7. Spatial Identities of a Border Town
Lived experience and the narratives representing it are crucial elements for understanding the construction of a local sense of place in Soviet Sortavala. For first-generation Sortavalans after the war, this often meant overcoming their unfamiliarity with the
new environment and a certain alienation. As Pekka Hakamies has argued, everyday
experiences linked to the territory of the North Ladoga region were initially to someextent exceptional, because the historical, geographical, social and cultural context offormerly Finnish Karelia was alien to the Russian settlers (Hakamies 2005: 14). However, familiarity became more common in time, as Sortavala gradually changed from a
Finnish town into a recognisably Soviet space (Izotov 2013: 172).
During the Soviet period, Sortavala’s Finnish legacy was mostly obscured in official documents and public discourses, and the local media ignored it with the rare
exception of local Finnish architecture. But it was much more difficult to inhibit Sorta­valans’ curiosity about the town’s Finnish past. It has been argued here that the memoryof this past was a major element in the construction of a local identity although it was
based on the creation of myths which were documented in the oral history surveys(Mel’nikova 2005). Local discursive contexts illustrate how residents of Sortavala perceived their place of living. Based on the assumption that territorial identities of Soviet
citizens owe a lot to official Soviet discourses, this section aims to investigate how feelings of locality relate to the local political elite’s attempts of shaping a Soviet identity.
When the first Soviet migrants arrived in the North Ladoga region, most of themwere confronted with an unfamiliar natural and cultural environment. Generally, theirformer homelands strongly contrasted with this cold Northern space, which looked so
inhospitable. Some of the new inhabitants felt they were ‘uninvited guests.’ They had no
emotional ties to the North Ladoga region or to the wider Karelia. This may explain why
the newcomers had no will nor desire to keep houses and the infrastructure in as good ashape as they had been in Finnish times (see Mel’nikova 2005: 351 and 377). Those settling in Sortavala in the late 1940s and 1950s hardly accepted the territory as their own,
as a home, although a sense of home seems to be vital for any form of human identity.
Local patriotism and attachment to the area should have come more naturally
to those born there later. However, official discourses at all times promoted a senseof place that referred to the wider framework of Soviet patriotism and nationalism
and seldom to local peculiarities. The narratives identified in local media publications
and official documents illustrate the priority of belonging to the Soviet nation, of an
All-Union identity, rather than providing local residents with symbols that would haveencouraged feelings of locality. Poems, songs and literature composed by local professional and amateur artists are mostly dedicated to Moscow, the Kremlin and the Motherland rather than to Sortavala (for examples, see KZ, 1 January, 28 September and 14
December 1955). Similarly, local social activities, such as participation in the ‘Relay
Race of the Friendship of the Pioneers of the USSR,’ clearly relate to the Soviet projectof creating a national identity.
Many biographical narratives of Soratavalans reflect local and regional culturaland spatial imagery: the beautiful natural and cultural environment, the brilliant ar-80

chitecture, a good place to live, nice recreational activities. Media narratives evoke‘the North’ and ‘Karelia,’ which have played a crucial role in producing images of theregion (Oksa 1999: 285). In the context of Northwest Russia, a notion of Northernness
seems almost as essential a characteristic as Russianness. But the emphasis on theregion’s natural beauty in local discourses tends to obscure the region’s cultural andethnic past. References to the Kalevala epic in the official discourses of Karelianness
rather appear as something imposed by the political elite.
7-1. The Human-made Environment and the Construction of Locality
The construction of Sortavala’s spatial identity has been a complex process fullof contradictions. The narratives studied here are evidence of the ambiguous attitude
the Soviet authorities adopted towards the Finnish heritage and cultural landscape. Admiration for the region and its unique character can be found next to statements thatcall for the transformation of the human-made environment in accordance with Soviet
views, concepts and traditions of spatial and socio-economic development.
Contemporary cultural and human geography sometimes refers to urban space asa text that can be read and interpreted. In this sense, post-war Sortavala has stimulated
the spatial imagination of its residents, creating an imaginary landscape marked bysemi-erased scribblings in Finnish on walls, eclectic architectural designs that could
be interpreted as palimpsests (Cupers 2005; Mitin 2005), old Finnish coins and othertrouvailles. Overall, the aesthetic attractiveness of the local urban and rural landscapeshas given rise to a positive attitude towards the previous inhabitants, and this spatial
imagery has complicated the process of adapting the local space to the demands andneeds of the Soviet system, promoted by the political elite.
One of the main issues in this respect was the question, posed early on in August
1946, whether the historical town centre of Sortavala should be protected. At the time,
the town executive committee appealed to the regional authorities to assign an urban
architect for this task in relation with a new construction project of seventeen residentialbuildings. A resolution was passed that prohibited any construction work in the central
part of the town without the expertise of and prior approval by the KFSSR’s architectural authority (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 2/72, l. 5). Similar actions in favour of protecting thehistorical town centre followed. In March 1947, the local authorities cancelled plans fora residential building designed to house the district energy department’s management,
because they were ‘in contradiction with a previously approved project’ (f. R-2203, op.
1, d. 3/123, l. 4). The decision was, however, superseded later, in the early 1960s, whena building for this purpose and several khrushchevkas (khrushchevki), cheap and basic
residential blocks, were erected in Karelskaia Street, in the very centre of town. This
meant that the town centre was then being shaped in line with Soviet norms of urbanisation, i.e. aesthetic and social Sovietisation.
The local newspaper also reported on various attempts made by the local authorities to improve the town’s infrastructure and embellish it, by focussing on neglectedneighbourhoods. In an article on ‘Sortavala in the near future’ published in 1969, R.
Heiskonen, the town’s chief architect, claimed that ‘the appearance of the town’ (oblik
goroda) would change: ‘the town will grow, new public services will make the town81

