ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the discourses and positionings of Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland vis-à-vis Finnish and Russian national narratives about the Second World War. The research draws on the author’s long-term ethnographic work and the data consists of interviews with Russian speakers (21 in all) living in border municipalities in the North Karelia region, Finland. The methodological framework is that of sensory ethnography, which sees sensory perception and embodied experience as primary dimensions of knowledge building about the world. The chapter discusses collective memories and memoryscapes within the framework of migration. Collective memory is conceptualized as producing transnational memoryscapes that combine memories of nations and locations of origin with the contemporary places of settlement. The sovereign cultural memories of the Second World War in Finland and Russia play a key role in producing contemporary national identities, “re-membering the nations” (see Poulter, 2009. ReMembering the Nation: Remembrance Days and the Nation in Ireland. In D. McCrone and G. Mc’Pherson (Eds.) National Days. Constructing and Mobilizing National Identity (pp. 57–72). Palgrave Macmillan.). Today, they are perceived as being somewhat antagonistic, and a source of anxiety among Russian speakers. Nevertheless, there are Russian speakers who perceive sovereign memories as legitimate and based on a morally acceptable order. The diversification of Finland’s population poses questions concerning the inclusivity of such memory politics and the potential threat to the cohesion of local communities and society. The concluding section of the chapter argues that contemporary antagonistic memory politics need to be critically evaluated from the perspective of transnational memory.
