Put Away
As the last war ended, Finland, who not unnatur- ally had been fighting against Russia, found her- self an occupied country. Early in 1945 Commun- ist purges began, and the Russians demanded the extradition of a number of political detainees and
emigres. One of the former was Unto Parvilah h a man in his late thirties who had been an offi in the Finnish Volunteer Battalion. After a fe comparatively civilised months of 'protect' custody' in Finnish gaols, he was flown to Mc, cow, where the Russians, having nothing speci r, to charge him with, spent months interrogati in the hope that something treasonable would t up; eventually he received a 'lenient' sentence five years' hard labour on the vaguest of count revolutionary charges. He got through th miserable years reasonably intact in body a mind—though weighing not much more than h his proper weight—only to find that instead being sent home to Finland as promised he vi packed off to exile in Siberia. There, at the Arct port of Dudinka, he spent four more years 'Soviet freedom' in a State saw-mill. Parvilahtt the most observant of extroverts, beautifu detached, sustained by his interest in the nig mare mechanics of prison camps and b the rich conglomeration of his fellow-slav exhilarated by the tuhtaa (fiddling—the 1 cunning of the prisoners in evading work). So of his stories are magnificent—particularly o about a prisoner, an ex-actor, who stole general's uniform, escaped in it. and then did
complete Captain of Koepenick tour of the 1 ur prison camps, where he scared the wits out le the authorities and left them cringing and proml ing to correct all the abuses he had unmasked.
Then there is the gloomy farce of the collecti farms, which he had ample time to study. A b eel farm is even more dreaded than a prison camp lie the farmer is just as much a captive, and rath, less cared for. One of Parvilahti's gayest momen Arn was on his final journey home, when he saw the collective farm exhibition in Moscow, all smili grain and gleaming tractors, in a setting like t
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