Russian

The Letter of Vladimir Kinert to his Grandchildren, 1952

Dear Jorma, Bosse, Christer and K°,

Thank you for the letters. If your grandmother liked writing letters same as she likes doing chores in the house, or inventing some interesting and funny things, she would of course write a lot, but even in her youth, when she was a young and pretty girl, her letters were more like telegrams – very short and nothing in excess of what is strictly needed. Unlike hers, my letters are probably too long. In my mind, I have images, light, and smells, living there for many, many years, and gradually fading with time, as old photos. As for the present, it is just sliding by without leaving traces, and only later, when it itself becomes a past, I can remember it.

Therefore I will tell you about the past. For you, children of the new era, my story will sometimes seem incredible. And so, I, your grandfather, was born in Lahta. Years ago this was a Finnish settlement, and then a big estate of my godfather, of Swedish descent, Count Vladimir Alexandrovich Stenbock – Fermor (you see, an altogether Swedish name), who served in the Life Guard Hussar Regiment. My grandfather, i.e. your great-grandfather, was a manager of this estate. It was situated on a sea shore on the Northern coast of the Gulf of Finland in 10 km from Petersburg, the capital of then great Russia. My father, and your great-grandfather, was also born there, and while he was studying in Petersburg, he spent the entire summer and part of the winter at home, in Lahta. This was a big family, 4 sisters and 3 brothers, and they lived freely, enjoying all the benefits of the country life. They had their own horses, their own rifles and dogs. The woods around were so big that you could walk for days without meeting anyone. In winters one could sometimes see wolves that disappeared with the building of the Finnish railway.

Soon after my birth, the great-grandfather had to go work in the city (he, too, after his father’s death managed this estate). Horses were sold, and jagdtaschenen and other hunting equipment – high boots, saddles and harnesses – were all packed and slept until their time, because the great-grandfather loved freedom and land, and he decided, as soon as he succeeds in life, to buy a piece of land, to build a house, and let his children who only knew city life then, as if they lived in a densely populated part of Stockholm, to taste real life. And finally, in 1899 the great-grandfather bought in the Vyborg guberniya, in 80 km to the North from Petersburg, on a shore of a big lake about 20 hectares of land – fields, and woods. And in 1900 the house was ready, and we went there.

And so, 55 years ago we – my sister Valya and I (the great-grandfather had only two children) on a nice summer day came home. It felt strange after the city to travel in one’s own carriage with one’s own horse driven by one’s own employee who waited for us at the Perkyarvi railway station. The air was wonderful, after the big city, it was clean, and it smelled birch trees smoke from our locomotive. We drove for a long time, sometimes through the pine woods, sometimes by the lake, and finally we came home. We entered a yard with a big white birch tree in the middle, and there were three more such trees near the bathhouse, the stables and the store rooms. We were given some milk from under our cow, and real country freshly baked bread, and I ran to the shore of the lake, our lake. From the yard where the great-grandmother’s little house and the porter’s lodge stood at the time, one had to go down about 50 meters to the field which then steeply went down to the lake. On the very shore there grew a big iron alder tree, on the rock a very big and thick pine tree, there were fir trees, wild ashes, bird cherry trees and birches. In some places there was no sand on the shore, and rocks came close to the lake. What stroke me was that the field, covered with flowers, lilac and blue and yellow blue cowwheats, was all ours. I went down the slope to the lake. There was a little wind, and waves quietly lapped on the beach. The water was quite transparent, such that the sand on the bottom was clearly seen, as if combed by wavy stripes. One could enter the water, or go fishing – everything was allowed, everything was our own.

And then, after I went up back through the field and still higher through a good pine forest, I came to the almost completed house, “the big house” as it was later called. There was a wall around, 1.5 m high, and up to 3-4 m thick, made of chips, pieces of boards, and other wooden bits and pieces left after the construction. The new sharp hexagonal tower roof covered with galvanized iron was shining brightly. I entered the house, with chips, splinters and boards scattered everywhere. In some rooms there was no floor yet, the carpenters whitened the window frames, and the stove setters were firing the stove with chips. There was a wonderful smell of fresh wood. But the first weeks we all, i.e. my mother, my grandmother and my sister, and also my father when he came there from Petersburg on Saturdays, used the 2 rooms in the great grandmother’s house in the yard, where we entered immediately upon our arrival there.

