Editorial: Crises and Recoveries

Abstract

the current year, 2018, has marked the 100th anniversary of the Armistice of the First World War. In Finland, we have commemorated the Finnish Civil War, which started in January 1918 and ended in May 1918. The multiplicity of events commemorating the past events as well as the flow of new studies and books studying and discussing the Civil War and Finland’s history during, after and before the years 1917 and 1918 show the need to remember and re-examine the past as well the importance of the possibility to reconstruct it with new sources and perspectives. The historical narrative of the history of Finland often focuses on the Second World War and the crisis experienced during and because of it. Also this volume of Ethnologia Fennica, under the theme “Crisis and Recoveries”, discusses the Second World War and the immediate post-war years. The three articles published under the theme, however, approach the war and crisis from new perspectives: those of personal narratives and various groups of civil society such as children who have long been excluded from standard historical memory. They also concentrate on the recovery side of crisis: they ask how individual persons and communities have recovered from the crises caused by or related to the war, and how the crisis are commemorated and reinterpreted. Additionally, the articles pay attention to the experiences of the younger generations who have no personal memories of the events but whose lives have been affected by the war and especially by the silences and tension surrounding it. In her article, Kirsi Laurén studies personal recollections and narratives of the Soviet partisan attacks in the Finnish borderlands during the war. In the post-war period, the actions of Soviet partisans in eastern Finnish villages were seen as a politically sensitive topic, and it was deemed inappropriate to speak publicly about what had occurred. Laurén’s research material consists of narratives that were told today, over 70 years after the war, by civilians who have Editorial: Crises and Recoveries Arja Turunen