Russian patriotic organizations have targeted the cemeteries of Finns.
Catholic and Orthodox monuments in Sandarmoh. Stock photo. Wikimedia Commons
Cossacks and masked rioters arrived to disrupt the memorial service for the victims of political terror organized at the Sandarmoh cemetery in Karelia, Russia, on Monday.
Sandarmoh is the place of execution and burial of victims of Stalin’s persecutions in the Republic of Karelia. According to archival sources, more than 7,000 people were shot there in the 1930s, including about 700 Finns.
At the memorial service, the names of those killed on the spot were to be read. Representatives of foreign embassies tend to arrive there. This time the representatives of France, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Norway were present.
This year, unidentified persons had hung flyers on trees and near monuments asking:
– Finns, Are you supporting fascism again? Has history taught us nothing?
– Emilia Eduardovna, why are you where fascism, LGBT and pedophilia are?
The text refers to to Emilia Slobunovawho is an opposition politician and a member of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia.
Disturbances
Busloads of Cossacks and members of the youth organization Young Guard of United Russia arrived to disturb the cemetery.
Nuori Kaarti is the youth organization of the Russian ruling party United Russia. Some of the rioters were masked and some were dressed in uniforms and field clothes with St. George ribbons.
In addition, loudspeakers were set up at the site, playing patriotic songs and covering the reading of the names of the victims.
Independent Russian media Meduza reported on the matter.
The Karelian local media Stolitsa na Onego disapproved of the memorial event, and saw it as part of an anti-Russian information war directed from the West.
Sandarmoh and its numerous monuments erected to different nationalities are seen as a cautionary example of the politics pursued in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The fact that the names of the Ukrainians who were killed on the spot were to be read at the event and the national symbols of Ukraine were to be publicly presented were particularly infuriating.
Memorial to Ukrainians killed in Sandarmoh. Wikimedia Commons
“Nazi symbols” out of cemeteries
At the same time, the All-Russian Cossack Union demands that Finnish cemeteries in the Leningrad region remove “Nazi symbols”.
A representative of the Cossack League Vladimir Pinchukin according to several Finnish military cemeteries, violations against Russian laws have been observed.
Finnish swastikas have been found on a few tombstones. Under one swastika is written “heroes” in Finnish and Russian.
According to Pintšuk, “Nazi symbols” should be removed from all Finnish tombstones.
– I support that everything is made in accordance with the previously agreed intergovernmental agreement. No Nazi symbols, no heroes, Pinchuk said.
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