more comfortable for residents and new public gardens will be planted’ (KZ, 1 January1969). The aim was to make better use of the urban space along the shores of the Leppäjarvi inlet. It was announced that storage facilities, sheds and garages would be torn
down in the town centre and new ones erected in a future industrial zone in the western part of the town, in the area between Pushkin Street and Sovkhoznoe Chaussee.
In 1970, a gasoline station and a factory, located on the road service land lot No. 178(dorozhno-ekspluatatsionnyi uchastok № 178), were relocated to sites outside the centre (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 60/1205, l. 7). Most of the plans were, however, never carriedout; the ugly storage facilities on the inlet shores would only be destroyed in the 1990s.
Although local officials understood the necessity of protecting the town’s architectural heritage and even recommended that local architects undertake studies of theFinnish urban legacy, Sortavala’s historical centre, overall, suffered from Soviet town
planning. Efforts to develop a master plan that would aesthetically reconcile the protection of the Finnish heritage with the need for new buildings and infrastructure go
back to the late 1940s, when the town’s chief architect was given the task to elaborate such a plan, but were only intensified over two decades later. In the early 1970s,
the development of a master plan for Sortavala was handed to Karelgrazhdanproekt
from Petrozavodsk, an institute for town planning attached to the regional Ministry for
Housing and Communal Services. But, over several years, the local authorities repeatedly complained to the regional government that the institute had not yet completed
the master plan and asked the KASSR’s Council of Ministers to use its influence sothat work would be sped up. In the end, the master plan never saw the light of the day.
Meanwhile, the local authorities undertook the construction of huge housing estatesoutside the town centre. In 1970, for instance, work started in the so-called Micro-District No. 1, a residential area of 26.5 hectares planned for 8,600 people, with 77,030
square metres of floor area (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 60/1205, l. 7).
The early efforts on protecting the Finnish urban heritage, entrusted to thetown’s chief architect, had focussed on gathering material on Sortavala’s history andon undertaking various cultural, historical and architectural studies (f. R-2203, op. 1,
d. 5/197, l. 43–44). In this context, it was recommended that local residents should
be taught about the town’s past. In 1951, the local authorities thus planned to organise excursions for residents that would make them familiar with the local history
and architecture within the framework of the general cultural and educational work(kul’turno-prosvetitel’naia rabota). The town council called on the responsible officials ‘to put an end to the underestimation of these sightseeing tours and to ensure themass participation of residents in tours of the town and excursions to the surrounding
areas’ (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 11/375, l. 45). However, none of the official documents
related to the town’s past ever mentions the social and cultural life of the town during
the 1920s and 1930s or refers to issues undesirable from a political or ideologicalpoint of view.
Activities linked to the town’s cultural legacy were mostly organised throughthe local branch of the All-Union Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (VOOPIK), which did not encourage local interest in the period of
Finnish independence. Emphasis was put on the town’s and region’s entire history.

