Those Stories That Silence and Heal Us
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it conjured memories of similar incursions by the Soviet Union on Finish borders during the Second World War.
By Essi Ikonen
When I was invited to write a blogpost with global resonance, I considered a few topics. Nothing stuck. Then a different kind of topic surfaced. Perhaps the time of the year had an impact. Here in Finland, we celebrate the Independence Day in December. This year, unfortunately, it had acute global resonance.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the news poured over me, unwanted and disturbing. I had to force myself to keep calm. Despite the three-generation long peace between Finland and Russia, the news of this latest invasion became entangled with my family history and a litany of their old stories. My grandparents experienced the gory resistance against the Soviet Union invasion of our country during the Second World War. My grandfather's family was forced to abandon their farm in Karelia–a region currently divided between northwestern Russia and Finland–twice in fact, the second time for good, prior to settling in Central Finland. Meanwhile, my other grandfather was saved when all other soldiers in his unit were killed, because he happened to volunteer as a scribe, working the typewriter. My partner's grandfather, as a boy of twelve years, escaped the battles in Northern Finland by walking 50 kilometers while shepherding the family’s cows, and then traveling a week in a cattle carriage of a train before finding safety.
These are the good stories.
When sharing my experiences with fellow Finns I realized that I was not the only one showered with an upsurge of family narratives from the time of the Soviet invasion of Finland. Yet for us it was delving into stories heard and experienced vicariously in a safe and warm family gathering from the distance of time.
A friend of mine comes from Syria. For her the outbreak of the war triggered flashbacks from her own experiences. She has lived in Finland for over ten years now. With sheer determination, she has learned Finnish, established a family and attained a career. When the war in Ukraine erupted, she immediately devised a plan to save her family in the event that Russia also invaded Finland. Luckily there has been no need to enact the plan. Yet.
This is the good side of these stories.
There are other good stories. In Suomussalmi, a small town at Russia’s border with Finland, there is a museum dedicated to the battles fought there during the Second World War. The museum’s exhibits document a tragic verisimilitude to the current situation. Most of the Soviet soldiers who invaded Finland in the Suomussalmi area were recruited all the way from Ukraine. Poorly equipped, many of them died. However, the museum not only documents battles.
There are also stories of individual destinies. For instance, there is a story of a Soviet pilot who was forced to land on Finnish territory. Without shelter in the bone-chilling winter, he would not have survived. He sought help from a local family and was offered a bed. In the morning, having been denied a pair of skis by the family that sheltered him, he took a pair from a neighbor’s house and skied back home. Two weeks later, a Soviet unit paid a visit to the house and returned the same skis along with a pouch of rubles. The museum also features a video of a modern day reunion of soldiers from both sides. Watching them stroll together in silence through the woods, where decades earlier they had fought each other, makes me wonder how selective the stories I heard from my grandparents may have been.
We desperately need these good stories. Not as an excuse to close our eyes to current horrors, but to face and live through those horrors while holding on to hope.
There were other stories in my grandparents' life. Stories that lingered in the good stories as a shadow of something not named. As Holocaust testimonies show, we may not be able to recount the most horrible stories, even to ourselves. Yet all those most horrible stories loom over us and find somewhere a space in our minds. Our children inherit unspecified memories of the horror in-between the lines and become the story tellers themselves. With eager desire, they repeat the stories we can tell and some we cannot.
Transgenerational trauma is tragically inescapable during times of war. Right now, Ukrainian and Russian soldiers fighting on the battlefield who survive the battles are surely wounded in the depths of their soul. When the guns are silenced, it will be a time for stories. But how can we then listen to their stories? Will we be able to help them tell those stories that cannot yet be told?
Discussing the power of narrative imagination, Richard Kearney tells of a Holocaust survivor who, only decades later, after having seen the film Schindler’s List, was able to connect to her trauma. By listening to someone else tell her story, she was finally able to confront and, ultimately, integrate her pain. Attending to stories, those of others and our own, can help us face the terrible memories and render them bearable. As the Greeks knew, a well told story of a tragic past can accompany us on the journey into the dark and pull us back to light, enlightened and relieved. The scars remain, but it is possible that they are transformed in an inner chamber of our being in which the wound can sleep peacefully. Healing takes place, a scar becomes an elastic reminder that life goes on and things can, indeed, get better.
My heart is with all Ukrainians fighting for freedom, the Russians who dare oppose the war, and those who cannot resist, yet suffer and hope for peace. With gratitude to my grandparents’ generation, I tell these stories for us not to forget and nurture hope.
Further Reading:
Kearney, Richard. 2017. Narrative Imagination and Catharsis. Kronos. Philosophical Journal. Vol VI.
Essi Ikonen
After studying philosophy, theology and psychology in the Universities of Jyväskylä and Helsinki, Essi received her doctorate from the University of Helsinki in 2020. Since March 2020 she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Aarhus University School of Culture and Society in the project "Epistemological Aspects of Dialogue: Exploring the Potential of the Second-Person Perspective," in addition to her work as an advisor in the Center for the Study of Gender, Religion and Culture. She resides in Finland and is also affiliated with the University of Helsinki through her research on listening and imagination.
