@DrakonFin :
So, after going over your commentary, I decided to have a look and create what could be called a commentary on your commentary. Unfortunately, because I copy-pasted your post onto my word-processing software, I didn't quite get the quotation system working right, so bear with me on this.
"Ok, here goes: while the interwar developments of the official language policies in the Karelian ASSR in your write-up seem plausible enough, the main thing about your scenario I am sceptical about is the postwar prevalence of Karelian as an official language in this Finno-Karelian SSR, and the extent to which the Finns would embrace a new, composite Karelian identity. Simply put, I think that the numbers of the Karelian population, actual Soviet Karelians and potential "New Karelians" in Finland (as in the 1920 borders) do not support such domination developing for the Karelian language and identity in the postwar years."
First off, thank you for you compliments on my take on interwar developments on language policy. In reality, all I did was basically put a veneer on events that actually happened OTL. The thing with the Tver Karelian literary language is largely OTL, for example; all I basically was change a few details to match TTL. Also, the Karelian-Finnish macaronic language used as a solution in TTL was actually a proposed solution during the 1930s IOTL; the main difference between OTL and TTL here is orthographic - although if one wanted to, the 1920s Cyrillic orthography for Karelian ITTL could also take on a different form, including either partially replicating the existing Russian transliteration of Finnish (which surprisingly tries to be close to both Finnish phonetics
and the orthography - all that would be needed to do in that case would be to use more letters to represent both affricates, lacking in Standard Finnish, and voiced consonants), for example. You’d probably get more out of it than me because the paper in the following link is in Finnish, but several years back there was a licentiate thesis on the development of the Karelian literary language that could serve as a useful counterpoint with TTL.
http://www.oocities.org/athens/4280/lisuri.html
(For English-speakers, here’s a summary of the content:
http://www.oocities.org/athens/4280/eng_doklad.html )
As for your skepticism on the prevalence of Karelian and the composite identity: you have every right to be so. The main thing I wanted to include in such a scenario is contained within its Soviet-era name OTL. Due to the inclusion of “Karelian” in the title, to me I took the title literally and assumed that the main way to pull off retaining such a title ITTL would be to find a way to find a better solution for the survival of the Karelian language, including standardizing it as early as possible. Now, if it was largely restricting oneself to just the Karelian ASSR, then it wouldn’t be a problem. Like the Turkic languages, the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages is basically one giant dialect chain - while the extremes may find it hard to comprehend each other, within the chain itself are a great amount of varieties distinguished by various isoglosses which represent significant changes. Thus it makes it hard to separate out languages within the dialect chain. Yet the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s managed such a feat both with the Turkic languages in Central Asia as well as with Tajik, which by any objective measure is much more similar to Classical Persian (and thus more similar to the standard Persian of Afghanistan), by treating various isoglosses coming together as representing different languages, and due to the state of the korenizacija policy - where language was one part of defining nationality - this meant that this represented different ethnicities. Had someone else other than Stalin headed the Narcomnats, the korenizacija policy would have been much different, and not only Central Asia but also Karelia too would be different on this score. The main problem with linguistics in general - and I can accept my share of the blame here - is that in order to describe a variety, one tends towards finding general absolutes, a basis that one can use for comparison with actual spoken usage. The effect is much worse when there’s already a standardized written language, because as humans we tend to confuse languages in general with written languages, while linguistics defends the notion of focusing on oral languages first - all written language is basically is an attempt to capture how a language was spoken at a particular point in time, and thus tends to be conservative and not always congruent with how the spoken language actually works. So perhaps in this case I all too eagerly assumed that, post-WWII, people would follow along when considering the realities of the Soviet Union it may or may not all be likely. The