Karelia

I will be describing some of the most interesting encounters I have had traveling around Russia and Ukraine, particularly those moments that illustrated or contradicted something I thought I knew about these countries.

The first moment was three summers ago in Zaonezhe, the ragged peninsula that juts down into Lake Onega in Russian Karelia. Zaonezhe has her own distinct Old Russian history (as one of the parts of Karelia occupied by ethnic Russians longest, as opposed to Karelians or Finns) and must be right up there for the highest density of wooden churches. It is one of the most bucolic places I have ever seen - long points jutting into the sea-like Onega, covered with meadows and abandoned sovkhoz settlements. I was part of a small expedition to identify socially-valuable forests on the peninsula as part of the forest certification process. we were banging around Zaonezhe in an UAZ, visiting remote villages and interviewing the locals.

Many villages here in fact date back to collectivization, when the far-flung peasants were pulled into new settlements from their isolated homesteads. We decided to find one of the most remote villages that predated collectivization, supposing that we might find the must unvarnished "Zaonezhians" there. This turned out to be true. The village (I have forgotten its name, sadly) was several hours from Velikaya Guba and had been isolated for some time by a bridge washout (we rolled up the windows on our UAZ and forded the river). We pulled up to a beautiful log bunk home and found its inhabitants in the yard. A middle-aged man was carving an axe handle while an older woman (his mother) shelled beans. They looked at our forest maps and pointed out a few important spots, then we began small talking. We complemented the woman on her beautiful traditional Zaonezhian home.

"Yes," she said, "in the '30s they said that anyone with such a nice house must be a kulak." [A kulak is a rich peasant, one of the main targets of Soviet terror.] "My father heard people saying that and so he changed our name and moved us to Petrozavosk, where he thought we could hide. He started working in a factory, but then he was randomly chosen for purging, so his strategy didn't work. We were sent out of Karelia and I returned to the village 30 years later and found our house abandoned. I've been here ever since."

The long, obscure history of Karelia - one of Europe's quietists corners - is jarringly disrupted by the 1930s. This thinly-populated frontier was the site of Stalin's famous "miracle of Socialism", the Baltic-White Sea Canal. This project was carried out entirely with gulag slave labor and brought about the death of at least 8,700 workers. It also populated much of the Karelian wilderness with a diverse assembly of Soviet nationalities, from Belarusans to Uzbeks. The descendants of these ZEKs (work camp prisoners) make up much of the present-day population along the canal route. I don't want to make it sound as if this grim history dominates Karelian life - it doesn't - but it is closer to the surface than in any other place I've been in Russia. Near the city of Medvezhegorsk is the Sandormakh memorial site, a mass grave of NKVD victims from 1937 and 1938. Many people in the city told me about the site, and interestingly, they all brought up one tragic aspect: besides being the final resting place of thousands of Soviet citizens, Sandormakh holds the remains of hundreds of foreigners who came to Karelia to help "build Socialism": Finns, Italians, French, Germans, idealistic leftists from all over Europe. One man said "these people came to help us build our country! How can you execute such people?" It was as if my Russian neighbors were acclimated to such horror in their own history, but couldn't countenance imposing it on such well-meaning foreigners.

Interestingly, while the people I talked to all regarded the White Sea Canal as a historical tragedy, they also could not contain their pride at the incredible ingenuity of press-ganged Soviet laborers. Deprived of any sort of mechanical equipment but still burdened with heavy work quotas, they devised entire fleets of earth moving equipment out of pine logs, including, amazingly, wooden cranes. The construction also left a fascinating mark on the surrounding landscape: for many kilometers on each side of the canal, the pine forests are a uniform 75-80 years old, having regenerated after the clearcutting of the virgin pine forests to build the foundations of the canal.

