ABSTRACT
Finns have lived in Ingria, the area near present-day St. Petersburg, for over 400 years. Migration to Russia in the east and back to Finland has depended largely on the shifting political situation. There are a number of reasons behind the Ingrian man's silence. Gulag literature and Holocaust literature break the mold of other national literatures: for instance, Primo Levi's books are not representative of Italian literature; Elie Wiesel's short stories do not represent French literature; and the works of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn or Varlam Shalamov dealing with the prison camps do not represent Russian literature. The accounts of Gulag survivors prove the significance of other knowledge. The idea of an ethical dimension in these narratives is linked to the memories of those who experienced the civil war and the prison camps, and to the need to impart this secondary knowledge because of its very sensitivity.
