensions
between nation-state sovereignty and human rights concerns became manifest. Peter Gatrell has
argued that unlike previous European wars, where people who fled fighting in central Europe
sought the protection of an alternative authority neither lost nor acquired “rights” in the modern
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
8

Robert Johnston, “New Mecca, New Babylon”: Paris and the Russian Exiles, 1920-1945
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 4-5.
9
George Ginsburgs, “The Soviet Union and the Problem of Refugees and Displaced
Persons1917-1956,” American Journal of International Law, vol.51, no. 2 (1957), 327-328.
10
Ibid., 329.
207
	
  

sense, many who fled their homelands during the First World War became homeless and
stateless because of some modern states’ unwillingness to integrate minorities.

11

The notion in

international law that individuals had the unambiguous right of entry only to countries in which
they were citizens further solidified the nation-state system. The passport as proof of citizenship
12

was linked to individuals’ claims of belonging to a specific country.

The making of the refugee

as a legal-bureaucratic category thus “resulted from the consolidation of the nation-state and
associated notions of membership and entitlement.”

13

After the First World War, the creation of

new nation-states out of the remnants of collapsed empires rendered hundreds of thousands of
people without formal citizenship.
This chapter employs the term refugee loosely to refer to people displaced from their
places of permanent residence due to war, revolution and other humanitarian crises, rather than
the legal definitions of the United Nations’ 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees.

14

This

analysis thus includes subjects of the Russian Empire who had been residing in Finland either
permanently or temporarily prior to 1917 but who had not acquired formal Finnish citizenship. It
is important to note that people displaced from the former Russian Empire included the non	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
11

Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 9-10.
12
Jane Caplan and John Torpey, ed., Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of
State Practices in the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 10.
13
Peter Gatrell, “The Making of the Modern Refugee,” Keynote address for the Conference on
Refugees in the Post-war World, Arizona State University, April 8-9, 2010, 2.
14
Article 1A of the United Nations’ 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees defines a
refugee as anyone who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race,
religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the
country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the
protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his
former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling
to return to it.”
208
	
  

15

Orthodox, non-Russian-speaking ethnic minorities.

Although these individuals did not fit the

standard definition of refugees as people who fled their country of origin, their lack of legal
rights and freedom of mobility in Finland rendered them particularly vulnerable. The problems
with defining the refugee are also compounded by the time these individuals spend outside of
their homelands. Refugeedom implies an impermanent condition: once dangerous conditions
were removed from their homelands, refugees could return home. For many people fleeing from
the remnants of the Russian Empire, the favorable conditions that would allow for their return
never materialized. More importantly, the choice not to return to their homeland was an explicit
16

rejection of Bolshevik rule.

As Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell have argued, the post-1918 re-

configuration of power and territory displaced those who migrated as well as those who were
rooted in one particular locale that had undergone dramatic changes. Such circumstances
17

therefore altered these people’s location in time and space.

A modified definition of refugees

allows for greater reflection on the emotive consequences of displacement and dislocation. I
follow Gatrell’s consideration of refugees as “a group whose ‘condition’ was created not just by
objective circumstance, but also by the gaze of politicians or professionals who sought in various
18

ways to order refugee life.”

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
15

Administrators of the Nansen passport, instituted in 1922 to allow for refugees from Russian
to travel across state boundaries in search of employment or friends and relatives, defined
“Russian” as any subjects of the former Russian empire (including the non-Russian minorities)
without diplomatic representation who had not acquired citizenship in another polity. See Skran,
Refugees in Inter-war Europe, 109.
16
Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 16-17.
17
Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell, “Introduction,” in Homelands: War, Population and Statehood
in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918-1924, ed. Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell (London: Anthem
Press, 2004), 2.
18
Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 8.
209
	
  

The Karelian Isthmus as a Refugee Zone
Malleable perceptions of the meaning of space and place are important factors in shaping
different kinds of social interactions. They affect considerations of belonging. Chapters Two and
Three have outlined how the Karelian Isthmus towns in the late nineteenth century became
popular leisure space for scores of visitors from the St. Petersburg region because of their
perceived tranquility. Chapters One and Four have illustrated how these dacha settlements were
also sites of tension in the early 1900s when the Russian imperial officials considered changing
the administration of some districts from Finnish to Russian authority. As seen in the preceding
chapter, this region also became a hub of clandestine revolutionary activity because of its
accessibility from the Russian capital. These perceptions of the Karelian Isthmus dacha places
stand in sharp contrast to each other. These towns and villages had never been tranquil sites of
cross-cultural exchange, and the effects of war and revolution further undermined the notion of
these places as serene. This chapter continues the juxtaposition of stability and chaos in the
Karelian Isthmus by exploring the liminal status of refugees whose flight brought them to the
towns and villages of this picturesque region. The analysis in this chapter illustrates the difficulty
in drawing the fine line between those who did and did not belong when individuals made
decisions through the lens of space and territory.
The series of social and political crises that followed the collapse of the Russian empire
and Finland’s secession from the imperial entity contributed to a massive flow of humanity
across the Finnish-Russian border in both directions. Finns and Russians with Bolshevik
affiliation who dreaded the victorious Whites’ retribution after the civil war in Finland fled to
Russia. Many more individuals attempted to flee from Russia to Finland to escape the Bolshevik
scourge. The Finnish-Russian border areas in the Karelian Isthmus became important centers of

210
	
  

refugee activity because they were routes between Soviet Russia and the West. St.
Petersburg/Leningrad, a city that housed Russia’s largest foreign population prior to the First
World War, was located only 30 kilometers away from the Finnish-Russian border. During the
war, naval operations near the Baltic lands made it difficult to leave Russia through those
territories, but relative calm in the Karelian Isthmus meant that it was still available as a possible
19

escape route until the Finnish civil war broke out early in 1918.

S.R. Mintslov, an officer who

served in the Imperial Army in the Kiev garrison and in the Caucasus, lived near Vyborg in early
1918, and he described in his diary the chaos of civil war in Finland. He wrote in January 1918
that he could hear heavy fire from his house at night, but could not distinguish if the fire was
coming from the Finnish Red or White forces. Several days later, his wife and daughter went to
the stores by the nearest railway station to find supplies, but found nothing left in the local stores
and the train station area under heavy armed guard of the Finnish Reds.

20

The refugee crisis in the Karelian Isthmus stemmed from problems during the First
World War. Some Russian visitors had second thoughts about their annual trips to the Finnish
coast. Anxious about these Gulf of Finland settlements’ vulnerability to German naval attack,
many Russians stayed away from the Isthmus when the war broke out, and some Russian
permanent residents in the Isthmus returned to Russia.

21

However, due to food shortages in St.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
19
20

Engman, Raja, 36.

S.R. Mintslov, Trapezondskaia epopeia: dnevnik Kiev, Trapezond, Finliandiia (Berlin: n.p.,
1925), 321-322. Diary entries are from January 15 and January 20, 1918.
21
E.A. Balashov, Karel’skii peresheek: zemliia neizvedannaia, kraevedcheskoe izdanie (St.
Petersburg: Geza Kom, 1996) 34-35.
211
	
  

Petersburg, some of the visitors began staying at their dachas in the Isthmus for longer periods of
time during the war years, turning their dachas into half year or even full year settlements.

22

After the onset of the war, the dacha as a place of respite took on a new meaning, since
Russian authorities set up convalescent homes in the region for wounded soldiers. Dachas that
stood empty during the winter months became sought after properties. As part of the war effort,
several dacha owners offered their properties for use by the Finnish section of the Russian Red
Cross as convalescent homes. As early as August 1914, two Russian women had offered their
dacha in Kuokkala to the Russian Red Cross for use as a military hospital. In their letter to Red
Cross officials they described their house as a large property, surrounded by scenic forests with
access to good drinking water and the seaside.

23

Finns who owned large properties in the region

also offered their houses for military use. The Finnish-speaking wife of a financier from Russia
informed the commander of the Vyborg military base that her dacha property near the Imatra
train station was available for use as a hospital.

24

At the end of the First World War, many of the
25

soldiers who convalesced in the dacha towns were internally displaced in Finland.

A significant number of these seasonal residents opted to seek refuge in their Karelian
26

Isthmus homes when revolution broke out in 1917.

When Finland declared independence from

Russia in December 1917, many of those who sought refuge in Finland suddenly found
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
22
23

Engman, Raja, 63

KA Finnish Red Cross Archives (SPR) Ub3570. Letter from Evgenii Konstatinovich and
Nadezhda Nikolaevna Sergeeva to the Russian Red Cross Office in St. Petersburg, August 8,
1914.
24
KA SPR Ub4 571, undated letter.
25
26

Engman, Raja, 62. In 1917, approximately 125,000 Russia soldiers remained in Finland.

Pekka Nevalainen, Izgoi: rossiiskie bezhentsy v Finliandii 1917-1939 (St. Petersburg: Zhurnal
Neva, 2003), 17.
212
	
  

themselves in a foreign country without having relocated. Mintslov also recalled reading about
Finland’s declaration of independence in Russian language newspapers and coming to the
27

realization that he was now “living abroad, in the fullest sense of the term.”

By the end of 1918, the social and cultural landscape had changed dramatically in the
Karelian Isthmus towns. In May that year, the Viipuri Province governor pointed out that the
situation in his province was different from other Finnish regions because of the heavy Russian
presence, which included the large number of landowners and merchants who had been living
there for several decades, as well as those who had arrived recently seeking refuge.

28

The

Finnish state requisitioned many of the abandoned dachas formerly owned by St. Petersburgers
for use as quarantine stations. Irina Elenevskaia, who fled with her family to Finland in 19201921, recalled in her memoirs that she stayed in one such dacha while quarantined in Terijoki.
Her family shared the second floor of that house, normally closed in the winter, with several
other families.

29

G. A. Solodukhin, a rank-and-file soldier stationed at Kronstadt, had taken part

in the Kronstadt rebellion against Bolshevik forces in March 1921, and fled to Finland in the
aftermath of the failed uprising. When he and his comrades first arrived in Finland, they were
taken to Terijoki, where his group of 80 people was housed in an abandoned dacha. For the two
weeks while they were stationed at the dacha, Red Cross personnel provided them with food and

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
27
28
29

Mintslov, Trapezondskaia epopeia, 319.
Ibid., 86.

Irina Elenevskaia, Vospominaniia (Stockholm: n.p., 1968), 120. Elenevskaia was the daughter
of a Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs official.
213
	
  

clothing. Soludokhin and other participants in the Kronstadt rebellion were eventually sent to a
refugee camp at Turkensaari, an island not far from Vyborg.

30

Towns that were popular destinations for the dacha folk also became temporary transit
stations for Russian refugees who planned to move to other cities in Europe. I.V. Gessen fled
with his family to Finland in 1918 out of fear of arrest by Bolshevik authorities. The family lived
in Terijoki for a few months before moving to Berlin via Helsinki.

31

A. A. Vyrubova, who

served Empress Alexandra as a maid of honor and was close to the imperial family, fled to
Finland in the winter of 1920. Her first stop was Terijoki, and when she arrived, she had no
possessions or money. She received some assistance from local aid authorities, and was
eventually relocated to Helsinki.

32

The ambiguous nature of Finnish-Russian border controls contributed to a paradoxical
situation in the Karelian Isthmus. The old customs boundary between Finland and Russia was
not well demarcated by any physical features in the countryside. Both Finnish and Russian
authorities lacked the resources to guard the territory. It was especially easy to cross the border at
33

night in the unpopulated areas.

For example, John Reed traveled from the United States to

Russia through the forests in eastern Finland, where Finnish Bolshevik sympathizers smuggled

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
30

G.A. Soludokhin, Zhizn’ i sud’ba odnogo kazaka (New York: All Slavic Publishing House,
1962), 49-50.
31
Vladimir Gessen, V bor’be za zhizn’: zapiski emigranta (New York: Rausen Publishers,
1974), 29. Vladimir, son of I.V. Gessen, recounts his experience growing up as the son of a
political figure in St. Petersburg as well as his life in emigration in Europe.
32
A.A. Vyrubova, Stranitsy iz moei zhizni (Berlin: n.p., 1923), 128-129.
33

Johannes Virolainen, Karjalaiset Suomen kohtaloissa (Helsinki: Otava, 1988), 63.
214

	
  

34

him across the border.

Princess Sofia Volkonskaia simply walked across a small bridge over a

dirty stream into Finnish territory in May 1919.

35

After the Red Army defeated General

Yudenich’s forces in northern Russia in December 1919, civilians and soldiers continued to
36

stream across the border to Finland.
Russia in Finland.

37

By 1922, there were approximately 20,000 refugees from

Although the Finnish state attempted to control the number of Russians

entering the country and expel a large group of Russians already residing in Finland, the lack of
physical control over border areas made it essentially an open space for the flow of human
traffic. It was specifically this unpatrolled, unregulated movement of people that alarmed the
Finnish political leadership. The porousness of the Finnish-Russian boundary in the immediate
months after the end of the civil war in Finland did not correspond with the Finnish
government’s desire to keep Russian influence out of the country.

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Family Ties
Pekka Nevalainen’s work on the flight of people from Bolshevik-controlled Russia to
Finland underscores the myriad of problems the Finnish government faced in managing the tide
of people who sought shelter in the country. These complications stemmed from the diversity of
people referred to as “refugees” in contemporary literature. In addition to the Russian subjects
already living in Finland who became de facto stateless people, refugees included ethnic
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
34

Robert A. Rosenstone, Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 361.
35
Sofia Volkonskaia, Gore pobezhdennym, vae victis, vospominania (Paris: Orest Zeluk, n.d.),
7.
36
Skran, Refugees in Inter-war Europe, 34.
37

John Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem: Report of a Survey (London: Oxford University
Press, 1939), 561. Simpson’s estimates do not include a distinction between ethnicity of Russian
imperial subjects, nor do they include details on where the refugees originated.
215
	
  

Russians as well non-Russian subjects of the former empire such as Ukrainians, Belorusians and
Germans. People fleeing from Russian included members of the aristocracy, bureaucrats in the
former imperial government, merchants, artists, intellectuals, and lay workers. Many were
former residents of the St. Petersburg environs, and had previous contacts with Finns through
their travels to Finland.

