The Soviet partisans in Finland were an
irregular military
Irregular military is any non-standard military component that is distinct from a country's national armed forces. Being defined by exclusion, there is significant variance in what comes under the term. It can refer to the type of military orga ...
force which attacked Finnish military and civilian targets during the
Continuation War
The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet-Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944, as part of World War II.; sv, fortsättningskriget; german: Fortsetzungskrieg. A ...
, a sub-theater of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
active between 1941 and 1944. They were based in
East Karelia in the Soviet territory and conducted
long-range penetration
A long-range penetration patrol, group, or force is a special operations unit capable of operating long distances behind enemy lines far away from direct contact with friendly forces as opposed to a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol, a small group ...
reconnaissance and raids inside Finnish borders, often attacking weak targets such as remote border villages or ambushing vehicles. Around 170 Finnish civilians were killed and 50 wounded in the raids.
Partisan activity and raids
Around 2,400
Soviet partisans
Soviet partisans were members of resistance movements that fought a guerrilla war against Axis forces during World War II in the Soviet Union, the previously Soviet-occupied territories of interwar Poland in 1941–45 and eastern Finland. The ...
at most operated on the
Karelian Front
The Karelian Front russian: Карельский фронт) was a front (a formation of Army Group size) of the Soviet Union's Red Army during World War II, and operated in Karelia.
Wartime
The Karelian Front was created in August 1941 when ...
. They targeted enemy soldiers and officers, bridges, garrisons and railways. Unlike Soviet partisans elsewhere, they lacked continuously operating headquarters behind the enemy lines and often stayed there for just 15–20 days at a time.
Their goals inside Finnish borders were to destroy military communications, disrupt economic activity of the Finnish population, and cause panic and uncertainty.
The partisans in Finland were controlled by organs of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union and 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.
...
. The three most important people co-ordinating the partisan activity were the NKVD major general Sergey Vershinin, the
First Secretary of the Karelian Communist Party Gennady Kupriyanov, and the First Secretary of the
Karelo-Finnish Komsomol Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (– 9 February 1984) was the sixth paramount leader of the Soviet Union and the fourth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year rule, Andropov served in the p ...
, who later became the leader of the Soviet Union. Andropov's responsibility was to train the Karelian partisans. The headquarters were located in
Belomorsk
Belomorsk (russian: Беломо́рск; krl, Šuomua; fi, Belomorsk/') is a town and the administrative center of Belomorsky District of the Republic of Karelia, Russia, located on the Onega Bay on the shore of the White Sea. Population:
Hi ...
on the shore of the
White Sea
The White Sea (russian: Белое море, ''Béloye móre''; Karelian and fi, Vienanmeri, lit. Dvina Sea; yrk, Сэрако ямʼ, ''Serako yam'') is a southern inlet of the Barents Sea located on the northwest coast of Russia. It is s ...
.
[Erkkilä 2011, p. 26]
The three most prominent partisan groups were named ''Poljarnik'', ''Bolshevik'' and ''Stalinets''. Ten percent of the partisans in the groups were women.
Besides the Soviet partisans, airborne reconnaissance troops and spies (russian: desántnik) of the Soviet military also operated inside the Finnish borders.
The Finnish Army organized a special unit called ''Sau'' for anti-partisan activities. A partisan brigade was destroyed in Northern Karelia by the Finnish Army in mid-1942. Finnish preparations in the north of the country for partisan activity have later been criticized as lacking. The German military stationed in
Lapland wanted to control the Finnish civilian population more strictly, conduct evacuations and issue German identification cards because they believed some civilians were giving information to the partisans, but the Finnish authorities rejected these plans. The
Finnish Air Force
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also had too few resources to help with anti-partisan duties.
The partisans often presented highly falsified accounts of the raids inside the Finnish territory. Civilian villages were called military
garrisons in the official reports. The raids on villages turned more brutal in mid-1944, when they were co-ordinated with the Soviet
Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive and incursions inside Finnish territory involved partisan detachments as large as 200 fighters during this time. In total, between 170 and 182 Finnish civilians died in the attacks, 50 were wounded and 20 went missing.
[Erkkilä 2011, back cover.]
Seitajärvi massacre
Forty-eight Soviet partisans attacked the village of
Seitajärvi in the municipality of
Savukoski
Savukoski ( sme, Suovvaguoika, smn, Suovâkuoškâ, sms, Suõvvkuõškk) is a municipality of Finland.
It is located in the province of Lapland, Finland. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The p ...
at 3:00 a.m. on 7 July 1944. The village was protected by nine soldiers of the Finnish Army. Barking dogs awakened the villagers, but the Finnish soldiers, taken by surprise, were quickly overrun by the partisans. The latter lured the civilians to come out of hiding by promising that they would not be hurt, speaking to them in Finnish. Then the partisans took the civilians with them and set most of the buildings in the village on fire. The Finnish anti-partisan unit ''Sau'' arrived on the scene nine hours after the attack and found dead bodies with the help of
search dog
A search-and-rescue dog is one trained to find missing people after a natural or man-made disaster. The dogs detect human scent and have been known to find people under water, under snow, and under collapsed buildings.