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A working plan of the local School of Soviet Activists40 (shkola Sovetskogo aktiva)
adopted in January 1974 thus included a chapter on ‘Sortavala’s Historical Monuments’(Pamiatniki istorii g. Sortavala) and the Councils’ Task to Protect Them (f. R-2203, op.
1, d. 81/1369, l. 41–50). Toivo Hakkarainen, the head of the local VOOPIK branch, wasreported to be responsible for the planned activities.
Despite the Society’s efforts, monuments of the town remained in a poor state oreven disappeared, as articles from the local newspaper show. In the late 1960s, local
history enthusiasts (kraevedy) publicly expressed their concerns about the issue. One ofthem wrote: ‘Knowledge about historical monuments should create a feeling of love for
the Motherland, its native people, their history and culture. However, because ordinary
members of our society lack initiative, we have lost a number of local monuments, suchas the Kurnaia izba [a typical eighteenth-century wooden farmhouse with a primitive
heating system already put up in the Town Gardens (Vakkosalmenpuisto) in Finnish
times; A. I.], a monument of the island of Riekkalansaari and other valuable monuments’ (KZ, 18 January 1969).
In Soviet times, studies of local history were being undertaken at schools as partof the curriculum—kraevedenie (see Ristolainen 2010: 113–114) was sometimes taught
as a separate subject in secondary schools—and hobby groups (kruzhki) at schools
studied regional history (kraevedcheskii kruzhok). As already noted above (see Section
6-1), these leisure activities mainly focussed on the heroic past of the Great Patriotic
War and on setting up small exhibitions on regional history (kraevedcheskii ugolok) (f.
R-2203, op. 1, d. 66/1250, l. 23).
There were a few exceptions. In the early 1960s, during the period of the Thaw,
official documents voiced, for example, concerns about the poor state of a local Finnish
graveyard. As a result, the deputies of the town council voted in favour of a decision
to undertake ‘repair work on the stone fence wall surrounding the old graveyard and toreturn to position fallen-down gravestones’ (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 34/892, l. 13). Interestingly, the Finnish origin of the graveyard was not mentioned explicitly, although it musthave been known to all participants of the meeting. But the decision was never implemented, not even in post-Soviet times. Even more, the cemetery suffered repeatedly
from barbaric acts committed by locals and its present state is one of decay and neglect.
According to local memories, gravestones were sometimes used to build porches forprivate houses, a destiny that recalls that of a cemetery in Kaliningrad (Kostiashov etal. 2002). Perhaps this desacralisation can be explained by the alienation that the postwar settlers felt in relation to their cultural environment: the beautiful huge gravestones
might not have corresponded to their idea of a graveyard. However, a similar situation
40 In the Soviet context, aktiv meant ‘the most advanced, proactive and experienced groupof people in any party, comsomol, and trade union organisation or industrial establishment.’ Important part of their activities was meetings where relevant issues of work havebeen discussed and where ‘an experience of the leaders was added with an experience of
masses.’ Important role also played schools of aktiv worked on the regular basis, as wellas intermittent courses provided the activists with necessary knowledge for their activity(Zavelev 1969).

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in Lahdenpohja, described by Marina Hakkarainen (2005: 52–53), shows that newcomers there continued to use old Finnish cemeteries, trying ‘not to disturb Finnish graves’and not letting ‘Finnish gravestones fall down.’ In Sortavala, a new graveyard for Russian settlers was established right next to the former Finnish cemetery.
7-2. Local Attitudes towards the Finnish Heritage
Gorbachev’s perestroika resulted in several public debates on the Finnish culturaland historical legacy. The passage quoted below reflects widespread opinions not only
among experts but also ordinary citizens. In 1986, an engineer of Remstroi a state establishment responsible for repairing buildings, wrote in her article ‘We do not care forwhat we have owned’:
Every year we are losing old wooden houses built before the Second World War.
These buildings always seem attractive because of their originality and beauty. But
after thorough renovation, these houses have been turned into ‘boxes’ that resemble
each other. What is happening in Sortavala is a sort of barbarism (KZ, 24 June 1986).

The rural architectural heritage was treated with even more indifference and often
led to destruction. Indeed, it was regularly the object of deep incomprehension. The
Soviet writer Marietta Shaginian, who travelled in the North Ladoga area in 1948, thus
described her impressions of the rural landscape:I have seen people living in isolated cottages near the forest. What a lonely life! Wholives in these houses? I have imagined our kolkhozniks forced to live in such a building and environment. In capitalist agricultural economies, people preferred to settle
at a distance of several kilometres from each other. The next important task of the
Karelian Republic is to move all these isolated houses to our familiar villages. The
kolkhozniks who have been resettled on these plots so far from each other have morally suffered from these wide spaces (prostorov) and even natural beauty has offered
no consolation to them. A teacher living in such an isolated home is suffering, too.
Our Soviet farmers are used to a communal way of life, necessary for their personal
development. They need a lecture hall, a club, where they can watch films and plays.
They need lectures, canteens, nursery schools, social meetings and everything elsethat makes life in a rural area resemble that in urban areas, that erases any difference
between town and village. During meetings, the kolkhozniks in the western part of the
Karelo-Finnish Republic say: ‘It is necessary to bring farmsteads (khutor)41 closer toeach other. We are Soviet citizens and not used to live in a (bear’s) den.’ This word is
not my invention but was used by local kolkhozniks to describe the old small farmers’
estates with every ‘comfort and convenience’ (Karelia, 23 September 2004).

The isolated farmsteads of North Ladoga were clearly an unfamiliar feature forthose who had grown up in Russian or Belorussian villages, part of an alien rural landscape that represented the Other. It is interesting to note the writer’s adherence to thepolitical and ideological postulates of the official Stalinist discourse, which can be foundsometimes even in such intimate documents as personal diaries. Not less important is the
41 In the Russian tradition, khutor [farmstead] is opposed to derevnia [village] (see also
Laine 2005: 37).