38

Refugees from Russia also included what Finnish historiography refers

to as “kinsmen.” One of these groups was the Ingrian Finns, a predominantly Finnish-speaking
group who had lived along the Gulf of Finland shoreline stretching from St. Petersburg to the
eastern parts of Estonia. Another group of ethnic kin was the Karelians, a people that resided in
regions adjacent to the Finnish-Russian border and spoke a language closely related to Finnish.
These groups were usually farming people with limited education. Many of them fled to Finland
to escape political persecution and famine, even though most had fleeting ties to Finnish
39

territory.

Some of these “kinsmen” retained their Lutheran faith and Finnish language, but

others followed Orthodox rites and spoke Russian as their mother tongue.

40

The government of the nascent Finnish state made no prior plans for accommodating
such as vast array of refugees, and the temporary and uncertain nature of the population
displacement crisis made it difficult for officials to plan logically.

41

The first government

sponsored agency that dealt with the refugee crisis, the Finnish Interim Economic Committee
(known hereafter by its Finnish acronym SVTK), was established with the original intent to
safeguard Finnish financial and property interests in Russia. From 1919 to 1922, this committee
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
38
39

Nevalainen, Izgoi , 38-39.

Ibid., 29. By the spring of 1922, approximately 15,000 refugees who had fled to Finland were
considered by the Finnish government as Finnish.
40
Ibid., 31.
41

Ibid., 8.
216

	
  

facilitated the repatriation of Finnish citizens living under duress in Russia. The committee
received partial funds from the Danish and American Red Cross for distribution to the displaced
and dispossessed.

42

This fledgling agency thus took on the gargantuan task of classifying

refugees.
The SVTK had a mandate to assist Finnish citizens, but its records show that doling out
resources based on citizenship and nationality was a much more convoluted affair at a time when
the concept of formal territorial citizenship was still novel. For example, distribution lists for
material aid to individuals included people who did not have proper identity papers. This list
consisted of people with Finnish surnames born in Russia as well as people with Russian
43

surnames born in Finland.

Decades of labor migration between Finland and Russia in both

directions meant that ethnicity, nationality and territory did not correspond neatly. Names, place
of birth and mother tongue were insufficient for determining citizenship, especially given that
little else besides property titles and parish records established an individual’s ties to a particular
polity. In one case, a man claiming to be a Finnish citizen sent a letter to the SVTK, penned in
Russian, asking the committee to locate his sister, a Finnish-speaker who had moved to St.
Petersburg and become a Russian subject through marriage.

44

With so many people whose

nationality could not be easily verified claiming to be Finns returning to Finland, it was no
wonder that aid agencies soon became overwhelmed by requests for assistance.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
42

The Finnish Interim Economic Committee (Suomen valiaikisen taloudellisen komitea/SVTK)
was established in October 1918 after the Finnish Passport Office in St. Petersburg/Petrograd
ceased to operate in June. At first the SVTK’s task was to keep track of Finnish-owned property
in Russia until official Finnish diplomatic representation could be established. The Finnish
government soon gave it the task of facilitating repatriation and managing refugee aid. See the
Finnish Interim Economic Committee Archive finding aid at the National Archives of Finland.
43
KA SVTK Bb1 Folder 1. List of refugees receiving material assistance, October 19, 1921.
44

KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 1. Letter from F. Ostening to the SVTK, December 21, 1921.
217

	
  

In the initial phases of the refugee crisis, Russian voluntary organizations were active in
helping those who self-identified as Russian. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution these
organizations dealt with a wide range of issues, such as education, temperance and poor relief,
but many of them became impromptu refugee agencies in the aftermath of the Russian Empire’s
collapse. One example of these organizations was the Russian Philanthropic Organization
(Russkoe blagotvoritel’noe obshchestvo, RBO). This association was founded in 1871 with the
aim of supporting Russian language educational establishments in Finland for the children of
Russian-speaking families residing in Finland. The RBO had already established several Russian
schools in Finland by the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. The organization continued its work
in Russian language education in Finland after 1917, but in the early years after Finland’s
independence, this organization diverted much of its resources towards supporting refugees. For
example, the RBO helped convert many of the schools it funded into temporary shelters for those
fleeing from Russia.

45

In May 1918, a group of prominent Russian merchants and professionals living in
Finland established the Russian Commission in Viipuri Province. This group sought to provide
material assistance to all Russian families living in this part of Finland. Its other tasks included
negotiating with Finnish authorities over proposed plans to expel subjects of the former Russian
46

empire from Finland.

Within the first week of this society’s establishment, it had already

assembled lists of potential donors and designated representatives to speak with local Finnish
authorities. In these early months, the Russian Commission sought to get official assurance from
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
45

Sto let Russkomu blagotvoritel’nomu obshchestvu, (Helsinki: VR Painatusjaosto, 1972), 4046.
46
LOGAV, f.504, op.1, d.1, l.1. Minutes of the Russian Commission in Viipuri Province
meeting, May 7, 1918.
218
	
  

local Finnish authorities that the organization could carry on its activities without interference.

47

When rumors about impending expulsion of Russian refugees surfaced, refugees turned to the
48

Russian Commission to verify the details.

Most of the Russian refugees living in Vyborg and

other towns and villages in the Karelian Isthmus only had rudimentary command of the Finnish
language, and they often relied on Russian aid organizations as their primary source of
information about their predicament.
The Russian Commission also dealt with administering Russian-run institutions in
Finland. Prior to the revolutions of 1917, St. Petersburg regional authorities had established
several sanatoria and convalescent homes in the Karelian Isthmus. With the Russian Empire’s
disintegration, these health establishments’ future became uncertain. When the Finnish
government notified the Hallila sanatorium of its intention to requisition the properties in the
summer of 1918, physicians and staff at the sanatorium approached the Commission with
concerns about the future of the patients at the establishment, since they had received no notice
from administrators in Petrograd. Without formal instruction from the sanatorium’s
administrators in Petrograd, the doctors were reluctant to comply with orders to turn over the
property to the Finnish authorities. The Commission negotiated with Finnish officials over the
terms of requisition and the liquidation of the establishment’s movable assets, and eventually set
up a liquidation committee to facilitate this process.

49

Without official Russian government

representation, the Russian Commission took on significant diplomatic functions in Finland.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
47
48

Ibid.

LOGAV, f.504, op.1, d.1, l.2. Protocol 3, minutes of the Russian Commission in Viipuri
Province meeting, May 8, 1918.
49
LOGAV, f. 504, op.1, d.2, l. 89. Letter from Chief of Physicians at Hallila Sanatorium to the
Russian Commission, August 14, 1918.
219
	
  

Refugees in Finland who were subjects of the defunct Russian Empire asked the Russian
Commission to help them solve a variety of problems. One widow informed the committee that
her identity papers were destroyed when she fled to Finland. She feared that without proper
papers, Finnish authorities would send her back to Bolshevik-controlled Russia. She therefore
asked the committee to issue her temporary papers. Another widow saw the Committee as an adhoc child services agency. This invalid woman found that being the sole caretaker of her young
grandchildren was too onerous, and therefore requested that the Russian Commission care for
these children. The members of the organization responded negatively to these requests, stating
that these tasks were not under its field of competency.

50

The Commission also received

numerous demands from people to speed up the delivery of aid to refugees, a difficult challenge
for the organization because its financial standing in Finland was unstable.

51

These kinds of

requests revealed the enormous expectations Russian refugees placed on the most prominent
members of their community.
The Russian Commission thus served as a liaison between the Russian community in the
Karelian Isthmus and regional Finnish authorities. The organization’s leadership soon discovered
just how difficult it was to act in this capacity. The political, social and ethnic heterogeneity of
people considered as Russians in Finland complicated this task. In the early 1900s, many
Russians fleeing to Finland were fugitives of the Tsarist regime. They included the autocracy’s
enemies of all political hues: anarchists, Bolsheviks, and other radicals. After 1917, many

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
50

LOGAV, f. 504, op.1, d.1, l. 13. Protocol 22, Minutes of the Russian Commission meeting,
May 30, 1918.
51
Ibid.
220
	
  

52

individuals connected to Tsarist government also fled to Finland.

The Russian refugee

community in Finland was therefore by no means unified in political ideals. The varied political
allegiances contributed to an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust among refugees in Finland.
Natalia Baschmakoff and Marja Leinonen have noted that although Russians in Finland formed
numerous associations in the early 1920s, many of these groups were gripped by constant infighting.

53

The incoherent order of hierarchy among Russians in Finland made it difficult for

community leaders to solve problems affecting their groups.
Due to limited funding, the Russian Commission restricted access to material aid. Early
on in the organization’s existence, its leadership decided that Finnish women married to Russian
men were not eligible to receive financial assistance from the Russian Commission, nor were
Russian women who married Finnish citizens. There was a gendered element to this decision
since the restriction did not seem to apply to Russian men married to Finns.

54

Such decisions

were not entirely arbitrary, yet they did not correspond with the realities of people’s social
bonds. Finnish widows of former Russian military personnel could not receive material aid from
the organization even though some may have considered themselves a part of the Russian
community.
Distributing aid by nationality proved difficult for officials because of the complex
family relationships between Finnish- and Russian-speaking refugees. Some individuals from the
mixed Finnish-Russian families who were unable to secure aid from Russian voluntary
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
52
53

Nevalainen, Izgoi , 16.

Natalia Baschmakoff and Marja Leinonen, Russian Life in Finland: A Local and Oral History
(Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 2001), 113.
54
LOGAV, f.504, op.1, d.1, l.7. Minutes of the Russian Commission in Viipuri Province
meeting, May 16, 1918.
221
	
  

associations turned to Finnish organizations for help. Elena Bogdanova wrote to SVTK officials
and described her plight through the help of translators. She was born in Russia, but lived in both
Finland and Russia, splitting her time between Vyborg and St. Petersburg. She married a
Russian-speaker with Finnish citizenship who died shortly after the couple fled from Russia to
Finland in 1919. Although Bogdanova had acquired Finnish citizenship through her husband, she
was unable to find work and had no means to support her two children. She explained: “I have
already requested assistance from the Russian Commission in Viipuri, but was denied help
because I am now a Finn by marriage. I have not asked the Finns for help in the past because I
lacked proper language skills, but now my situation is so extreme that I am left with little
choice.”

55

The aid agency responded favorably to her request, and granted her a small sum of

money to purchase food and clothing. Bogdanova’s specific reference to the Russian
Commission denying her help indicated her awareness of the complex relationship between
nationality and aid organizations’ rationale for distributing funds. Her letter revealed her
isolation from the Finnish community, yet this seclusion did not prevent her from identifying
herself as a Finnish citizen in her appeal to Finnish authorities for help.
Political turmoil in Finland and Russia separated some Finnish-Russian families. Finnish
officials frequently received requests from citizens to locate and assist relatives who remained in
Russia. Alfred Blomqvist, a Swedish-speaking Finnish citizen who had migrated to St.
Petersburg some years ago for factory work, wrote to the SVTK in August 1922 pleading for the
organization to evacuate his Russian wife and daughter from Russia. Although Blomqvist had
been able to leave Russia a year ago, his wife and daughter had fallen ill and were forced to
remain. By the time they had recovered, the most recent wave of Finnish evacuations had already
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
55

KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 2. Letter from Elena Bogdanova to SVTK, January12, 1923.
222

	
  

terminated. At the time of writing, Blomqvist claimed that his wife and daughter were living in
squalor with little access to food, clothing and shelter. He had read in the newspapers that the
Finnish government was planning a new round of evacuations, and decided to ask the SVTK to
56

ensure that his family was included.

Pekka Pitkänen, a Finnish citizen who fled from Russia in

1922, wrote to the SVTK in 1923 informing the committee that he still had relatives in Petrograd
whose whereabouts were still unknown. He requested that the committee help him find his
relatives.

57

Others treated the organization as a courier service for sending food and other

supplies to friends and family in Russia. One refugee asked the committee to send a package of
shoes and clothing to his son in Petrograd. The sender only provided the name of his son without
a forwarding address, and expected the SVTK to deliver the materials promptly!

58

Refugees

looked upon the SVTK as an umbrella organization for all kinds of tasks related to their wellbeing. While the organization attempted to track Finnish citizens remaining in Russia or
arbitrarily imprisoned in Soviet prisons, the enormity of this task overwhelmed officials because
it involved dealing with an unstable government that was not on good terms with the Finnish
political establishment.
Difficulties notwithstanding, the Finnish aid organizations displayed some willingness to
help Finnish citizens with relatives stranded in Russia, even if the relatives were not Finns.
Valdermar Lutinen, a teacher from a Karelian Isthmus village, wrote to the SVTK in 1922 asking
that the organization send money to his daughter Anna, who had moved to Petrograd during the
First World War to work as a housemaid. After having lost contact with her father for over four
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
56
57

KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 2. Letter from Alfred Blomqvist to SVTK. August 10, 1923.

KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 3. Letter from Pekka Pitkänen to SVTK representative Anni Arpiainen,
April 11, 1923.
58
KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 3, Letter from J. Waljus to the SVTK, no date.
223
	
  

years, she now informed him in writing that she had married a Russian man and given birth to a
child. She wrote that that her husband had recently fallen ill, leaving her as the primary wage
earner in the family with no one to care for their son. The SVTK responded favorably to
Lutinen’s appeal to assist his daughter and her family in Petrograd.

59

Finnish citizens were

sometimes successful in convincing their government officials to care about the plight of their
non-Finnish relatives.
Finnish aid agencies occasionally worked with their Russian counterparts in solving
complex problems that some interethnic families faced. Local representatives of the Finnish
Refugee Aid Committee in Kellomäki investigated the situation of a young girl living in a
refugee center at a former Russian gymnasium. The girl, born in Petrograd, had a Finnishspeaking father and Russian-speaking mother who were divorced. In 1921, her father and
stepmother fled with her to Finland. Several months after their arrival in Finland, the girl’s father
left her in the care of her great-aunt, who was now staying at a Russian refugee center in the
Karelian Isthmus, while he and his wife moved temporarily to Berlin. The girl’s great-aunt
expressed desire to send the girl to Petrograd, where her biological mother still lived. When the
father heard of this plan, he asked the Finnish Refugee Aid Committee representatives to send
the girl to Berlin. The committee’s officials, however, were reluctant to comply with the father’s
demands. Aid workers found that that girl was well adjusted at the Russian refugee center, where
she was enrolled in classes with other children of her age. According to the aid workers, the child
was completely Russified, and the girl claimed she had no desire to move to Berlin with her
father. Not knowing how to deal with this situation in the long term, the Finnish Refugee Aid
Committee representatives decided to send money to the Russian refugee center in the girl’s
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
59

KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 2, letter from Valdemar Lutinen to SVTK, September 7, 1922.
224

	
  

name as compensation for her care until suitable guardianship arrangements could be made.

60

In

this particular scenario, the Finnish citizen who requested assistance from officials did not
initially get desired results. Finnish aid authorities dealing with this case showed empathy for a
child whose predicament as a refugee was further complicated by custody issues.
Russian refugees in Finland relied on their connections with Finnish acquaintances for
survival in the tumultuous years of the 1920s. Individuals with family connections through
marriage tended to fare better. Those without such connections had a much harder time with
simple tasks such as finding housing, work, and food and clothing. With the large influx of
refugees coming to Finland in 1921-1922, there were significant housing crises in Finland’s three
largest cities: Helsinki, Viipuri, and Turku. Elenevskaia recalled that her family, after several
months in quarantine centers in the Karelian Isthmus, were told that they were to leave and
resettle elsewhere, since only those who had dachas or other immovable property in the Karelian
Isthmus were allowed to stay. The family wanted to go to Vyborg, but was informed by
authorities that they were not allowed to resettle there without special permission. They
eventually got permission to move to Vyborg, but since they did not know any Finnish or
Swedish, they relied on a Russian-speaking acquaintance who had lived in Finland for a long
time and who was familiar with local government agencies. The Elenevskaia family’s
acquaintance eventually found housing for them in the same quarters as two other Finnishspeaking families who had lived in St. Petersburg until the Bolshevik Revolution.

61

The hierarchy of power within the Russian community in Finland governed the lives of
those who did not have personal connections in Finland. The Finnish section of the Russian Red
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
60

KA SVTK Ea1 Folder 4. Letter from Finnish Refugee Aid Committee in Kellomäki to the
SVTK in Helsinki, February 15, 1923.
61
Elenevskaia, Vospominaniia , 122.
225
	
  

Cross, which continued to operate in Finland until the mid-1920s, prioritized material assistance
to Russians who had been long term residents in Finland prior to independence. Many of these
individuals were higher ranking military personnel, teachers, university professors and other
professionals. Red Cross records from 1922-1923 provided details on the people receiving aid.
Widows of military personnel were the most common aid recipients. One officer’s widow even
received aid for herself, her adult son, three minor children, and the family’s nanny. The Red
Cross also gave money to a disabled colonel whose wife was fatally ill and had two young
daughters under his care. The colonel had sold his family’s belongings at an auction, and when
his family had used up all the money from that sale, he turned to aid organizations for help.
Several teachers from the Russian gymnasia in Finland also accepted aid given by the Finnish
section of the Russian Red Cross. These teachers all had young children in their households and
were unemployed because they lacked proper language skills to teach in Finnish schools after
62

several of the Russian schools had been shut down.

The pre-revolutionary hierarchy of power

among Russians still regulated the lives of those who had minimal ties with people outside the
community in the 1920s.

No Haven for Bolsheviks
In 1922 Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky attempted to flee from Soviet Russia to Finland
under threat of execution in Petrograd.

63

He had participated in anti-Bolshevik activities but later

served in Red Army during the Civil War. Once he reached Finland, he required written
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
62

KA SPR Hpa2. List of people receiving Red Cross aid. Complied by the Committee of the
Finnish Red Cross, 1922-1923.
63
Viktor Shklovsky wrote his memoirs in Raivola, one of the Karelian Isthmus villages with a
strong Russian presence, in 1922. See A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917-1922, translated
by Richard Sheldon (Normal: Dalkey Archive Press, 2004), 133.
226
	
  

confirmation from a trusted person that he had no Bolshevik ties. He turned to artist Ilya Repin,
who had by that time become a well-known resident in the Karelian Isthmus and was well
respected by Finnish officials. Repin, who adhered strictly to the pre-revolutionary Russian
cultural ideals, responded:
My dear Viktor Borisovich – of course I know you well and love you. But,
why do you practice the ‘new’ illiterate orthography? Why are you afraid
of your own authorities? How can I assure them that you are not a
64
Bolshevik?
Repin then wrote to his old friend Kornei Chukovsky, explaining his
refusal to provide the written testimony on Shklovsky’s behalf. Repin claimed that since
Shklovksii used the new orthography, he “considered it as a clear indication of slavery to
Bolshevism.”

65

Repin, as someone who identified as Russian, did not come to the assistance of a

fellow Russian by providing a reference that would have helped his friend’s case with Finnish
authorities’ investigation. The correspondence between Repin and Skhlovsky underscores the
elusiveness of a unifying Russian identity. Political divisions among Russians living in Finland
in the 1920s should not be underestimated. Finnish officials’ suspicion of Russians as potential
Bolshevik enemies heightened these divisions. Repin’s response to Skhlovsky’s pleas reveals
that some Russians who wished to remain in the good graces of Finnish authorities felt the
necessity of distancing themselves from other Russians who had even the slightest connection to
Bolshevism. This factor contributed to the sense of alienation among Russians in Finland.
There was a broader political dimension in the relationship between those fleeing from
Russia and refugee management authorities in Finland. Concerns over the seeming porousness of
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
64
65

Cited in Baschmakoff and Leinonen, Russian Life in Finland, 50.

Letter from I.E. Repin to K.I. Chukovskii, July 15, 1923, in Repin, I.E., Chukovskii,K.I.
Perepiska, 1906-1929 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006), 164. Also cited in
Baschmakoff and Leinonen, Russian Life in Finland, 50.
227
	
  

Russia’s western borders related to broader European views on how best to deal with the two
warring sides in the civil war in Russia. As John Thompson has noted, Western leaders
contemplated a range of policy options in dealing with political turmoil in Russia. One of these
options was “the isolation of Russia and the erection of a surrounding ring of buffer states to
66

contain Bolshevism – a cordon sanitaire.”

By the end of 1919 when Allied intervention in

Russia had failed to produce desired results against Bolshevik forces, the Allied delegations at
the Paris Peace Conference gave the idea of the cordon more serious consideration. Both David
Lloyd George and George Clemençeau argued that the Allies should approve the encirclement of
Russia with a small number of independent states to prevent the Bolsheviks from spreading their
influence outside this zone, and to deter a much weakened Germany from entering into economic
and political partnerships with Russia. As part of this strategy, the Allies proposed to give the
new Russian border peoples as much assurance from Bolshevik attack as possible, along with
economic assistance for the states in the cordon sanitaire.

67

There is no direct evidence linking the western Allies’ views regarding the cordon
sanitaire to the Finnish government’s handling of Russian refugees in Finland, but Allied
involvement in the civil war in Russia did affect Finland’s position vis-à-via Russia from 1918 to
1920. Although Poland was at the center of the cordon idea, the Baltic area, including Finland,
was not obsolete in Western diplomatic and military planning. The British were especially
interested in the Baltic region not only as part of a cordon sanitaire against Soviet Bolshevism,
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
66

John M. Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1966), 38.
67
Ibid., 368-369. R.A.C. Parker has commented that the French devoted their efforts in 1919 to
strengthening Poland and Romania, rather than supporting anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia as
part of their vision of the cordon. See Europe 1919-49 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1969), 42-43.
228
	
  

68

but also as part of a region for facilitating trade with the Russian market.

British-French

military representatives and foreign policy makers relied on Finland’s assistance against
Bolshevik forces in a planned attack on Petrograd. Finnish politicians had some reservations
about participating in this campaign. Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Finland’s first
president, was particularly concerned that White Russian émigrés in Western Europe, who did
not support Finnish aims, might influence Britain’s and the United States’ willingness to
recognize Finnish independence.

69

Finnish diplomats thus emphasized that any Finnish

participation in an offensive against Petrograd would be conditional on the Whites’ recognition
of their country’s independence. In the spring and summer of 1919, Admiral Alexander
Kolchak’s government in Omsk refused to go beyond granting Finland autonomy until an allRussian constituent assembly could be convened.

70

This led to tensions within the Finnish

government over the treatment of the Russian refugees: members of the Agrarian Party wanted
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
68

Esa Sundbäck, Finland in British Baltic Policy (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and
Letters, 2001), 193. See also Olavi Hovi, The Baltic Area in British Policy, 1918-1921 (Helsinki:
Finnish Historical Society, 1980).
69
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Memoirs of Marshal Mannerheim, trans. Count Eric
Lewenhaupt (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1954), 197. The Finnish Parliament declared
Finland’s independence from Bolshevik-controlled Russia on December 6, 1917. The Central
Executive Committee that headed the Bolshevik government recognized Finnish independence
on December 31, 1917, formalized on January 4, 1918. Sweden, Denmark and Norway followed
suit. Because of complications arising from the continental war that still continued in Europe as
well as the Civil War in Russia, other major states were more reluctant to recognize Finnish
independence. The United States and Great Britain, for example, only did so in spring 1919.
Kalervo Hovi, “The Winning of Finnish Independence as an Issue in International Relations,”
Scandinavian Journal of History, Vol. 3 (1978), 47-73 discusses the international political
factors involved in the recognition of Finland as an independent state. See also “Finland’s
Independence is Recognized by European States,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland
website, January 11, 2008,
http://formin.finland.fi/public/default.aspx?contentid=107680&nodeid=15153&contentlan=2&cu
lture=en-US, accessed June 11, 2012.
70
Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace, 331-332.
229
	
  

the Russians to be driven out, while other parliament representatives felt they should address the
humanitarian concerns regardless of political outcomes in Russia.

71

The relationship between nationality and political affiliation was a troubling one for
officials to consider when dealing with the masses of people entering Finland from Russia. The
defeat of the Reds in Finland’s civil war colored Finnish attitudes towards the Russian
population. Some officials deemed Russians to be a bad influence and sought to rid them from
72

Finland even though many Russian refugees did not identify with the Bolshevik cause.

Animosity toward Russians, however, was not reserved only for the Bolsheviks. Members of
Finland’s political leadership worried that Russians who were part of the old Tsarist regime
would oppose Finnish independence. While some leaders wished to show the Whites in Russia
their goodwill by supporting Russian refugees, others worried about the effects of providing safe
haven for Russians who did not support Finnish independence.

73

Political considerations affected refugees’ relationship with Finnish authorities.
Alexander Hedberg, a Swedish-speaking Finn who grew up in Western Finland, moved to Russia
as a young adult and married a Russian woman. He was politically active in his youth, and
during the Civil War in Russia, he served in General Wrangel’s army. He fled to Finland after
White armies’ defeat. His Russian wife, however, was captured and imprisoned by the
Bolsheviks. Hedberg received news through an acquaintance that his wife had tried to flee
clandestinely to Finland but was caught in the process. His acquaintance suspected that she had
been beaten and tortured by her Bolshevik captors. Hedberg explained to SVTK officials, “I
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
71
72
73

Engman, Raja, 118.
Ibid., 81.
Ibid., 125.

230
	
  

would travel myself to Russia to find my wife, but as someone who had served in the White
armies, such a thing equals my death sentence. I urge you to do everything possible to bring her
to Finland.”

74

Interestingly, Hedberg’s letter to the SVTK was written in Russian, indicating that he had
been away from Finland for such a long time that he had lost his ability to communicate in
Finnish or Swedish. He likely worried that this factor might cast doubt of his loyalty to the
Finnish state. He explicitly stated that the SVTK could contact the gymnasium director at his old
school, who had known him in his childhood, to verify his political reliability. This emphasis in
his letter shows that he recognized the tense political environment in Finland, especially after the
country had been bitterly divided by its own civil war. He may have sensed that the Finnish
authorities viewed with suspicion anyone who had connections to Russian politics. He likely felt
that as someone who had spent his adult life in Russia and participated in Russia’s civil war, his
political reliability in Finland may not be taken for granted even though he was still a Finnish
citizen. Hedberg’s communication with authorities demonstrates his understanding that
acceptance into the new Finnish polity depended on more than just bloodline.
Finnish security and customs officials made strong efforts to monitor and control the
movement of people into Finland, especially after the Whites’ final defeat in 1922. Memos
circulated in the Finnish Investigative Police (VALPO) Terijoki regional center mentioned that
Soviet authorities used data available from the Finnish Passport Office in St.
Petersburg/Petrograd to determine the identity and citizenship of individuals who wished to leave

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
74

KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 2. Letter from Alexander Hedberg to SVTK, April 30, 1922.
231

	
  

Russia.