I recall two of the first occurrences of these first two weeks there. Once when we woke up on a usual beautiful sunny morning we smelled an unusual, very peculiar smell of smoke. Outside the window everything was in white smoke. It turned out that the woods were on fire, at a distance of 300-400 meters from us, on the border between us and our neighbor, the old lady Maryushka. Our employee Alexei, the Finnish neighbors, women and children all ran there. Having seized a big axe and a spade, I ran there, too. It was the first time in my life that I saw the woods on fire, the fire creeping along the ground, the moss, fir needles, dead wood, the cowberry bushes burning, everything. I understood that one should dig ditches, so that the fire cannot pass. But nothing came out of it. In the woods where the earth is firm, with stones, and more important, roots, an 11- year old boy cannot dig a ditch, especially when he is scared. Then, when I saw that there is no water, and I cannot throw the earth on the fire, I ran to get help. I remembered that on our way here we passed a big village called Ilola in about 6 km from our place, on the same lake shore. And I started running. It was not easy for me, a city boy, to run along a road which was sometimes sandy. And nevertheless I reached the village, I saw two or three villagers talking between themselves and I asked them for help. One of them spoke Russian, and he promised to come if needed. I slowly went back home. There was no smoke any longer. Our neighbors have extinguished the fire using an old Finnish method of waving wet fresh birch branches.

The second incident was our visit with my sister to Paltalle, a village located in 3 ? km from us on the Petersburg-Vyborg highway. There was a shop there, where we bought everything from butter, sugar, kerosene, and leather to caramels and beautiful Finnish small canvases (holstinki).

Our employee Alexey went to buy different household appliances, bolts, window bolts, nails, etc. for the construction of the big house. He went in the work cart driven by our horse Svetlyak (Firefly). I and Valya came with him, too. The road was very rocky, and where there were fewer stones, tall pine trees stretched their mighty roots so the cart was bumping along, but we rode carefully. On the way back the horse went too fast, all our purchases started flying and clattering over the cart from one end to another, and the horse, knowing the house was close and fearing the noise, went even faster and bolted. When it came upon a rock, the cart bounced, Alexey flew out of the cart, releasing the reins, but still holding a couple of pots of milk in his hands and yelling "My God, oh my God, look what is happening..." My sister grabbed me, while I was rolling in the cart, and so we were shooting ahead with noise and rattle, hitting the trees and rocks until we flew into our yard, where the cart overturned. I was shaken but unhurt, but Valya was covered with bruises, probably from the last fall. After some time, Alexei came, safe and sound, carrying the surviving pots.

Then we moved to the big house. After a common children’s room in St. Petersburg, here we had our separate rooms. New furniture specially purchased for the house was delivered. Each of us had a desk, covered with cloth, with 5 drawers. There were a lot of elk antlers, on which caps and hats were hung up, in the hall and other rooms. The most interesting for me was my father's study, which had a large shield, lined with dark green cloth, with guns hanging on it – 2 very high quality muzzle-loading double-barreled guns, 12- and 16-caliber, another rifle, double-barreled, 16 cal., Lephony double-barreled rifle gun of 12 cal., and another double-barreled Scott shotgun, 12 cal., there were also 2 military Berdan rifles – a shotgun and Cossack rifle, 2 cartridge bags, a powder flask, smaller shotguns (4), a whip, daggers, hunting knives, bows and arrows, and much more. In the corner, a cabinet was hanging, with carpentry tools, shooting plane, shaving planes (3), chisels, wimble, drills, and other tools. We were allowed to use all these tools, provided they were put in place immediately afterwards. Above the desk, branched elk horns (2) were hanging, on which there were two shiny fire helmets, fire belts with coils of rescue rope, a fire ax, a military saber (sword), a military artillery cap. On the wall there were two long pipes from ancestral times and an old round barometer. On the desk, in addition to a double inkwell and candlesticks, there were 3-4 shorter pipes and an English sundial. In addition, there was a large cabinet full of books, with drawers full of accessories for filling cartridges, removing and inserting caps, devices for cleaning rifles, etc. At the bottom of the cabinet there were also cases of rifles, boxes with old revolvers and the famous telescope. It was a real museum, a paradise for an 11 year old boy.
The next room was my mother's boudoir, an unremarkable room, but it had a ladder leading to the tower - an octagonal room with four narrow, high windows, from one of them you could easily access the roof of the entire house. In the study, there was also an ottoman covered with a Persian rug, a Persian rug on the floor, and a fireplace. On the cabinet, there were stuffed ruff in the spring dress and a large black and white oystercatcher (magpie) that were killed by the great-grandfather in Lahti many years ago and which were very rare. In the dining room, besides 2 good oak buffets, 12 chairs and a table for snacks, there was a tabernacle in the corner - a hand carved cabinet with glass in which there were very interesting icons. On a small shelf there was a silver mounted lamp, which was sometimes lit on holiday eves. Then there was another room, a large room with glass doors to the balcony and grand piano made of rosewood, produced by no longer existing factory, Ahlquist. Then there were our two rooms with a wonderful view of the lake, desks and elk antlers, on which my sister and I immediately hang all our caps and hats, as well as my toy gun, crossbow, etc. There was also the room of my grandmother, which later became the room of your dad. Then there was my parents' bedroom, where a huge Smith and Wesson revolver was hanging above the bed. Then there was a hallway and front room, a bathroom with a bath, 2 toilets, a kitchen and servants’ room. In the kitchen, there were two huge tables, a Russian oven, a tank for hot water and a big stove almost in the middle.

