---
title: 'Suomalainen sotilas! (Finnish Soldier!): Soviet safe-conduct leaflet, Continuation War'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/soviet-leaflet-suomalainen-sotilas-1942/
description: 'A Finnish-language leaflet photographed flat on a wooden surface: an address to ''Finnish soldier!'' that opens with a child''s voice calling ''Father, come…'
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

[![Suomalainen sotilas! (Finnish Soldier!): Soviet safe-conduct leaflet, Continuation War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/soviet-leaflet-suomalainen-sotilas-1942.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/soviet-leaflet-suomalainen-sotilas-1942.jpg)

# Suomalainen sotilas! (Finnish Soldier!): Soviet safe-conduct leaflet, Continuation War

A Finnish-language leaflet photographed flat on a wooden surface: an address to 'Finnish soldier!' that opens with a child's voice calling 'Father, come home!', tells him his real enemies are 'the Hitlerites' rather than the Russians, and ends with two boxed safe-conduct passes, one in Finnish and one in Russian. The tells are the staged risk that his children will be left fatherless and the naming of Hitler's side as the culprit for the war.

- **Date:** 1942
- **Period:** [Second World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=wwii)
- **Made by:** Soviet forces (Red Army propaganda); the issuing unit is not printed on the leaflet
- **Region:** [Eastern Europe and Eurasia](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=eastern-europe-eurasia)
- **Country:** [Soviet Union](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=soviet-union)
- **Medium:** [Leaflet](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=leaflet)
- **Issuer type:** [Military](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=military)
- **Regime:** [Soviet Union](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=soviet-union)
- **Leader:** [Joseph Stalin](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=joseph-stalin)
- **Audience:** [Enemy forces](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=enemy-forces)
- **Purpose:** [Persuade or win support](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=persuade-support)
- **Theme:** [War and the military](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=war-military)
- **Event:** [Continuation War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#event=continuation-war)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/)
- **Regime:** [Soviet Union under Stalin](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/soviet-union/)
- **Leader:** [Joseph Stalin](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/soviet-union/#joseph-stalin)
- **Source:** Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- **Source:** [Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive (SA-kuva), via Finna](https://www.finna.fi/Record/sa-kuva.sa-kuva%2F24786), retrieved September 29, 2026
- **Rights:** CC BY 4.0 (SA-kuva licence statement on Finna record) SA-kuva (Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive), record sa-kuva.sa-kuva/24786, CC BY 4.0.

## Text on the object

Original (Finnish and Russian) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
Suomalainen sotilas!

Kuuletko tuon äänen? Se on SINUN lapsesi, joka kutsuu sinua!
Kuuletko häntä? Tunnetko tuon äänen, tuon hennon lapsen äänen, joka kuuluu läpi taistelun kohinan?
Hän kutsuu sinua: "Isä, tule kotiin!"
Palaa kotiisi, Suomen mies, siellä lapsesi näkevät nälkää pyöveli Hitlerin takia, joka on syössyt pienen maanne tähän mielettömään, veriseen ja toivottomaan sotaan maailman voimakkaimpia suurvaltoja vastaan.
Sillä aikaa, kun sinä sodit vieraan asian puolesta Hitlerin hyväksi, saksalaiset sotilaat ja upseerit "huvittelevat" Suomen kaupungeissa ja kylissä, häpäisevät vaimosi ja siskojasi, mässäävät nälkää kärsivän Suomen kansan kustannuksella.
Sinun vihollisiasi eivät ole venäläiset, vaan hitlerläi-
set. Venäläiset ovat monasti auttaneet Suomea, he antoivat Suomelle viljaa viime vuonakin, kun Suomen kansa oli nälänhädän partaalla.
Suomalainen isä! Lapsesi tarvitsee sinua, mutta sinä makaat juoksuhaudassa uskaltamatta seurata hänen kutsuaan. Aijotko yhä edelleenkin totella niitä, jotka ovat syösseet sinut ja perheesi turmioon?
Aijotko todellakin sotia Hitlerin puolesta siihen asti, kunnes omat lapsesi jäävät isättömiksi.
Tee loppu sodasta! Mene "metsäkaartiin" tai antaudu vangiksi.
Se on ainoa keino, jolla voit pelastaa henkesi ja päästä näkemään vielä lapsesi.