75

Some Finns returning from Russia in the early 1920s had official exit travel documents

issued by the Soviet government verifying that they were Finnish citizens who had lived in
Russia for work, and who were registered with the Grand Duchy of Finland’s Passport Office in
the former imperial capital. Many of the refugees from Finland did not possess proper
identification papers, and these individuals relied on witness testimonies to verify their identities.
These refugees’ transience and their diversity in terms of occupation and familial connections
made it difficult for Finnish authorities to confirm these testimonies. For example, Ludmilla
Nordstrom, a housemaid, was born to a German-Russian family in Vyborg in Finland, and had
worked informally for different Russian and Finnish families in Finland and in Russia. In 1919,
she tried to enter Finland through Estonia but was unsuccessful. Because she was unable to
provide written proof of her place of birth or citizenship status, she did not manage obtain
permission to travel to Finland until 1923.

76

Finnish state security organs set up an investigative police force in the Terijoki parish
district to gather information on the political reliability of refugees, both Russian and Finnish, in
quarantine centers in Terijoki and Kellomäki. Authorities interviewed refugees at the quarantine
centers, and recorded information on individuals in detailed surveys. Besides basic demographic
details on each individual such as place of birth, occupation, marital status and place of
residences, authorities recorded information on the refugees’ intended destination in Finland.
Officials were especially interested in individuals who responded that they were traveling to
meet relatives or friends who were already residing in Finland. The questionnaires also contained
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
75

See memos from 1921-1922 in the Finnish Investigative Police (VALPO) Terijoki regional
center archives, KA VALPO Terijoen osasto Box 71.
76
KA VALPO Terijoen osasto Box 71, Ludmilla Nordstrom, questionnaire, September 14,
1923.
232
	
  

information about the reasons for an individual’s decision to go to Russia if he or she was born in
the Grand Duchy. Most importantly, the interviewers were interested in the refugees’ prior
political activities: whether they had participated in any capacity in the Finnish civil war,
whether they had been imprisoned for crimes of a political nature, whether they had any
connection to the Bolshevik Party in Russia, and whether they had participated in the Russian
civil war.

77

Police and customs officials’ documents suggested that not all who claimed to be

Finnish or claimed to have Finnish connections were welcomed into the country with open arms,
and not all were treated equally once they entered the country.
Irina Elenevskaia recalled her family’s interrogation by customs officials in Terijoki.
Communicating with the Russian family in German, the Finnish officials asked detailed
questions about their lives. In addition to the family’s political affiliation in Russia and reasons
for fleeing, authorities also asked about living conditions in Petrograd and the mood of the
population, especially in the workers’ quarters. The border guards eventually determined that the
family was in danger from persecution by the Bolsheviks in Russia, and granted the family the
right to stay in Finland temporarily.

78

Many more Russian families attempted to flee Russia via

Finland in 1921 as the civil war in Russia intensified. The massive influx of Russian refugees
prompted Finnish authorities to use extra scrutiny to determine whether the refugees would pose
a threat to the Finnish state. It also appeared that they used information the refugees provided as
a method for gauging the political environment in Russia.
Refugee aid authorities in Finland were interested in confirming individuals’ political
reliability before distributing materials to those requesting assistance. The SVTK, which
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
77

See the investigative reports of the VALPO Terijoki department in the Finnish National
Archives. KA VALPO Terijoen osasto Boxes 71-76.
78
Elenevskaia, Vospominaniia , 117.
233
	
  

received funds from the American Red Cross, relied on informants to provide information on
refugees. The organization employed Elisabeth Kaipainen, a Finnish woman from the Karelian
Isthmus who spent some time living in Russia. She was a refugee herself who got to know some
individuals held at the quarantine centers. She became the organization’s regional representative
responsible for relaying information about the plight of refugees in the quarantine centers to
SVTK headquarters in Helsinki. One of her jobs was to verify the political reliability of refugees
whom authorities considered moving out of the quarantine zone. In one report, Kaipainen
testified on behalf of a couple whose political allegiance was suspect because they were Finnish
citizens of Russian descent who lived in Russia prior to the Bolshevik Revolution. Confirming
that they had no Bolshevik ties, she recommended that this couple be moved out of the
79

quarantine zone and be allowed to resettle in nearby villages in the Karelian Isthmus.

In

another report, Kaipainen interceded on behalf of Sergei Lenskii, a Russian-speaker who was
born in Finland. She argued that since he served in the Imperial Navy with an impeccable record,
and had a Finnish-born wife, it was unlikely that he would harbor any Bolshevik views. She
recommended that he receive refugee aid from Finnish agencies.

80

Finnish authorities apparently

accepted her judgment: a letter from the SVTK to the American Red Cross stated that since
Kaipainen knew many of the refugees, “the certificates about the fugitives she thus issues are
81

thoroughly to be relied on.”

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
79

KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 1. Letter from Elisabeth Kaipainen to the SVTK representative in
Helsinki, Anni Arpainen, no date.
80
KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 1. Letter from Elisabeth Kaipainen to the SVTK representative in
Helsinki, Anni Arpainen, March 25, 1921.
81
KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 1. Letter from the SVTK headquarters in Helsinki to the American Red
Cross, no date.
234
	
  

People like Kaipainen served as agents of the state by providing information authorities
required to determine the trustworthiness of those seeking refuge in Finland. At the same time,
they also served as intermediaries between aid agencies and scores of refugees seeking material
assistance. These dual roles empowered agents like Kaipainen, who could re-interpret rules on
aid distribution and significantly influence other individuals’ well-being. These agents often
interceded on behalf of those who did not have the resources to approach authorities and request
for aid. Kaipainen often wrote to officials on behalf of those who were illiterate and could not
send written requests for assistance, and she did so for individuals regardless of their nationality.
For example, Kaipainen once informed Helsinki authorities about the plight of a Russian peasant
and his wife who spent several years traversing the Finnish-Russian customs border as peddlers.
In the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution this couple fled to Finland. Having subsisted by
begging and scavenging for over a year, they were finally detained at the quarantine center in
Terijoki. She told SVTK authorities in Helsinki that since this couple was making a concentrated
effort to learn the Finnish language and had a strong desire to live among Finns, the SVTK
82

should provide extra rations and funds to this couple as a show of good faith.

Although in

these cases Kaipainen made no mention of people’s political affiliations, her connection with
them suggested that she trusted these individuals and was willing to intercede on their behalf.
Her rapport with refugees suggests that she did not internally categorize individuals by language
or nationality. Her reports about the individuals with whom she interacted indicated that the main
lens through which she viewed these people was the experience of dislocation. In doing so, she
challenged the markers of ethnicity and nationality that officials often used to determine which
groups were to receive aid.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
82

KA SVTK Ea3 Folder 1. Letter from Elisabeth Kaipainen to the SVTK representative in
Helsinki, no date.
235
	
  

Peter Gatrell has argued that “individual states interpret their obligation toward refugees
in different ways, and elaboration of a group designation rather than an individual condition has
not prevented states from seeking to discriminate between different categories of forced
migrants.”

83

Efficient control over the movement of people into Finnish territory was a crucial

part of state-building endeavors. Indeed, aid agencies in Finland initially attempted to sort
refugees and displaced peoples according ethnicity and nationality so that they could prioritize
assistance to Finnish citizens. However, complex social relations among those who sought refuge
in Finland made it extremely difficult for authorities to draw a clear line between those who
could have access to Finnish aid based on nationality and citizenship criteria and those whose
welfare was not in Finnish jurisdiction. Refugees’ correspondences with aid officials suggested
that the experience of dislocation prompted some people to employ ethnicity and nationality in
ways they had not previously imagined. In doing so, these people engaged in conversation with
officials on the boundaries that determined how different groups were to be treated. The plight of
refugees in Finland revealed a feedback relationship between micro-level personal experiences
and meso- to macro-level state building practices. People’s daily routines limited the range of
state actors’ efforts to assert their authority. In turn, officials’ methods for dealing with these
limits prompted some individuals to devise new strategies to cope with government responses to
their circumstances.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
83

Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 10.
236

	
  

Chapter 6 - The Afterlives of Abandoned Homes:
Russian Dachas in the Karelian Isthmus and the Finnish State, 1920-1927

In the 1910s, Aino Väisänen’s family lived in a Finnish village near the Russian border,
and regularly sold produce to visitors from Russia coming to stay in their summer homes. After
the Bolshevik revolution, some of these visitors were trapped in Russia, some went into exile in
Western Europe, and others remained in Finland as refugees. All had ambiguous legal standing
in the newly independent Finland, and faced enormous hurdles in retaining their properties in the
Finnish villages. Aino’s father arranged to pay property taxes on behalf of the Boronins, St.
Petersburg visitors who regularly bought his vegetables. In exchange, the Väisänens could use
the Boronins’ land however they wished. This allowed Aino’s large farming family to move to
this spacious property. After losing all contact with the Boronins, the Väisänens sold the
1

premises in 1926.

This chapter investigates how evidence of previously existing Finnish-Russian social ties
affected the Finnish Republic’s management of real estate owned or used by subjects of the
former Russian empire. It evaluates the consequences of government decisions on foreign-owned
assets for both the Russian property owners and the Finns they encountered. It reveals how
property settlement decisions led to unintended consequences when officials attempted to
balance state and individual interests. This case study illuminates ways in which Finnish-Russian
social and cultural contacts in the border regions impinged on nation-building, as well as the way
state efforts to exert control over borderland areas affected daily social interactions at the micro
level.
1

Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS KRA), Aino Knuutila, KE 35: 73597376, 1984.
237

The majority of Russians who possessed immovable assets resided seasonally in the
Karelian Isthmus. Yet government authorities’ attempt to transfer Russian-owned properties to
the Finnish state unearthed the long-term effects that decades of social and economic
transactions between Finns and Russians had on the region. Theorists on borders and borderlands
have commented that the post-Westphalian nation-state often imposed political boundaries on
the population with little regard to its social structure, with significant consequences on the
2

social structure itself. The effects of the post-1917 border regime changes on dacha property
management reflected how the imposition of borders in connection with nation- and statebuilding can have real life consequences for people whose activities traversed this boundary.
This case study also reminds us that borders are not merely spatial distinctions but are also social
3

sites that cut through lives, cultures, economies, and identities. It invites us to consider how
social transactions at the micro level can have broader effects.
This chapter is based on archival research conducted at the Mikkeli Provincial Archives
of Finland. Petitions to the Administrative Organ for Property of Foreign Owners in Viipuri
Province (hereafter Administrative Organ) to claim the abandoned property included letters of
attorney proving a Russian landowner had given permission to a Finnish citizen to manage his
property. These documents do not describe the precise relationship between the Russian and
Finnish citizens, but suggest that some contacts between them continued even if political changes
between 1917 and 1922 prevented them from meeting physically. Reports stating the
Administrative Organ’s decisions on these property claims, while not detailed in reasons,
2

William Zartman, “Introduction: Identity, Movement, and Response,” in Understanding life in
the Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion, edited by William Zartman (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 2010), 3.
3
Randall Halle, “Views from the German-Polish Border: The Exploration of Inter-national
Space in ‘Halbe Treppe’ and ‘Lichter,’” German Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 1 (2007), 77.
238

collectively illustrate this governing body’s decision-making patterns. Board meeting minutes
divulge more concretely the motives and rationale behind the Administrative Organ’s decisions.
The bulk of this material is from the years 1923 to 1927, the period of greatest flux in property
claim issues.

As the first chapter has emphasized, the Karelian Isthmus had been under both
Swedish/Finnish and Russian rule over several centuries, thus creating a complex setting for
Finnish-Russian contact. Trans-border contacts was a regular aspect of life in this region. After
Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire, the Finnish Customs
Department established checkpoints along the Finnish-Russian border in 1812 to monitor the
transfer of goods between Finland and Russia, but these were merely “local manifestations of the
increasing control over space rather than expressions of boundaries dividing the space.”

4

Precedents for Finnish-Russian economic and cultural contacts existed prior to the mass arrival
of Russian visitors to summer houses in the Karelian Isthmus at the end of the nineteenth
century. Daphne Berdahl has argued that border zones “are often fields of heightened
consciousness that demand articulation or identification.” They are also “intersecting,
overlapping, and often, mutually constitutive cultural fields” and as such they “may also have
5

real spatial dimensions and implications.” Although Finnish-Russian interaction in this region
was neither completely serene nor constantly wrought with tension, the imposition of a strict

4

Anssi Paasi, Territories, Boundaries, and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the
Finnish-Russian Boundary (New York: J. Riley and Sons, 1996), 169.
5
Daphne Berdahl, Where the World Ended: Re-unification and Identity in the German
Borderland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 7.
239

border regime after 1917 that cut through this territory had profound consequences for its
inhabitants.
The networks that bound the Karelian Isthmus’ Finnish residents and Russian visitors
functioned within a backdrop of rising political tension. Finnish nationalist activists became
increasingly concerned with what they perceived to be Russian authorities’ fortified attempts to
impose centralized forms of imperial rule on Finland. Officials in Russia worried that what they
perceived to be the Finnish people’s strengthening aspiration for sovereignty would undermine
the empire’s security. As mentioned in previous chapters, these tensions affected the nature of
cross-cultural contacts in the Karelian Isthmus.
The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 facilitated Finland’s secession from the crumbling
Russian Empire in subsequent years. It is possible to argue that the post-1917 border changes
stranded people on the “wrong” side of the boundary, since they cut off many Finns living on the
Russian side and left some Russians stranded in Finland. Anssi Paasi offers a more nuanced
description of the new border situation. He posits that the boundary was functionally located in
the “wrong place,” since it immobilized people whose social and economic activities spanned
6

both sides of the new divide. The establishment of a new border regime disrupted social
transactions between local Finnish villagers and seasonal visitors from Russia. Michiel Baud and
Willem van Schendel have argued that national borders are “imagined projections of territorial
7

power.” In the years immediately after Finland’s declaration of independence, state authorities
prioritized securing the border region for military reasons. Chapter Five has noted several
examples of the Finnish government’s attempts to secure the border region. These attempts
6
7

Paasi, Territories, Boundaries, and Consciousness , 169.

