ABSTRACT
Unlike many other European cities, Helsinki was not reduced to rubble in the Second World War. Even though it was bombed heavily by the Soviets, especially in February 1944, the human casualties and material damage caused by the air raids were relatively limited. 1 Despite the modest scale of physical destruction during the war, reconstruction-in its material, psychological and discursive senses-became a major part of Helsinki’s post-war life. In Helsinki, as in other cities in the aftermath of the war, modernisation prompted a complex response: modernity was celebrated even in the presence of considerable nostalgia towards the actual or imagined past. Reconstruction historiography, however, rarely discusses this engagement with the past by urban citizens after the war. 2 Furthermore, in recent years there has been a burgeoning interest among historians in acts of ‘writing the nation.’ 3 The significance of local representations of history is, however, often reduced to something to be understood primarily within the framework of the construction of a national community. 4 While agreeing that overlapping local and urban histories played an important part in localising national memory and identity, this chapter will show their parallel uses in creating a sense of localism, which ties in with the approach adopted by Jeremy DeWaal elsewhere in this volume. 5 The existing research on the uses of the past deserves enrichment in the consideration of the writing, consumption and performance of urban history, especially during the post-war period. Using Helsinki as an example, this chapter examines the significance of history in reviving and readjusting the idea of urban community after the long war and within the framework of the new post-war situation.
