Karl arrives in Helsinki from Rakvere as an unemployed cellist — but the real reason is a secret mission: to uncover the truth about the death of Jüri Vilms and his three companions in 1918.
According to the official story, they were executed by the German forces occupying Helsinki. The men had escaped across the frozen Gulf of Finland to reach Finland, were captured, and reportedly handed over to the Germans.
Vilms was among the proclaimers of Estonian independence, serving as Minister of Justice and Deputy Prime Minister in the first government. The other refugees were Arnold Jürgens (26) and Johann Peistik (24), young athletic men already entrusted with important duties, and Aleksei Rünk (33), their escort — an experienced traveler on ice, a farmhand by trade. Their mission was to advance a provisional Estonian government-in-exile via Finland after the German occupation of Estonia.
They did not realize General von der Goltz’s forces controlled Helsinki while aiding the Finnish Whites. It was believed the four Estonian freedom fighters were killed during Red purges on 13 April 1918. Finnish reports to Estonians blamed the Germans; the Sugar Factory in central Helsinki was cited as the execution site. Germans strongly denied involvement, but given their occupation of Estonia, Estonians found the Finnish account plausible.
About the novel
“Helsinki 1930 – The Freedom Fighters’ Mystery” follows Karl Pokka (Estonian: Pokkats), commissioned by a liberal workers’ party aligned with Vilms’s ideals. To honor their founder, they seek clarity on the fates of the four Estonians and to remove the diplomatic shadow cast by the mystery.
Assigning the mission, Ants Piip — Vilms’s old friend — insists on secrecy: not only the Germans but possibly Finns themselves could be implicated.
Historical background
In 1997, Finnish historian Professor Seppo Zetterberg published Jüri Vilmsin kuolema (The Death of Jüri Vilms), a thorough academic study that inspires this novel. I remain in the realm of fiction, not academic historiography.
Originally, I intended to write about the abduction of President K. J. Ståhlberg. Research convinced me he has received due recognition; the episode — politically — was either a disastrous far-right misstep or a remarkably successful counter-provocation by opponents. The Ståhlbergs themselves were unharmed.
On forgetting and injustice
Jüri Vilms and his three companions have not received justice in Finland. On the contrary, as I attempt to show through fiction, Finns have tried to wash their hands of the affair and forget it altogether.
Had four Finnish freedom fighters vanished in Tallinn, and their bones been exhumed from a mass grave, the response would likely have been very different. The deliberate forgetting of the Estonian fighters’ fate is, to me, a crying injustice. I feel compelled to open their graves in words.