What an account. Sevander's father was among the leaders of a movement of idealistic Finnish-Americans (from the US and Canada) committed to creating a socialist community in Soviet Karelia. Instead, he and hundreds of others fell victim to Stalin's ruthless paranoia in the purges of the late 1930s.
Sevander spent part of her childhood in a gulag before finding her place in Soviet society in World War II. The final irony (actually, it opens the book): During the Glasnost era, the onetime Karelian pioneer town of Petrozavodsk establishes a sister-city relationship with Duluth, Minn., twin city to Sevander's childhood hometown of Superior, Wis. When Duluth sends a citizen's delegation, she's at the railway station to welcome her onetime neighbors.
I read no particular propaganda here, just a first-person recitation of empirical fact. In fact, Sevander concludes by reaffirming her socialism, even after returning to the United States to live out her final days.
Author(s): Mayme Sevander, Laurie Hertzel
Edition: 1st University of Minnesota Press Ed
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 208
Contents......Page 8
Map of Soviet Karelia......Page 9
Foreword......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 14
You Must Remember......Page 18
Big Red, Little Red......Page 28
The Little Communist......Page 42
Pioneers Again......Page 52
Filled with Hope......Page 60
Wanting to Belong......Page 72
They Took My Father......Page 86
The Dark Days......Page 96
Enemy of the People......Page 122
A Grave Injustice......Page 134
Trusted to Serve......Page 146
Too Late for Mother......Page 158
No Tears Left......Page 174
To Know the Truth......Page 186
Faces from the Past......Page 194
Afterword......Page 206
