Peace between Finland and the Soviet Union was concluded on 19 September 1944. Two days later, the very last civilians arrived in Ostrobothnia. Käkisalmi was ceded to the Soviet Union on 23–24 September 1944. 

The relocation of the residents of Käkisalmi to Heinola

Already in the summer of 1944, about 350 townspeople from Käkisalmi moved to Heinola. For them, the town zoned plots, and one of the streets was named Käkikatu. The areas of Heinola rural municipality in Siniläähde also received new residents.

The rural municipality residents were evacuated in 1944 to Alavus, Peräseinäjoki and Töysä. The management board wanted to change the final resettlement municipalities assigned to the residents in 1940–1941 to new ones, in order to secure them a sufficient amount of arable land. The board proposed to the state that 380 farming estates should be located closer to the town of Heinola, as even in Karelia the longest distance from the villages to the centre of Käkisalmi was only 16 kilometres. In addition, the lands of Karelia had been relatively good farmland.

New investment locations

The board of management hoped that the people of Käkisalmi would be resettled in the surroundings of Hämeenlinna, where preparations for the resettlement of the municipality's residents had already been made after the Winter War. However, the final decision on 29 June 1945 was resettlement in the surroundings of Heinola. The board of management succeeded in reducing the size of the resettlement area when Sysmä and Hartola were replaced by Nastola and Iitti. According to the plan, only people from Käkisalmi and those who acquired their properties through voluntary purchases were to be resettled in Heinola rural municipality.

The northern parts of the municipalities, bordered by the Lahti–Kouvola railway, were reserved for the evacuees from Käkisalmi. After the Continuation War, the resettlement plans no longer applied to the townspeople, who instead settled in areas where they could find a livelihood and a place to live. However, many of the townspeople of Käkisalmi ended up in the Heinola region.

Nynäs Manor served as temporary accommodation for evacuees. At its peak, around twenty families lived in the cardboard rooms of the manor.

Moving to Heinola and land acquisition

Käkisalmi residents moved from Ostrobothnia to the Heinola area from 1947 onwards, once the properties had been zoned and named for the new Heinola residents. Voluntary transactions, mostly plot sales, had been made even before that – around a hundred by spring 1946. In addition, Kymi Oy:n The transactions concerning the Nynäs estate area and Asko Factories' peat bog were based on voluntary participation.

In Heinola rural municipality, the expropriated land previously belonged to the parish, companies, and, for example, the Paaso and Myllykylä manors. Of the city's expropriated land, the majority was owned by the city.

Population distribution in Heinola

At the end of September 1947, there were 111 people living in the town of Heinola who had previously lived in the rural municipality of Käkisalmi. There were 200 people who had moved from the town of Käkisalmi. The town also housed 129 former residents of Lahdenpohja and 108 former residents of Vipuri.

At the end of December 1948, the rural municipality of Heinola was home to 814 people who had relocated from the rural municipality of Käkisalmi and 122 former residents of the town of Käkisalmi. In addition, 273 former residents of Uusikirkko had settled in the area. In 1959, the rural municipality of Heinola had 97 resettlement farms for displaced persons and 65 front-veterans' farms.

When people from Käkisalmi began to settle in Heinola in the latter half of the 1940s, the town had a population of around 3,000. Before the arrival of the displaced population, Heinola rural municipality had around 6,000 inhabitants. The increase was significant in relative terms, and in places the displaced population formed the majority in the villages.

Karelian signs in the landscape

The settlement of people from Kexholm in Heinola has left permanent marks on the town. The bell of the new town and rural parish of Kexholm was brought to Heinola from the ravages of war and placed in the prayer house in the Sinilähti district. In the Heinola cemetery, you can find both a gravestone for Karelian evacuees and, in the church park, a memorial stone for the deceased left behind in Karelia.

The new road, built after the wars and running through the grounds of the former Nynästen manor, was named Karjalantie. In the Sinilähde district, it continues as Karjalankatu. Its total length is approximately three kilometres. Vuoksentie, Pärnäjoentie and Käkikatu also take their names from Käkisalmi.

Heinola and Käkisalmi – similar small towns

Description of early 20th-century Käkisalmi is like reading the equivalent about Heinola. Viljo Kojo described Käkisalmi as follows:

”Even in the early years of the 20th century, Kexholm was an idyllic little town, whose painted wooden houses dreamed in the embrace of their lush parks and, every early summer, would drown in the surging, pale pink blossom foam of apple trees.”

Features connecting Käkisalmi and Heinola were the townscape split by waterways, the spa, and the extensive rural municipality surrounding the town.