They illegally impressed me at Helsingfors

"In my young days I shipped aboard a bark plying between Helsingfors and New York."

"You are a Russian?"

"I am a Finlander, Madam."

"Have you been a sailor all your life?"

"Yes, Madam. For a time I was an unimportant officer on board a battleship in the Russian Navy, until I was discovered to be a Nihilist, when I was cast into prison. I escaped last May, and came to New York."

Robert Barr: A Rock in the Baltic

Great pianist

In 1881 Busoni toured Italy and was made a member of the Reale Accademia Filharmonica at Bologna. In 1886 he went to reside at Leipsic. Two years later he became teacher of pianoforte at the Helsingfors Conservatory in the Finnish capital. In 1890 he captured the famous Rubinstein prizes for both pianoforte and composition. In the same year he became Professor of pianoforte playing at the Moscow Imperial Conservatory.

James Francis Cooke: Great Pianists on Piano Playing
Study Talks with Foremost Virtuosos. A Series of Personal Educational Conferences with Renowned Masters of the Keyboard, Presenting the Most Modern Ideas upon the Subjects of Technic, Interpretation, Style and Expression

"There will be an uprising here before long,"

On that gray, dreary northern coast the long winter was fast setting in. Poor oppressed Finland suffers under a hard climate with August frosts, an eight months' winter in the north, and five months of frost in the south. Idling in sleepy Abo, where the public buildings were so mean and meager and the houses for the most part built of wood, I saw on every hand the disastrous result of the attempted Russification of the country. The hand of the oppressor, that official sent from Petersburg to crush and to conquer, was upon the honest Finnish nation. The Russian bureaucracy was trying to destroy its weaker but more successful neighbor, and in order to do so employed the harshest and most unscrupulous officials it could import.

William Le Queux: The Czar's Spy. The Mystery of a Silent Love

På gatorna i Helsingfors

På vårvintern stormade det och bände på isarne kring Helsingfors, så att ändtligen midt i april den blå randen utanför Gråhara båk kom allt närmare, medan isarne vid hamnarne alltmer antogo den smutsgrå färg, som ändtligen i slutet af månaden blef lika klar som vattnet, tills det
hela sjönk likt skum och försvann för solstrålarne och några milda vindar i förening.

Studenterna firade som vanligt sin första maj i Kajsaniemi, stodo utanför värdshuset i snömuddret och sjöngo, medan en mängd kypare och jungfrur ombesörjde en artificiel värme och dito solsken medelst en mängd punschbålar, hvilkas innehåll tömdes och fyldes lika hastigt.

Herr Adolf sjöng icke med i qvartetten. Han hade börjat taga lektioner för stadens fashionablaste sånglärarinna och fick inte slita ut sin fina tenor i korsång. Dessutom var han icke omtyckt af kamraterna, fruntimmersaktig som han var. Han tillhörde ett litet kotteri fattige adelsmän, hvilkas ekonomiska stöd han, den borgerlige, i nåder fick vara. Det var en hop finhyade, pomaderade och moderna modejournalsungdomar, mycket nogräknade om sitt rykte, då det gälde det, som verlden fick veta. De visade sig endast i de fashionablaste familjer, talade endast med de unga damer, som i allmänhet i societeten voro mest observerade, och aktade sig på allt vis att i något afseende visa någonsomhelst sjelfständighet eller karaktär. De sågo i allmänhet helst på, voro öfverallt, logo öfverlägset åt allt, och drogo jemt och ständigt i små nödvuxna och ynkliga mustascher, som aldrig blefvo längre.

Daniel Sten: "Sämre folk"

A number of telegrams from Helsingfors

It is needless for me to tell you that most of the stories that have come from Russia regarding atrocities, horrors, immorality, are manufactured in Viborg, Helsingfors, or Stockholm. The horrible massacres planned for last November were first learned of in Petrograd from the Helsingfors papers. That anybody could even for a moment believe in the nationalization of women seems impossible to anyone in Petrograd. To-day Petrograd is an orderly city--probably the only city of the world of its size without police. Bill Shatov, chief of police, and I were at the opera the other night to hear Chaliapine sing in Boris Gudonov. He excused himself early because he said there had been a robbery the previous night, in which a man had lost 5,000 rubles, that
this was the first robbery in several weeks, and that he had an idea who had done it, and was going to get the men that night. I feel personally that Petrograd is safer than Paris. At night there are automobiles, sleighs, and people on the streets at 12 o'clock to a much greater extent than was true in Paris when I left five weeks ago.

William C. Bullitt: The Bullitt Mission to Russia

What kind of Finns we would encounter

We were now not at all sure what kind of Finns we would encounter, but soon we saw two Finnish soldiers and much to my relief I recognized them as being White Finns. They stopped us and then took us to the village to their officer. A young lieutenant was sitting at a table in a small hut. We reported to him and when I mentioned that I was an officer and named my regiment, he rose and saluted. The Finns were very decent and helpful in every way. Despite their own difficulties, they extended help to the numerous refugees coming over, established receiving camps and medical units for the sick. We were taken by sleigh to Terrioky. Nelka as having temperature was taken to the hospital and I to the camp. As soon as possible we communicated with our friends the Wredes in Helsingfors and they immediately took steps to get us out of camp and into their own home. So in a few days we were on our way to Helsingfors where we received the warmest hospitality from the Wredes and remained with them for about six weeks.

Michael Moukhanoff: Nelka.
Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963,
a Biographical Sketch

In the neat, shiny, carefully scrubbed little city of Helsingfors

They had a hair-raising time in Helsingfors. On one occasion, German officers forced Palla’s door at night, and the girl became ill with fear while soldiers searched the room, ordering her out of bed and pushing her into a corner while they ripped up carpets and tore the place to pieces in a swinishly ferocious search for “information.”

But they did nothing worse to her, and, for some reason, left the hotel without disturbing Brisson, whose room adjoined and who sat on the edge of his bed with an automatic in each hand––a dangerous opportunist awaiting events and calmly determined to do some recruiting for hell if the huns harmed Palla.

She never knew that. And the worst was over now, and the Scandinavian border not far away. And in twenty-four hours they were over––Brisson impatient to get his papers to Washington and planning to start for England on a wretched little packet-boat, in utter contempt of mines, U-boats, and the icy menace of the North Sea.

Robert W. Chambers: The Crimson Tide