TUNNE KELAM ⟩ I realized how lucky my family had been

Tallinn was in a downpour of Soviet bombs in 1944. Photo: Sander Ilvest / Postimees

• In spring 1944, Tallinn and Helsinki were in a downpour of Soviet bombs.
• Same attackers, different fates.

This year, by tradition, we are marking the anniversary of the large air raid on Tallinn, this time the 80th. A personal memory of it still lingers, Tunne Kelam writes.

I was seven and a half years old, we lived in a two-story wooden house near Lilleküla station on Päikese Street, which had no fire protection and no shelter. But so it was with hundreds of buildings in Tallinn. In fact, for more than a year we had been used to the sound of air raid alarms and bombs falling, especially during 1943. As the alarms were sounded quite often, our family did not take them very seriously. Usually we stayed in the kitchen, ate our dinner and didn't bother to go down to the basement from the second floor.

But the evening of March 9 began in a completely different way. It began with a sudden furious rattle that left no doubt about the seriousness of the situation. We drew the curtain of the bedroom window open a bit and were blinded by unexpected light – «Stalin's Christmas trees» coming down on parachutes, exposing the whole city. Residents of the eight apartments of our house quickly found themselves in the basement, which had no advantages of shelter, except protection from bomb fragments.

I don't remember any particular sharp fear, just a stoic dejection that lasted for hours. Father and mother, aunt and grandmother prayed. The one-and-a-half-year-old little brother Kuldar, whose arrival in September 1942 at the maternity hospital on Sakala Street had been accompanied by an air raid alarm and distant sound of bombs exploding on the second day of his life, was quite calm against expectations. The sound of explosions was constantly heard, often quite close. From time to time the whole house was shaking.

A few hours later, silence fell. Father opened the front door of the house. As the first thing, the glow of blazes from both Endla and Luha streets caught the eye. Our Päikese Street (now named Saturni) was just an extension of Luha Street, connecting Koidu Street to Raudtee Street. Gray masses of people moved along it, most with belongings loaded onto carts or bicycles. Parents went upstairs to check what had happened to our apartment, which seemed to be okay. Then explosions started again. There was talk of a second wave of the raid. It lasted until the early hours of the morning. Around four o'clock, everything fell silent again, but people didn't dare take the new pause too seriously – rumors spread of a third wave coming. However, that didn't happen.

I don't remember any particular sharp fear, just a stoic dejection that lasted for hours.

It turned out later that a third wave had been planned by the Red Army, but it was thwarted by an initiative of the Finns. Just a few weeks earlier, Helsinki had been raided by a much larger armada of red bombers. Upon hearing of the air raid on Tallinn, the Finns decided to take revenge for Helsinki and put their planes hot on the heels of the red aircraft returning in the darkness. When these landed to refuel and pick up bombs for a third wave, they were unexpectedly attacked by the Finnish planes, with more than a hundred bomber aircraft, as well as fuel tanks, destroyed. Perhaps this saved Tallinn's Old Town from total destruction.

When the second wave of the raid subsided, we again opened the door to the street, where the number of people heading to refuge had increased. Around five o'clock in the morning, my maternal and paternal aunts arrived with their doctor husbands. They lived in houses next to each other on Kaupmehe Street. Both houses had burned down, along with the X-ray gear of the aunt's pulmonologist husband, aunt's dental surgery room, the other aunt's grand piano. As we had been left with a roof over our heads, they were at least able to lie down and rest a little from the horrible night, which had ended with a few kilometers' walk to our place.

At that time, the parents of my now wife Mari-Ann lived in a rental apartment on Kentmanni Street parallel to Kaupmehe Street. On the evening of March 9, they walked downtown to celebrate the 25th birthday of a female friend of theirs who worked at the daily Päevaleht. The hoped-for pleasant get-together never materialized, as the air raid began. They returned home to Kentmanni Street just in time. Incendiary bombs had caused fires that were quickly spreading from house to house. Flames fell on the roof of the rental house from the house next door. Residents quickly formed a human chain to fill buckets with water and haul them up to the roof. That house was saved.

It turned out later that a third wave had been planned by the Red Army, but it was thwarted by an initiative of the Finns.

I don't remember if we had electricity after the air raid. Probably not. But that wasn't the biggest problem. We could get warmth by heating the stove, and we cooked food on the kitchen stove anyway, which was lit routinely at seven in the morning. Petroleum lamps and candles were always at hand, as there was a war going on. When the Germans arrived, we managed to get back our valuable Philips radio, which we had been ordered by the Soviets to take to a collection point at Tõnismägi at the beginning of the war. It enabled us to listen to valuable news from Finnish, German, and even English stations – my father was proficient in all those languages.