Michiel Baud and Willem van Schendel, “Toward a comparative History of Borderlands,”
Journal of World History, vol. 8, no. 1 (1997), 211.
240

included expelling Russian military personnel remaining in Finland and heavily restricting the
number of people who could reach Finland from Russia. Finnish authorities also established a
8

quarantine center in Terijoki to screen individuals attempting to enter Finland from Russia.

These efforts can be seen as authorities’ attempts to turn the state’s imagined territorial power
into reality.
The Finnish authorities’ attempts to secure the border zone were set in a wider political
context of uncertainty over what regime change in Russia could mean for Finland’s sovereignty.
These efforts were pertinent, given the territorial disputes between Finland and Bolshevikcontrolled Russia from 1918 to 1921. The anti-Russian rhetoric espoused by Finnish nationalist
groups within the elite in reaction to Russification at the end of the nineteenth century did not
dissipate once the imperial system disintegrated. Instead, anti-Russian sentiments were fused
with anti-Bolshevik expressions. Paasi has commented that although the Finnish population did
not serve as a mouthpiece for extreme rightwing groups, ideas proposed by students and the
academic intelligentsia became crucial for developing territorial ideologies based on anti-Russian
9

patriotism. During the first decade of Finland’s independence these ideologies became the
dominant view in Finnish public life. The populist association, the Academic Karelia Society,
gained notoriety for its campaign to homogenize the border regions for ethnic Finns.

10

Paasi contends, “nationalism is a specific form of territoriality” that “looks inward in
order to unify the nation and its constituent territory, and…looks outwards to divide one nation

8

Pekka Nevalainen, Izgoi: rossiiskie bezhentsy v Finliandii 1917-1939 (St. Petersburg: Zhurnal
Neva, 2003).
9
Paasi, Territories, Boundaries, and Consciousness, 99.
10

Outi Karemaa, Vihollisia, vainoojia, syöpäläisiä. Rasistinen venäläisviha Suomessa 19171923 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1998), 19.
241

11

and territory from another” and is “always concerned with a struggle over the control of land.”

Subjects of the defunct Russian empire owning landed property in a Finnish region adjacent to
the Russian border potentially threatened the new state’s territorial integrity. Eric Hobsbawm
theorized that nationalism involved elites’ invention of traditions, rituals and symbols that imply
continuity with the past to establish boundaries of social cohesion and membership.

12

In this

constructed national narrative, Finnish right wing groups imagined Russians as the hereditary
enemy.

13

This implied continuity, however, did not necessarily correspond with social reality.

Evidence of Russian home ownership in the Karelian Isthmus brought into question the extent to
which Finnish- and Russian-speakers regarded each other as enemies. It also challenged the idea
that the region “naturally” belonged to the Finns. Issues of border and territorial control were
thus fused with ideas about nationalism.

Russians and their Dachas after Finnish Independence
Changes to border control from 1917 to 1920, made it extremely difficult for many dacha
owners to care for their properties. Those in Russia could not personally tend to their summer
homes because they could not easily travel to Finland, while those in Finland could not mobilize
resources to do so. Most owners were unable to pay taxes once political turmoil eased in the mid1920s. The state simply annexed much of the abandoned properties once the Russians

11
12

Paasi, Territories, Boundaries, and Consciousness , 51.

Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric
Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 9.
13
Paasi, Territories, Boundaries, and Consciousness , 159.
242

14

disappeared en masse from the Karelian Isthmus.

Kristina Rotkirch, whose maternal

grandparents had spent much time at the Karelian Isthmus dachas, recalled that when the Finnish
parliament passed a law in 1920 enabling local Finns to purchase the deserted properties, her
great uncle bought several of these houses.

15
16

In some cases, the government even sequestered houses with living inhabitants.

A

memoirist recalled that in one Finnish village, a St. Petersburg hat maker bequeathed land from
his large dacha territory to the Finnish Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg as a shelter for the poor
widows among its members. Soon after, the home opened its doors to thirty women from the St.
Petersburg Finnish Lutheran congregation. The council that ran the St. Petersburg Finnish
Lutheran congregation also directed this shelter. When the border closed in May 1918, the
shelter remained on the Finnish side of the border, and the administration was stranded on
Russian side. Since no one could pay the property taxes, the Finnish state took custody of the
dacha grounds and the buildings. Land settlement authorities displaced the women living in the
home and leased the premises to other parties.

17

The authorities’ actions severed the bonds

between the donor and the destitute Finnish women he had intended to assist, and in doing so,
deprived these Finns of their security.
Those Russians who remained in Finland after the country declared independence were in
an equally difficult situation. Living in a state where they could not maintain their livelihood,
14

Maria Lähteenmäki, Maailmojen rajalla: Kannaksen rajamaa ja poliittiset murtumat 19111944 (Helsinki: SKS, 2009), 299.
15
Kristina Rotkirch, “Karelia Through the Umbilical Cord,” in Dacha Kingdom, 401.
16

I use the terms sequester and annex in a similar sense, to denote indefinite takeover of
property, with the possibility that the owner may reclaim the property. I use the terms confiscate
and expropriate to mean seizing of private property without a chance for the owner to redeem the
property or receive any compensation for it.
17
SKS KRA, Elsa Pukonen, VI:1277, 1959.
243

they had limited means for paying their taxes. Some managed to retain their properties and
subsisted by putting up boarders at their dachas and planting vegetables on their plots.

18

Others

attempted to sell their real estate as a last resort. Doing so, however, was difficult because
government policies aimed to limit the influence of Russians in the Karelian Isthmus as much as
possible. This involved denying citizenship applications to Russians and complicating their
business activities. Russians’ landed property came under special scrutiny by state agents, and a
series of statutes and laws were passed between 1918 and 1925 to restrict or even prevent
Russians from owning land in Finland.

19

Bargain or Burden?
Before considering whether Finnish policies on foreign-owned land can be construed as
part of a general nativist policy designed to diminish Russian influence in a region with a strong
history of Finnish-Russian cultural interaction, it is vital to consider this issue from a pragmatic
point of view. The Finnish state simply could not ignore the problem that hundreds of people had
abandoned their properties and owed an enormous amount in property taxes. Since the state also
struggled with land and housing shortages, annexing the real estate appeared to be the most
direct solution. The Board of Settlement oversaw the populating and cultivating of estate lands to
20

improve the position of the landless population.

Sorting out the legal aspects of the large

number of foreign-owned real estate required a much more concentrated effort. On October 20,

18
19
20

Baschmakoff and Marja Leinonen, Russian Life in Finland, 53.
Lähteenmäki, Maailmojen rajalla, 299.
Finnish National Archives (KA), Board of Settlement Archive Finding Aid 523.
244

1922, the government created the Administrative Organ as a special section of the Board of
Settlement to handle affairs related to foreign-owned properties.

21

In the early years of Finland’s independence, vaguely worded legislation regarding
foreigners’ land ownership rights complicated the Administrative Organ’s tasks. A 1920 Finnish
law stipulated that foreigners who did not reside in the province in which they held property
titles did not have the right to control property in Finland without special permission. But as
members of the Administrative Organ noted in a letter to a cabinet minister, “control of
22

property” and “special permission” were not clearly defined in the legislation.

Nonetheless,

this issue appeared moot, since many Russian dacha owners had already fled the area, and the
state simply seized their properties in accordance with the 1922 Law on Properties in Finland
Abandoned by Foreign Owners that gave the Finnish state annexation rights. If no owner came
forward to claim the property after five years had lapsed, the state would then be entitled to
appropriate it. Since Article 7 of this law in theory permitted Russian owners to redeem their real
estate from within five years of its seizure, the 1922 law inherently contradicted the 1920
legislation that prohibited foreigners from owning property in Finland without special
23

authorization.

This contradiction generated a situation where right to redemption was subject

to authorities’ discretion based on criteria external to legal provisions.

21

Karlaja, November 2, 1922. The Council of State named bank manager I. Alopaeus as the
chairman, Justice of the Court of Appeals A.H. Makkonen as secretary and architect O.I.
Meurman as the member-at-large.
22
Mikkeli Provincial Archives of Finland (MMA), Administrative Organ Archive, Da4. Letter
from the Administrative Organ for Property of Foreign Owners to Cabinet Minister Juho
Niukkanen of the Board of Settlement, 24 October 1923.
23
Finnish Acts and Decrees Collection, 211/1922. Law on Property in Finland Abandoned by
Foreign Owners. This law was amended in 1924. Memos from the Administrative Organ , which
contained lists of properties owned by Russian subjects and the taxes still owing on these
245

The Administrative Organ’s interpretation of laws on property ownership and real estate
sales indicated that its foremost priority was economic: ensuring that the Finnish State had the
financial advantage. In the wider context of property rights, the state regulation of property
ownership for monetary purposes is not a unique phenomenon. As Bruce Carruthers and Laura
Ariovich have emphasized, scholars studying property rights have long recognized the
relationship between government and property, and that the state generally specifies rules to
24

serve its own fiscal interests in tax revenues.

The numerous villas that wealthy Russian

summer guests owned provided a source of income for the Finnish state. The government used
some of the funds received from the seizure and rental of these properties to finance border
25

patrols in the Karelian Isthmus.

The state’s need to confiscate neglected real estate also related indirectly to the 1922
Land Settlement Act, which “provided for acquisition of land, by the state or communal aid, for
any Finnish citizen, who met certain conditions, and who otherwise could not become an owner
of a farm or dwelling site.”

26

Expropriation became one of the main means for the state to

acquire additional territory. Those most liable to expropriation were owners of neglected farms,
which in the Karelian Isthmus dacha settlements mainly meant Russian landowners. Real estate
speculators and those whose activities did not exclusively pertain to agriculture were also liable

properties, indicated that the Administrative Organ had turned over these properties to state
custody. These memos can be found in MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Da4.
24
Laura Ariovich and Bruce G. Carruthers, “The Sociology of Property Rights,” Annual Review
of Sociology, vol. 30 (2004), 29.
25
Lähteenmäki, Maailmojen rajalla, 301.
26

Kaarlo Uolevi Pihkala, “The Land Settlement Program of Finland,” Land Economics, vol 28,
no. 2 (May 1952), 148.
246

to expropriation.”

27

As a site of leisure, the Russian dacha became vulnerable to expropriation

legislation.
The worsening condition of abandoned dacha properties provoked a sense of urgency for
authorities who prioritized state fiscal gains. At a board meeting in April 1923, representatives
from parish districts with large numbers of abandoned properties discussed the financial
consequences of deteriorating real estate. The chairman desired that the abandoned properties
“be taken into the state’s care as soon as possible, since these properties have now been
abandoned for about five years. They are now in such bad condition, that they need to be
salvaged in the near future.” He also acknowledged that it could be less costly for the state to
allow foreign owners to redeem these plots and sell them, because the government would not
have to pay for the repair of damaged homes. The state could recoup some revenue lost through
years of unpaid taxes by property redemption fees and shift the burden of restoration to the
original owners.

28

Subsequent rulings suggested that economic expediency gave state agents and

judicial authorities incentive to permit some Russian and Soviet citizens to reclaim less valuable
lands. For example, Ivan Ivanoff was able to reclaim his property after the Administrative Organ
had turned it over to the state in April 1923. The Viipuri Provincial Governor approved the
return of this property on condition that Ivanoff paid twenty-five Finnish marks per month to the
29

state appointed caretaker who looked after the property when it had been in state custody.

27
28

Ibid.

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Cb1. Administrative Organ board meeting report, April
15, 1923.
29
LOGAV, f.505, op. 1, d.3, l.1. Viipuri Province Governor’s office, memo N:o 36266, August
24, 1923.
247

These decisions acknowledged the Russian dacha folks’ economic significance to the
Karelian Isthmus but did not necessarily reflect goodwill on behalf of the Administrative Organ
officials toward Russian property owners. They did not represent Finnish authorities’ acceptance
of a permanent Russian presence. Since strict border regulations still made it difficult for
Russians to travel to Finland, this option was only open to those already residing in Finland, or to
those in Russia able to communicate with a Finnish acquaintance to negotiate property claims on
their behalf. The stipulations for redeeming expropriated property were financially burdensome.
The applicant was required to pay outstanding property taxes and pay for the property’s
maintenance while it was in state possession. The value of the applicant’s real estate was not
high enough to compensate for the start-up costs associated with re-acquiring it. Raising such
sums was mostly beyond the means of those without gainful employment in Finland and those
who lacked the social networks to assist with this purpose.
Maintaining the state’s financial advantage remained the priority for the Administrative
Organ. Russians’ material well-being and their general entitlement to property ownership were
addressed only if they did not interfere with government priorities. That the debate on what
should be done with real estate in good condition for which the ownership title remained
unknown underscored this priority. The consensus was that the state should immediately
expropriate and auction off these properties before another party had the chance to claim them.
The chairman claimed this practice was prompted by the prevalence of cases where soon after
the Administrative Organ had announced its intention to appropriate a more valuable property,
“an agent who had bought the said real estate or had a letter of attorney permitting him to sell it
always appeared.” The Administrative Organ would thus be required to postpone the seizure and

248

sale of this property until an investigation could determine whether the said agent’s claims were
30

legitimate.

