SUMMARY:

Marina Vituhnovskaja writes about two generations of the Finnish (Swedish by origin) Enckell family, approaching their biographies and interpreting their choices in favor of dynastic, national, imperial, or some hybrid of loyalties within the larger context of Finnish elites’ integration into the Russian empire. On the basis of diverse archival materials, largely unknown to scholars, memoirs, and other sources, the author reconstructs “imperial biographies” of the Russian general and hero of the Russian-Turkish war Carl Enckell (1839–1921) and one of his sons, colonel Oscar Paul Enckell (1878–1960), who chose a traditional strategy of imperial integration through military service and became one of the chief officers in the Russian military intelligence. He started his military carrier at the time when Finland’s officers in the Russian military service were increasingly regarded as national traitors in Finland and at the same time met ambivalent reception in the Russian society. His father nervously reacted to the changing political situation that made impossible his and his generation’s mixed loyalty (to Finland, the dynasty, and the Russian empire). Oscar Enckell tended to socialize in cosmopolitan circles, stressing his supranational identity and European culture, and positioned himself as a Europeanized representative of the strong and influential European state – Russia. Until the last moment of the empire he remained a loyal servant to this state and until the end of his life maintained friendly relationships with old friends from the multinational military milieu to which he formerly belonged. Oscar resisted both Russification and Finnish nationalism. Even upon assuming an important military post in independent Finland (1919), Oscar Enckell preserved his European-cosmopolitan-supranational orientation, which developed in response to the challenge of imperial integration at the time of rising nationalisms.