Vyborg Massacre

In April 1918, Vyborg became the last capital of the Red Finns. When the railway leading to Petrograd was cut off, Vyborg was surrounded by the Whites. The city was full of refugees as well as demoralized soldiers. After the blockade ring closed, about 500 Russian soldiers remained in Vyborg. When the Reds began evacuating Vyborg by sea, most of the Russian soldiers who had participated in the fighting and a small number of Red Finns managed to get on the ships. There were fights over places on these ships because the White army had issued an official order to execute all Russian soldiers who fell into their hands. Knowing this, the Red Finns gave up their places to the Russians. Thus, all the Russian soldiers were able to board the ships, except for about a hundred of the most severely wounded.

The Whites who surrounded Vyborg believed there were many more Russians there. Propaganda constantly emphasized that a liberation war was being waged against the Russians and those collaborating with them. The Whites stormed the city shouting “Shoot the Russians.” They did not find Russians with weapons in their hands but searched for unarmed ones, aided by neighbors. These actions were not spontaneous; special patrols conducted searches for Russians among the remaining population. It was easy to find them because the residents of Vyborg did not think they had any reason to hide.

At that time, 5,000 Russian civilians lived in Vyborg, most of whom were citizens of the Grand Duchy of Finland. They did not consider themselves foreigners after Finland gained independence. Russian merchants and officials themselves had suffered under Red rule. They were glad that the White liberators had taken the city. However, the Whites who captured Vyborg did not understand the specifics of this city, as most of them came from western or northern Finland. They considered all Russians, in Mannerheim’s words, to be “Lenin’s hooligans.” They also did not know that these Russians helped the White underground movement. Thus, the Russians remaining in Vyborg — officials, officers, entrepreneurs — found themselves in serious danger. On the very first night after the capture of Vyborg, mass house-to-house cleanups took place. Russians were detained primarily based on their appearance and language. The Whites used a cunning trick tested during the capture of Tampere. All detainees were forced to say the Finnish word for “one” — yks, yksi. Even Russians who had lived in Finland often pronounced it incorrectly — yuks — and thus revealed themselves.

As a result, a large number of Russians were gathered near the station area. Mistakes occurred, for example, Poles who happened to be in Vyborg at that time and who were hostile to all Reds — both Russians and Finns — were counted among the Russians. This crowd of 200 people was led through the entire city of Vyborg to the western side of the Vyborg castle. Two Orthodox priests walked at the front of the procession; they were kicked and humiliated. Relatives of the detainees followed the crowd, begging for mercy. The relatives offered money in exchange for lives. The money was taken from them, but the people were not released. The crowd was brought to the fortress, stopped between the fortress ramparts, and there all were shot to the last person, including several women and underage boys. Then the executioners walked over the shot crowd and finished off the wounded.

The execution that took place in Vyborg on April 29, 1918, at three o’clock in the afternoon was the largest mass execution in Finland during the era of firearms.

They were mostly shot by soldiers from northern Finland under the command of Swedish officers and jägers. It should be noted that many officers in the White Finnish army were ethnic Swedes living in Finland. The mass execution was led by Major Martti Ekström, who was originally from Sweden.

“We can name all the executed by name. Besides Russians, twenty-three Poles, fourteen Ukrainians, an Italian, a Jew, two Tatars, and Estonians were shot,” says Alla Matvienko, a member of the local history community and a member of the Vyborg toponymic commission. According to her, Vyborg local historians began searching for the execution site in the early 2000s immediately after Westerlund’s book was published. It turned out that the tragedy occurred at the Annen fortifications near the Friedrichshamn gates. After that, disputes began about what should be written on the memorial stone or plaque. Some proposed emphasizing that Russians were executed here. Others believed a more vague inscription was necessary — “To the victims of terror.”

Let us emphasize once again — Russians in Vyborg were killed precisely on ethnic grounds, regardless of their political views. According to the account of the former church caretaker Juho Kochetov, one Russian officer living in Vyborg on the day the city was taken “went to greet the White Guards with a bouquet in his hands and in uniform but was instead shot.” Westerlund repeatedly notes in his book that there is much evidence of Russian officials’ sympathy for the Whites. Captain Konstantin Nazarov of the liquidation department, according to his wife Anna’s story, left home on the morning of April 29 to greet the White Guards and went to the station to obtain some kind of permit to stay. “But there was a long queue of those waiting at the station, so he went home and then to his office at 21 Ekaterininskaya Street, where he was arrested along with other department members at 11 a.m.” Nazarov did not help the Red Guards in any way and was not a Bolshevik. But he was shot between the ramparts the same day.

In the following days, executions of Russians continued. In total, about 400 Russians or those considered Russians were killed. Somewhat less severe reprisals also took place in other settlements — rural areas of the Karelian Isthmus, as well as western Finland.

Mass shootings ceased with the arrival of the British vice-consul in Vyborg, Voldemar Frisk, who lodged an official protest. However, in the following days and weeks, other Russians were also shot. The Vyborg shootings brought unpleasant notoriety to the commander-in-chief, the commander of the Eastern group of troops Ernest Lewström, and the city commandant when Petrograd newspapers began writing about them, followed by the Swedish “Hufvudstadsbladet.”

It is difficult to say what caused the mass executions. It can be assumed that the White Finns were intoxicated by victories and did not think about what they were doing. Partly, the hatred of Russians can be explained by military propaganda, which declared them the main enemies of Finland, although this was not true. Finland broke away from Swedish rule in 1809. The entire 19th century was a happy and favorable time for Finland. It was an era of peace, political stability, and increasing prosperity. Relations worsened only at the beginning of the 20th century when Russia unified administration and introduced Russian as the sole official language in the Grand Duchy of Finland. The Finns considered this oppression. The hatred of Russians that manifested in 1918 existed for no more than one generation.

So what was the reason that so many people were killed in Vyborg as a result of these events? Some questions have no answers. We do not know why civilians are killed during wars. If we recall history, piles of dead appeared both in Russia during the Civil War and in the Balkans. Ordinary people, not prone to criminal actions, who recently lived ordinary lives, resorted to desperate bloody actions. It is by no means correct to say that ethnic hatred is a special trait of the Finns. However, this does not mean that we should remain silent about the facts that took place.

Sources:

http://terve-suomi.com/blog-finnomanki/394-vyborg-1918-ili-krovavyj-final-finskoj-revolyutsii.html

http://ristikivi.spb.ru/docs/viipuri-terror-1918-1.html

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Выборгская_резня