The Establisment of Finnish Teacher Education in Ingria in 1943

Authors

• Reijo Rautajoki Itä-Suomen yliopisto

Abstract

The School Administration of Finland started to build up a school system in Ingria, which was occupied by the German Army during World War II. The main focus of the article is to examine why the tribal ideology and Finnish project in Ingria were so important to the school authorities of Finland. At the beginning of the war there was a shared expectation that Germany would win the war and a large share of the Ingrian-Finnish population would stay in Ingria. It was important that the Ingrians remained patriotic to Finland and their Finnish language should flourish. A strict school system was needed to form the basis for this endeavor. This article shows that the Finnish school authorities had no option but to follow one path, despite the fact that the Finnish Government understood that Germany would lose the war. Within a few weeks everything changed. The Germans decided to move all Ingrian civilians to Finland in the autumn of 1943. The article is based on Finnish archive material and research literature.