problem comes when to complicate things further you throw in the mixture of Gylling and his circle attempting to create a “Red” Greater Finland, compounded by the creation IOTL of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, presumably to incorporate Finland into the USSR. Had the Karelo-Finnish SSR been more “successful” in incorporating Finland IOTL, I’d think there would be a tension between the Karelians and the dominant Finns, and for many of the same reasons outlined during the inter-war period, and it’s for that precise reason that I had the Soviet authorities be as they were ITTL post-War. Stalin is the main key for this bit, and Stalin has a tendency to be paranoid. Stalin also has a tendency to redraw boundaries almost at random and to change the ethnic composition of various territories, as well as the definition of ethnicities themselves. Hence the incorporation of what previously used to be separate nationalities pre-WWII into a single nationality post-WWII, which I would be honest to say that there would be a lot of complaints (privately) among the formerly separate nationalities now forced to become Karelians. In reality, I know that changing nationality in this case would seem rather stupid, and that not all Finns would embrace a changed national identity. Therefore, as I see it, the only way to keep not just continuity with the Karelian ASSR but also to justify keeping “Karelian” in the title was to accept a contradiction. The Soviet authorities ITTL accept the contradiction by artificially inflating the number of people who qualify as “Karelian”; I’m sure there are other reactions that could be done, but the main thrust as I see it is to give the Karelian language a better chance of survival and an early standardization (in a way that could be acceptable to all Karelian speakers) to accommodate those who believe that only a written language qualifies as being an actual language. Accept that and it could peacefully co-exist with Finnish. Attempting to change the facts on the ground, as I outlined (in probably a very cynical fashion), and things would become problematic - especially when one is trying to impose on others what was once imposed on them.
"I did a quick comparison of populations, and even if we'd argue that "Finland proper" would suffer a 20% population loss during 1940-45, through deaths, population transfers and emigration, it is hard to see actual Karelians from the Soviet areas added to the Finno-Karelian SSR to make up more than 10% of the total population of the SSR by the late 1940s, even if we add transfers of smaller Finnic groups from other parts of the USSR. To account for potential New Karelians, we could add the Finnish Karelian population of c. 500 000 at best, in which case the most optimistic proportion of Karelians (as perceived in the program you are describing) of the entire Finnic population of the SSR would at best reach c. 25%."
That sounds very interesting.
"In your account of the "Karelianization" of (Eastern) Finland, I think that the Finnish people are rather too easily giving up their Finnish national identity to embrace this new, essentially
constructed identity of being Karelian. I'd personally expect that many people also in Eastern Finland, probably the majority, would see the new Karelian identity as being hoisted on the people as a hostile Soviet(/Russian) imposition. While among the people who do see themselves as (Finnish) Karelians accepting the new identity would be easier (even if they would also balk at having to use Cyrillic all of a sudden), when we get to the Savonians, a separate Eastern Finnish group with a particular and distinct local/tribal identity as well as a Finnish national identity, the effort of repackaging them as Karelians would meet some pretty deep opposition. The key here, I think, would be the fact that this imposition of "Karelianization" would be seen as part and parcel of Soviet policies against the Finnish people, together with deportations, the decimation of the traditional intelligentsia, clergy, bureaucracy and the upper bourgeoisie, and thus not seen in the context of giving the people more rights but in terms of systematic repression. The deep-seated resentment towards joining Finland into the USSR among the majority population of the SSR, like in Estonia, would then provide a powerful antidote for trying to push policies like this in both structural and grassroot terms . . . Your scenario seems to assume Finns throwing away their national and cultural identities very easily for material and administrative gains, and this widespread cynical opportunism and pragmatism seems to me uncharacteristic for Finns who are champions in stubbornly holding on to their views and grudges, and a deep-seated ability to resist those who seek to lord over them, especially if those people are seen as unworthy and unlawful in their activities."