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emphasis on the necessary transformation of the rural world, a transformation achieved
on a large scale later on, in the early 1960s, during the implementation of Khrushchev’s
policy of agrotowns (ukrupnenie derevni). However, as Hakamies has argued, already the
first settlers in the second half of the 1940s ‘had to create their own places based on what
they found and on early life in their new environment’ (Hakamies 2005: 93).
Other sources confirm this perception of the local landscape by the newcomers.
Granitsa i liudi [Border and People], a book published in 2005, presents the results of asurvey carried out in 2000 and 2003 by Finnish and Russian scholars in the neighbouring district of Lahdenpohja, with a similar historical background and at times mergedwith the district of Sortavala (Mel’nikova 2005). The books offer rich evidence of thealienation felt by early Soviet migrants when confronted with Finnish settlement practices. The strangeness extended to the natural environment, with its Northern coldness
and its landscape dominated by rocks—many settlers had grown up in flat farm country(Mel’nikova 2005: 148). Parallels with Kaliningrad have already been alluded to, but
in Sortavala, the war had only resulted in minimal destruction. The early migrants ofNorth Ladoga therefore arrived in a rural area whose residential and economic infrastructure had largely remained intact. Subsequent transformations of the environment
can thus not be simply attributed to post-war reconstruction efforts. It must, however, be stressed that the predominant farming institutions of Soviet agriculture were
kolkhozes and, later, sovkhozes, which required concentrated settlements that resemble
the traditional Russian village.
More results of this international research project, a joint-venture of the European
University of St Petersburg and the Karelian Institute (University of Joensuu) financedby the Finnish Academy of Sciences, have been published in Moving in the USSR:
Western Anomalies and Northern Wilderness (Hakamies 2005). They show that the
spatial restructuring of the cultural landscape in post-war times led to homogenisation
when the population increasingly became concentrated in larger settlements:
The chain of major, historically successive social events and processes are tightly
connected with the restructuring of the cultural landscape: the first impressions of thewell-ordered cultural landscape, bringing together of the houses from distant farmsteads and enlargement of fields, the construction of multi-storied houses, the ruination of suburban farms and the disappearance of an idyllic and picturesque view
(Hakkarainen 2005: 46).

Hakkarainen and other contributors of this book have analysed the interrelations
between the cultural landscape and the local sense of place by taking a closer look at thememoirs published by exploring early Soviet migrants’ memories. Of particular interest is the way in which they link the newcomers’ sense of place to narrative traditions of
the Russian peasantry. Their methodological approach, based on cultural anthropology,
offers a valuable complement to the one adopted here, which draws on cultural andhistorical geography.
7-3. Perceptions of Place
As a community of migrants, Sortavala in the late 1940s and 1950s provides us
with numerous personal life stories that illustrate how newcomers perceived the place85they have found themselves in by chance. The cultural environment, and first of all
the urban landscape, in the North Ladoga region was alien to the first generation ofthese Soviet migrants. The natural environment with its hills and rocks also created thisspatial alienation of the migrant community with the surrounding territory. For former
residents of the southern regions of the USSR, this landscape could even have beenfrightening. Being unfamiliar and different, this place, as Marina Hakkarainen documented, was at the same ‘wonderful’ and ‘nice’ (Hakkarainen 2005: 47). The difference
between Finnish and Russian traditions was especially visible in rural areas. The Finnish types of settlements, broadly characterized by individual houses located far awayfrom each other, stood in sharp contrast to both Russian traditional villages and theSoviet type of agrarian economy—sovkhozes and kolkhozes. Therefore, the settlement
structure was restructured as the Soviet settlers moved to rural centres. All these contradictions in perception of the place finally resulted in a process of restructuring andadaptation of the environment to the needs of the new residents. It led to the productionof a new social and cultural locality in the border area. The findings of this study are inline with the personal and autobiographical narratives collected in the former Finnish
territories (in particular in the municipality of Lahdenpohja) by Finnish and Russianscholars (see Hakamies 2005). An informant’s statement attests to a continuing sentiment of alienation:
We still do not feel that this is our place. Can you imagine? We have lived here for somany years but anyway, this is not our place. Since this is not our homeland, this isan alien place. We do not accept it as ours. Perhaps those born here feel it differently.
How could all this be ours? This land is not ours, this house is not ours. Everything isa remnant of the Finns (Mel’nikova 2005: 351).

This passage can be contrasted with another, an official document from Sortavala,dating from 1948, which proclaimed that Sortavala has already become ‘a hometown’for the community of migrants who settled there:
The support of the working people (trudiashchiesia) for the way in which the town
(Party) cares for their hometown is growing. For instance, residents from Fanernaia
Street, during the meeting, have made a pledge (obiazatel’stvo) to help working on
the improvement of the town (raboty po blagoustroistvu goroda) (f. R-2203, op. 1, d.
5/197, l. 56).

It could be argued that Sortavalans felt estranged from their environment becauseof the neglected state of many parts of the town; official documents and newspaper articles regularly speak of the residents’ willingness to improve the situation. One mightsuggest that this indifference to an ordered environment is part of the Russian traditionand contrasts with Western attitudes and explain the relations between humans andspace in post-war Sortavala as characteristic of the socialist version of the traditional
Russian communal way of life. However, the studied material reveals a more complex
relationship, with various cultural, historical, mental and other factors at work. Oneof these, and perhaps not the least important, is the Soviet system of total control oversociety and the consequent absence of an even limited local autonomy in decision-making. The absence of significant private property may also have had its impact on theconstruction of a local identity.

