Toivo Flink: Kotiin karkotettavaksi: Inkeriläisen siirtoväen palautukset Suomesta Neuvostoliittoon [Exiled home: The return of Ingrian emigrants from Finland to the Soviet Union]

15 October 2010 | Mini reviews, Reviews

Kotiin karkotettavaksi: Inkeriläisen siirtoväen palautukset Suomesta Neuvostoliittoon 1944–1955
[Exiled home: The return of Ingrian emigrants from Finland to the Soviet Union, 1944–1955]
Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010.  320 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-222-183-4
33 €, paperback

It has been 65 years since the Allied Commission operation to repatriate Finnic Ingrian emigrants from Finland to the Soviet Union was completed. During the Continuation War (1941–1944), 63,000 Ingrian civilians fled to Finland to avoid the war; 56,000 of them were returned to the Soviet Union at the order of the Russian-dominated Allied Commission. It is estimated that half of those remaining in Finland secretly fled to Sweden. Ingrians continued to be returned from Finland to the Soviet Union for ten more years. The Ingrians had been promised they would be returned to their former home areas around St Petersburg, but they were actually transferred to more remote parts of the Soviet Union. In this first study to deal exclusively with the travails of the Ingrians, Flink has used Russian archives to uncover how and where the population was moved. This subject has long been a sensitive issue both in domestic and foreign affairs. According to Flink, his research would not have been possible if the return of Ingrians to Finland had not begun in 1990. (There have been about 30,000 immigrants since, and now the state is planning to terminate the right of return.)

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