In the courtyard there were extended service facilities, which contained a cart house in which there were 3 carriages, saddles and harness, and then one year there were 2 sleds for travelling to the station, with warm aprons and fur bags for the feet, and also a plow, a hiller (okuchnik), 2 harrows, and 2 grinds. In the middle, there was a pantry for oats, agricultural tools, shovels, picks, crowbars, axes, wrench, etc. with a pathway to the attic, which served as a hayloft. Then there were the stables with 3 stalls and barns with 3 stalls, too. Then there was a large open shed, with barrels, work cart, etc., sauna and laundry room, and storage for winter items, etc. I remember that they were locked with huge keys. In addition to the fields in front of the big house, there were fields in the forest, where rye was cultivated that year (imagine, we had our own rye!), and another field near the lake behind the land belonging to our neighbor Maryushka. And all of it was ours. You could cut down any tree in order to make a bow, arrows, a walking stick, or a toy boat. On the lake there was a jetty and our own blue boat, on which we were allowed to row alone, along the banks only, because the offshore waters were very deep. All day long we used to fish from the jetty or the boat, putting it on anchor behind the reeds.

In the autumn of the first year we went hunting with my father and our dog Nora, an English setter, white with dark brown spots. That time we did not bring any game, although we rose early, and it was very cold until the sun dried the dew on the bushes and ferns. My dad shot a bird which was very rare in those places (later I only saw it once in 40 years), a nutcracker, or Orlovka, a black bird with thin white stripes, the size of a very large black woodpecker. We stuffed her, and she stood in our dining room in St. Petersburg. After that, we went hunting with my dad many times and I remember, on many gray autumn mornings, the white powder smoke drifting through the trees and bushes, and our Nora running, making increasingly wide circles around us, convinced that we could not have missed, and that she will surely find the woodcock she helped track down...

As time went on, the six birch trees on the field near the path to the lake became bigger, and another boat appeared, a white one, which was so steady that one could swim from her in deep spots, getting out of the water directly into the boat without making it tilt much.

Time passed. My dad (and your grandfather) ordered a sailboat in St. Petersburg. It was very special: the nose and feed were covered with red and yellow lacquered battens, and the boat body was not painted, but covered with yellow varnish. She also had an unusual design, with a mast, fixed with three screws, a single oblique sail, usually kept in a canvas bag, and a lifting keel. It was, perhaps, heavy and slow, but very reliable. My dad wanted us to become accustomed to the lake and the wind and we were therefore allowed to use this boat, provided everything was always in order. And indeed, every summer, every windy day, we were always on the lake, sometimes 5-7 miles from our place. We really grew up and were not afraid of anything.

When I turned 15 years old, my dad gave me his gun, the very gun which he received from his father when he was 15 years old. And I began to go hunting alone in the woods, with our old Nora. Imagine, this forest stretched between the shore of the lake and the Vyborg highway, in the form of a strip of 3 ? - 5 km wide and 12 or more miles long (and our own forest was 2 km long and 200-300 m wide). When my dad came in the summer, he usually stayed from Friday evening till Sunday afternoon, and we went hunting with him. We harnessed our work cart, and sat there with my dad, and the servant and the dogs. We rode 7-8 kilometers from our house, and then went hunting for 3-4 hours, the servant and the horses were waiting, and we wandered through the peat bogs and forest. We called this place El Dorado, as the Spanish once called the gold-bearing region of California, and we called it that because we saw a lot of game there. Of course, without my dad, I did not go so far, mainly not farther than 3-6 km. I even had a little book for recording my hunting trophies - what, where, when and under what circumstances I killed. Shortly after moving to the big house, a very deep well with beautiful clean water was dug in a basin near the yard. First there were two large wooden buckets. When one rose, the other sank. Later the well was closed and equipped with a pump.