86Official documents offer multiple evidence for the carelessness of local residents
and even acts of vandalism. Since the late 1940s, the local authorities regularly expressed concerns about the state of the town’s parks and gardens and passed numerous
decisions in this respect. In 1947, the town executive committee adopted, for example,
a resolution ‘On the Protection of Plantations in the Town of Sortavala,’ which prohibited the cutting down of trees and bushes on municipal territory as well as causing
damage to them (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 3/100, l. 11). Similarly, despite endless calls by theauthorities to take care of streets and yards, the state of these public spaces deteriorated
year after year. Another document, referring to the work of the combine ‘Landscaping’(kombinat «Blagoustroistvo»), from 1964, illustrates how the Soviet official machinery
worked. It typically started with an optimistic statement: ‘Those who remember the
town in the first post-war years see the changes that have happened in formerly neglected areas. New buildings, gardens and flowerbeds have appeared there.’ This is followedby the usual obligatory criticism of the situation: ‘Nobody takes care of plants. Old
trees are dying in the arboretum. Many organisations in town do not realise how valuable planted trees are. The construction enterprises destroy trees when they are raising
new buildings. Three old oak trees have been destroyed, because one of the organisations in town poured hot dross from a boiler-room on the trees’ roots’ (f. R-2203, op. 1,
d. 44/1004, l. 54 and 56). The next passage complains that the new gardens, created ashort time ago near the pier and the boarding school, show bad taste in the selection ofplants and bad planning. Finally come the recommendations: ‘To make our town looknice, we will have to get the executive committee’s council for architecture to work on
this. We will also have to establish an all-town’s council for services and amenities’ (f.
R-2203, op. 1, d. 44/1004, l. 61). This new council was to be composed of representatives from all local organisations and institutions as well as of local activists.
With its commitment to collectivism and public—in fact, state—property, theSoviet political elite set the stage for these failures to successfully manage the urban
environment. In Soviet Sortavala, the sanitary state of the town was the responsibilityof the permanent commission for services and amenities, which, in the 1960s, tried to
involve enterprises and various organisations in maintaining the urban landscape. In
August 1965, the commission reported on the neglected state of courtyards, noting thatmany of them were full of rubbish, lumber and firewood and that the state of cesspools
was unsatisfactory as well (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 44/1004, l. 68–69). During the 1960s
and 1970s, the local newspaper published numerous letters sent in by readers commenting on the dilapidated state of the town. One of them perfectly illustrates the ironic
attitude ordinary citizens adopted towards the official rhetoric of the Brezhnev era:
‘I have seen the photograph in your newspaper that bears the caption “Elisenvaara is
growing and improving” [rastet i khorosheet—a widespread cliché of Soviet novoiaz;
A. I.]. I have some doubts about (the term) “improving.” I have lived in the settlement
for twenty-one years and nothing has changed in Elisenvaara or in its image during thisperiod. It is time for thinking seriously about improving conditions in the settlement. It
is necessary to arrange for the planting of trees and for other amenities’ (KZ, 23 January1969).

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Neither did the situation improve during Gorbachev’s perestroika. In the late1980, the paper published contributions from its readers under the title ‘What kind of
masters are we?’ One of the local residents wrote: ‘The clean parts of the town havebeen shrinking like shagreen over the last twenty years. Mud and chaos attract the looksof strollers’ (KZ, 29 May 1986). In response to these criticisms, the chairman of thetown executive committee admitted that the local authorities had finally given up on
their efforts to clean up Sortavala and suggested that the citizens do maintenance workon a voluntary basis (KZ, 13 May 1986). At the same time, the journalist A. Kotova noted that ‘talking does not make the town clean. A year ago, a group of activists prepared“Rules for Municipal Sanitation and the Provision of Services in Sortavala” (Pravila
sanitarnogo soderzhaniia i blagoustroistva g. Sortavala). In these Rules, the activists
specified duties for tenants, communal services, enterprises and organisations. But theRules ended up in the hands of indifferent employees of housing committees’ (KZ, 24
April 1986).
Today, more than two decades after the official ending of the Soviet system, theproblem is no less acute and public debates on this issue, now taking place in online
forums, are no less intense than forty years ago. This suggests that the contemporary
Russian model of local government owes a great deal of its inefficiency to its authoritarian predecessor. There is still no true local self-government, and municipalities neither have the skills nor the will to bring about changes.
Similar problems were observed for the provision of other municipal services. In
March 1968, a town official responsible for outdoor activities and sports noted in a report presented at one of the town council’s sessions that ‘we live in a town surroundedby water and forests; in fact, this is a Northern resort. But in summer time, we have nosuitable place for swimming. The town beach, recently created on the shores of Lake
Ladoga under the name of Solnechnaia is not convenient for the residents’ (f. R-2203,
op. 1, d. 50/1087, l. 61). Indeed, the ‘Sunny Beach’ was located at too great a distancefrom town and the water there was quite cold, because the site formed part of an openbay.
It can be argued that the weak attachment to a local identity was in part the result of official narratives that predominantly emphasised wider patriotic sentiments,
expressed as devotion to the socialist Motherland. The political elite never abandoned
their educational efforts to instil ‘love’ for the Soviet Union. An important part of these
efforts was the teaching of patriotic history at schools. In this context, local history
mostly meant regional history in the form of kraevedenie, a curriculum that combined
regional history and geography.42 In January 1969, young local amateur historians(kraevedy) from all schools in Sortavala thus participated in a conference, where theypresented their work on the region’s history and the material collected during field trips
in the North Ladoga area. Some students reported on their search (poiskovaia rabota)
for traces of the Second World War, others presented a so-called literary montage [a sort

