Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 14 – Between 1917
and 1953, the vast majority of the 400,000 Finns, Karels and Ingermanlanders
living outside of Finland but within the Russian Federation disappeared, with
many of them presumed to have been killed as a result of Soviet policies. The Finnish government has now announced that
it plans to investigate their fates.
This research effort is scheduled to
begin in August and be completed by the end of July 2025. The Finnish
government has allocated two million euros (2.5 million US dollars) for the
project which it decided to launch after a major expose on this issue by Helsingin
Sanomat in August 2019 (yenicag.ru/finlyandiya-namerena-vyyasnit-sudby-s/331129/).
This is one of the most sensitive
issues in Finnish-Russian relations, and Helsinki’s decision to go ahead with
research on it not only guarantees that Finns are going to learn far more than
they knew before about the horrors visited on their co-nationals by the Soviets
but ensures that tensions between Moscow and Helsinki are likely to increase.
Perhaps especially important is the
fact that Helsinki is not limiting its effort to tracking down those who
identified as Finns but also considering the fate of two related groups, the Ingermanlanders
and the Karels, the surviving members of each of which can be expected to make
use of this research to press their own goals.
On that possibility, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-new-aspirant-to-be-fourth-baltic.html,
windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/04/i-always-knew-i-was-izhor-submerged.html,
windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/regionalist-movements-now-under-kremlin.html,
windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/08/karelia-in-1990-wanted-autonomy-not.html,
and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/centenary-of-otava-flag-recalls-white.html.
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