The Administrative Organ’s preoccupation with maintaining the state’s financial
advantage in dealing with property ownership in some instances even inadvertently penalized
some Finnish citizens who purchased property from Russian owners, especially when the chain
of ownership could not be clearly established. Kalle Kakko had purchased land from Russian
merchant Feodor Ivanoff in October 1924, a small part of which had been parceled out and sold
to another Russian, Ivan Kondratjeff, in 1917. Since only Kondratjeff’s part of the plot was
neglected, the Finnish state should only have been entitled to expropriate that small section.
Nonetheless, upon examining the original sale agreement between Ivanoff and Kondratjeff, the
Administrative Organ turned the entire property over to state control on the grounds that the
contract did not clearly delineate the part sold to Kondratjeff, and therefore the entire property
31

could be considered abandoned.

In another village, the Sirki family faced similar obstacles in their May 1924 purchase of
dacha property from Russian engineer Dimitrij Vojeikoff and his brother Pavel. The Vojeikoff
brothers had inherited this property from their father in 1916, but the Administrative Organ
argued that because the brothers had not provided sufficient proof that they were the legal heirs,
they had no right to ownership and therefore no right to sell this property. The Supreme Court of
Finland voided the sale between the Voijeikoffs and the Sirkis, and allowed the state to sequester

30

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Cb1. Administrative Organ board meeting report, April
15, 1923.
31
MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Ea2, 1926. Viipuri Province Court of Appeals decision,
June 3, 1926. MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Ea2, 1926.
249

32

this real estate, thus depriving the Sirkis of valuable land.

Josefiina Toivonen’s case paralleled

the one mentioned above. She had purchased property from Leningrad acquaintances who
inherited the real estate from their father in 1918. The Administrative Organ had deemed this
sale illegal, claiming that since the landlord had died in Russia in 1918, his sons’ inheritance
rights could not be verified. Toivonen thus appealed to a local judge to honor the sale. By
preventing real estate transactions between a Finn and Russian, the Administrative Organ ended
up sacrificing the Finnish citizen’s interest in favor of state financial gains.
Protecting state fiscal interests through repossession of abandoned properties was much
more complicated than simply confiscating foreign-owned real estate. The complex task of
transferring Russian-owned properties to Finnish hands raised several larger issues that
legislators had not initially anticipated with regards to evaluating Russians’ place in Finland. By
allowing subjects of the former Russian empire to repossess less valuable properties out of
financial expedience, would Finnish officials subsequently be required to recognize Russian
property owners’ legal rights in Finland? Would this solution lead to public recognition of these
Russians’ previous connections and contributions to the Karelian Isthmus dacha towns, thereby
legitimizing their right to permanent residence in Finland at a time when the Finnish
government’s goal was to limit the number of Russian residents in Finland? In ensuring the
Finnish state’s gain from transferring property out of Russian hands, the Administrative Organ
also disadvantaged Finnish citizens who had direct contact with the Russian proprietors. What
unforeseen implications would this have for future land settlement policies?

32

LOGAV, f.505, op.1, d.3, l.13. Supreme Court decision, March 13, 1925.
250

Trustworthy Trustees?
Some Russian landowners who were able to re-establish contacts with acquaintances in
Finland opted to assign their Finnish associates as temporary caretakers as part of their efforts to
keep their assets. Russian citizen Maria Schukovnova signed over her two dachas to a
neighboring farmer for maintenance.

33

A Russian colonel’s wife turned over her property, which
34

had been in her family’s possession since 1891, to a policeman for temporary care.

Finns who

took over temporary care of land for the absentee owners dealt with rentals, maintained buildings
on the property, and most importantly, paid property taxes.

35

Other Russians with no plans to

return to Finland sought to entrust their properties to Finnish citizens for temporary care in hopes
of recouping some sales revenue. A Russian couple drew up a letter of attorney that allowed a
Finnish citizen to sell their property in the Terijoki village “in order to raise funds for
themselves,” although this document did not specify how proceeds from the sale of this property
36

was to be transferred.

Members of the Administrative Organ were well aware of this practice,

and worried that this legal loophole meant that the absentee Russians essentially remained de
facto owners of their property. The Administrative Organ’s letter to Minister Niukkanen stressed
the fact that the 1920 law requiring foreigners to have special permission to own property in
Finland did not prevent a foreign proprietor from appointing another person to manage his real
estate in Finland. “When the foreign citizen issues a letter of attorney that gives the recipient
33
34

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Ea2, 1923. Letter of Attorney, November 27, 1923.

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Ea2, 1925. Maria Golubzova Letter of Attorney,
February 23, 1925.
35
MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Ea2, 1926. See, for example, the affidavit for the
temporary transfer of property caretaker duties from Anna Mushketova to Bruno Briesmeister,
March 17, 1925.
36
LOGAV, f.505, op.1, d.6, l.3. Letter of Attorney signed by Andrei Ausin and Alisa Lovisa
Ausin, June 4, 1925.
251

rights of guardianship, this would in effect permit the foreigner to control his property in the
37

Viipuri province, thus breaking the spirit of the 1920 law.”

What these officials failed to

realize was that even appointing a trustee to sell their properties did not necessarily mean a
significant financial advantage for the Russian owner abroad. One person recalled how he had
arranged the sale of an acquaintance’s dacha. The notary in charge of the property informed him
that there was now very little interest in the area where the dacha was located, since many of the
other properties in the area were abandoned, thus detracting from the value of properties in the
area.

38

Judicial authorities nonetheless permitted these kinds of legal arrangements between
Russian proprietors and their Finnish acquaintances, so long as the foreigner appointed a Finnish
citizen as the legal trustee. For example, the Administrative Organ had turned over an apparently
abandoned farm owned by a Russian subject to the Finnish state. When a Finnish citizen
submitted a letter of attorney to the Administrative Organ demonstrating that the owner had
given him legal rights to manage the farm, the highest court in the Viipuri Province approved the
39

transfer of this real estate after having confirmed the deal’s legality.

Article 10 of the 1924

amendments to the 1922 legislation eventually established a clear guideline on redemption of
property by a legal trustee appointed by the original owner. It gave the trustee who had already
obtained a letter of attorney from the owner certifying his legal right to govern property on the
owner’s behalf five years time from the original date of the property’s seizure to redeem it. The
37

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Da4. Letter from the Administrative Organ for Property
of Foreign Owners to Cabinet Minister Juho Niukkanen, 24 October 1923. MMA Administrative
Organ Archive, Da4.
38
Baschmakoff and Leinonen, Russian Life in Finland, 54-55.
39

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Eb3. Court decision on a petition submitted by Otto
Ukkonen, October 27, 1924.
252

title was to be returned to the legal appointee on condition that he paid the relevant fees related to
the upkeep of this property for the time it was in state possession.

40

These arrangements prolonged the permanent property transfer to the Finnish state,
diverted revenue from the sale of land to foreigners, and had few benefits for the Finnish trustees
besides direct access to the buildings and soil on the property, but they solved some immediate
practical problems. The Finnish trustees would be responsible for general maintenance of the
property, thus preventing the real estate from further deterioration that would devalue it. The
Finnish trustees would also be responsible for paying outstanding property taxes, thus ensuring
that the state would still collect some revenue from these properties. In cases where the state had
already seized a Russian-owned property, the Finnish citizen who possessed a letter of attorney
permitting him to control the real estate was responsible for paying the state-appointed caretaker
who had tended to the property. This provision therefore relieved the state’s obligation to pay
individuals for the upkeep of unoccupied premises. One Finnish shopkeeper who petitioned the
Viipuri Province Governor for control of a Russian nobleman’s estate was allowed to do so on
the grounds that the he paid a modest salary to the state-appointed caretaker who had been
41

looking after the estate.

That these types of transactions were permitted suggested that some

officials were capable of balancing state priorities and individual entitlements.
From the available documents, it is difficult to discern the exact nature of the previously
existing relationship between the Russian property owners and the Finnish citizens who acted as

40

Finnish Acts and Decrees, 224/1924. Law on Property in Finland Abandoned by Foreign
Owners (amendment).
41
LOGAV, f.506, op.1, d.9, l.40. Letter from Administrative Organ representative Einar Stenius
to the Viipuri Province Governor, October 16, 1924. The birth certificate that accompanied
Schahoff’s petition indicated that Schahoff had a Finnish mother and a Russian father. He was
born in the Terijoki parish and baptized in the Orthodox Church.
253

caretakers. But since these dacha communities were small, these people kept intermittent
contacts with each other. Aino Väisänen’s testimony indicated that Russians sometimes entrusted
those Finns who provided services for the dacha industry – farmers and shopkeepers, for
example – with the care of their properties. Such contacts offer an interesting window to survey
ways in which Finns and Russians crossed legal paths even years after the Russian empire’s
collapse severed the imperial relationship between Finland and Russia. From one point of view,
it could be argued that by asserting their legal right as trustees for Russians who owned
properties, Finnish citizens were taking advantage of new opportunities to gain access to lands
that for decades had been held by middle and upper class St. Petersburgers. On the other hand,
these legal transactions also point to the importance of pre-existing cross-border contacts that
made these operations possible in the first place. Moreover, these kinds of boundary-crossing
relationships affected a larger segment of society in the Karelian Isthmus towns, because they
connected people of different socio-economic and occupational backgrounds. Though the
relationship between the dacha owners and property temporary property caretakers may not have
been extraordinarily intimate, establishing this contractual relationship would not have been
possible if the Russian dacha folk had not established prior social networks that included Finns.
These relationships and their associated legal transactions also raised the issue of trust
and dependency between the Finns and Russians engaged in these contracts. A Russian who was
appointed a Finnish citizen as his legal trustee required reasonable assurance that the Finnish
citizen would fulfill the tasks required of him or her, and more importantly, ensure that the
original Russian proprietor would receive the revenue generated by the property sale or rental.
This accentuates a reversal of roles that took place when Finland became an independent state. A
number of the Russian villa owners had previously been the wealthier members of their small

254

communities. Farmhands, nursemaids, and shopkeepers in these parish towns even depended on
wealthier Russians for jobs. After the Finnish state limited the Russians’ ownership of land,
former Russian landlords’ livelihoods now depended on the farmers and shopkeepers whom they
had appointed as their legal trustees.

Debtors and Creditors
In 1911, Finnish citizen Gunilla Virki had rented out a section of her property to Russian
subject Dmitri Laurentieff for use as a summer home. Virki claimed in a petition to the
Administrative Organ that after some time, Laurentieff disappeared, owing her unpaid rent
dating from June 1915 to June 1925. Her request for rent compensation from the Administrative
42

Organ was denied on the grounds that it was unreasonable.

Economic interdependency

between local Finns and Russians that had proliferated with the rise of the dacha industry also
affected daily life in Karelian Isthmus towns after Finland’s independence through the debtorcreditor relationship. That a significant number of Russians rented dacha property from local
Finnish farmers proved ominous for some Finns when border regime changes displaced their
Russian tenants. The Russians’ rental payments had been a steady source of the Finnish farmers’
contribution toward property taxes. When many of the tenants either disappeared or became
refugees unable to pay rent, many of these Finnish farmers, who had rented parts of their
farmsteads to Russian families, could not pay their taxes. Consequently, these Finns’ properties
were also under threat of expropriation while the owners’ debts accrued.

42

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Cb1, 1926. Administrative Organ Executive Board
meeting minutes, July 16, 1926 and August 9, 1926. The documents do not indicate what board
members of the Administrative Organ deemed “unreasonable.”
255

The Administrative Organ faced the complex task of determining whether landowners
were truly paralyzed by the inability of their Russian tenants to pay rent or if these landlords
43

were simply using the absence of tenants’ rent payment as a pretext for evading taxes.

This

illuminated another situation where officials representing Finnish state interests confronted
evidence of Finnish-Russian contacts in legal texts. In order to assess the Finnish landholders’
claims, government authorities inevitably investigated details of the relationship between the
Finnish landlords and their absentee Russian tenants. Regardless of state representatives’
attitudes towards these relationships, agreeing to ease Finnish subjects’ tax burden due to
Russian tenants’ debt could set off an unpleasant precedent whereby the Finnish state would then
be taking on responsibility for these Russians’ inability to pay rent.
Other types of creditor-debtor relationships also affected the Administrative Organ’s
activities. One particular case concerned Finnish attorney Herman Beyrath’s claim that Russian
actress Anna Datschkova owed him a significant amount of money. Beyrath argued that he
should receive the assets of Datschkova’s real estate as compensation, but property was already
in state custody. Although local parish courts ruled in his favor, the Administrative Organ
implored the Viipuri Province Court of Appeals to overturn this decision.

44

The Administrative

Organ then turned to the Supreme Court of Finland for a final ruling. The petition mentioned that
if a property owner had borrowed from a creditor, the debtor had the right to mortgage the
property to pay the debt. This situation became complicated when after a state had annexed the
real estate, a creditor claimed the revenue the state received from the property due to the

43

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Da4. Memo from the Administrative Organ to the
Board of Settlement, January 30, 1926. MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Da4.
44
MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Da4. Administrative Organ petition to the Viipuri
Supreme Court, April 15, 1924. MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Da4.
256

previous owner’s debt to him. The question became whether the state should be liable for paying
the debts of an individual whose property the state had already taken into custody. The letter of
appeal to the Finnish Supreme court outlined the urgency of clarifying this issue and stated that
this decision had “very great significance to the operation of the Administrative Organ.”