42 Some authors have emphasised the close links between kraevedenie and identity-building(e.g. Johnson 2006: 3–5 and Ristolainen 2008: 34).

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of show usually based on poems by local authors; A. I.] called ‘We Love You, Karelia’(KZ, 4 February 1969).
The issue of Finnish topographical names (see also Section 6-3) was revived
in public debates during the perestroika period, with local historians and journalists
raising the question of the town’s street names. Vladimir Sudakov suggested renaming
streets that did not reflect local cultural and historical traditions and establishing protected historical neighbourhoods in Sortavala. Proposals were made to give back theSoviet Cosmonauts’ Street its former Finnish name of Vuorio, to rename Komsomolskaia Street after Nicholas Roerich, a former resident, and Suvorova Street after Maiju
Lassila, another former resident (KZ, 11 December 1986). The proposals found a wide
echo among the local residents. Many readers agreed that a Soviet street name such as
Komsomolskaia contradicted the architectural and historical traditions of the old town
centre. Others expressed regrets about the old wooden buildings that had been lost.
These biographical narratives depict Sortavala as ‘different and peculiar when compared to other cities’ (KZ, 18 December 1986). In the late Soviet period, local effortsof creating a sense of place thus explored previously almost never mentioned Finnish
cultural and historical subjects.
Officials from the local VOOPIK branch participated in the debate, too. N. Mineeva, the chief secretary, wrote about two local historical buildings conceived by
Finnish architects in the 1930s to house the former lyceum and a girls’ school, underlining the necessity to protect them:Architects’ and workers’ hands have created these architectural monuments. Thesebuildings, so to say, ‘are our testamentary legacy.’ And we should keep them in a goodcondition for the coming generations. This is a citizen’s duty for everyone of us. (KZ,
13 March 1986)

Plans for repairing old Finnish buildings were partly implemented in the 1990s.
But the neighbourhood of the Zaria cinema, chosen for protection as a cultural heritage,
continues to be in a sorry state. None of the other areas have benefitted from a protected
heritage status. Nor were streets ever renamed. Public debates on these issues in thesecond half of the 1980s therefore never produced any results. At the same time, theyshow that local citizens increasingly became interested in the period of independent
Finland and in the monuments created during those times. It can thus be assumed that
the Finnish past and Finnish culture played a certain role in the emergence of a local
sense of place.
7-4. Tourism in Soviet Times
Starting in the 1960s, leisure activities and tourism became a major aspect of local life. There was, for example, a boom of motorboats in the 1960s and early 1970s. A
growing number of citizens acquired boats for trips on Lake Ladoga, to go fishing, pickberries and mushrooms or simply spending their leisure time on and near the lake. In
1962, the local authorities decided to organise sightseeing tours by ship, motor launchand bus to islands and other sites of interest in the town’s neighbourhood (f. R-2203,
op. 1, d. 34/892, l. 35). Many of these trips were part of the ‘work with children’ or
young people, such as those organised by seventeen activists of the Housing Com-89

