Price County, Wisconsin

The objective of the Soviet Union’s first five-year plan was to achieve maximum self-sufficiency. The forest resources of the Soviet Union in the 1920s were enormous. Most of the forests were situated, however, in areas where exploiting the wood was difficult, at least for purposes of foreign trade. From the point of view of their locations, the best forests were to be found in Soviet Karelia, from whence timber could be transported with relative ease along the waterways to western European markets. For this reason Karelia, which was otherwise a backward area, was of particular importance with regard to carrying out the five-year plan.

The start of the first five-year plan meant that the production goals of Soviet Karelia were raised dramatically; they were set so high that reaching them was not possible with local manpower. According to information in Soviet Karelian newspapers, from 30,000 to 50,000 more workers were needed in 1931. Under these circumstances, the leader of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Republic, tried to ensure that as many as possible of the new workers would be Finnish-speaking. As a result, Finnish-speaking workers came from southern Russia, Siberia, Ingermanland, Finland, the United States and Canada.

The manpower to be recruited from Canada was valuable not only because it was Finnish-speaking, but also because in Canada there were plenty of skilled forest workers thought to be capable also of teaching effective working methods to the rest of the population of Soviet Karelia. The recruiting was done by an office, known as Technical Aid to Soviet Karelia. An agreement was made for 50 to 70 experienced forest workers from Canada and the United States to be allowed to go to the Soviet Union. The Work Unit would act as “shock troops”, who would show how effectively forest work could be carried out.

The “ambassador” of the Canadian Finns was Comrade Karppinen, who came to Karelia in the spring of 1930. In the autumn, he was followed by 26 Canadian and four American Finnish forest workers who made an agreement with the bureau responsible for forest work at the beginning of November to fell 14,000 cubic metres of pulpwood (about 21,000 cords), transport it to a tractor road and load it on tractor sleds.

Matroosa was a kind of model forestry area and attempts were made there to organize timber cutting and processing on the basis of the methods taught by the Canadian and American Finns.

Thank you Bill Hoffman for contributing this information!

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