Applications
A dog w ...
s in a nearby forest. The women and children who were taken as prisoners by the partisans had been killed by shooting and stabbing them with knives and bayonets. Some of the women had also been raped.
Fourteen civilians and two Finnish soldiers had been killed altogether. One eight-year-old girl who had been stabbed played dead and survived. The anti-partisan unit ''Sau'' kept tracking the partisans and found the trail of the troops. They fought until the morning and killed 33 partisans in total, but the main bulk of the partisans had managed to escape over the
Kemijoki
Kemijoki ( sv, Kemi älv, se, Giemajohka), with its length, is the longest river in Finland. It runs through Kemijärvi and Rovaniemi before reaching the Gulf of Bothnia at Kemi. Facta 2001, part 8, ''finnish''
At Rovaniemi the Ounasjoki r ...
river. According to the official Soviet report which falsified information, the partisans destroyed a "Finnish garrison" and killed 94 men.
In the aftermath of the attack, a doctor from neutral
Sweden was requested to perform autopsies on the victims. The administrative board of the
Norrbotten County sent a doctor named Richard Lindgren to perform the task. Two Swedish newspapers, the ''
Norrbottens-Kuriren
''Norrbottens-Kuriren'' (simply ''NK'') is a daily regional conservative newspaper published in Norrbotten County, Sweden, and has its main office in Luleå.
History and profile
''Norrbottens-Kuriren'' was founded in 1861, and therefore is th ...
'' and ''
Norrländska Socialdemokraten
''Norrländska Socialdemokraten'' (''NSD'') (Swedish: ''The Norrland Social Democrat'') is a daily regional newspaper published in Norrbotten County, Sweden.
History and profile
As of the division of the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Par ...
'', followed him to report on the attacks. The autopsies found that the civilians had been either shot in the head or neck. A five-year-old girl called Valma had been stabbed to the head with a knife and seven-month-old Ritva had died from blunt force trauma to the head. The rapes could not be unambiguously proven in the autopsies, as the bodies had already been washed and had also decomposed since it had been nine days since the attack happened. Based on physical marks on the bodies and the position of the bodies on the scene, it was concluded that rapes had happened and this was reported by the ''Norrländska Socialdemokraten''.
Lokka massacre
![Victims_of_partisans](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Victims_of_partisans.jpg)
Twenty-one civilians were killed in the village of Lokka,
Sodankylä
Sodankylä (; sme, Soađegilli ; smn, Suáđigil; sms, Suäʹđjel) is a municipality of Finland. It is located in the region of Lapland, and lies at the northern end of Highway 5 ( E63) and along Highway 4 ( E75). The Kitinen River flows nea ...
, on 14 July 1944. The partisan group ''Stalinets'' attacked the village from three directions at 7:45 p.m. after one partisan had been caught nearby and fired at with a rifle by a Finnish civilian. The school building where the civilians were hiding was then set on fire by the partisans. The partisans shot at people who tried to help them escape the burning structure through a window. Hilja Kumpula and five of her children perished in the fire, the youngest of whom was a one-month-old baby. The detachment managed to escape unharmed before units of the Finnish Army could reach them. Gennady Kupriyanov, who was leading the partisan activity, claimed in his report that the village was a "heavily fortified garrison". In reality, the NKVD had accurate intelligence on the village and the partisans had been monitoring it for days, knowing it had no combatants.
Legacy
The partisan attacks were not a widely-known topic in Finland until the 1990s. This was in part due to the official
Finnish position of friendly relations with the Soviet Union after the war, which even made them a sort of “forbidden topic”,
and some publishers avoided books about it. This changed when journalist and author Veikko Erkkilä published his book ''Vaiettu sota'' () in 1998. Public awareness and debate ensued and Erkkilä was given a state award for an information publication ( fi, Tiedonjulkistamisen valtionpalkinto) by the Finnish Government.
In
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
, the Soviet partisans in Finland are held in high regard as heroes of the
Great Patriotic War
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Sou ...
.
A conference of reconciliation was held in
Sodankylä
Sodankylä (; sme, Soađegilli ; smn, Suáđigil; sms, Suäʹđjel) is a municipality of Finland. It is located in the region of Lapland, and lies at the northern end of Highway 5 ( E63) and along Highway 4 ( E75). The Kitinen River flows nea ...
in September 2002. It was attended by 150 people, including Finnish and Russian researchers, victims of the partisan attacks and two Soviet partisan veterans. The former
Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations
An under-secretary-general of the United Nations (USG) is a senior official within the United Nations System, normally appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the secretary-general for a renewable term of four years. Under ...