mittee No. 2’s club Youth (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 67/1260, l. 8 and 9). Such events were
not motivated by purely political and ideological reasons. As everyday practices, they
contributed to the creation of a local identity and a sense of place.
Although Sortavala was located in a closed border area, tourists came there fromeverywhere in the Soviet Union, but particularly from the metropolitan area of Leningrad. One of the main local attractions was—and still is—the archipelago of Valaam in
the northern part of Lake Ladoga, where the former Orthodox monastery of the same
name was located and which was administered by Sortavala’s town council. A state historical museum was founded in Soviet times.43 Since 1967, Sortavala could also boastof a tourist base, Sortaval’skaia, on the island of Riekkalansaari, which could cater for
186 guests and received up to 300 tourists a day. In 1980, Sortavala and its surroundings were visited by 11,000 tourists (Sudakov 1999: 119). Tourism in Sortavala was the
responsibility of the Karelia’s regional trade unions committee at Petrozavodsk. The
committee also organised package tours for tourists that included trips within North
Ladoga and guided tours of Sortavala, during which visitors were informed about
Sorta­vala’s history and cultural legacy.
Moreover, Sortavala was famous in the Soviet Union for its House of Composers, a tourist resort on the shore of Lake Ladoga’s Kirjavalahti inlet, which consisted of
a complex of buildings known in Finnish times as Jääskeläisen huvila [Jääskeläisen’ssummerhouse]. As similar recreational facilities owned by organisations and large establishments, it belonged to the Union of Soviet Composers. However, many representatives of other creative professions—artists, writers, poets etc.—spent their summer
holidays there: the ballerina Maia Plisetskaia visited the place together with her husband, the composer Rodion Shchedrin and Bella Akhmadulina composed a cycle ofpoems dedicated to Sortavala and North Ladoga during her stay. It was in the 1960s
that Alexander Naumovich Kolker, during his visit to the shores of the Kirjavalahti,
composed the music for the song ‘Karelia,’ which later became one of the biggest Soviet hits that is still well-known in contemporary Russia. The song, set to the words ofa poem by Kim Ryzhkov ‘Karelia will come in dreams,’ can be seen as an expressionof the Russian view of Karelia, which emphasises the beauty of a natural landscapeuntouched by civilisation.
There can be no doubt that Sortavala’s attractiveness to Soviet tourists, with its
own brand of cultural heritage and natural beauty, contributed to local pride and that
tourism played a significant part in the town’s identity.
7-5. Environmentalist Discourses
Concerns about the state of the natural environment often shape local spatial
identities. In early Soviet times, environmental issues were rather discussed in official
documents than in public debates and seemed not to play a crucial role in everyday
practices. One of the first official records on the subject goes back to March 1946.
The document raised concerns about the water quality of Lake Helmijarvi, the town’s
43 In the early post-Soviet years, all buildings of the monastery were returned to the Russian
Orthodox Church and the religious community was revived.

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main water supply since the Finnish period.44 The town executive committee passed a
resolution On the Protection of the Zone of the Town’s Water Supply which advocatedmeasures to protect the lake’s pure water against pollution (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 2/57,
l. 26). In later years, however, the local media increasingly reported public concerns
about environmental issues, a practice unheard of during the earlier decades of industrial modernisation. In 1960, the director of the Leskhoz, a local timber establishment,
wrote an article under the headline ‘To Protect Our Green Friend,’ in which he reported
numerous violations of forestry regulations by local enterprises, particular by Promkombinat, an industrial combine at Pitkäranta. But the regularly imposed fines did little
to change these nefarious practices (KZ, 21 January 1960). In February 1962, a local
meeting discussed the question of water purification in relation to the reservoirs on theoutskirts of the town. Officials responsible for the water supply decided that plans toimprove the municipal water supply and sewage system should include efforts to ameliorate the water quality of Lake Ladoga. At the same time, the discussion clarified that
expectations of this sort were unrealistic in practical terms. No technical documents
had been prepared for the project and it remained unclear when a local sewage collector
would be built. In fact, the sewage system would only be modernised in the 1990s, withhelp from Finnish experts and financial support from the European Union.
The year 1960 also saw the foundation of a local branch of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Nature (VOOP) at the state office tasked with organising public
services and amenities (kontora blagoustroistva). Planned activities included public
lectures and debates (KZ, 23 February 1960). Primary organisations of the All-RussianSociety for the Protection of Nature were subsequently established in several settlements of the district, such as in Värtsilä, where the inaugural meeting in 1965 announced plans to create a 3-km-wide green belt around the settlement and a programmeof planting green vegetation (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 55/1146, l. 92). Until March 1972,
the Sortavala branch had the status of an inter-district organisation before becoming asimple town branch. At the time, the society counted thirteen primary organisations andsix collectives with a total of 1200 individual members as well as thirty-eight voluntary
inspectors (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 64/1231, l. 53).
Unlicensed fishing was another issue. A local newspaper debate reported thewidespread practice of poaching and the ‘predatory destruction of fish reserves.’ Asa result, the town executive committee decided to establish a 5-km-wide ‘green belt’around Sortavala where fishing, including by amateurs, was not allowed (f. R-2203,
op. 1, d. 55/1146, l. 92), albeit with little effect. Other articles voiced concerns of local citizens about environmental damage, often revealing a soulful attitude towards
nature. Under the headline ‘The Islands Call for Help,’ a reader complained about the‘barbaric’ logging taking place on islands of Lake Ladoga, while others evoked similar
preoccupations (KZ, 8 February 1969).
In the 1960s, a clean natural environment thus started to become a major issue
in public debates on the local quality of life, with concerns increasing over time. In
44 The lake is situated on one of the rocky hills surrounding Sortavala and its waters are
replenished by natural precipitation.

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March 1978, delegates of the Tenth Conference organised by the Sortavala branch of
the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Nature published an ’Appeal to the residents of the town of Sortavala, the surrounding settlements (rabotchii poselok) and thesovkhozes’ in the local newspaper, which stated among other things:
We live in a nice region. But as a result of peoples’ economic activity, the irrationaluse of natural resources and water pollution, we are faced with irreversible damage
to nature. We appeal to the town’s residents to take care of the natural resources (KZ,
18 March 1978).

