The controversial diary of a Finnish woman lured by the dream of Soviet Russia that turned into a nightmare

In the 1930s, a young Finnish woman, harboring dreams of living in a workers' paradise, left her home for Stalin's Soviet Union. However, this dream quickly turned into a nine-year nightmare, which she documented in her diary.

Published under the pen name "Kirsti Huurre" in 1942, the diary became one of the most banned books in Finland, second only to Hitler's autobiographical manifesto, "Mein Kampf," for safety reasons. Now, 90 years later, Huurre's great-granddaughter, Anna Shilske, has translated this memoir, "Under the Sickle and Hammer," into English.

"There was a very strong cultural influence of the Soviet Union in Finland, so a book that was critical of the Soviet Union was banned," Shilske said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio. Born in Finland and currently a senior finance officer at the World Bank in Washington D.C., she recalled hearing about her great-grandmother's book as a teenager.

Shilske said, "Even then, I thought her story was fascinating and deserved to be heard by a wider audience." Her motivation for translating her great-grandmother's diary stemmed from seeing the parallels with the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. "I thought, if I don't translate this book now, when am I going to translate it?" she said. "Hearing about the plans for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including taking Kyiv in three days... I realized that these elements were exactly the same as what my great-grandmother mentioned in her book."

Before Huurre decided to leave Finland for the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, she had a "very normal life," Shilske said. "In the book, she tries to explain to herself and the readers that her life was good in Helsinki... she wasn't running away from her parents at all." "But, something really drew her to the Soviet Union, and I'll never fully understand what that was."

While the exact motivations for Huurre's departure from Finland to Russia are unknown, Shilske suggests that the Finnish Civil War of 1918 may have played a role. The war, which began a year after Finland's independence from Russia, was a six-month conflict between the socialist Red Guard and the conservative White Guard, ending in a White victory. "There were two sides at the time, and she actually had friends on both sides," Shilske said. She believes that it was possibly Huurre's friends on the Red side "that led her to be interested in life in the Soviet Union."

The Soviet Union also conducted propaganda and information campaigns, some of which proclaimed that "joining the Soviet family meant plenty of work, nice apartments, and a society that treated everyone equally." Shilske said that her great-grandmother must have felt that this move was the right decision for her and her family as a young mother. Furthermore, Huurre seemed to expect that once she was settled in Russia, her young son would come to join her.

"I have a hard time understanding why someone would feel so strongly that... you're going to move to another country and leave your child behind... she must have felt very conflicted about it, but also very determined about what she was doing and that it was a good choice," Shilske said.

Shortly after arriving in the Soviet Union, Huurre met a Finnish Red Army officer. They fell in love, married, and had a daughter. Subsequently, the Soviet Union began its ethnic cleansing. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Stalin ordered the deportation of "anti-Soviet" individuals. Those with different ethnic backgrounds were imprisoned and investigated, with the most common charge being espionage. "This was an easy solution to these purges, to claim that these people were actually spying for foreign countries, although there was no evidence that this was ever the case," Shilske said.

After spending nine years in the Soviet Union, Huurre managed to escape back to Finland in 1941. However, her return home was far from smooth, as she returned to a country at war. The Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland began in 1939 after the Soviet Union invaded Finland, only three months after the start of World War II. The Winter War was followed by the Continuation War, a conflict in which Finland and Nazi Germany fought against the Soviet Union.

Upon her return, Huurre found herself suspected by the Finnish state police of being a Soviet spy or of having strong feelings for the Soviet Union. "The military and the police did extensive interviews or interrogations of what she did in Soviet Russia, who she discussed or lived with, and who she associated with," Shilske said.

Around this time, Huurre wrote about her experiences living in Stalin's oppressive Soviet Union. The Continuation War was still ongoing, but when it became clear that the Soviet Union would prevail, she fled to Sweden. "She couldn't risk staying in Finland and then potentially being deported to the Soviet Union by the Allied Commission for being a Soviet citizen," Shilske said about Huurre.

She believes that her great-grandmother wrote the book because "she wanted to share her experience... to counter other types of propaganda messages in Finland about the Soviet Union being a workers' paradise." Her memoir, "A Private Diary from the Soviet Union in the 1930s," was first published in 1942. "I've actually seen a copy of the book that was given to a Finnish soldier who had done well in a sports competition, so I think it was certainly used as propaganda by the Finnish military as well," Shilske said.

However, Shilske said that she is not surprised that the memoir was so controversial. "The book is her experience, her way of life in Soviet Russia during those nine years," she said. Translated, the author's preface reads: "My purpose in writing this book is not to propagandize, to warn any Finn who may still have illusions about the sickle and hammer. I just want to tell the truth about the life that I and my friends had to go through under the 'Stalin sun.'"

In the book, Huurre describes the scene of her Soviet husband being killed and how she was viewed as the widow of a spy. "She didn't have a decent job, she had difficulties finding housing and feeding her daughter, so it's clear that her experience was very negative and she made it very clear in the book how she felt about Soviet society at the time," her great-granddaughter said.

The Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union ended in 1944, with the Moscow Armistice being signed in September 1944. Subsequently, an Allied Control Commission, led by the Soviet Union, was established in Helsinki to ensure that Finland adhered to the terms of the peace treaty. Shilske said that the commission sent a list of books that were not allowed to be sold to all bookstores and publishers. It also required Finnish libraries not to keep any literature that was considered "damaging to the brotherly relations between Finland and the Soviet Union."

Her great-grandmother's book was on the list. "The Finnish librarians thought the book was very dangerous for the relationship between the two countries because it painted a negative picture of life in the Soviet Union," her great-granddaughter said. Huurre spent the rest of her life in Sweden until her death in 1991. In hindsight, Shilske said, it is easy to describe her great-grandmother's decision to leave Finland for the Soviet Union in the 1930s as "foolish," but ultimately, "she was a young woman, and she still wanted to have an experience."