I apologize if it seems like that. How you describe the Savonians and their reaction to all of a sudden being described as Karelian is how I’d imagine most non-Karelians would react. Proud regional/ethnic identity combined with some form of resentment - the Izhorians, for example, who I doubt would see themselves as being as Karelian as the Ingrian Finns or genuine Karelians. At the same time, even among genuine Karelians, I would assume in private that they would be concerned by this dilution of their numbers via artificial inflation. OTOH, those who still have memories of the USSR pre-WWII (which would almost all of them living outside the 1920 boundaries of Finland) know that if they air those views in public that terrible things would happen to them, so for the most part they would bottle it up. The primary way I’d see this Karelianization work is if one incorporates their regional identity into an artificial imposition. Accepting Karelian nationality (and thus less of a tendency towards discrimination) does not have to mean giving up one’s Finnish-ness and/or one’s regional identity - one sublimates them both, if only as a survival mechanism. The only way I’d see that work, though, would be once Stalin is dead and thus it becomes more acceptable to state that there’s more going on than what meets the eye. Once Stalin is out of the way, the forced Karelianization can stop, and thus becomes more informal, more voluntary. Of course, that informatlity would also exist beneath the surface as well, though more diffuse and affecting both Finns and Karelians alike - and even then I don’t see the New Karelians arising until after Stalin is dead. As I see it, under Stalin the separation of pre-WWII Finns into Karelians (broadly defined) and Finns would be more well-defined; the New Karelians would arise under Khruschiöv to muddy the waters as informal, voluntary Karelianization as one response to adapting to Soviet rule and would largely be a Western/Southwestern Finland phenomenon. (The reason they would be “New” would be because of changed circumstances and perceived differences of treatment, even though the reality was anything but.) Any forced Karelianization of Western Finnish dialect speakers would always hit opposition, so instead the Sovietization of the Finnish people would be different depending on geography. Åland would be a case in point in how Sovietization in Finland would differ on the basis of geography, and for that we can actually use Kaliningrad as a better model where not only was the area emptied of its original population, but placenames and geographic features were changed to Russian names and a new population was forced in. (For example, the capital of Åland would be changed from its Tsarist-era name to a more appropriate name for the Soviet period - as one possible example, it could be initially renamed Stalingrad [both for the historic battle and for the leader himself] until de-Stalinization goes into full swing, where it gets renamed Botingrad.) Now, of course, Åland (or could that be something else during the Soviet era, i.e. the Kalashnikov Islands?) is different from other areas of Finland in how that would go because in order to achieve that objective and secure a potentially sensitive trading route along the Soviet border ITTL would be accompanied by what we would now call ethnic cleansing or, at its worst, genocide. That would not be typical for the rest of Finland, for obvious reasons.
So I’d see Karelianization in a different light. Under Stalin, official Karelianization would be largely confined to Eastern Finland, within the 1920 boundaries, as part of what I had written in the scenario. Western Finland would be different (after all, this is the designated area of the Finnish people) because here you’d have Karelians - presumably genuine, because that’s the main way I can see the whole thing work - migrating westwards for better opportunities in Helsinki, Turku, etc. than what they knew back in the territory of the old ASSR. Having established themselves in a new environment, only to see déjà vu all over again, they try to make the best of the situation and try to bridge the gap between themselves and their new neighbors (which I know sounds contradictory, but embracing contradiction, AFAICT, is part and parcel of Soviet life.) It is from that, and especially with the relaxation under Khruschiöv, that informal Karelianization develops, both as a general phenomenon (explained further below) of partial accommodation to the Soviet system via Karelian intermediaries and Karelian rootedness in Finland via Finnish intermediaries, and as the formation of the New Karelians as a means of bridging the gap between the Finnish and Karelian nationalities. That is a pragmatic approach to Karelianization which could be made even easier among Finns if one just assumes “Karelian” as just another more poetic way to refer to Finnish people (which I think would be a partial internal justification for the New Karelians). In that case, even “Finnish” and “Finn” outside of a separate nationality context could also function as a perfectly acceptable regional identity as well, at least for those living in Southwest Finland. (I know it’s a partial undermining of what I wrote in the scenario, but that was part of my understanding for how the artificially-expanded Karelian identity could be constructed.) I know it would be difficult to explain, but to take one example I’ll focus on French-Canadians in general (not getting into the various regional differences and all that). Now, there would be people among French-Canadians who were historically subjected to Anglicization and many do take on Anglicization and some of a generic English-Canadian identity, but just because that is so does not mean that they are any less French-Canadian. One can express one’s own French-Canadian identity, however one defines it, even in English - in which case the French language (and in particular the French language as spoken by French-Canadians) takes on an important symbolic role. It’s that type of flexibility in terms of nationality that one needs as a basic mechanism of survival in the Soviet era. Of course there would be some anguish over whether to retain one Finnish nationality or to advance further to “middle class” status by obtaining Karelian nationality, but regardless of one’s choices the basic thing is how one can make the Soviet system work. Or to put it another way, to use a phrase common in the interwar period in the US (and apologies in advance if it sounds insensitive; such were the attitudes of the time) one could “be a Jew but not Jewish”. In this case, one could still be a Finn (and/or a Savonian, or a Tavastian, or what not) in terms of national and cultural identity as one would see it under normal circumstances, but not Finnish in terms of the circumstances of the Soviet period where nationality could be used as a tool of discrimination.