The newspaper also reported on the action of a small group called The Station ofYoung Naturalists, which was not part of the official All-Russian Society but had been
initiated by A. Antropenkova, a local activist, in 1976. Aimed at involving children
in nature protection, the Station was initially composed of seventeen hobby groups(kruzhki) from local schools, which by 1986 had risen to forty. One of its activities,
The Blue Patrol, designed to preserve the water quality of Lake Ladoga and otherlocal lakes and rivers, started in 1980 (KZ, 6 December 1986). The child volunteers
also cleaned up a small stream flowing through the town’s Vakkosalmi Park, turning it
in fact into a small river (KZ, 5 June 1986). This grassroots-level organisation showsthat environmental issues were increasingly a preoccupation of the civil society which
emerged during the perestroika years. In 1986, a reader of the local newspaper worryingly wrote about the Airanne Lake, close to the town’s major park (Vakkolahdenpuisto)and part of the eco-system of water reservoirs connected with Lake Ladoga, arguingthat the lake might be transformed into a marsh if the water level of Lake Ladoga wereto drop further (KZ, 6 December 1986).
In the late 1980s, environmental issues appeared on the national political agenda,
as electors’ mandates prepared during the 1989 campaign for the Congress of People’s
Deputies show. Typical for these is a statement by R. P. Litvinova, a secretary of the
primary party organisation at the local bakery combine:‘I believe that every resident of Sortavala is worried about the future of Lake
Ladoga. I would like the candidates to elaborate already now, during this phase of theelection campaign, their environmental programme. They should be aiming at fighting
against the pollution of Lake Ladoga’ (KZ, 9 February 1989).
The spatial imagery of local identity-building was created through everyday practices and discourses of place-making which referred to local peculiarities of the naturaland human-made environment. Official documents and media publications suggest thatit played a key role in the emergence of a local territorial identity. During the early
decades of post-war Sortavala, this process was to a great extent shaped by a Soviet
patriotic discourse that subordinated ideas of a ‘small homeland’ (malaia rodina) tothe politically and ideologically motivated goal of protecting the Soviet Union as the
big Motherland. Later years attest to the growing role of a slowly emerging local civilsociety, particularly during the perestroika years.
The discourses studied have shown how the Soviet migrants gradually adapted
to the formerly Finnish urban and rural space. Numerous documents from the 1960s
and 1970s offer evidence of sentiments of unfamiliarity and alienation. Indirect manifestations of the newcomers’ placelessness can be found in the biographical fragments

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contained in articles and letters published by the local newspaper. These fragments also
inform about the motives and mechanisms at work in the transformations that the local
urban and rural landscapes underwent during the Soviet period.
It has been argued that the Finnish architectural legacy of Sortavala occupieda central role in local identity-building. The continuing struggle of the local authorities and local citizens to halt the decay of the historical town centre and to promote a
cleaner and more ordered urban environment can partly be explained by the admiration
many residents had for this legacy, even though repeatedly proclaimed intentions topreserve local monuments had few practical consequences. Tourism may have had aneven greater impact on local patriotism. Outdoor activities on Lake Ladoga and in the
nearby countryside along with sightseeing trips, whether organised by institutional actors or not, contributed to the appropriation of the cultural and natural landscape by theSoviet newcomers. The area’s great attractiveness for tourists living outside the region
reinforced local pride.

8. Concluding Remarks
Discursive representations of Sortavala in official documents and media publications allow for a better understanding of how Sortavala’s location on the border has influenced the ways in which the local community has positioned itself. Throughout mostof the Soviet period, official discourses attest of the pervasiveness of state socialism inall spheres of life, including forms of local identity, although reports on everyday practices and individual biographies permit glimpses of local identity-building that were
not part of the official ideology.
The narratives examined in this book demonstrate how a diverse community of
migrants has produced locality and created a sense of place. Initial feelings of unfamiliarity and alienation gave way to a certain local patriotism, as Sortavala slowly changed
from a ceded Finnish town into a recognisable Soviet place. Similarly, the rural areas
surrounding Sortavala underwent dramatic changes when the traditional Finnish habitat was replaced by settlement forms and agricultural practices typical of Russian traditions and Soviet collectivisation.
Official local discourses reproduced national ones that emphasised the construction of a new type of human being: Soviet man. This had clear repercussions on framing
Sortavala’s identity as a Soviet town. The chapter has illustrated the multiple methods
and forms of communist socialisation through indoctrination of core socialist values.
While some elements of the local Finno-Karelian tradition were incorporated into thenarrative of Karelia’s and, more particularly, Sortavala’s Sovietness, this recognition
implied clear limits as to which elements of the social, economic, cultural and architectural history of the town were acceptable. Overall, Soviet mass rituals, such as publiccelebrations with parades and demonstrations, sporting and other collective events,
were predominant, since they were seen as manifestations of a united Soviet people andof its approval of party policies defined by the political elite.
Of particular importance for Sortavala’s borderland identity were the discourses and practices linked to the defence of the socialist Motherland. Patriotic education

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