"Behind matches" with Evgeny Leonov: What little-known facts about the life of Finns in the Russian Empire were discovered by a popular film

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Soviet-Finnish film "Behind the Matches" with Yevgeny Leonov and Galina Polskikh was perceived by the domestic audience, without much hesitation, as a movie about "old abroad". At the same time, what is happening in the picture applies to Russian history. The film can tell a lot about the times when Finland was a principality within the Russian Empire.

Seven years before independence

The film is based on the story of the Finnish classic Maya Lassila, written in 1910. In seven years, there will be a revolution, Finland will gain independence, but for now it is one hundred and one years as part of the Russian Empire. If you look closely, you can find that this is reflected in the film: for example, when Antti and Jussi, performed by Leonov and Innocent, enter the police station, the viewer sees a portrait of the Russian emperor above the chief's table, and the gendarmes are dressed in Russian uniforms, well known to the Soviet children based on illustrations from the biographies of the Bolsheviks.

It is interesting that the police chief, quite in the all-Russian trend, is depicted as a boorish devil: after the events of 1905, a general hostility to the police broke out in the empire, which literally covered all classes. By the way, most likely, unlike ordinary policemen, their boss is Russian. But … most likely, he speaks Finnish with the arrested persons. On the outskirts of the empire, the police tried to learn the local language - not so much out of respect, but so that there were no secrets from them.

Why Antti and Jussi "went to America"

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, emigration from Europe to the United States acquired enormous proportions. The flow from the Russian Empire was especially noticeable. The Jews moved en masse, first of all, because of the pogroms on the outskirts of the country, and the Poles, not wanting to remain under the rule of the Russian emperors. After 1905, Russian political émigrés were added.

In general, immigration rules in the United States at this time were harsh. The entry of Chinese workers, people with a criminal record or on the wanted list, prostitutes, polygamists, infectious patients, epileptics and anarchists was prohibited. In addition, those who entered were required to prove that they could feed themselves (they own this or that craft or capital).

At the end of the nineteenth century, in the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Russian authorities began to try to organize a recruitment into the army among the local population. The Finns did not like this: Russia was conducting military operations mainly on the southern borders, and why go somewhere to fight the Turks at a high risk of dying or being disabled, the Finns could not understand. Some bore bribes to officials, others decided to go to America - a country where it seemed that workers were always needed. If you look at the list of restrictions on entering the United States, it becomes clear that Finnish peasants (and it was they who migrated, mostly) had no problems with entry. By the way, almost all of them intended to return to their homeland when the problems were resolved - but in fact, no more than a quarter of labor migrants returned.

Another reason for leaving was a political one: in 1899, Nicholas II signed a decree according to which his decrees had legal force in Finland without the consent of the local Sejm and the Senate. This seemed like a bad sign to many Finns, and the migration flow became really dense. So Antti and Jussi's joke was perceived as very believable. True, it was mainly the residents of Vaasa and the surrounding territories that left, and the heroes lived in Liperi, in another part of Finland, but when the constant moving to America is heard, no one is surprised that the neighbor also wanted to try his luck there.

Matches, coffee and other household items

For a Russian it is surprising why the peasants drink the "master's drink" - coffee. But coffee is generally very common in Scandinavia, just as tea was common in peasant and merchant families in Russia. Of course, coffee is an expensive product brought from overseas, but tea was also imported for Russia. I must say, just as in Russia merchants strove to dilute tea with fireweed or less useful additives, in Scandinavia merchants also cheated with coffee, stirring it, for example, with fried barley - which worsened the quality of the drink, but made it more accessible for peasants and artisans …

The wife of the protagonist, Anna-Liza, seeing that the house has run out of matches, sends her husband not to the store, but to the neighboring farm. In Finland in the early twentieth century, shops were not very often in the countryside, and it was much faster to borrow matches from neighbors - unless, by chance, a wandering peddler, the main supplier of factory-made household items in the countryside, had not accidentally passed by the house.

By the way, Anna-Lisa is dressed very fashionably, in a tailored suit made of a blouse and a skirt made of factory fabric, with large buttons - you can compare her suit with the clothes of a relative, dressed in a simpler way. Anna-Lisa covers her skirt from a suit with an equally flirty apron. It looks like Antti spoils his wife - when he goes shopping, he takes her cuts and accessories so that she can be fashionable. At the same time, he himself dresses without any force. If you look for a fashionable man in the frame, it will be Partanen's "fist" - although he dressed up, perhaps, only for the sake of matchmaking. But two whole watch chains instead of one make his image caricatured, betraying a lack of taste. Taking him on a visit, the heroine of Galina Polskikh, by the way, also dresses very smartly, in a suit similar to Anna-Lisa's clothes, but more dandy.

Kaisa, the Polish heroine, in general, it seems, is a fashionista - and she throws a scarf on her shoulders not like her village friends, but beautifully tying it, and at home, if you look closely, a mirror in an Art Nouveau frame is never more fashionable.

A fashionable blouse, multi-colored, in a printed flower pattern, on an old-fashioned girl - Anna-Kaisa, in contrast to smooth or striped blouses of married women: after all, a girl needs to show off! But her chosen one, a tailor, if you look closely, is dressed in a suit that was sewn a very long time ago, when Tahvo was younger and slimmer - which does not represent Tahvo as a tailor in the best way. Either he doesn’t have time to make a new coat for himself (that is, he is lazy), or there is no money for material (that is, he does not earn too much). This emphasizes his image of a drunkard. Later, after marrying the "widow" Antti, we see him in clothes that are too big for him - apparently, these are Antti's clothes for a ceremonial occasion (which he probably wore in his youth).

Most of the talk in the frame seems to be about cows and milk. It is no coincidence: one of the main goods that Finland supplied to the Russian market was the so-called Chukhonskoye butter - high-quality butter with a high salt content, which made it possible to store it for a long time and not add salt to food if the butter had already been put there. In addition, it had a characteristic fresh sour taste.

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