Folk history of Sortavala in local residents' stories

Abstract

The war divided the history of Sortavala into two parts: the Finnish and the Soviet. After the departure of the Finnish population in the 1940s, the part of the memory that used to connect the place to its inhabitants in all previous years was interrupted. The newcomers received a legacy of a land with a history that they could “read” only from the surviving artifacts, transferred material heritage, for which there had not even always been a name. Only half a century later these people are getting the opportunity to deepen their knowledge and enrich the “Finnish memory” of the place thanks to the former owners and their descendants, who wished to return to their hastily abandoned houses; along with that comes an understanding and awareness of the city's European past. Simultaneously with these processes, the formation of the place's own Soviet history has been taking place since the 1940s - biographical memory preserved in the personal and family histories of the first settlers. It also becomes involved in creating images of the city that are preserved today in the narratives of the older generation. The paper describes the key motives of the historical memory of Sortavala, recorded during a week-long expedition to the city in October 2020 under the project “The People's History of Russia: Crossroads of Local Civilizations”.