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Anita Konkka

Anita Konkka: Black Passport

An introduction translated from Finnish by David Hackston

Anita Konkka is a writer who offers humorous and sharply focussed descriptions of women’s lives. In her novels Samaa sukua (The Same Family, 1985) and Johanneksen tunnustukset (The Confessions of Johannes, 1995) she deals with her Ingrian roots. In the latter she presented a portrait of her father, the writer Juhani Konkka.

In the novel Musta passi (Black Passport) Anita Konkka tells the story of her Ingrian-Finnish uncle. The question of Ingrian identity became topical once again for the writer during the crisis in Kosovo.

After the Russian revolution, the nine year-old Eero Konkka escaped with his family from Toksova to Finland. After a few years the family returned to Ingria; only the elder brother, who was later well-known as the writer and translator Juhani Konkka, remained on the Finnish side of the border. This decision affected the course of Eero’s life in many different ways during the years of Stalinist terror. His life in the Soviet Union became a long series of fleeing and adventures. He worked as a teacher and political campaigner until he was fired and given a ‘black passport’. This meant that he no longer had the right to work or to have a home. The desperate young man travelled throughout the vast Soviet Union looking for any place where no one would ask for his passport. He worked as a carpenter in the Red Army’s theatre in Habarovsk, on railway buildings in Grozny, in a meat processing plant in Dusanbe and in a furniture factory in Irkutsk, yet he always had to leave to escape imprisonment before the brand in his passport was revealed.

Eero Konkka, who was luckier than tens of thousands of other Ingrian Finns, managed to escape both ethnic and political cleansing. Before his death in 1996 he sent a package back to Finland filled with tape recordings and asked his niece to write about the two brothers, who lived under such different political and social circumstances. "There is adventure, there is drama, sometimes it verges on tragedy, but there is also romance," he promised the person listening to the tapes.

Anita Konkka had already written about her father Juhani. The stories told by her uncle gave birth to the novel Black Passport, which deals in depth with the more human side of life, friendship, falling in love and marriage. Because the writer incorporates elements of her own life, wonders and debates these issues, the result is both an original documentary novel and a preserved piece of Ingrian history.

"In this novel Konkka has gone deep below the surface […] She has identified her own position between the conflict of cultures; she has perceived the enormous conflict between the cultures of her Ostrabothnian mother and her Russian father, something which made the young Anita Konkka special between two cultures." - Tuula Hortamo, Iisalmen Sanomat, 28.7.2001

"Black Passport is an exceptionally knowledgeable depiction of the history of the Finnish minority in Russian Karelia during the time of Stalin. Anita Konkka’s uncle has given her a valuable and marvellous inheritance." – Erkki Savolainen, Savon Sanomat, 19.7.2001

"As a novel, Black Passport moves forth decidedly and vividly. The uncle has all the qualities of a character in a novel. The life history of an Ingrian communist, a Soviet both in spirit and in blood, from the 1920’s to 1990’s offers a plot full of adventure and often horror." – Kaisa Neimala, Etelä-Saimaa

"Anita Konkka has threaded [her uncle’s] cassettes together to shape a novel full of life, humour, self-irony and empathy. Her unique style, her seemingly carefree narrative which drives the story like a roaring fire, blends together elements of her own life, her experiences of what it is to be Ingrian, journeys behind the border and a mild critique of the war years. Konkka has succeeded in seamlessly combining a questioning perspective with the story-telling in a way which is most enjoyable, so that the narrative is constantly in motion." – Eila Jaatinen, Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, 13.5.2001

© David Hackston