Among the peoples who underwent total deportation under the rule of the communists were the Ingrian people, whose mention was banned in the USSR until the early 1990s. Other peoples repressed under Stalin were at one time rehabilitated. The fact of the ethnic genocide of the Ingrians has not yet been recognized by the state.
Ingermanlanders and Izhorians: what are the differences
The people known from the ancient Russian chronicles are often confused with the Ingrian people: Izhora or Izhorians. The only identity between them is that the name of the region Ingermanlandia, as the Swedes called it, really comes from the Izhora people, more precisely - Ingeri.
The Izhorians have been reliably known since the end of the 12th century. Then they were part of the Novgorod state. Izhors lived between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga on both sides of the Neva. At the end of the 15th century, the Izhora land, together with the entire Novgorod state, was annexed to the Moscow state. The Izhorians retained their language, akin to Finnish, but religiously over the centuries they became close to the Russians, professing Orthodoxy.
After the Time of Troubles, the devastated and depopulated Izhora land went to Sweden. The Swedish authorities in the 17th century actively settled it with Finns of two ethnic groups - Evremeys and Savakots. They became the basis of the people, who were called the Ingrian people. Dialectal differences existed between the descendants of Euremeis and Savakots in Ingermanland until the beginning of the 20th century. The merger of the Izhorians with the Ingrian people was prevented by differences not so much in language as in religion: the resettled were Lutherans. The Ingermanlanders also retained their differences from the majority of Finns.
Before the revolution, about 16 thousand Izhora residents and about 160 thousand Ingrian residents lived in the St. Petersburg province. In Siberia, there were about a thousand Ingrian people. These were the descendants of those exiled for the 1804 riot.
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An attempt at national self-determination
The splash of national identity that engulfed the overwhelming majority of the peoples of the Russian Empire at the time of its collapse did not bypass the Ingrian people either. In addition, they were inspired by the example of the proclamation of Finland's independence.
During the civil war in Finland (January-May 1918), which ended in the victory of the local White Guards over the Reds, the leader of the White Finns Mannerheim considered the seizure of Petrograd and the proclamation of a "free city" there. But when he learned that the government of imperial Germany, which helped him to overthrow the Finnish Bolsheviks, was not going to be at enmity with the Russian Bolsheviks, he abandoned this venture. However, Lenin and his comrades were suspicious of the mood of the Ingrians, who lived in a compact mass very close to Petrograd. The Soviet rulers decided to carry out preventive punitive measures against this people.
In May 1919, the forcible mobilization of the Ingrians into the Red Army began. As a measure of coercion, the Bolsheviks began to widely use the confiscation of property. The massacre was led by the "red Latvian" Jacob Peters. In response, residents of several volosts located in the vicinity of the Finnish border rebelled with weapons in their hands. In July 1919, they proclaimed the Republic of Northern Ingria. Fraternal Finland rendered her all possible assistance, without getting involved in an open military clash with Soviet Russia. But in October 1920, Finland signed a peace treaty with the RSFSR in Tartu. The territory of Northern Ingria remained part of the RSFSR. Residents of the self-proclaimed republic left their homes and went to Finland.
Some of the Ingrian people who lived south of Petrograd joined the White Guard army of Yudenich and, after its defeat, went with it to Estonia (there were more than a thousand such refugees). The total demographic losses of the Ingermanlanders in the vicinity of St. Petersburg during the years of the civil war amounted to about 50 thousand people.
From that time on, the Ingrian people began to be considered an unreliable people for the Soviet regime. The Bolsheviks were now ready at the first opportunity to eliminate this threat from the rear to "Red Petrograd".
The genocide of the Ingrian people in the 1930-40s
In 1928, communists began a policy of dispossession throughout the country. Among the Ingrian people, most of whom were well-to-do owners, due to their zeal and diligence, "dispossession" was carried out especially fiercely.
In the first wave of deportations, in 1929-1931, more than 18 thousand Ingrian residents were deported to various regions of Siberia, as well as to the Kola Peninsula. All property was confiscated, the deportees were allowed to take with them only what they could carry in their hands. The eviction was announced in less than a day. All subsequent deportations took place in the same way.
In the second wave, held in 1935-1936. about 41 thousand "kulaks" with children were deported to the same regions of the North and Siberia, as well as to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. An uncountable number of people were expelled from their places of residence due to the construction of a line of fortifications along the border with Finland.
In 1937-1938. the authorities began the final cleansing of Ingermanland from "anti-Soviet elements". The ethnos ceased to be recognized as such, Finnish schools, newspapers and theaters in the Leningrad region were closed, the Ingrian intelligentsia was subjected to total repression. 10.6 thousand residents of the Leningrad Region were convicted as "Finnish spies", and 80% of them were shot.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Military Council of the Leningrad Front, headed by K. E. Voroshilov and A. A. Zhdanov made a decision on the complete deportation of all the remaining Ingrian residents to the Arkhangelsk region. However, due to the rapid advance of German troops, this decree was only partially implemented. A significant part of the Ingrians ended up in the occupied territory.
Since 1942, Finland began to pursue a policy of returning the Ingrian people to the historical homeland of their ancestors. Almost all Ingrian people - over 63 thousand - left the occupied territories of the USSR for Finland.
In the fall of 1944, during the negotiations on an armistice with Finland, the Soviet Union put forward a condition for the forced return of Ingermanland refugees to the USSR, according to the Soviet side - “forcibly driven to Finland”. Although the Finnish authorities tried to save whoever was possible by registering them as Finns, still more than 43 thousand Ingrians had to return to the USSR. Most of them were settled in various regions of the North-West of the European part of the RSFSR. During the 1940s, many of the Ingrian people who had been previously deported to the depths of the USSR were also settled in Karelia.
Numerous migrations contributed to the dissolution of the Ingermanland ethnos. Nevertheless, now their number in Russia is more than 20 thousand people.
The conflicts of the Ingrian people could not but affect the Izhorians, who were often also recorded as Finns and were subjected to repression on this basis. Currently, there are slightly more than 200 Izhora residents in the Russian Federation.
Yaroslav Butakov