Because everything was our own, it was a pleasure to work, to bring out of the woods and transplant the most beautiful fir and juniper trees, to make flower beds, benches under the birches in the field and on the beach. My father immediately gave me and Valya an ax, a shovel, and a rake, and although they were smaller than ordinary tools, we could use them. We had a small but very nice vegetable garden of our own. When the sailboat was bought, it was unloaded from the train at the Usikirko station. We, i. e. I and the servant took the horse and the work cart and went to the station to fetch the boat. When we arrived at the lake, we drove the horse and cart in the water [to float off the boat]. The servant with the horse then returned home around the lake, and I took the oars and began rowing toward the house. Well, thanks God it was still then, otherwise I would never have reached the shore. It was very difficult and inconvenient, because along the middle of the boat lay the mast, two sail yards and the sail wrapped in a tarpaulin, all this made it very hard to row. Finally, I got home, and during the next visit of my dad we installed the mast, pulled the screws, lifted the sail, and fixed the anchor chain with large heavy anchors. Our other boats had anchors, too, although not on the chain, but on the thick ropes. To make it more comfortable, the sailing boat was always anchored at a deep place, about 2 meters deep, behind the reeds. We approached the sail boat using another boat which we left in its place for the time of our sail ride. To store the boat in the winter, a boathouse was built on the shore, which my father pompously called “The Admiralty”. There we stored oars, oarlocks, fishing nets, fishing rods, etc. The boats were painted every year, and therefore were very well preserved, did not leak or rot.

It soon became clear that for winter visits the big house had to be heated in advance, which was expensive and difficult. Therefore, a so-called small house consisting of 6 rooms, a hall and a kitchen was built closer to the cape. This house survived until 1944. There your great-grandmother lived, i. e. my mom, with her sister, Aunt Lucia. To this house we, i .e. I, your grandmother, your father and Aunt Astrid, when they were still very small, fled from Russia in 1922. It is to this house that we returned in 1942, when this land was re-conquered from the Bolsheviks by the Finns. In 1943, Jorma was there, and I still have the photos of him on the porch of the house.

In winter, we always came to the small house, in which 2 rooms were heated, while the big house was locked, with the blinds drawn, and everything in it was asleep – both the guns, and books, and the crystal glassware in the dining room, and the mirrors in the living room, and the grand piano. Only on the windows and glass doors between the living room and the balcony big snow stars, 30-40 mm in diameter were seen, but the thermometer on the wall showed a strange, unusual temperature of -6 ° R, i. e. about 8 degrees below zero. When we arrived there in the winter, we went with a bunch of keys to the big house to fetch our favorite books, and, of course, the guns. Before our departure, the guns were cleaned and greased, and once again everything was carried away and locked in the big house. At some point, Dad decided to buy another horse. It was a wonderful Finnish "Swede", a tall red-and-chocolate-brown thoroughbred, with large dark mane and tail. His name was Veterok ("Breeze"). He was a remarkable runner. When my father was riding him from the Perkyarvi station (17-18 km), he overtook absolutely all other riders, and reached home in 1 hour 15 - 1 hour 20 minutes. Father was always holding the reigns himself, and the servant was sitting beside him. While Svetlyak was an all-purpose horse - it plowed, harrowed, carried goods, oats and hay, Veterok was a parade horse. He had his own harness and his own winter sleigh. But since they did not use him a lot, he really wanted to run all the time, so you had to harness him inside the carriage shed, as it was very hard to hold him in check. Therefore, dad told us to regularly ride the horses in summer, twice a week, and he taught us to ride. And then, Valya and I often made 25-35 km rides.

And what did we, the children, do in Tabor when we were 12-14 years old? We studied music and French a little, but because we were good pupils in school, and we were not given any home task for the summer, we did more or less nothing. However, we were busy all the time, I was making crossbows – one-, two- and even three-barreled, and arrows to them, pretending some of them were explosive. We were also shooting at goal, or trial shooting shotguns, seeking the best charges for them, or fishing from the jetty, which was most fascinating, because although the fish in such a shallow place is usually small, but you could see her picking the bait, and you did not have to go far or sail. Then once or twice a day we went swimming, and occasionally wandered with a fishing pole along the shore in the shallow waters. Sometimes we fished from a boat in the reeds, and we came across big fishes there.

We also dug flower beds and planted vegetables, weeded and watered. In the spring, before Dad’s arrival on Friday we went to pick up lilies of the valley, we gathered so many that our hands could not grip the bouquets, which were then placed throughout the house in all the available bowls. When the lilies of the valley ended, we collected fragrant wild orchids ("dame’s rockets") in damp meadows, which looked like hyacinths, and which we called Nachtschatten for some reason. My father liked them very much. Then there were cornflowers and large daisies. We were also gathering a lot of strawberries for Dad’s arrival, and then raspberries. In the fall, we always went to the woods to gather mushrooms. And we also gathered blueberries, and cloudberries, in the fall we went to the woods every day. I used to play alone a lot, building warships out of paper, which were not meant to float in the water, but imitated upper works of real ships, and I kept these ships on the floor or on the large table on the balcony. Ships were sometimes armored, because I also made canons of lead-zinc alloy that fired real gunpowder, and their shells, which were made of lead, too, could easily pierce even cardboard book covers. Some canons were on the ships in rotating towers, and some were land-based. There were many ships (30), and also tin soldiers and sailors who took part in the battles. There was a terrible noise, and the entire balcony was filled with smoke. On the windows we placed pillows to prevent accidental shots from breaking the glass. There was also shrapnel, i. e. shells filled with powder and small shot, which exploded in the air, close or far away, as desired. All of this equipment, ships, soldiers, guns and ammunition were kept in perfect order in the tower of the big house, and they died with it. 

