The search for a socialist El Dorado: Finnish immigration to Soviet Karelia from the United States and Canada in the 1930s

The search for a socialist El Dorado: Finnish immigration to Soviet Karelia from the United States and Canada in the 1930s, by Alexey Golubev and Irina Takala, Winnipeg, University of Manitoba Press, 2014, 236 pp., $34.95 (pbk), ISBN 978-1-611-86115-0Arguably, no other region figures as prominently in the history and mythology of the Finnish people as Karelia. It is a part of the world that has been contested since the thirteenth century, and one that resonates with Finns in particular for the region's oral folklore and mythology that is a foundational aspect of Finland's national epic, The Kalevala. First published in 1835, it contributed to the development of Finnish nationalism in the early twentieth century as well as the growing unrest that led to independence from Russia in 1917.It was only natural that, when an opportunity arose for socialist Finns to emigrate to what for many was an historic ancestral homeland and establish a socialist utopia, thousands would flock to the call. The Search for a Socialist El Dorado by Alexey Golubev and Irina Takala is the product of two significant research projects that have, for over a decade, explored this emigration from Finnish communities in Canada and the United States. The projects largely examine the 1930s and the emigration of Finns to the former Soviet Union during its formative years. One, based in Canada and led by the late Varpu Lindstrom, explored those Canadians who fell victim to Stalin's purges in the 1930s. The second, led by Irina Takala and based out of Petrozavodsk in the Russian Federation, looked at North American immigrant communities in Karelia to, as the authors write, better understand Soviet regional history and focus[ed] on the impacts of American and Canadian immigrants on the cultural, economic, and social development of Soviet Karelia during the 1930s and 1940s (viii).What Golubev and Takala have produced is clearly a study based more on the latter project. Throughout its nine chapters, The Search for a Socialist El Dorado provides a solid chronological examination of the establishment, growth, and tragic end to the North American Finnish communities in Soviet Karelia. The first three chapters provide necessary background information on the nature and characteristics of the Finnish diaspora and Soviet immigration policy during the 1930s. While much of the discussion in these sections has been well trodden by historians, Golubev and Takala provide added layers of context from the Soviet perspective using archival materials largely inaccessible to scholars until recently and a secondary literature largely untapped by North American academics. …

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