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The Finnish Operation of the NKVD was a mass arrest, execution and deportations of persons of
Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...
origin in the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
by the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
during the period of
Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...
(1937–1938). It was a part of the larger
mass operations of the NKVD Mass operations of the People's Comissariate of Internal Affairs (NKVD) were carried out during the Great Purge and targeted specific categories of people. As a rule, they were carried out according to the corresponding order of the People's Commis ...
which targeted many minority nationalities in the Soviet Union. Different estimations range from 8,000 to 25,000 of Finns killed or disappearing during the repression.


Early anti-Finnish campaigns

Soviet repression of the
Ingrian Finns The Ingrians ( fi, inkeriläiset, ; russian: Ингерманландцы, translit=Ingermanlandts'i), sometimes called Ingrian Finns, are the Finnish population of Ingria (now the central part of Leningrad Oblast in Russia), descending from Lut ...
, who are a people closely related to the Finns, started at the same time as the forced
collectivization in the Soviet Union The Soviet Union introduced the collectivization (russian: Коллективизация) of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascension of Joseph Stalin. It began during and was part of the first five-year plan. T ...
in 1928. Between 1929 and 1931 Soviet authorities deported 18,000 people from areas near the Finnish border, consisting of up to 16% of the total Ingrian Finnic population. All remaining Finns in four border parishes were deported in 1936 and replaced with
Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 ''Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...
. In 1937 all Finnish-language schools, publications, broadcasts, and Ingrian Lutheran churches were closed down. The Finnish Operation of the NKVD was preceded by the early anti-Finnish campaigns of 1935-36 which began with the
Karelian Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union The First Secretary of the Karelian regional branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the position of highest authority in the Karelian ASSR (1923–1940, 1956–1991) in the Russian SFSR, and in the Karelo-Finnish SSR (1940–1956) of ...
declaring that "Finnish bourgeois nationalists" must be destroyed. Two prominent Finnish-Soviet politicians
Edvard Gylling Edvard Otto Vilhelm Gylling (30 November 1881 – 14 June 1938) was a prominent Social Democratic and later Communist politician in Finland, later leader of Soviet Karelia. He was born in Kuopio. He was a member of Parliament of Finland for ...
and
Kustaa Rovio Kustaa Adolf Simonpoika Rovio (23 January 1887 in Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly ...
were arrested in 1935. Many of the early targets were
Red Guards Red Guards () were a mass student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized and guided by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 through 1967, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a Red Guard lead ...
veterans of the
Finnish Civil War The Finnish Civil War; . Other designations: Brethren War, Citizen War, Class War, Freedom War, Red Rebellion and Revolution, . According to 1,005 interviews done by the newspaper ''Aamulehti'', the most popular names were as follows: Civil W ...
who now lived in the Soviet Union. Local communist party organizations and military units were reorganized as a part of the purges, and many Finns were expelled from the party. In late 1935, three leaders of the ''Säde'' agricultural commune were arrested and their families were exiled to the north of Karelia.


NKVD operation

The preparations for the operation started immediately after the
NKVD Order No. 00447 NKVD Order No. 00447 of July 30, 1937 (russian: О операции по репрессированию бывших кулаков, уголовников и других антисоветских элементов, "About operation to repress ...
had been signed in March 1937, although it officially began on August 5, 1937. In the first month, 728 people were arrested. The Karelian ''
troika Troika or troyka (from Russian тройка, meaning 'a set of three') may refer to: Cultural tradition * Troika (driving), a traditional Russian harness driving combination, a cultural icon of Russia * Troika (dance), a Russian folk dance Polit ...
s'' and ''dvoikas'' were given quotas how many people could be arrested and how many executed. In January 1938, 5,340 people had been arrested, and a new quota of 700 arrests of whom 500 could be executed, was given. The mass arrests continued until August 10, 1938. The Karelian authorities specifically alleged that Edvard Gylling had "reinforced the enemy lines" by recruiting
Finnish Canadian Finnish Canadians are Canadian citizens of Finnish ancestry or Finns who emigrated to and reside in Canada. In 2016, 143,645 Canadians claimed Finnish ancestry. Finns started coming to Canada in the early 1880s, and in much larger numbers in the e ...
and
Finnish American Finnish Americans ( fi, amerikansuomalaiset, ) comprise Americans with ancestral roots from Finland or Finnish people who immigrated to and reside in the United States. The Finnish-American population numbers a little bit more than 650,000. Man ...
immigrants through the Resettlement Agency. At least 739 Finns who had moved from North America to the Soviet Union were repressed in 1937 and 1938, although the number could be higher according to historian Irina Takala. Almost all North American Finns were found guilty of "counter-revolutionary activity" per the
Article 58 Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times. In particular, its Article 58-1 was updated by the listed sub-articles and ...
of the Soviet penal code. Different estimations range from 8,000 to 25,000 of Finns killed during all of
Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
-era repressions. Finns made up only 3% of the population of the
Karelian ASSR The Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic ( rus, Каре́льская Автоно́мная Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респу́блика, r=Karelskaya Avtonomnaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respub ...
, but made up more than 40% of the victims of the Great Purge in Karelia. Mass graves of Finnish victims are located in
Sandarmokh Sandarmokh (russian: Сандармох; krl, Sandarmoh) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where possibly thousands of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and bur ...
and Krasny Bor. Outside of Karelia, especially the Murmansk Finns were heavily persecuted and the Finnish population almost completely perished in the area. 3,000 Finns were executed in
Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
as well.


Research

Russian historian Irina Takala of the
Petrozavodsk State University Petrozavodsk State University (PetrSU) is a classical university in Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, Russia. It was founded in 1940 as the Karelian-Finnish University and was renamed in 1956. The rector of Petrozavodsk State University is Pro ...
has researched the subject in detail since the 1990s. She has commented that the FSB has limited access to relevant archives in the recent years. In 2020, the
Finnish Literature Society The Finnish Literature Society ( fi, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura ry or fi, SKS) was founded in 1831 to promote literature written in Finnish. Among its first publications was the ''Kalevala'', the Finnish national epic A national epic ...
launched a new research project ''Memories of the Stalinist repression'' which will include interviews of the relatives of the victims. The project will also cooperate with
National Archives of Finland The National Archives of Finland (Finnish: ''Kansallisarkisto'', Swedish: ''Riksarkivet'') is a Finnish government agency under the Ministry of Education and Culture. It is responsible for archiving official documents of the Finnish state and mu ...
's 5-year research project regarding the fates of Finns in Russia between 1917 and 1964.


See also

*'' The Eternal Road'', a film depiction of the NKVD purge of Finns *
List of Finnish MPs imprisoned in Russia This is a list of Finnish MPs who were imprisoned for political reasons in Russia. Jägers Future MPs from the Jäger Movement were imprisoned or deported to Siberia for the crime of Lese Majesty during the period of the Grand Duchy of Finland ...


References


Journals

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Finnish Operation of the NKVD Political repression in the Soviet Union Great Purge NKVD Massacres in the Soviet Union 1937 in the Soviet Union 1938 in the Soviet Union Mass murder in 1937 Mass murder in 1938