Later, when I became older, I made a phone between the houses and the lodge, i. e. the house in the yard, where servants lived. Much was invented, from suspending the wires on the trees using special spring insulators, to prevent damage during storms (they survived for more than 20 years) and to various systems for connecting the phones. Then we bought old Bell phones that were sold out after the reorganization of the St. Petersburg telephone exchange. Then the alarm was installed, from the house to the janitor, in case thieves get into the house, the system for pumping water into the tanks and a small power plant in the toilet, the alarm for the bathroom, hall, cellar, closet in the hallway, etc. All this took time and was a series of small technical victories. Then there were roses, those noble standard roses, about 100 pieces, which had to be planted in the spring in long boxes and to be removed in the fall, they also had to be treated with chemicals and trimmed. They were wonderful, and they decorated the balcony tables and Dad’s study. Then there were photos. My dad gave me a camera and all the accessories for developing and printing photos. So I had a real lab, first in the house near the tower, and then in a separate section of the shed in the yard where the plow, sleighs and wagons were kept. Also, there was the bookcase. It held complete works of foreign authors such as Walter Scott, Dickens, Mark Twain, Bret Hart, Edgar Allan Poe, Balzac, Spielhagen, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Ebers and many others, in addition to thick magazines and hunting books. All this could be read freely, but then every book had to be carefully put in place.

Wolka

Time passed, and at some point Wolka appeared in Tabor. He was my cousin, the son of my father's brother Nicholas [Vsevolod in the Kinert tree]. He was a real madcap, fearless and cunning, who immediately became my younger companion in all. He came only for the summer, because he studied at a private boarding school. His mother and sister lived in Minsk, in the Belarusian part of Russia, and he went there for Christmas and Easter. He was not good at school, and he was not interested in my technical achievements, but he loved nature, the lake, forest, and hunting, so we spent all summer with him, and the stronger the wind, the more chances you would see our sail somewhere on the lake. He read what I chose for him from the books in the large bookcase, and he grew up as a noble and romantic person, not suitable for life at all, but only for brave and beautiful adventures.

Little Manya

I must say that sometimes in the winter I had to stay at my cousin’s (Viacheslav Karlovich Korzun) place in Kolpino, 23 km south of Petersburg. There was a large naval factory there, and my cousin was in charge of its electric department. He was then a mechanical engineer, in the rank of a captain, and had a small State apartment with a garden that had roses, lilacs, etc. And because he was a good mathematician, and I was preparing for my examinations in higher mathematics, I stayed with him, running the house together with the cook Fenya.

Among employees of the plant there was superintendent Kavelin who had appeared there recently, a former officer of the Guard. At Christmas time, the plant administration organized a celebration with a Christmas tree for the children of workers and employees. There, among many employees and their relatives who distributed gifts and danced at the party, I suddenly noticed a tall slender girl in a black ball gown. She was slim, with a long and narrow face, as in the old portraits, very beautiful, with blue-gray eyes, and strangely colored hair with golden strands. She was very lively and witty, although she behaved very modestly, and pretty soon disappeared. This was the niece of Kavelin, who was called “Little Manya” to be distinguished from “Big Manya” (who was actually much shorter than Little Manya), who was her aunt, the wife of Kavelin. She came to visit her uncle and aunt for Christmas from Tsarskoe Selo, where she lived with her family – her mother, sisters and brothers. I liked her tremendously, and although I was aware of the enormous gap between us, I wanted to see her, to get to know here better, and I did all I could to achieve this. Since she had weak lungs, doctors told her to live in Finland, and for the summer of 1910, I managed to rent a house for her family in Tabor, The Weber House, which was 600-700 meters away from us. It, too, had its own land and part of the lake. I tried to provide Manya’s family with all the required facilities and home appliances, and I considered as happy every day I visited them, and I visited them often - almost every day.