At the same time, just like how all people are not monolithic, I would also assume that there would be genuine Karelians who in their own way would bend over backwards to help in order to get Finns - with both Finnish and the expanded Karelian nationalities - used to living under a completely different set of rules as a form of quiet rebellion against the system. Therefore, increasing the plausibility of a Soviet Finland would have to recognize that there are many different shades of gray within the absolutes that seem tangible on the surface, at first glance. On one hand, it would seem that the Karelians - both New and genuine - are collaborators; OTOH you’d have cases where under the surface such stuff is undermined by means of mutual assistance outside of the officially prescribed channels. Not necessarily assuming that the genuine Karelians end up becoming like the popular stereotype of Canadians, but that the reality of the Soviet period is that regardless of what one says in public the real glue is mutual cooperation, everything else be damned, and that what one says in public should not be taken too seriously and thus has to decode what’s going on by reading between the lines. This would go beyond using any one sort of template, whether it be Estonian, or Moldovan, or what have you. One could see it as “uncharacteristic” for Finns who would accuse social climbers as traitors, and likewise for genuine Karelians who in the Stalinist period were propagandized as being more Russian than the Russians despite their separate language; I see it, from what I can tell, as the only way one could survive living in such an authoritarian system at all costs. And it’s not just true of the Soviet period - much of my reading on this from non-Soviet examples, such as Latin America, Greece, and the dictatorships of Franco and Salazar indicate that such mechanisms were the primary way for anyone of some means to get by. Not necessarily by social climbing, but by using whatever opportunities were available, even if they were less savory than what one was used to, and taking advantage of them. In the case of the Karelians, ITTL they would have had to deal with the Soviet system for a lot longer than the Finns in Finland (not to mention, under the Russian Empire, being outside of the Grand Duchy and having to negotiate with the Russians on their own), and thus can put that knowledge to work. They would also know that there’s a right way to working with the system and there’s a wrong way to work with the system - and what Gylling and his circle did was the wrong way. Now, some (particularly among the intelligentsia) could take that, as I wrote it, and spin it into a triumphalist narrative. But ordinary people are different from the intelligentsia and don’t necessarily have to believe what the intelligentsia tell them - in that case, they’d take Gylling and his circle in a different light, thinking that the latter were too naïve in their thinking. It’s
those Karelians, who I would think would be more of the majority among the genuine ones, who would leave more of a lasting impression; IOTL, these were the same Karelians who were split between those who evacuated to Finland at the end of the Continuation War and those who stayed behind. These would be the same Karelians who ITTL would introduce the Finnish people to how the Soviet system actually works and can thus serve as intermediaries (and even potentially doing the reverse and changing their nationality on their internal passport to Finnish). Put in that light, a Finn changing his/her nationality to a Karelian one means something different, and Karelianization in that case would be much more widespread even among those who retain Finnish nationality, even if one does not actually learn to speak the Karelian language. Karelianization in this general sense, more informal and private than the formal Karelianization that would be very Stalinist in orientation, would mean more than taking OTL Finland during the Cold War era and adding on a coat of red paint, adulations to Karl Marx and Vladimir Ulianov, and a Potemkin village-esque constructed national identity. Karelianization here among ordinary people, much like the earlier movement among the intelligentsia in the 19th century towards seeing Karelian culture as a purer uncontaminated form of Finnish culture, would be taking on a certain modality and mentality of looking at the world, as experienced by the Karelians themselves (including their collective sense of “he’s gone a gun to my head”), adapting it to one’s circumstances, and then responding accordingly, and the responses will be as diverse as the people themselves. In that sense, even those who decide to resist the system are themselves its collaborators, of a sort, through benefitting from a thing that one cannot get through other means and is extremely difficult to express in words, even in English.