45

Even in 1922 when the first laws were established regarding the state’s seizure of
abandoned foreign properties in Finland, the Administrative Organ was already concerned about
consequences for the state if a creditor was permitted to seize properties already in state
possession as compensation for debts. The Administrative Organ worried that should this be the
case, the state would not be able to recuperate expenses incurred for the maintenance of the
properties, and thus the state would have the most to lose when annexing abandoned real
46

estate.

The Administrative Organ made a small compromise in its petition. While insisting that

the state should continue to receive the revenue from properties seized, it also acknowledged that
it was unfair for creditors to be denied compensation from debtors whose property the state had
already confiscated. It suggested that the Supreme Court amend the Viipuri County Court of
Appeal’s decision so that the right of redemption for that property should be transferred to the
creditor. He may then dispense with the property as he wished, and the state would not be
47

directly responsible for repaying this debt.

This case indicated that land authority representatives, legislators, and judicial authorities
did not always agree on the interpretation of laws pertaining to foreign-owned property,
45

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Da4. The Administrative Organ’s petitions to the
Finnish Supreme court, November 24, 1924.
46
MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Da4. Letter from the Administrative Organ for Property
of Foreign Owners to Cabinet Minister Juho Niukkanen, 24 October 1923.
47
MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Da4. Administrative Organ’s petition to Finnish
Supreme court, November 24, 1924.
257

especially if they affected the balance of public versus private interests. On the one hand,
compensating the Finnish creditor potentially implies acknowledging that whenever the state
seized Russian-owned property, it may also be responsible for taking on the Russian’s financial
burdens. On the other hand, the courts could rule in favor of the Finnish state, and reject the
creditor’s claims for financial compensation, but this option would disadvantage the Finnish
citizen. It would also proclaim that pre-1917 contacts between Finnish citizens and Russian
subjects should be ignored and forgotten, even if it penalized Finnish citizens who engaged in
these contacts. In the Beyrath case the courts and land settlement agents struggled to find
common ground due to the wide range of implications the final decision on this case could have.
The debtor-creditor relationship between former Russian subjects and Finnish citizens
revealed further layers of complexity in Finnish-Russian everyday contacts that may not have
been initially obvious. In late nineteenth century Russian society the dacha was often associated
with the urban middle class, but the income boundaries of this segment of society were therefore
rather amorphous, such that by 1900 the dachniki included a diverse range of people “from
mandarins all the way to shopkeepers.”

48

For example, Russian artists, writers, and musicians

thought of themselves as part of the middle class, even though they were not all necessarily
better off than the Finnish farmers, craftsmen and civil servants with whom they interacted. By
the early years of the twentieth century, Russians unable to afford the dacha lifestyle increasingly
borrowed money from the growing Finnish middle class. The Finnish small farmers, too, profited
from the Russians’ yearning for the exurban pleasures that the dacha offered. Renting out their
farmhouses to the growing community of dacha folk enabled Finnish farmers to earn

48

Lovell, Summerfolk, 4.
258

supplementary income.

49

These transactions brought Finns and Russians of different economic

circumstances into dialogue with each other, and Finnish authorities confronted these
interactions in the early 1920s when balancing state priorities with Finnish citizens’ financial
well-being. The enduring effects of these Finnish-Russian contacts made it difficult to determine
exactly what “Finnish” objectives were. Safeguarding Finnish interests was more complicated
than imposing strict measures on Russians.

Interpreting Soviet Interests
Because settling Finland’s property ownership questions involved citizens of a
neighboring state, it is also useful to consider the transnational context in evaluating the Finnish
reaction to legal evidence of Finnish-Russian contact in dealing with landed property questions.
Dealing with a foreign government complicated Finnish officials’ assessment of property claims
because it prompted them to question whether individuals were acting in their own interest when
submitting their petitions or whether they were acting in the interests of the Soviet state.
Additionally, the transnational dimension further exposed the Finnish state’s tendency to weigh
greater state priorities against that of the individual citizen. Given the overall hostility toward
sBolshevism among the Finnish political leadership, dealing with the newly established Soviet
state on property issues had significant consequences on the final decisions the Finnish
authorities made on Russians’ right to property in Finland.
Sorting out Soviet citizens’ real estate ownership rights in Finland was not the first or
sole instance in which the Finnish government had dealt with the defunct Russian empire’s
successor states over property issues. Mikael Korhonen’s study of Finnish citizens’ restitution
49

Hämäläinen, “Vanhan suomen venäläiset huvila asukkaat,” 118.
259

demands for personal property damaged or lost to Soviet Russia illustrates that this issue was
related to peace negotiations between Finland and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist
Republic that culminated in the Treaty of Dorpat in October 1920. His study analyzed private
claims made by individual citizens, many of whom were Finnish citizens working and living in
Russia before 1917. Groups or individuals originally made these claims through private initiative
because the Finnish state could not, for political reasons, act openly on behalf of these claimants.
Finnish diplomatic support was restricted to general support for civic and private associations
organizing these claims for compensation. Korhonen argues that the Finnish government did not
play a more active role in supporting these individuals’ claims for private property compensation
because it did not want to jeopardize larger state property claims by interfering with the much
smaller, and comparatively less valuable individual claims. As a result the private claimants lost
50

out in this relationship.

Korhonen’s study demonstrates that among Finnish government

officials there was an established pattern of protecting larger state assets at the expense of
individual citizens.
In March 1925, the establishment of the Soviet Citizens’ Society for the Protection of
Russian Property Owners in Finland, based in Leningrad, further complicated the Administrative
Organ’s efforts to assess varying property claims. Because the Soviet government appeared to
have at the very least approved of this society’s activities, property ownership claims could no
longer remain an issue of strictly domestic Finnish interest.

50

51

The Soviet government’s

See the English summary of Mikael Korhonen, Finlands ryska fordringar: Ekonomisk
uppgörelse med Ryssland efter 1917. Privata ersättningsfrågor I ett jämförande internationellt
sammanhang (Turku: Åbo Akademi University Press, 1998), 324-332.
51
Lovell notes, for example, that Leningrad regional executive committee had originally refused
to support any society to defend dacha owners’ interest in Finland on the grounds that this
organization might interfere with the committee’s municipalizing of private houses in Leningrad.
260

endorsement of this society added a diplomatic dimension to the issue of property claims. Up to
this point, Finnish authorities had at least been willing to examine petitions from individuals
even if they were Russian or Soviet citizens. Finnish land settlement authorities, however, were
extremely skeptical of real estate claims made through an organization with apparent ties to a
foreign government. They suspected that the Soviet state was interested in supporting its
citizens’ land ownership rights in Finland only to bolster Soviet state finances. A civil servant
working for the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported from Leningrad that Soviet news
reports on the Society for the Protection of Russian Property Owners in Finland contained
“misleading information by the Party with the purpose to get claimants with property in Finland
to leave this matter to the Soviet Union’s government.” He also noted, “Russians…have said that
the Society asks for a fee in order to provide assistance, which amounts to around 60 to 250
marks, in addition to the relatively high payments for inquiries and other services for which the
Society takes responsibility.”

52

As Stephen Lovell has remarked, although many Soviet

government representatives in the early 1920s disapproved of summer houses as the least
acceptable form of private property, policies preventing dacha ownership had dubious legal
foundations, and exurban locations posed uncertainties in Soviet legal processes.

53

Finnish civil

Intervention from Foreign Minister Boris Chicherin and head of state Mikhail Kalinin in 1924
changed the committee’s decision. See Summerfolk, 123.
52
MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Ea1. Memo to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
concerning the Society for the Protection of Soviet Citizens’ Property Ownership in Finland.
May 8, 1925. In this report, the civil servant also includes the Russian newspaper article to which
he refers, the May 6, 1925 edition of Torgovo-promyshlennyi kurier. This article states, “The
Society for the Protection of Soviet Citizen’s Property Rights in Finland has taken to canceling
some of the auction of real estate that have been designated to be sold.” It also mentions that in
the first month of the Society’s operation, 80 people have personally spoken to representatives of
the society inquiring about their properties in Finland.
53
Lovell, 122-123.
261

servants unaware of the tensions Soviet legislators faced in interpreting the legal code feared that
the Soviet government was attempting to undermine Finnish sovereignty.
Finnish government agencies’ refusal to deal with property claims presented through
Society for the Protection of Russian Property Owners, on the grounds that it had no legal
standing in Finland to represent Soviet citizens, elicited an unsympathetic response from the
Soviet consul in Viipuri. The consul argued in turn that the Administrative Organ had no
legitimate reason to refuse to review claims made through the society in cooperation with the
Soviet Consul. Whereas the Administrative Organ claimed that the society could not be
recognized as a legal representative of Soviet citizens in Finland, the consul argued that “in any
case the Administrative Organ cannot say the same about the Consular Office, which is legally
the administrative organ of the Soviet Union accepted by the authorities of Finland, and the tasks
of which include controlling the interests of the citizens of Soviet Russia.”

54

Unfortunately for

the Russian dacha property owners seeking claims through this organization, the involvement of
the Soviet state in this negotiation may well have done more to hinder than help their claims for
expropriated real estate, even if they had their Finnish peers’ support.

This chapter has attempted to illustrate the relationship between territorial boundaries,
state prerogative in managing resources, and everyday relationships at a local and regional level.
In the twentieth century, especially within recent decades, lawmakers have justified tightening
border controls by claiming the need to prevent outsiders from accessing state resources such as
healthcare and education. Such controls, however, cannot be separated from practical concerns
54

MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Ea1. Letter from the Soviet Union Consular office to
the Viipuri County Administrative Organ for Property of Foreign Owners, June 30, 1925, No.
1316. MMA Administrative Organ Archive, Ea1.
262

that might contradict the border's role as a gatekeeper. The examples in this study remind us that
the connection between territorial boundaries and control of state resources can be an ambiguous
one, especially when individuals' social interactions are taken into consideration.
Nationalism is intrinsically related to territory in the sense that nationalizing states often
attempt to make territory congruent with nationality. Borders are an important aspect of this
equation because they can be regarded as structures that denote the spatial extent of state
sovereignty. Border scholars have addressed people’s attempts to traverse territorial boundaries
in spite of government attempts to limit these movements. These limits do not just refer to
mobility across guarded boundaries. Borderland peoples can complicate national interests
without physically crossing a territorial border. They do so by evoking relationships where
people’s daily activities might bring them into contact with those from the other side of the
divide. State actors, however, are not always successful in untangling these cross-boundary
connections without subordinating nation-building interests to state-building ones or vice versa.
Authorities’ attempts to impose administrative order in border regions resonate with larger
themes on relations between state actors and individual citizens.
The cases presented in this study indicate that protecting the Finnish state’s financial
interest was the primary factor motivating officials’ handling of Russian-owned property in the
first decade of the country’s independence. It is tempting to assume that officials explicitly
sought to deprive Russians of their assets in Finland in pursuant of a nativist agenda because
anti-Russian movements continued to gain momentum in the 1920s. Permitting Russians to own
a vast amount of property in a region that Finnish nationalists considered a battle ground for
competing influence with Russia seemed counter-productive to the state-building program.
However, this view is misleading because it overshadows significant practical dilemmas that

263

complicated governance in a border region. Officials made decisions on property claims within a
backdrop of uncertainty over whether Russian proprietors would be free to traverse the FinnishRussian border as they had done for decades prior to Finland’s secession from Russia. The
immediate fiscal imbalances resulting from mass abandonment of valuable property also affected
authorities’ judgment.
Defending national interests by transferring Russian owned real estate to the Finnish state
was in reality a much more convoluted affair. Finnish authorities’ concern with Russian owned
property related to their efforts to assert control over border regions that were sites of FinnishRussian interaction. In the process of managing territory and property, officials inadvertently
marginalized borderland inhabitants. Although land settlement authorities had been charged with
the task of resolving land and housing shortage problems by confiscating abandoned property,
expropriation practices did not benefit Finnish citizens uniformly. Varying degrees of economic
interdependency between the Russian summer inhabitants and the local Finns they encountered
in the Karelian Isthmus made it at times difficult to expropriate Russian properties without
negative consequences for certain Finnish citizens. When there were conflicts of interest between
state revenue and individual gains, legal decisions sometimes privileged the state at the citizen’s
expense. In many of these cases, Finns who actually had intimate and regular contacts with the
Russian seasonal residents gained very little from the state’s efforts to transfer property from
Russians to the Finnish state. Although the annual exodus of Russian summer visitors to the
Karelian Isthmus was physically a part of the local landscape for a short time, the effects their
contacts with local Finns who resided there permanently had a much longer afterlife.

264

Conclusion

The dacha, which has been a ubiquitous part of Russian bourgeois life since the middle of
the nineteenth century, found its way into southeastern Finland through decades of urban
expansion in St. Petersburg. The dacha communities in the Karelian Isthmus did not develop
unexpectedly: years of Finnish-Russian political, social and cultural exchange, coupled with the
political legacy of Finland as a buffer between the Swedish kingdom and the Russian Empire,
facilitated the growth of dacha life in southeastern Finland. Dacha culture was one particular
aspect of Finnish-Russian encounters from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the
twentieth century, but the effects of these exchanges resonated more broadly. This dissertation
has made use of one micro-level topic to explore the wider consequences of social changes at the
turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The stories in this study reveal the malleability of
ethno-national identities. They defy the notion that national and imperial perspectives existed as
binary opposites. They indicate that class boundaries were anything but rigid. They challenge the
distinction between residents and visitors, insiders and outsiders. Finally, the cases in this study
expose overlapping rural and urban perceptions of space.

