KUIVOZOVSKY (TOKSOVSKY) FINNISH NATIONAL DISTRICT

Abstract

The history of the Ingrian Finns in the Soviet Union has been very dramatic and difficult. Today historiography has a lot of research about violence against the Finnish minority since the second half of the 1930s. But there is no paper which describes the earlier years of their life: from 1920s to the first half of 1930s. Up to this point, historiography did not describe the actions of the Bolsheviks in relation to the Ingrian Finns, except for repression. Many studies focus on individuals and their families who have been resettled in other parts of the Union. This work is devoted to the Finnish national district with the center in the village of Kuivozi, and later in the village of Toksovo, which were one of the historical centers of residence of the Ingrian Finns. The aim of the study is to explore how the national policy of the Soviet Union was implemented on the example of the Finnish minority with the help of materials from the Toksovsky District Council. This article mainly uses documents left by the Bolshevik Party and local authorities. The analysis of new sources sheds light on previously unknown information about the relationship of the Bolshevik authorities with the local population. The paper shows how the Soviet Union tried to organize the life of ethnic Finns in a region so close to Leningrad - a large, strategic center of the country. The situation was also complicated by the proximity of the border and the danger of collaboration on the part of the Finns, because on the other side of the Sestra River lived the same people to whom the Ingrian Finns were close in language and culture.