Moonlight Swim

Finland in ’59, and Tuula Siponius sings Kuutamouintia. The Elvis version in Blue Hawaii (1961) is not as good; it doesn’t have a duck and is filmed in sunlight. Below, more music from the long dark Finnish winter of 1959.



Seija Karpiomaa, Vanha Mustalainen, (The Old Gypsy).



Anna-Liisa Pyykkö & Ingmar Englund, Kaikki alkoi sinun kanssasi, (It all started with you).



Vieno Kekkonen, Tuliharja, (Brush Fire).

Remembrance in St. Petersburg

In the IHT, Alison Smale writes of the Piskarovskoye Memorial Cemetery, and its monument to the one million victims of the siege of Leningrad, and then goes on to tell of an exhibition at the Anna Akhmatova Museum on the Soviet-Finnish wars of 1939-40 and 1941-44, and of arguments that Stalin’s attack on Finland on June 25, 1941, with 85,000 Finns and 330,000 Russians killed, led directly to the siege of Leningrad.

Akhmatova, who knew nearby Finland from pre-1917 days when many St. Petersburg residents vacationed there, was one of the few European intellectuals to see Stalin’s attack on Finland in 1939 on a par with Hitler’s occupation of Paris or bombing of London.

In the permanent exhibit that chronicles her life, the Finns have installed pictures of these wars. On another floor, they built what looked like a Finnish apartment, peppering it with war images in unlikely places (the surface of dinner plates) to illustrate that memories of war never fade.

Read more.

In his book, The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939-40, Carl Van Dyke writes that this war “convinced the Finnish government of the need to seek protection against the threat of another Soviet invasion by courting allies either in Scandinavia or Germany.”

He also describes how “the war revealed many deficiencies in the Red Army’s ability to conduct contemporary warfare, confirming the Red Army’s low status in relation to other European armed forces...”

Though Stalin had increased the size of the military prior to the war years, from 1934 on he’d introduced a series of organisational reforms in the Red Army to consolidate his own political power, culminating in a wave of repression in 1937-38 during which “36,761 army commanders and some 3,000 naval commanders had been dismissed, shot or imprisoned.”

From the book:

The absurdities and horrors of the first month of the war had given rise to jokes and humorous stories which ridiculed superior officers and commissars while indulging in self-deprecation. Eventually, a more benign expression of this humour found its way into the military press in the character of Pasha Brezhuntsov (‘The Liar’), who was a creation of the editorial board of the newspaper Boevaia krasnoarmeiskaia. In early February the editors began printing the fictional letters of Pasha the Liar, depicting a gossiping, undisciplined soldier incapable of shooting or skiing and unfamiliar with regulations, whose exploits poked fun at Soviet weaponry, military food, the excessive formality of military bureaucracy, and traffic-jams on the roads. These stories came to the attention of the Political Administration of the Leningrad Military District which condemned such humour as politically subversive and a mockery of the Red Army soldier.

A more politically sympathetic alternative was the cartoon character ‘Vasia Tërkin’ created by the military journalist A. Tvardovskii with the help of the artsts V. Briskin and V. Fomichev at the newspaper Na Strazhe Rodiny. Tvardovskii based his cartoon character on a truck driver he had met during the invasion of western Belorussia a few months before, embellishing him with traits of a folk hero. Tvardovskii’s intent was to portray the role model of a combat-ready soldier who combined cheerful, quick-witted but unpretentious humour with resourcefulness under fire ‘without undermining the sacred principles of military discipline’. ‘Vasia Tërkin’ was introduced to the reading public on 31 December 1939. (...) ‘Vasia Tërkin’ sought to co-opt the potential subversiveness of military humour (...)

Images and excerpts from The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939-40, Copyright © 1997 Carl Van Dyke.

Three from Arja Kajermo

After a recent morbid exchange on an issue of blame, I was reminded of the above strip, my favourite of many by Dublin’s leading Finnish cartoonist, Arja Kajermo. (Click image to enlarge.)

Regarding God and his mam in the last panel, as Iraqi Mojo will explain, America is God now.

In the hunt through back issues of In Dublin magazine for the first strip, I also found this one, on terrorists infiltrating RTE television programmes.

From 1977 to 1993 Ireland’s national broadcaster was explicitly prohibited from broadcasting statements by spokespersons for Sinn Féin, the Provisional IRA, or other proscribed terrorist organisations under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Authority Act. There were a number of breaches of this, as explained in a snippet from The Irish Emigrant, March 27 1988:

SECTION 31

The young reporter who compiled the report that had Martin McGuinness speaking on the air was dismissed by RTE on Monday. Jenny McGeever has now taken the matter to the High Court and has been given leave to apply for a judicial review of her dismissal. No action is being taken against the editor and assistant editor of the programme. McGeever was a freelance reporter on contract to RTE. She is claiming that she could not report effectively if she did not tape interviews with various people. The fact that one of these interviews went out on the air was simply an oversight caused by the pressure to have the story ready for transmission.

This news item gave rise to a couple of related stories. The Gay Byrne morning radio programme was investigating the impact of emigration on families. He invited to the studio a woman whose husband had emigrated because he could not find work. After the programme was broadcast it was discovered that the woman was a member of Sinn Fein. The other programme under the eye of the press and politicians is “Questions and Answers.” This programme goes out on television on Sunday nights and is hosted by Olivia O’Leary. The format consists of a panel of politicians and other personalities giving their opinions on issues raised by individuals in an audience drawn from members of the public who apply for tickets. Members of Sinn Fein appear to have been particularly successful in obtaining tickets.

RTE’s Questions and Answers programme used the same format as the BBC’s Question Time, so there’s topicality for you.

Finally, the perfect portrayal of Dublin life as I remember it from those days. For more, have a look at Arja’s place.

All comics copyright © Arja Kajermo.

Flying home

While I was on holiday, the Sadie paintings arrived home safely from the exhibition in Finland. The above homecoming picture is now on my wall, resting before the next adventure. Below, a detail view. Click on it for an even closer look.

Ring-ring

Jeff Winner has posted some Raymond Scott ringtones for the iPhone, but I don’t think they’ll work on my phone. Mobile? Well, the wire is long enough to reach both of my chairs. As the man said, “Siunattu teknologia!” 

Flying to Finland

In Finnish my darling flying cat is called Siiri Peloton Postilentäjä. From January 14th until March 15th 2009 the Post Museum in Helsinki will be exhibiting 24 original paintings of her adventures. The pictures are boxed and ready to go. I’m holding my breath -