Reader's Opinion | Finnish soldiers also read books during the war

Jaakko Lyytinen wrote (HS Column 23.12.23), that the Ukrainian soldier resorts to the book. Lyytinen gestured Ylen's interviewin which a Ukrainian special forces soldier using the combat name Frenchman says that literature takes him away from the war for a while and presents his books there somewhere.

Finnish soldiers read books in the middle of their military operations, if one is to be believed who served as a chaplain to an artillery battery in the block of Kyyrölä and Muolaa on the Isthmus Victory Estonia. In his work Give me the book (1968) Estonia is certain that during the years of the Continuation War, soldiers read a lot and that even the men who normally only picked up the “book of the four kings” picked up the right book at that time. The priest himself had prepared for the war by buying by Georges Barbarin the book Death as a friendit was obvious that death would soon become his acquaintance.

Men seem to have had enough books. The defense forces had started acquiring conscript libraries, or “garrison libraries”, as it was called at the time, immediately after its establishment. By the Winter War, every troop division had a library, usually managed by a non-commissioned officer attached to the troop division staff. During the wars, some of the books were moved to the fronts as dugout libraries. The headquarters' entertainment office acquired books, and they were also received as a donation. Different kinds of libraries developed: both rotating boxes containing dozens of books and separate dugouts properly equipped with a library sign.

Also Matt Kuusi is in his book Bypasses (1985) mentioned of these libraries. He says with a sense of humor that when he served in the Ohta block on the border between Kivennava and Lempaala, there was plenty of everything: a theater, a mayor, priests, doctors, a telephone, a sports field – and 33 libraries, which is more than the city of Helsinki. Those libraries must have been the aforementioned book boxes called transfer libraries. (Similar transfer libraries were in use at log cabins for decades.)

According to Voitto Viro, in the summer of 1944 the books had to be left behind, when only vital items could be evacuated, if even those.

Eija School

doctor of social sciences, library historian, Lahti

The reader's opinions are speeches written by HS readers, which are selected and delivered by the HS editors. You can leave an opinion piece or familiarize yourself with the principles of writing at the address www.hs.fi/kiryotamielipidekeisuis/.