Ethnicity and Nationality
First and foremost, this dissertation has shown that lived experiences often left traces
outside neatly bounded ethno-national categories of analysis set by ethnographers and nationalist
politicians. Russian-speakers who flocked to the Karelian Isthmus in droves during the summers
and Finnish-speaking villages who lived permanently in the region recognized the dacha as a
particularly Russian social and cultural phenomenon. This acknowledgement, however, did not

265
	
  

stop either group from reaching beyond the ethnolinguistic divide. Chapter Two has illustrated
how Russian and Finnish speakers engaged with each other through various facets of dacha life:
land and property exchanges, the service industry, local commerce, and other micro aspects of
economic interdependence. Finnish-speaking inhabitants in the Karelian Isthmus originally
viewed this incursion of Russian life into their towns with suspicion, and this attitude certainly
lingered throughout the years of the dacha boom in Finland. Nonetheless, many locals
recognized the boon this development brought to their region, even if they did not always get
along with their new Russian-speaking neighbors and summer visitors. The willingness of
Finnish and Russian speakers to communicate with each other did not mean that they were void
of any sense of belonging to a particular cultural community, nor did it mean that they were
indifferent to significant cultural divides. It only meant that some individuals were capable of
negotiating through these differences when the opportunity arose.
The experience of mediating cultural differences served further purposes in times of
political uncertainty. Chapters Five has shown how some individuals manipulated nationality and
ethnicity as categories of practice in order to improve their own personal circumstances. Russianspeaking refugees in Finland who had personal ties to Finnish speakers emphasized these
relationships when claiming aid from Finnish agencies. Likewise, some Finnish speakers who
had been long-term residents in St. Petersburg also made note of their family connections to
subjects of the defunct Russian Empire when they fled to Finland. They appealed to these
familial bonds when making their pleas for assistance from Russian community organizations
that provided assistance to former Russian subjects living in Finland.
Chapter Six has shown how years of interethnic contact in the Karelian Isthmus posed
significant administrative dilemmas for Finnish officials who sought practical solutions to the

266
	
  

question of abandoned dacha properties in Finland. These officials quickly realized that
prioritizing the Finnish state’s fiscal priorities in property management also meant
disadvantaging some Finnish citizens who had close ties with Russians who had owned or rented
dachas in Finland prior to 1917. This case study has illustrated how people’s daily interactions
brought them outside the confines of narrowly defined national communities, and how these
interactions continued to affect state- and nation-building processes long after these bonds were
severed.

Class Boundaries
Interethnic hostilities existed in the context of dacha life in the Karelian Isthmus, but
these hostilities did not necessarily cement the bonds of ethnic cohesion. Chapter Three has
shown that Russian speakers in the Karelian Isthmus dacha communities did not constitute a
uniform group. The fissures and disagreements among Russians were as revealing as
misunderstandings and conflicts between Russian and Finnish speakers. Chapter Three has
shown that not all of those who lived in the dachas wished to be associated with the dacha
lifestyle. Artists and writers like Ilya Repin and Kornei Chukovsky lived amongst the dacha
folks, but did not interact much with them. Repin and Chukovsky preferred consorting with
fellow creative individuals. These people included Russian and Finnish speakers. These artistic
intellectuals’ disdain for the regular dacha dwellers exemplified the gulf between the
intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie. Both groups emerged from social changes that made the old
estate system of social organization in Russia less relevant in an era of capital relations, but each
saw their role in the modern world in different ways. The bourgeoisie associated the domesticity
and leisurely atmosphere of dacha life – upgrading home décor, entertaining guests, group visits

267
	
  

to the beach and public bathhouses – with upward mobility, but the intelligentsia considered the
bourgeoisie’s preoccupation with dacha life to be superficial social conventions that encouraged
crass consumerism, pettiness and idleness.
The world of the dacha also reflected the amorphousness of class boundaries. These
boundaries were not strictly defined by income and financial wealth. Occupation and lifestyle
traits mattered just as much in people’s perception of social status. By the latter decades of the
nineteenth century, Russians had come to view dacha life as a status symbol of belonging in the
middle class. The dacha was no longer the luxury leisure form of an extremely privileged elite.
People of widely varying incomes sought to own dachas. Those who could not afford to buy
dacha properties rented them from local farmers and entrepreneurs ready to take advantage of
these real-estate transactions. It was not uncommon for Finnish and Russian speakers of
different occupation and income status to engage in interdependent economic relationships with
each other.
Chapters Two has shown how these relationships, which blurred the divide between
social classes, sustained the dacha world in the Karelian Isthmus. Farmers sold plots of land
unsuitable for agriculture to office workers from St. Petersburg, or rented rooms in their
farmhouses to financially struggling stage actors who also wanted to experience the dacha life.
As Chapter Six has shown, the significance of these transactions between people of different
social strata resonated deeply after Finland became an independent state. Local villagers who
sold or rented out their properties to Russian dacha dwellers brought up these economic ties
when negotiating property management with Finnish officials. In Chapter Four, the
amorphousness and permeability of class boundaries had significant consequences for security.
The regularity with which people from different walks of life engaged with each other

268
	
  

confounded Russian security police agents who were more accustomed to formal social
conventions and strict social hierarchies.

Local and Imperial Perspectives
The encroachment of the dacha onto Finnish territory underscored the clash of local and
national elements of everyday life with the imperial experience. From a spatial-territorial
perspective, Chapter One has revealed how geopolitical boundaries can easily be relegated to the
background in some daily situations. Dacha goers from St. Petersburg often complained about
the tedious customs inspection process when crossing the Finnish-Russian customs boundary.
However, in spite of this process, St. Petersburgers still traversed this boundary frequently and
accepted customs inspections as a normal aspect of the annual exodus to the dacha. Travel
literature indicated that many Russians did not have a particularly strong sense of where Russia
ended and where Finland began. In fact, once the dacha goers arrived at the various dacha
communities in Finland, they felt right at home since they had brought so many vestiges of
Russian life with them.
From a legal-political perspective, dacha life in Finland underscored the dilemmas of
governing a vast empire where constituent parts had differentiated sets of legal and political
traditions. Chapter One has illustrated how differentiated notions of subjecthood and citizenship
between the Russian Empire and the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland impinged upon daily
life for dacha dwellers. Since Finnish citizenship was required to practice medicine in the Grand
Duchy, dacha folks often complained about the lack of Russian-speaking physicians that could
tend to their needs. Such practicalities were the basis of lengthy discussions between Finnish
authorities and imperial officials over the dacha dwellers’ access to basic civil rights in Finland.

269
	
  

This inevitably led to further debate over the relationship between property ownership and rights
of citizenship. Chapter Four has underscored how legal differences between Finland and Russia
had more dramatic consequences related to the broader political atmosphere. Political
organizations opposed to the Tsarist regime took advantage of the different legal procedures and
the imperial police’s limited jurisdiction in Finland to plan anti-government activities, many of
which took on a violent nature. The proliferation of these clandestine political activities in the
Karelian Isthmus villages led to heated debate between Finnish and Russian officials over the
nature of Finland’s autonomous status.
When Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, imperial officials never planned for the intentional colonization of Finland.
The expansion of dacha life into Finland coincided with other measures by Russian authorities to
curtail elements of political autonomy in Finland. The strong presence of Russian life in the
eastern reaches of Finland gave Russian officials further grounds to scrutinize Finnish political
autonomy. No wonder, then, that the proliferation of these dacha communities in the Karelian
Isthmus provoked commentaries in the Finnish nationalist press about the threat of Russian
colonization of Finnish territory.

Residents and Visitors
Dacha life blurred the distinctions between the definition of local residents and visitors.
As urban space became increasingly crowded, many Russian urbanites came to see their dachas
not just as a seasonal, summertime or weekend get-away, but also as a place of secondary
residence. As seen in Chapter One, travel literature at times described the permanence of the
dacha folks in the Karelian Isthmus in ambiguous ways. Travelogues and tourist guides

270
	
  

employed a variety of terms to stand in for the dacha dwellers. Some used the term dachnik,
which evoked the image of the dacha goer as a special type of visitor to the Karelian Isthmus
towns. Other publications used the term tourist, which lumped dacha folks into the same
category as one-time visitors. The dacha was intricately linked with the tourism industry: dacha
dwellers and regular tourists alike were drawn to the same natural attractions in Finland, and they
occupied the same social spaces such as parks and beaches, pubs and restaurants, theaters and
gambling houses. Some publications referred to the dacha dwellers as residents, which implied
their long term presence. Indeed, some St. Petersburgers even began staying at their dachas in the
Karelian Isthmus for the entire year, commuting to the city when their jobs made these journeys
necessary. In the aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, some of the
dacha people who remained in the Karelian Isthmus had no home other than their dachas in
Finland.
The haziness of the distinction between resident and visitor is important because it also
altered the perception of who was considered an insider and an outsider. These perceptions
mattered in an age when the prevailing political atmosphere encouraged people to define ingroups and out-groups based on criteria that did not always match lived experiences. The dacha
folks did much to shape the towns and villages in the Karelian Isthmus alongside Finnishspeaking residents whose families had lived there for generations. The dacha goer was not a
permanent resident in the Karelian Isthmus in the same sense as locals who had long standing
familial ties to the region; however, their influence on local life was far more significant than
that of someone who only visited on a few occasions in a lifetime.

271
	
  

Urban and Rural Life
Finally, the dacha world distorted boundaries between the urban and the rural. Life in the
Karelian Isthmus had been strongly connected to St. Petersburg ever since Peter the Great
founded this city on Gulf of Finland, a mere 30 km away from the Finnish-Russian boundary.
People living in the Finnish countryside near the border became increasingly drawn to the St.
Petersburg sphere of influence, and their fortunes changed along with the booming metropolis.
The dacha phenomenon was one among several of the urban influences from St. Petersburg that
affected the towns and villages in the Finnish countryside.
The dachas were physically located in a rural setting, and it was the tranquility and idyllic
nature of the countryside that city folks sought when establishing their secondary residences.
Urbanites, stressed from the ills of city life, sought some form of return to nature. At the same
time, the dacha dwellers were never quite content to abandon all the vestiges of urban life when
they left for the dachas during the summers. Dacha living did not always entail disappearing into
the wilderness to live the life of an ascetic. Many of the dacha folks were eager to establish
theaters, gambling houses and other social-cultural institutions common in urban spaces. They
brought with them the consumer culture of urban society. They also scurried back and forth
between the dacha and the city as their jobs and social obligations necessitated. The rural towns
and villages in the Karelian Isthmus offered St. Petersburgers an ideal middle ground between
the stresses of urban life and the isolation of living deep in the backwoods.

Boundaries and political situations have changed, but presence of the dacha in Finland is
still a part of the Finnish-Russian dialogue. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian
citizens have once again turned to eastern Finland in search of dacha properties. Since 2003,

272
	
  

Russian citizens have made up 80 percent of foreigners who own property in Finland, mainly as
secondary homes. Most of these Russian-owned secondary homes are located in eastern Finland.
Local Finnish residents and the Russian property owners interact intermittently with each other,
and attitudes that locals and foreigners have of each other are neither uniformly positive nor
1

negative. The political circumstances behind this new wave of Russian dacha ownership in
Finland has changed dramatically from the situation a century ago, but the economic, social and
cultural implications of dacha life in Finland from the end of the nineteenth century should serve
as a reminder of the complex nature of Finnish-Russian interactions.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
1

Olga Lipkina and Kati Pitkänen, “Dacha Perspectives: A Study of Russian Second Home
Ownership in Eastern Finland,” a preliminary report for the Transborder Second Home Tourism
Research Group at the University of Eastern Finland Centre for Tourism Studies, April 13, 2011,
available on the University of Eastern Finland Centre for Tourism Studies’ Local Impacts of
Transborder Tourism and Leisure webpage, http://www.uef.fi/mot/transborder, accessed January
14, 2013.
273
	
  

APPENDICES

274
	
  

Appendix A
Figure 1: Map of Vyborg Province, 1897

Source: Atlas öfver Finland (Helsinki, 1899).

275
	
  

Appendix B
Figure 2: Map of the Frontiers of Finland, 1595-1812

Source: David Kirby, A Concise History of Finland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006), 32.

276
	
  

Appendix C
Figure 3: Map of St. Petersburg and environs

Pre-1948 Finnish place names:
Metsäkylä (Molodezhnoe)
Tyrisevä (Ushkovo)
Terijoki (Zelenogorsk)
Kellomäki (Komarovo)
Kuokkala (Repino)
Ollila (Solnechnoe)
Siestarjoki (Sestroretsk)
Source: Sankt-Peterburg I Leningradskaia oblast’ atlas avtomobil’nykh dorog Rossii (St.
Petersburg, 2009).
	
  

277
	
  

	
  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

278	
  
	
  

	
  
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Series Ha Collection on the Press and Censorship
Series Hd Governer General F.A. Seyn Collection
Finliiandskaia gazeta Newspaper Archive
Finnish Red Cross Archive
Finnish State Police Archive
Church Affairs Committee Archive
Russian Chamber of Commerce in Finland Archive
Russian Philanthropic Society Archive
State Refugee Assistance Center Archive
Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS KRA)
Karelian Life History Collection
Karelian Men and Women Collection
Russian Life in Finland Collection
Provincial Archives of Mikkeli (MMA)
Board of Settlement Viipuri Province Administrative Organ for Property of Foreign
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Terijoki Parish District Sheriff’s Office Police Archives
Viipuri Regional Civil Registry
Orthodox Church Districts Collection
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State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF)
Fond 494 – Finnish Gendarmerie Board
Fond R5801 – Russian Press Bureau in Finland
279	
  
	
  

	
  
Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI)
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