It’s that sense of learning from what came before them which would, IMO, make Soviet Finland different from Estonia. Estonia never had anything like the Karelian ASSR ITTL for Soviet Finland; therefore when the Soviet Union moved into Estonian territory, called by its inhabitants as an occupation and by the Kremlin as a liberation of a union republic who voluntarily joined, it felt more sudden. It was indeed an occupation that was accentuated by a cultural gap which even the pre-WWII Estonian Communists could not bridge. Even the Estonian intelligentsia was not of much help since they were more concerned about themselves then they were of their own country. It was because of those stark differences, combined with a more direct Nazi occupation than what I would think Finland would have ITTL, which allowed the Forest Brothers to thrive in the first place, and I can’t blame Estonians for acting as they did. The situation in Finland differs in that even if one strips away Gylling and his circle’s attempt to build a “Red” Greater Finland on Karelian territory and have the Karelian ASSR develop more organically in a manner similar to other ASSRs within the RSFSR, the Karelian ASSR at both its best and its worst would be the contemporary historical precedent, as experienced by the people who lived through it. There’s more of a sense of continuity with the past with the inclusion of the Karelian people than there was with Estonia, which was more of a rupture and a disruption, even with the promotion to SSR status and thus the push in the 1950s to create distinctive national symbols to reflect this change. In that sense, even the Finns of Finland are as much victims of the Great Terror of the 1930s as are the Karelians who actually had to live through it, particularly with the push to replicate that same system in Finland itself. Having people around who saw the system in action firsthand and thus can bend the rules to make things work would definitely be invaluable, despite any official ideology. In that sense, the constructed Karelian national identity moves out of its artificiality and its Potemkin village-ness, with all its assorted connotations, and becomes something more authentic as a lived experience of fully understanding the Soviet world stripped out of all ideology and perceived socioeconomic status. The Finnish national identity during the Soviet period thus benefits from this partial Karelianization as being a hybridized sense of understanding the Soviet world with its own sense of flexibility. Just like how French-Canadian ultramontane nationalists came to accept the emigrants to New England as a potential good thing as an extension of the messianic mission the nationalists self-daubed on all French-Canadians (after a good deal of lamenting over the breakup of the French-Canadian nation via emigration), so too could the definition of the Finnish national identity under the difficult circumstances of living in the Soviet Union.
"Now, this is just my personal two cents on the matter. It might be that my POV as a Finn might give me a different understanding of the matter of linguistic and national/tribal identities in Finland than what you have. It is not necessarily a better one, of course. I do agree with the general point that identities are essentially changeable and not set in stone. In the case of the annexation of Finland by the USSR I tend to look at the Baltic examples, though, and see in them the significance of the popular opposition to a unjust foreign takeover, based on a generally well-supported, coherent national identity, as an inoculation (as it were) against the foreign-sponsored imposition of a new national identity that is seen as hostile and/or artificial. It would be, IMO, a different thing for the general success a potential Karelianization of Finland if it was done in different circumstances, under a positive, widely accepted (and "organic", or seen as such) process of national awakening or "renaissance"."
I agree, even if our POV is different. And I hope my commentary on your commentary helps in some way of clarification. As well as having it help out anyone else who wants to tackle on a similar scenario and thus making it more plausible.