ORAL HISTORY: MIGRATION AND LOCAL IDENTITIES - Academia

Narrating Migration in Nordic Countries“And all the people in the world seemed to have died. There wasno one to talk to. There was no one to come and talk to you, to help youto do things. There was a lot of snow, muteness, darkness, and like ashadow I trekked after my mother, anxious and tired in that darkness.Despite the fatigue, sleep would not come. And if it did sometimescome in the darkest moments of the night, there came dreams thatmade me quite frantic with fear; in those dreams I was running awayfrom Russian soldiers.” (Vuohelainen, 1985, p. 122)However, it can be maintained that the Finnish authorities, theFinnish Karelian League (Karjalan Liitto), and the majority of politiciansin post-war Finland actively strove to resolve the situation andintroduced measures to improve the position of the Karelian evacuees,for example, by guaranteeing them an income and housing (Raninen-Siiskonen, 1999; Sallinen-Gimpl, 1994; Armstrong, 2004; Heikkinen,1989). The settlement measures were based on The Emergency SettlementAct (see Hietanen, 1982, pp. 13-66) passed in June 1940 to dealwith the problem of evacuees after the Winter War. On the basis ofthis law, the state procured areas of land from the original populationand redistributed them to the evacuees. The implementation of thelaw was suspended in June 1941.A government report issued after the second evacuation inDecember 1944 provided the guidelines for the settlement of warveterans and the population evacuated from the ceded areas. TheLand Acquisition Act was passed by Parliament in April 1945. This lawauthorised the state to appropriate land for war veterans, the familiesof fallen servicemen, and evacuees from the ceded territories. The landwas mainly handed over by the state, local municipalities, parishes,private companies, and other bodies. According to the Land AcquisitionAct, almost 55 percent of the Karelian evacuees were entitled toreceive land. In total, nearly 150 000 farms were established on thebasis of the Land Acquisition Act, and the lost fields that pioneers hadenergetically cleared on the other side of the border were restored inFinland by the early 1950s. In addition, over 100.000 evacuees weresettled in towns and other communities, and the villages of the Kareliansand the ex-servicemen became new urban districts and parts ofparishes. The compensation measures can be regarded as part of thegovernment’s policy of appeasement (Nevakivi, 2000, pp. 232-233).200