One early May morning there was a nice fresh breeze, I raised the sail, and came to Manya’s jetty. Manya and her little brother Vasya, a boy of 8, came on board. We decided to go to an island about 7 km away. The weather turned suddenly bad, the wind grew stronger, the waves were splashing over the side, it became cold and it started raining. We had to sail very carefully, because the gusts of wind changed direction all the time. Finally, near the island, the sail rope broke, and the sail fell into the water. I went to the reeds at the southern shore of the island, repaired the sail, raised it again, and turned home with the heavy wet sail. There was a head wind, and I had to maneuver, to move in zigzags, constantly changing direction. The wet sail strongly reduced the stability of the boat, and she went among the foaming crests, drawing overboard, and being filled with water. I had two lives on my hands, and I thought and hoped that Little Manya did not understand the gravity of the situation. All wet, with numb hands I held the sheet, and the steering wheel, i.e. the sail rope and rudder, again and again changing the direction, hopelessly,  to move a few dozens of meters. Finally we came home, being late for dinner for 5 hours. Then I found out that Manya was all the time aware of the danger, but behaved calmly, not showing it because of her brother. I was so stiff frozen that I could not dock the boat myself, and giving it all to our waiter Panas, I crawled out of the boat on all fours.

This incident brought us closer to each other, although we did not talk much about it - we alone knew how close the death was. In late May, Wolka arrived, and he was at first very unhappy about this girl coming between us, but soon became very fond of Manya, and called her Dissi. Perhaps this was his first and only love of a boy to an adult woman. The summer was at its height, the three of us were now constantly together, went sailing or hunting. In the autumn of 1910, we returned to Kolpino, and Little Manya and I became bride and groom. In 1912 we got married, so Little Manya is your grandmother. A lot of time passed, and in 1916 I got a job as an engineer at the same plant in Kolpino. Then revolution broke out, it raised me from an electrical shop manager assistant to head of the electrical department. Before the war, in 1911, Wolka died, and in 1913, our daughter was born - your Aunt Astrid. On May 10, 1914 my father (your great-grandfather) died, and in 1917 in Kolpino, on May 12/25, your dad was born, to the sound of gun fire. In 1918, the Bolsheviks prevailed, the Finnish border was closed, and finally, after 4 years of living like slaves, without the right to buy and sell, to move, to change jobs, etc., half-starved, under the constant threat of raids and arrests (nearly all of your grandmother’s relatives were killed or fell victims to the Bolsheviks in one way or another), we left behind all we had - furniture, clothes, linen, dishes, cameras, silver and jewelry, books, guns, and came on foot to Finland. It was on 31st December, 1921. After 3 weeks of living near the border in quarantine, we were allowed to come home, that is to Tabor. So, Grandma and I, Astrid and your dad returned home. It was on a cold day in January, and since we had nothing to cover the children, your grandmother and I put them into the sleigh and covered with the apron so that they do not freeze when crossing our old lake.

At that time, my mother (your great-grandmother) Augustina Fedorovna lived in Tabor with her sister Lucia, who had come back before the border closure in 1917. There were 3 cows and chickens, but there were no horses, and no servants. Still, everything was intact - all the guns, books, saddles, harness, carriages and houses. We lived in the small house, and we rented the big house to the Gaveman and Krug families (Krug is Aunt Bebi’s father). But since in order to live one had to earn money (despite the fish in the lake, and a good forest, we still needed money to buy flour, salt, sugar, kerosene for lighting, clothing, shoes, yarn, to pay taxes, to buy post stamps, etc.), and it was very hard to earn anything so far from the city (Vyborg was 45 km away, an impossible distance to cover in the winter’s frost and snow), your grandmother and I decided to get me a job in town, and to come to Tabor only in summers, and on my vacations. At that time a good friend of ours we knew from Kolpino, Sergei Fedorovich Charpentier was working as a mechanical engineer at Diesen Wood and C, a large pulp mill in Pitkyaranta. I wrote to him, and immediately, on 15/VII 1922 started working at the plant. Of course, not speaking any Finnish or Swedish, I could not be an engineer and had to be content with a position of a machine operator. Soon your grandmother with Astrid and your father came from Tabor. We received a small 2 room apartment. Astrid was enrolled in the Finnish folk school. And then I became a headman, and later the head of one of the plant’s workshops.

Time passed. Astrid and your dad went to high school. Every summer, we went to Tabor and then we lived in the Big House ourselves, without renting it out. Then, since the Pitkyaranta School only had 5 classes, both children entered the New Connection School (Uusi Yhteys Koulun), which they finished with white caps, i. e, passing the so-called student exam. In 1935, your great-grandmother died, and aunt Lucia was invited to stay at Aurinko, an excellent facility for older people incapable of independently living at home. Astrid brilliantly finished school, and got a job in Vyborg at SOK offices and began to permanently live in Vyborg, arriving at Tabor only on Sundays and holidays. By then, we already had a good big apartment from the State in Pitkyaranta, with many flowers, a nice vegetable garden, a greenhouse, a cellar full of bottles of home-made wine, different preserves, canned vegetables, jams, etc.