LUPALAPPU
Jokaisella Suomen sotilaalla on oikeus tämän lupalapun kanssa siirtyä rintaman yli venäläisten vangiksi. Jokainen Punaisen Armeijan sotilas sekä neuvostokansalainen on velvollinen saattamaan hänet lähimpään Punaisen Armeijan esikuntaan.
Punaisen Armeijan päällystö takaa sotavangille hengen, hyvän kohtelun ja kotimaahan paluun sodan päätyttyä.

ПРОПУСК
Каждый финский солдат имеет право с этим пропуском переходить через фронт в плен к русским. Каждый воин Красной Армии и советский гражданин обязан сопроводить его в ближайший Штаб Красной Армии.
Командование Красной Армии гарантирует пленному жизнь, хорошее обхождение и возвращение на родину после войны.

Vangiksi antautuessasi nosta molemmat kätesi ylös, sinua ei kukaan ammu.
```

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

```
Finnish soldier!

Do you hear that voice? It is YOUR child calling you!
Do you hear him? Do you know that voice, that frail child's voice that can be heard through the roar of battle?
He is calling you: "Father, come home!"
Go back home, man of Finland; there your children are starving because of the executioner Hitler, who has thrown your small country into this senseless, bloody and hopeless war against the most powerful great powers in the world.
While you fight for a foreign cause for Hitler's benefit, German soldiers and officers 'amuse themselves' in Finnish towns and villages, dishonour your wife and your sisters, and gorge themselves at the expense of the starving Finnish people.
Your enemies are not the Russians but the Hitlerites. The Russians have often helped Finland; they gave Finland grain last year too, when the Finnish people were on the brink of famine.
Finnish father! Your child needs you, but you lie in a trench, not daring to follow his call. Do you intend to go on obeying those who have thrown you and your family into ruin?
Do you really intend to fight for Hitler until your own children are left fatherless.
End the war! Go to the 'forest guard' or surrender as a prisoner.
It is the only way in which you can save your life and get to see your child again.

SAFE-CONDUCT SLIP
Every Finnish soldier has the right to cross the front with this pass and become a prisoner of the Russians. Every soldier of the Red Army and every Soviet citizen is obliged to escort him to the nearest Red Army staff.
The command of the Red Army guarantees the prisoner of war his life, good treatment and return to his homeland after the war.

PASS (Russian box)
Every Finnish soldier has the right with this pass to cross the front and go into captivity to the Russians. Every soldier of the Red Army and Soviet citizen is obliged to escort him to the nearest Staff of the Red Army.
The command of the Red Army guarantees the prisoner life, good treatment and return to the homeland after the war.

When you surrender, raise both your hands; no one will shoot you.
```

Read from a 4000 px copy of a glass-negative photograph; parts of several lines are hidden by a vertical fold and by stains, and the words at those points were completed from the surrounding letters ('hitlerläiset' is printed split across two lines as 'hitlerläi- / set'; 'Aijotko' is printed with 'ij', as in the original spelling). The first boxed text in the translation is the Finnish 'LUPALAPPU' box, the second is the Russian 'ПРОПУСК' box; the two boxes are near-identical in meaning.

[← Lietuvos darbo žmonės! Lietuviai! (Working People of Lithuania! Lithuanians!): Soviet May Day leaflet for German-occupied Lithuania](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/soviet-leaflet-lietuvos-darbo-zmones-1942/) ['The Spearhead reaches SOUTH - ALWAYS SOUTH!' (Curtin leaflet) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/spearhead-reaches-south-curtin-leaflet-1942/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)