On March 10, we walked around the neighborhood for some time. Then we realized how lucky we had been. The entire upper part of Endla Street was destroyed, as well as a large part of Luha and Kristiina streets. We were a few hundred meters out of the zone of devastation. Dad took photos of the devastation with his camera. Our then house is still there, it just has gotten taller by a third floor.

The consequences of the Soviet air raid on Tallinn on March 9 were particularly painful and devastating. Reminiscing about them and making them known to future generations is an important and dignified tradition.

In recent years, I've been interested in the question why don't Finns, whose capital Helsinki fell victim to three massive Soviet air raids in February 1944, the month before the raid on Tallinn, commemorate those events? Could it be the influence of the long period of Finlandization, during which it wasn't suitable to provoke the Russians? After all, the Soviet authorities, who had «liberated» Tallinn, eagerly spread a new historical narrative, according to which retreating Germans had destroyed our capital. But still – why don't Finns remember the air raids of 1944? The answer must be sought in a comparison of the numbers of victims and the scale of devastation in Tallinn and Helsinki.

Why don't Finns, whose capital Helsinki fell victim to three massive Soviet air raids in February 1944, the month before the raid on Tallinn, commemorate those events?

The statistics for Tallinn is quite detailed: 757 people were killed (including 50 military personnel and 121 Soviet prisoners of war), and more than 600 were wounded. An estimated 280 Soviet bombers took part in the attack, which managed to destroy a third of the residential space of Tallinn (1,549 buildings were destroyed and 3,350 were partially destroyed). 20,000 city dwellers were left without a roof over their heads.

In February 1944, Helsinki was hit by three massive air raids with ten-day intervals between them (on the nights of February 6/7, 16/17, and 26/27). The goal was strategic – to force Finland out of the war by destroying their capital with demoralizing thoroughness. During the three air raids, a total of 2,121 Soviet bombers attacked Helsinki, dropping over 16,000 bombs. Only 530 of these bombs fell down in the actual territory of the Finnish capital! Casualties? A total of 146 people were killed and 356 were wounded as a result of the three raids. 109 buildings were destroyed, with over 300 sustaining damage. In any case, Soviet pilots also managed to hit the Soviet Embassy, which was completely destroyed by fire.

Why such a dramatic difference? Finland was an independent state that itself organized its own defense and was responsible for it. Helsinki had already been bombed by red aircraft at the beginning of the Winter War. In the following years, large-scale construction of shelters took place. During the years of the Continuation War, possibilities were created to evacuate most of the civilian population to rural areas, as needed.

As Soviet bombing raids increased in 1942, a unique system of defensive perimeters was set up to protect Helsinki, including with the help of scientists, in particular mathematicians. Each sector of the system had anti-aircraft guns on standby, whose actions were coordinated with the other sectors. In the event of Russian aircraft approaching, a firewall could be created in the air by firing from all sectors simultaneously. In addition, the Finns managed to acquire their first radars from the Germans by 1943, which were able to detect approaching enemy aircraft at a range of more than 100 kilometers. Moreover, Finns had their own fighter aircraft, which played an effective role in intercepting bombers.

Finland was an independent state that itself organized its own defense and was responsible for it.

Lastly, there was an exceptionally effective system for diverting enemy aircraft from the heart of the city. Helsinki was completely darkened, while to the east of the city, beams of light from searchlights could be seen, creating the impression that this is where the center of the city was located.

The carefully thought-out system of deception worked surprisingly well. After the bombing on February 26, the Soviet side developed the perception that the strategic objective had been achieved. The Finns meanwhile fed messages into the media through Swedish channels about a "complete destruction" of the Finnish capital. No new bombing raids followed.

When, after the armistice of September 1944, a delegation of the USSR under the leadership of Zhdanov arrived in Helsinki, the Russians could not believe their eyes. Judging by all the reports following the bombings, the city should have been in ruins, but there was not much in terms of visible destruction, and there was no difficulty providing accommodation to the delegation as had been feared. Outraged at this news, Stalin dismissed the head of the strategic air force, Marshal Golovanov, from office.

All of the above serves as a timely reminder that national defense requires preparation at the right time, in a coordinated and thorough manner. Only then can other possibilities to get out of danger open up. But let's not forget that over the past two years of Russian aggression, Ukrainians have spent 3,000, in many cases 5,000 hours, in shelters. This is amidst constant air alerts, daily civilian casualties, and destroyed homes. My one night in the basement of our house is but a crumb compared to all of this.