Karelia's turbulent history during WWII also leaves its mark. Many thousands of Finnish-American leftists emigrated into Karelia during the 1930s to build Socialism, and brought with them jazz and cutting edge techniques for paper manufacturing. But once their native Finland had become forcibly allied with the Axis, Finns became "Enemies of the People" within the USSR and were in imminent danger. So many simply took on the identity of Karelians, who are a Finno-Ulgric people, speak a language very close to Finnish and were regarded as staunch Soviet patriots. So now it is not really clear how many native Karelians belong to that ancient tribe and how many are Finns. I was in the village of Shalgovaara with a Finnish wildlife biologist, Yuri. We were told that this was a classic Karelian village, but Yuri kept straying close to peoples' yards to eavesdrop on their conversations. He returned to us and said "these people are all Finns! I haven't heard a word of Karelian all day!" I wonder, is this a case of confused ethnic identity or Finnish chauvinism, which Karelians feel is not far beneath the surface? I must admit, for a non Finno-Ulgric like myself the difference between Finns and Karelians is pretty baffling: among their shibbeloths seems to be whether you pronounce the word for "forest" as metso (Finnish) or mechso (Karelian).

What is this blog?

My name is Brian Milakovsky, I'm from the United States and currently live in Vladivostok, Russia. I have had a fascination with eastern Europe, Russia and the whole "post-Soviet world" that began with an interest in my family's roots in western Belarus and Bohemia. I eventually combined this interest with my professional specialty (forestry) and began living and working in the region: Karelia and Komi, all over Ukraine, and now the Russian Far East.

A big part of my life for the past three years has been talking with friends, coworkers, neighbors, people on the train, curious landladies, etc. about Russia, Ukraine, the USA, the USSR and the myriad peoples that made up that giant country. Slavs' well-known lack of political correctness has made this a much more frank and interesting conversation than I could find at home. I have started this blog to record my impressions and bring up some questions about Russian character and ethnic identity. The title Druzhba Narodov ("Friendship of Nations") refers to the idea of ethnic harmony that was the Soviet model for running a country with 150-odd nationalities. In some ways it was a myth imposed by the authorities to shift the emphasis towards class identity, but it was also sincerely and actively practiced by millions of people, many of who long for the days before the bitter ethnic and national squabbles of contemporary eastern Europe. For me it evokes the fascinating question of how Russians (or anyone, for that matter) can live well with other peoples, be they in the "near abroad" or across the world.

These questions came into focus for me first when I was living in the city of Medvezhegorsk, Karelia during the Georgia-Ossetia war. Karelia is a long, long way from the Kavkaz, but distance did not dull the passions of my Russian neighbors about the war. A lot of people wanted to bend the ear of the only American in town, and at first the line was pretty standard: this is American perfidy, you put the Georgians up to this, we're only defending a helpless minority, isn't the West supposed to like that sort of thing? (I was simultaneously reading the American version online: rekindled Russian imperialism, unprovoked aggression towards "Rose" Georgia). But then I started getting the realpolitik version too: well, you got Kosovo so we get South Ossetia. And when the director of the local sawmill cornered me under the Kirov statue, his angry argument also included a heavy dose of doubt about the precedent Russia was setting by "liberating" a disgruntled Kavkaz ethnic group. My own feelings were strongly mixed - I was angered by the callousness of shelling apartment blocks andmoved by the memorial concert in bombed-out Skhinvali, but alarmed to hear Putin use the term "genocide" on national television and to see how carelessly the figure of 2000 siege victims was bandied about, only to be quietly downgraded to 200 a few days later.

It was deeply unsettling to be simultaneously watching war coverage on Russia's Pervi Kanal and CNN - there was no overlap in our countries' popular interpretations. We were using the same language - human rights, genocide, autonomy - to defend diametrically opposite positions. The ethical acrobatics necessary for Americans to denounce Ossetia and defend Kosovo, and Russians visa-versa, also showed me that in such affairs neither side may have a coherent ethical position.

So this blog will follow one American trying to understand Russians and their mentality, and as much as possible to assess our often competing takes on history and current affairs. I also hope to transgress frequently to other regions where tolerance and druzhba narodov are being tested: the Balkans (of which I have no expertise but plenty of interest), Europe and the United States and the tricky relationship with immigrant communities.

Enjoy, and please comment!