Seite - 45 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 4/2018

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Tuulikki Kurki | Border Crossing Trauma 45 Historical Trauma of a Victim and a Perpetrator in the Borderlands The historical novel Pain discusses the civil war that took place in the early 1920s in Russian Karelia, close to the Finnish–Russian border. The war was merciless as it divided the population and even single families with the question of whether Karelia should join the Soviet regime, remain a separate entity, or join Finland. Part of the population tried to remain neutral, albeit that it was difficult to do so in a world that was at that time divided by strong ideologies and demanded allegiance. In Russian Karelia, Finnish troops also participated in the war, and fought on both White and Red sides. The driving force of the White Finns was the Greater Finland ideology (in Finn- ish: Suur-Suomi-aate) that had developed already in the 19th century and aimed at unifying all Finno-Ugric peoples living in Finland and elsewhere (Niinistö 2001, 80–83). In the novel Pain (Perttu 2014, 21–22), this Greater Finland ideology works as an intoxicating drug that creates enthusiasm and affinity among the White troops and persuades the Finnish soldiers to cross the border. Officially, the task of the White troops was to defend Karelia against Russia, and liberate the Karelian people from Russian rule. This task justified their border crossing, their violence and killing, and the executions of Reds on the Russian side of the border. By leaning on the Greater Finland ideology, White Finns also attempted to annex those areas of Russian Karelia inhabited by Karelians and Finns to Finland (Baron 2007, 25–26). The novel Pain addresses two different traumas in the civil war: the trauma of the victim and also the trauma of the perpetrator. Both traumas are embodied in the narrative of the main protagonist, a Finnish woman Riikka. Riikka participates in the civil war with the White troops. Her personal motive is to revenge on the Reds for a violent attack where her uncle was shot to death, and she was mutilated with a horsewhip. The force behind her actions is her physical and mental pain resulting from these traumatic events. She tries to numb the pain not only by exacting violent actions against the enemy and killing the Reds in a blind fury, but also through a process of self-inflicted pain. As such, pain becomes an instrument for controlling her agony, and she had understood its controlling mechanism at the moment of her uncle’s murder and when she became a victim of a violent attack herself. “The pain was burning, it was almost stunning, but strangely enough it felt somehow good. The pain was the only thing that existed, my uncle’s dead body that was sliding down against the wall did not cause agony, there was no fear. There was only pain.” (Perttu 2014, 46.) “Riikka wished that she could shoot all the prisoners herself, but she was just one of the eight volunteers. Each of the volunteers should aim at one prisoner. [...] Riikka did not feel anything. She looked at the men who were bustling at the cliff edge. She did not under- stand what they were doing. The pain inside her did not let go. It was not replaced by another pain that she wished for. The new pain would have erased all that which cluttered her memory and did not leave room for anything new. She had just killed a man, and now the body was pushed over the cliff’s edge into a roaring torrent.” (Perttu 2014, 57–58.) Like other Finnish soldiers, Riikka at first supports the ideology of Greater Finland. However, the ideo- logical intoxication evaporates during her fights with the enemy, and the emptiness and meaninglessness