“When the time allowed for the evacuation ended on the morning of March 18th the remainder of the brethren left. That was the last day in the existence of the old Monastery of Valamo, and its 16-tonne Great Bell marked the occasion by striking 12 times.”

"There were no air-raid shelters to be found, only a network of crypts under the church, and on account of the uneven bedrock, the tunnels uniting them were so low in places that the men had to crawl through them when carrying things to safety.  The men also slept in the crypts in spite of the minimal protection that they offered, for a bomb falling on the church would have buried them immediately. In any case, the men carrying the things out had to be changed every half hour as there was so little air in the tunnels."

“I brought with me a photograph of the Igumen of Valamo together with Field Marshal Mannerheim, General Valve and Colonel Järvinen standing on the monastery steps.”

- Sulo Venho

“We stepped into the huge domed church of the Monastery of Konevitsa. What splendour and beauty opened up before our eyes: icons, gold, silver, and art everywhere! We looked at each other and said as if with one voice, “Are there any things here that we could take with us to Finland?”

- Anna Venho

 In the words of Hieromonk Paul of Valamo, “It seemed as if all the powers of hell had assembled overhead”

“I stood in the biggest of the halls, gazing sorrowfully at the beautiful paintings and icons that covered the walls and considering which of them we should take with us.”

“When packing the monastery’s belongings the icons had to be taken out of their frames to save space regardless of how valuable those frames might have been.”

“There was no time for packing carefully. The icons were separated from their frames ruthlessly with an axe and pairs of icons of similar size were nailed face-to-face for transport. In the library the majority of the books were thrust into potato sacks, of which there were fortunately plenty in the monastery’s storeroom.”

”As I stepped out of my room my neighbour, Fr. Pamva, came into my mind for some reason, and I thumped on his door with all my might until his white-haired head appeared. “The alarm has sounded!” I said. “All right”, he replied as he struggled to pull his felt boots onto his feet, and then we ran out just as the noise of aircraft resounded above our heads. We were in such a hurry that I forgot to be amazed that Fr. Pamva had really come along with me and not waved his hand in desperation and stayed in his room as he usually did. Then, when the bombing was over for the time being, he came up to me and hugged me, saying “Thank you, you saved my life: when I went back to my room afterwards the brick wall had collapsed straight onto my bed!”

“I remember well how the sounds of things being taken down and packed could be heard throughout the church services, and it felt at times of prayer that I was damaged in some way and that there was something that I had lost forever, particularly regarding my own participation in the air of paradise that surrounds monastic life.”

“We had exchanged the cassock for a military uniform, but neither of us could settle on what we should do about our beards and long hair. There were no rules about these things, as such situations had never arisen before.  We looked in the mirror and had to admit that we seemed rather odd, so we did away with the excess hair.”

 Are there any things here that we could take with us to Finland?

“Surveying the whole island after the snow had melted was a painful experience. There were torn and mutilated icons and books scattered everywhere in the forests and close by the sketes.”

- Andrei Peshkov, a novice from Konevitsa Monastery

“The journey from Sortavala to the bishop’s residence at Hympölä was more than three kilometres, and the last part was a forest road that was still totally snowed up, so that the horse had to struggle through snow that came up to its stomach. We then loaded six heavy boxes of archive material onto the carriage and set out on the return journey. We nevertheless had to leave two boxes by the roadside because the horse simply couldn’t manage to pull such a load.”

“Later the same archives were discovered among the remains of an outbuilding on the Hympölä estate. The building was in ruins and had been demolished as its roof had caved in. It had been used in the meantime as stables for horses, with its floor consisting of several layers of synodal documents.”

The Soviet troops occupied the Monastery of Petsamo early on in the Winter War. The monks Akaki and Savvati succeeded in escaping, but the others were taken prisoner.

“I didn’t even have time to take the icon with me from my cell, nor my cloak or my monk’s headgear. I simply rushed straight out into the snow and the darkness….

The valuable paintings, holy images and gold vessels in the monastery church that were worth millions are all lost. Only me and Savvati have come here to Tervola, and we had to run 17 kilometres through deep snow in 25 degrees of frost to reach a road where we found a car to pick us up.” 

- Hieromonk Akaki

Hieromonk Isaaki, deputy Igumen of Valamo Monastery, visited Helsinki in April 1940 and had an audience with President Kyösti Kallio. Legend has it that it was the President who hinted to him that there was an estate for sale at Papinniemi, which was where the Monastery of New Valamo eventually came to be founded.

“When news finally came of the terms of peace we all burst out crying, even the men, for they were mostly from the Karelian Isthmus and would have to relinquish the most precious lands of all for our people, those where they had been born. Our departure from the island (of Konevitsa) was like a dream. We went round our favourite places and shed tears as we said goodbye to them and took some last photographs. There was a strange silence everywhere now that the fighting had ceased, and the atmosphere was more than oppressive. The constant rumble, the blaze of gunfire – like fireworks – was gone.”

- Evi Könönen

SOURCES:

Arkkipiispa Paavali: Muistikuvia Valamon viimeisistä päivistä 1939–40.

Jorma Back et al. Valamo ja sen sanoma, 1982.

Karjala, 26.12.1939.

Karjalainen, Elina: Paavali – Legenda jo eläessään, 1982.

Kirkollishallituksen kirje Opetusministeriölle 7.4.1952, nro 1053.

Krogerus, Tellervo: Lähtö Konevitsasta maaliskuussa 1940. Sotahistoriallinen aikakausikirja 35, 2015.

Leo Kasangon arkisto.

Vaalisto, Heidi: Konevitsan Antti, 1985.

In the midst of a war