And in 1939 came the gunfire, the war broke out, the Bolsheviks, like an all destroying avalanche, rushed to Finland. The sky flared from burning trees and cottages, as if someone was throwing matches in the sky, these were reddish flashes of the cannon shots. We had to leave. This was in December 1939. Someday you'll learn why this war broke out, and what a miracle it was, when 3 ? million were struggling with 180, without adequate supplies of shells, food, guns and airplanes. How bravely they held back the enemy for 3 months, performing heroic deeds and thus receiving ammunitions and weapons from the enemy. How the world watched this hopeless struggle with amazement. Sweden helped with volunteers and money, and many a brave and decent Swede perished in this battle with the enemy. But, of course, all this was a drop in the sea. The Bolsheviks captured our Tabor and Pitkyaranta; they plundered and destroyed it all. They seized Vyborg, Serdobol, Kexholm, Valaam, Konevets, Lascal, Koivisto, Yakkimo and Yohaness. Yet they were unable to capture Finland, as they had planned when they attacked us. And the blood of the fallen has helped preserve our independence and freedom, but we had to give away our cities, fields, factories, forests, lakes, rivers, and railways. The Finns left, leaving behind their ancestral sites. We left, too. Your grandmother and I left Pitkaranta. Aunt Astrid came from Vyborg to pick up your dad, who was then convalescing in Tabor, and they came to us through the woods, which was very difficult, because Dad’s leg had not healed yet, taking nothing with them.

Returning to Tabor

So the war broke out. Your grandmother and I were evacuated from Pitkaranta to Liperi in the north-east of Karelia. From there, we arrived at Oulu (Uleaborg), a city on the northeast shore of the Gulf of Bothnia of the Baltic Sea. There, I was hired as a machine operator of high voltage electric filter systems at the Oulu OY pulp mill. Our life was hard and cheerless. It seemed it will be like this forever. We lived in a rented room. I worked in shifts, nights, mornings, or afternoons, riding to the factory (I bought a bicycle) in the cold, of sometimes up to -34 C, wrapped up to my eyes and ears. It was almost impossible to buy anything, after this war that ended so terribly in early 1940 (13th February 1940). Bread was scarce and rationed, as were other things. Here we met with Uncle Harry Andersson, who came to the factory from Sweden. Your father also moved here from the officers' school, which he entered immediately after the war. He served as Fenrick, and constantly visited us, bringing us food whenever he could.

Then the second war started, when the Finns with the help of the Germans pressed the Bolsheviks hard in the south and west, and managed to regain all the places captured by the Bolsheviks - Hango, Karelia and Vyborg, Sortavala, Kexholm and Pitkyaranta. Before the war, your dad met your mother on the train, who was then a very beautiful, tall, and slim young girl, and they married before he went to war. The war was successful, and all those wishing to return home to their old places were allowed to do so. And so, on a sunny morning of 12th May 1942, your grandmother and I arrived at the old station Perkyarvi to continue our travel back home. We traveled into the unknown, not knowing how and where we will live; we had nothing with us except for a bicycle and a couple of packages remaining after the evacuation from Pitkaranta. We sent there a bed and a mattress that we bought in Oulu, and some tools and potatoes for planting in the garden, which, too, we bought in Oulu. Our station was not there, not as it once was - pretty, with apple trees on the platform, and the house of the station master in the thick garden. There was only a small barrack and a desert all around, where once were shops, pharmacies and other houses. We waited from 9 am to 6 pm until we managed to get a horse and cart, loaded our luggage on it, and went home.

We drove into what was once a yard, and there was nothing there except the birch – the sauna, stables and barns were destroyed, and even the logs [they were built of] were taken away somewhere. The henhouse survived, and the little house with no doors or windows. The big house burned down, and even the chimney was dismantled, in some places piles of bricks and wrecked roof sheets were scattered. The trees around were burned and withered. Our neighbors, too, returned to their old homes. Some of their structures had been destroyed, too, but the main houses survived. It was a happy meeting after so many misfortunes. A cold and clear northern spring evening came. It was impossible to spend the night in our surviving house and henhouse without stoves, doors and windows, and the neighbors took us to the surviving sauna at Kunsisto (a villa just 250 meters away), where we spent the first few days, until we restored first the room in the hen house, and then the small house. A few days later grandfather Englom arrived, he built the top of the frame over the well, set up the doors and windows of the henhouse and the stove, the upper part of which we brought with us.

