Russia starts holding trials about a "genocide of the Soviet nation" in Karelia

On July 19 in Petrozavodsk (the capital of Karelia, a region in the Northwest of Russia), the Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia started a significant historical trial, dedicated to the events of 1941-1944 and apparently related to the considerably worsened relations between Finland and Russia after 24 February 2022.

The Karelian authorities are thus contributing to the ongoing trials in Russia on ‘genocide recognition’. According to the newspaper ‘Vedomosti’, as of June 2024, Russian courts have already issued 19 similar rulings on ‘genocide’.

As reported on the court's website, the trial was initiated by a petition filed by the Prosecutor of the Republic of Karelia Dmitry Kharchenkov. He asked the court to recognize "as war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as genocide of the Soviet people, the previously established and newly discovered crimes committed by German and Finnish troops on the territory of the Karelian-Finnish SSR during the "Great Patriotic War" (a term used in Russia to describe the period from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945 along the many fronts of the Eastern Front of World War II). Special emphasis was placed on the actions of Finnish soldiers during the occupation of Karelia in 1941-1944.

In the first part of the session, the prosecutor of the Republic of Karelia, Dmitry Kharchenkov, and the head of the Republic of Karelia, Artur Parfenchikov, spoke, and a film was shown about the uneasy relations between Russia and Finland since 1917. The audience saw and heard details of meetings between Hitler and Mannerheim and their alliance, how Finland participated in World War II on the side of Nazi Germany.

However, some important events for the relations between the two countries were presented in a one-sided manner. In particular, the Winter War (Soviet-Finnish war from 30 November 1939 to 12 March 1940) was described in the spirit of the Stalinist propaganda of the 1940s, and the story about how exactly the Winter War started was bypassed. For example, nothing was said about the secret additional protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, in which Finland, as well as the Baltic States, was named as the domain of the USSR's interests.

In addition to representatives of the Karelian authorities, representatives of societies of concentration camp prisoners were present at the session and supported the prosecution.

At the second part of the session two historians were questioned as witnesses: Sergey Verigin and Bair Irincheev. They both noted that they considered the murder of doctors, nurses and wounded in the hospital in Petrovsky Yam in February 1942 by Finnish saboteurs to be an example of genocide. They believe it had been concealed by Finnish historians.

Verigin, known for his special version of the Sandarmokh memorial site where thousands of Soviet citizens were shot in 1937-1939, insisted that during the years of occupation of Karelia the Finns pursued a policy of segregation. They gave green passports to representatives of Finno-Ugric nationalities, opened schools for children, while Slavs were considered second-class people. In his opinion, Finnish historians downplay this segregation, thus distorting history. They also publish a reduced number of victims of the Finnish occupation, although in those years ‘about 2000 children died in Petrozavodsk’. Sergei Verigin is also sure that ‘Finnish war criminals were practically not punished’. The thesis about the segregation policy pursued by Finland was raised dozens of times at the meeting.

At the end of the first day of the session, the testimony of Klavdia Nyuppieva (born in 1935), the chairperson of the Karelian Union of Former Young Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps, who was unable to attend the trial, recalled her memories of her difficult hungry childhood and the horrors of war and occupation. Her commentary was also heard in the film about the relations between Russia and Finland shown earlier. 

It is worth noting that the speakers at the session were hardly asked any questions, and there was no one to ask them. Representatives of the Finnish side or historians presenting another point of view on Finnish-Soviet relations are not represented at the court session in any way. Any version or interpretation of events presented by the speakers invited by the Karelian prosecutor's office is presented as a reliable fact uncritically and without verification.

At the same time, the first session of the court was open, anyone could attend it. Both state and non-state media representatives could be accredited, but they were visibly unwelcome. Online broadcasting of the court session was also conducted.  

It should be remembered that long before the beginning of the trial in Sandarmokh, as part of the ongoing works there, the monument ‘To the victims of repressions of 1937-1939 and the victims of the Finnish occupation during the Great Patriotic War’ had been erected but not yet opened. The memorial sign will probably be unveiled after the end of the trial, the outcome of which is predetermined.