Antropologicheskij forum, 2019, no. 43

FINNISH CEMETERIES IN RUSSIA: CROSS-BORDER GROUPS OF MEMORY AND THE NEW MORAL ORDER

Ekaterina Melnikova

European University at St Petersburg
6/1А Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences
3 Universitetskaya Emb., St Petersburg, Russia
melek()eu.spb.ru

Abstract: The paper is concerned with the issue of the symbolic transformation of the old Finnish cemeteries left on the territory of the Soviet Union as the result of the Second World War. After the Northern Ladoga region and Karelian Isthmus had been ceded by Finland to the USSR, local Finns had to abandon both their houses and graves, leaving them without any care for a long time. During the Soviet time they were either neglected, turned into parks or became graveyards for new locals who settled in these regions after the war. The destiny of the old Finnish cemeteries is widely debated today and provokes numerous and intense accusations of local people regarding their improper use and lack of care. I argue that the discussion of the abandoned cemeteries is related to a broader context of life within the territory of the shared homeland and is instrumentalized today in the codification of a new moral order. I also claim that ‘shame’, ‘guilt’ and ‘pity’ are not the only forms of emotional feelings experienced by the new possessors of the Finnish past. At the same time it wasprecisely ‘shame’, ‘guilt’ and ‘pity’ which became the most effective instruments for the symbolic transformation of the recently useless ‘past’ into a highly valued and estimable heritage in the region.

Keywords: borderlands, heritage, cemeteries, memory, emotions.

Acknowledgements: The publication was prepared during the projects “The layered cake of Russian-Finnish neighborness: everyday interactions at different scales” (no. 80-36945), and “The Big Layered Cake: towards the conceptualization of neighborness” (no. 201805086), which were supported by the Kone Foundation in 2016 and 2018.

To cite: Melnikova E., ‘Finskie kladbishcha v Rossii: kross-granichnye gruppy pamyati i novyy moralnyy poryadok’ [Finnish Cemeteries in Russia: Cross-Border Groups of Memory and the New Moral Order], Antropologicheskij forum, 2019, no. 43, pp. 11–40.

doi: 10.31250/1815-8870-2019-15-43-11-40

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/043/melnikova.pdf