Reconstruction work began, and field work, planting potatoes, wheat, rye, oats and peas, work at the vegetable garden and greenhouses. We had to do everything ourselves - chop wood in the forest and bring it in a wheelbarrow or on a sledge, because we had neither horse nor cart. The neighbors helped, but they, too, had nothing, except one neighbor, who had a horse, plow, harrow and cart. A barn survived, and a broken thresher in it. Your grandmother, who was not accustomed to this hard work, and was still weak after two years of not having enough to eat in Oulu, fell ill and was taken to her bed.

Then came your father and mother, and brought us some things, and your mom stayed and took care of the house until your grandmother recovered. Still, all this period was very hard for your grandmother who had to press, thresh, fill in the barn, etc. At first, when we had not yet grown our own potatoes, acquired chickens, pigs and even a cow, we were hungry, and often had to ride the whole day on the bike to barter onions, cereals and sugar, etc. Then, when we already had our own wheat, cabbage, and all veggies from the garden, life became easier. In the second year, after heavy and cold winter, when we had already fitted all the windows, and installed a wonderful Finnish stove that had been given to us as a gift, and a good oven, your father and mother came back with little Jorma. They stayed a few days. Then we planted apple trees instead of those destroyed during the war, and installed a wind electric station that gave us light in the winter of 1943-44. The woods around were not damaged; only the birch in the field and the pine on the shore became thicker.

And so began life in our own home, strenuous but interesting, and it seemed that no one will ever take it away from us. All the things we were doing were for the improvement and decoration of this life. We made it all ourselves - the wheelbarrow, furniture, kitchen tables, cupboards, shelves, chairs, closets for linen, and other things. We installed the stove ourselves, built greenhouses and greenhouse frames ourselves. In 2 years, we have done more than we would have normally done in 5 years. We had the only radio around, and on the dark Christmas morning all the inhabitants of our small village (5 houses) were coming to listen to the Christmas service at our place, because there was no church anywhere, all churches were destroyed during the war by the Bolshevik shells. But everything was gradually settling down, we had three hens and a rooster which meant we had our own eggs, a pig which meant our own pork and ham, and, finally, a cow – so we had milk!

Your Dad and Aunt Bebi were always helping us, sometimes they sent parcels. Once we received a round table and 4 chairs, which were sent by Bebi from Helsingfors. Your dad brought me a double-barreled gun, because all the guns we had in Tabor before the war, had been lost. And finally, your dad sent us from Karhumaki his dog, a nice Karelian puppy, Susi Koere Porry, who became the third member of our small family consisting of your grandmother and myself. He slept always with us, and during the day he was in the garden on a long rope, digging a deep hole for himself, where he was hiding from the heat or buried in snow in winter. Since he was accustomed to soldiers being with your dad at the front, so once, when we were passing near some soldiers, he tagged along with them and did not come back. We waited for 3 days, and then in late winter I went to the Perkyarvi station, asking people on the way, if someone had perhaps seen him. When I reached the station (16 km), I looked for him there, and after a long day of searching I found him in the house occupied by Viesti OS., the same military unit, in which he was in Karhumaki. He was glad to see me, I took him on a long rope, and we went home. It was late afternoon, and since it was a sunny spring day, and the road was along the lake, the thin layer of ice which was capable of holding my bike in the morning, cracked to my and Porry’s horror, and we sank to the ground ice in the water, by ? of a bicycle wheel. It was not dangerous, but it looked scary, until we went to the other side of our lake to pick up the mail, and sunk completely near the shore, but managed to get out and went home across the lake with the mail. It was dusk, the ice grew stronger due to the evening frost, and we safely returned home. Porry lay sick for three days and then recovered. This is how our life was gradually coming to normal on this desert island, because we could only rely on ourselves there: pharmacy, doctor, all this was hopelessly far away, and even cobblers or tailors were not available.

But you get used to everything, and we did not regard it as difficult to travel 35-40 km on a bicycle, and to bring 20-25 kg of cargo. We did not have our boats; the Bolsheviks took Molly, our latest yellow boat, which was bought before the war by your grandmother and your dad. Therefore, we had to borrow from the neighbors their surviving boat, therefore we did not catch fish, but our Katiska was near the shore, and when we found bream or pike there, it was a holiday for us. We even smoked breams and burbots at home, in an improvised smoker made of a big old milk can. In our greenhouses, under frames with parchment paper instead of glass, tomatoes, melons, celery, cucumbers, carrots and other vegetables were successfully growing. There was also cabbage on the garden beds. We planted two varieties of strawberries and 5 good apple trees. In the well, there always was good water. On the place where there was the sauna destroyed by the Bolsheviks I and my neighbor built another one, which was identical to the one that your father once built with the same neighbor, and we heated it every Saturday.

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