Margaret Rossiter Column: Walking on the Russian border

It was a pleasant road through a dense forest of mixed plantations of broadleaf and pine trees. It was a little wider, and somewhat better maintained, than our average Irish boreen. It was a pleasant place for a casual walk on a warm July day. But this was no ordinary road. The forest on the eastern boundary was in Russian territory while that on the western boundary was in Finnish territory. The summit of a low ridge on the eastern boundary was dominated by a watchtower, and warning notices, in Russian and Finnish, translated by our friends, told us that entry was forbidden.
The sun shone. The birds sang. Lovely wildflowers bloomed on the grass margins. This was a quiet, peaceful place in Karelia, the most southerly province of Finland, but in 1939, it was the scene of bloodshed and death, which Stalin’s Russia sought to annex in the Winter War of 1939-40, in the same way as Putin’s Russia is now seeking to annex Ukraine. Annexation - adding-to, extending, might, in our concept of language, suggest a mutual agreement, a negotiated deal. The reality in Hitler/Stalin/Putin-speak is very different.

Margaret Rossiter's Column: Walking the walls - a youthful impression that lasted a lifetime

Finland and Ireland share remarkable similarities in our histories. For centuries, the Finns were successively under the domination of the Swedes or the Russians. They were a proud Nordic people, with their own folklore, literature, music, language, identity. They aspired to their own independent governance, to making their own rules and regulations, creating their own institutions, making their own decisions and mistakes.
With the growth of constitutional nationalism they declared their independence as The Republic of Finland in 1918, approximately at the same time as Ireland was within the final phase of achieving our own independence. And then, they did that which we were later to do, they indulged in a very bitter civil war, killing about 36,000 of their people. By 1939, Finland had, however, established itself as a hard-working, democratic, well-functioning State. Like Ireland in those early decades of new statehood, there were many problems in search of solutions. It was not the best of times. The world economy was still depressed. The Finns, like the Irish, had a well-established tradition of emigration. To stem this, industries had to be established, natural resources exploited, educational and health services set up.
The Finns were very busy working hard, minding their own business. They had no ambition for the acquisition of any extra territory. And then, in 1939, the Russians invaded.

The objective of the invasion was the “annexation” of the province of Karelia for the alleged protection of the Soviet Union and particularly for the defence of Leningrad. There followed the Winter War, in which the Finns bravely defended their country. A retired former President and Army General, Carl Gustav Mannerheim, led the defence. Over 240,000 Finnish men, women and children, worked night and day to construct a series of tunnels to augment the geographic barriers of forest and lakes. These still remain, and are a proud part of the history of the struggle, in the same way as we recall the significance of Dublin’s GPO in 1916.
The “Mannerheim Line” was seen at the time as a classic in military strategy, and the Finns fought bravely and very effectively against numerically superior forces. Europe looked on with admiration; the media of the time carried headlines praising “The Plucky Little Finns,” but there was little in practical help. In early 1940, they engaged in talks with Soviet Russia, and while they were successful in preserving the integrity of much of Karelia, they had to cede a long section of their border to the Russians, one section of which we had walked by on that sunny July day.
Finland, while never forgetting that lost territory, went back to working hard, building a sound economy, peaceful and democratic. Like Ireland, it is now a member of the European Community, giving a very good standard of living to its people, and having one of the best standards of medical care and education in the world (for which they pay in high taxation).
Our Finnish friend, Paivi, and her husband, Erkki, who took us on that border walk, had both lost ancestors - great uncles and cousins in the Winter War of 1939/40. They became part of family history recalled by their parents.It was time to leave the small road on that warm and memorable July day. We retraced our footsteps to the access road which would take us to the village and coffee. Walking downhill and before we reached the valley, we paused to look again at the countryside which we had traversed. The watchtower, with its apparently hostile eyes, stood tall in the forest, taller than the tallest trees. “Ah! Russo!” Paivi said in a low voice. And then we walked on in silence.

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