Elisabeth Rehn
Märta Elisabeth Rehn (; born 6 April 1935) is a Finnish former politician and diplomat. She served as the Minister of Defence of Finland during 1990 to 1995 and as an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations during 1998 to 1999. She was al ...
acted as patroness for the conference. There, the long-standing silence on the raids and also the war-time response of the Finnish authorities were criticized.
Criminal investigation
Olavi Alakulppi, a captain in the Finnish Army who witnessed the aftermath of the Seitajärvi raid, tried to influence a
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
commission to investigate the Soviet partisan attacks in Finland as a war crime. He served in the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
after the war and during his stay in the United States he submitted evidence and a formal testimony about the partisans, including photos of the victims and reports from Swedish newspapers about the attacks. In 1960, the Soviet envoy to the United Nations strongly denied that they had committed crimes against civilian population and even questioned whether Alakulppi had actually served in the Finnish Army. The Finnish UN permanent representative
Ralph Enckell
Carl Fredrik Ralph Alexander Enckell (13 May 1913, in Helsinki – 18 May 2001, in Helsinki) was a Finnish diplomat.
Enckell was employed by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs since 1934. He was Secretary of State in Stockholm from 1944 to 1945, i ...
refused to take a stance on the issue and the case was not pursued further.
In October 1998,
Christian Democratic MP
Päivi Räsänen submitted a parliamentary question asking the government how they would investigate the partisan war crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. The question was answered by the Minister for Foreign Affairs
Tarja Halonen
Tarja Kaarina Halonen (; born 24 December 1943) is a Finnish politician who served as the 11th president of Finland, and the first woman to hold the position, from 2000 to 2012. She first rose to prominence as a lawyer with the Central Organisa ...
who stated that the investigation would require co-operation from Russia.
After the parliamentary inquiry, the office of the
Prosecutor General of Finland decided to review the issue, as murder does not expire under the Finnish law. They concluded that the partisan attacks should be investigated as murders, but that the case should not be pursued by the Prosecutor General, and instead referred the investigation to the
National Bureau of Investigation. Finland and Russia only had a treaty on general cooperation on legal matters, not a treaty on extradition, so in case of charges extraditions would have had to happen based on Russian court orders.
In 2003, Russia informed Finnish authorities that the alleged crimes had expired under the 1926 Soviet criminal code, which ruled that murder expires in ten years, and that they would not provide further information from the archives. The National Bureau of Investigation dropped the case after this.
Victim compensation
The Finnish Parliament approved legislation which granted a sum of 1,500
euro
The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...
for the victims of the partisan attacks in September 2003. The compensation was granted to people whose illness had been caused by a partisan attack, including emotional distress, or if they had lost one or both parents. It was estimated that there were 600–700 Finns eligible for the compensation. Previously only physical injuries were compensated.
Declassification of victim pictures
In November 2006, the
Finnish Defence Forces
The Finnish Defence Forces ( fi, Puolustusvoimat, sv, Försvarsmakten) are the military of Finland. The Finnish Defence Forces consist of the Finnish Army, the Finnish Navy and the Finnish Air Force. In wartime the Finnish Border Guard (whic ...
declassified slightly over 300 war-time pictures that had been considered “politically delicate” or too brutal for a broad audience. Dozens of them were related to the Soviet partisan raids. These included pictures of villages burned by the partisans, bodies of the victims, including children, and old men being armed with rifles to defend their villages. Previously only researchers or relatives of the victims could access these pictures with a special permission. The declassified pictures were widely discussed in the Finnish media.
List of villages raided by the partisans
The following is a list of villages raided by the Soviet partisans in alphabetical order.
[Martikainen 2002, pp. 259–263; Erkkilä 1998]
See also
*
Soviet partisans in Estonia
The Soviet partisans in Estonia were Communist partisans who attempted to wage guerrilla warfare against the German armed forces during the German occupation of Estonia. Partisan activity was singularly unsuccessful in Estonia due to the gener ...
*
Military history of Finland during World War II
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...
*
Finland–Russia border
The Finnish–Russian border is the roughly north–south international border between the Republic of Finland and the Russian Federation. Some long, it runs mostly through uninhabited taiga forests and sparsely populated rural areas, not fo ...
Notes
References
* Erkkilä, Veikko: ''Vaiettu sota: Neuvostoliiton partisaanien iskut suomalaisiin kyliin'' (in Finnish). Helsinki: Arator, 1998.
* Erkkilä, Veikko: ''Viimeinen aamu : Neuvostopartisaanien jäljellä'' (in Finnish).
Otava, 2011.
* Martikainen, Tyyne: ''Partisaanisodan siviiliuhrit'' (in Finnish). Kemi: Värisuora-kustannus, 2002. {{ISBN, 952-91-4327-3
Finland
Finland–Russia relations
Continuation War
Soviet World War II crimes
Massacres in Finland