Leevi Lehto: The Finnish Communist in Eastern Karelia

Translated into English by the author

From Ampauksia ympäripyörivästä raketista, 2004. Also available online in Finnish original, and as translation into Russian by Sergej Zavjalov and into Portuguese by by Marja Elisabeth Lintulahti Olandim and Odile Cisneros.

It was year 1910.
The days begun to pass.
As for me, I returned to Vaasa, where immediately I got vacated for a month.
And now, something incredible happened.
The area of the cabin was 18 m2, and there was the same amount of men in it.
In Dubrovka, I participated in 10 km skiing race, winning it.
Thus I was left in the winter cold in my shirtsleeves.
Here the commissar shot the militia chief in the forehead without further
questioning.
A short time of family happiness fell into pieces after lasting no more than a year. I
don't know,
why that Lady had been arrested, but as neither of our's names
had been taken up yet, we reckoned,
that nothing would prevent us from leaving.
Now we are on the shore of Lake Onega already.
Everything is in an exemplary order.
The air is thick with the stench of War-Communism.
But one doesn't feel like stopping, though the hack steams like a steam-kettle.
The process for electing the Committee for the Mining Industry begins.
The Colonel is received by the chief of the school, Aleksander Inno.
The military school forms itself for an offensive.
Salomaa walks over to the table covered with a red cloth.
But it is as long a lie as from here to St. Petersburg.
But Fate had arraigned for some of the biggest bosses
to be in another event at the Railwaymen's Club at Finland Station.
By the way, I was there myself to see all that.
The trial was a travesty.
But then it was time for parting again.
But they say a Finn does not believe before trying.
But there was no-one in the cottage except
for two corporals from the Savo Light Infantry Regiment,
washing away their homesickness with bottles of fresh Finnish brew.
But now I could see what sweet days were waiting the Finnish Communist bosses
next to cocoa, lard, and semolina.
But the wind has gone over them.
When inspecting the house,
they found forty female bodies, on top of them
the afore-mentioned officer's wife.
But as Lenin himself said,
this call was followed by no one but myself, and one other,
equally free from homesickness.
But left behind by me was the gunpowder-smelling Lapp hut
and I was the only one to emerge from there.
But for the Lectorship for Physics and Chemistry was nominated an electrician, Teemu Kallio.
But hearing this, the lady of the house brought newly-tarred skis, Kajaani style.
But there was workmen's power in Eastern Karelia, after all.
I, however, soon begun to have second thoughts,
but it was too late already at that point.
But the milkmaid, coming to work in the morning, did not notice the change,
and thus the whole cattle, a hundred heads in all, was given arsenic.
But I don't even know whether they managed to get back to Finland, or not.