Boris Björkelund: A journey to the Land of All Possible Impossibilities
- Dmitry Ivashintsov
- Jan 16
- 3 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Few memoirs capture both the absurdity and resilience of the 20th century as vividly as Boris Björkelund’s Journey to the Land of All Possible Impossibilities. Published in St. Petersburg in 2014, this long-lost memoir was brought to life with the help of artist and photographer Dmitry Ivashintsov.
A Life Between Empires
Boris Vladimirovich (or Voldemarovich) Björkelund (1893, St. Petersburg, Russia – 1976, Otalampi, Finland) was born into a Finland-Swedish family in St. Petersburg. During World War I, Björkelund served as an officer in the Russian Navy. He was shell-shocked in battle with German ships and narrowly escaped death at the hands of revolutionary sailors in Petrograd in 1917. In 1921, Björkelund was drawn into the Finnish intelligence network, but the so-called "Björkelund Group" failed. After moving to Finland, he joined the Finnish General Staff, analyzing Soviet press materials — work that reflected both his sharp analytical mind and his deep understanding of the shifting politics of the region. He retired in 1938 and opened an antique shop and a small advertising business in Helsinki.
A Decade in the Gulag
In 1945, his life took a tragic turn. Björkelund became one of the so-called "Leino prisoners"—20 Finnish residents secretly handed over to the Soviets by the Communist Minister of the Interior, Yrjö Leino. Sentenced to ten years in the Gulag, Boris endured imprisonment nine times in Moscow and Leningrad’s most notorious jails, spent years in three labor camps in the Northern Urals and Siberia, and was later confined in the infamous “Vladimir Central” and a special political prison near Moscow. Yet even in these brutal conditions, he never lost his sharp mind or sense of irony — qualities that later shaped the remarkable tone of his memoir. In 1955, as a Finnish citizen, Boris returned to his new homeland, where his devoted wife, Irina Romanovna Björkelund (née von Raupach), awaited him. Boris Vladimirovich wrote about all of this with surprising vividness and a certain humor. A former naval officer, intelligence officer, and General Staff analyst, he provides a detailed analysis of Stalin's entire prison camp system in his book, and his tenacious memory allowed him to leave behind a vast gallery of verbal portraits of his comrades in misfortune.
The Book and Its Legacy
The Finnish edition appeared in 1966 to great acclaim. Nearly half a century later, the complete Russian version was published in 2014 by the St. Petersburg publishing house Russkaya Kultura. The hardcover book contains 448 pages, including a preface and detailed commentary by historian S.A. Mankov, as well as eight pages of color illustrations.
Irina Romanovna and the Memory of a Life
This publication was made possible thanks to the efforts of Irina Romanovna Björkelund (1908, St. Petersburg – 2010, Helsinki), who lived a long life and cherished the memory of her husband. Irina Björkelund was the daughter of Colonel Roman von Raupach (1870, St. Petersburg – 1943, Helsinki), the last military prosecutor of the Grand Duchy of Finland. After the February Revolution, he was invited by Alexander Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government, to join the Extraordinary Investigative Commission of 1917. There, he examined high-profile court cases, including that of Grigori Rasputin. Raupach soon moved to Finland. In the 1920s he was an informal leader of the Russian émigré community there. R. von Raupach wrote his own memoir, also designed by D. Ivashintsov, in 2007.
Artist Dmitry Ivashintsov, who knew Irina personally, visited her at her Helsinki apartment in 2006 and 2008. Irina herself lived to be over a hundred, retaining a sharp mind and fluency in four languages. Her dedication ensured that Boris’s extraordinary story — a blend of tragedy, endurance, and quiet humor — would not be forgotten.
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