The legacy of Finlandisation: an exchange

In autumn 1996 Books from Finland published Anna Rotkirch's article 'Finlandisation and post-Finlandisation' (3/1996), in which she argued that the old Finlandisation had been replaced by a Russophobia in which the new Russia is painted in sombre colours. The journal prints here rejoinders by Anne Sailas, Ilmari Susiluoto and Martti Valkonen, the three authors of Venäjä - jättiläinen tuuliajolla ('Russia - a drifting giant'), which Rotkirch cited as an example of the negative attitudes she describes, and a response by Rotkirch herself.

From Ilmari Susiluoto, co-author

Venäjä - jättiläinen tuuliajolla

('Russia - a drifting giant', Edita, 1996)

Finns have, throughout their history, occupied a special position in Russia. This is demonstrated, for example, by the bitter memories of the Soviet generals of the Karelian front in the Second World War, or the nostalgic writings about the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, if Otto Wille Kuusinen, a Finnish-born member of the Politburo, which he took as a model in creating for Khrushchev a programme for the shift to communism. The Marshal of Finland, C. G. Mannerheim, began his military career in Russia, but became a symbol and leading figure of the White army of independent Finland. Nor can one forget the celebrated history of Finnish capitalists in the building of socialism in the years of 'Finlandisation'. Finnish companies built more dams, power-stations and hotels for the Soviet Union than the other western countries put together.

The builders of the Finnish databank were, above all, traders, engineers, builders and workers whose grass-roots observations about life across the border formed the basis for an operational code. That code can be understood as a collection of rules of thumb: what Russians were like in negotiations and afterward, what were their jokes and anecdotes, what were their attitudes to agreements, bosses and subordinates, time, work, responsibilities. More than any other western country, Finns had and have this kind of everyday knowledge of Russia. Its creation was aided by Finland's century-long connection with Russia, but also by earlier cultural contacts, of which it can be suggested that liquor and sauna are relics. The ease with which Finns adopted Soviet political rituals and used them to their own ends (as if Lenin granted Finland its independence!) led, in the West, to theories of Finlandisation, fantasies that Finland became Sovietised in reality.

Finland may be described, in Darwinist terms, as a 'collaborative self-protector'. Finland protected itself against the East by economic collaboration. This could be put differently: the more alluring Finland was as an economic partner, the smaller the probability that Soviet security officials and military circles would need to participate in decisions concerning our country. During the post-war decades, a group of Soviet experts developed in Finland, primarily in the field of economics. These people dealt with the routine of trade with the East, which in reality meant a continual struggle with Soviet bureacracy. Practical matters adopted the rhythm of the bigger country. This way of doing business was primitive, but its mutual benefit, planned nature and influence in smoothing the trade cycle was extravagantly praised on both sides.

Of course, there were people in Finland who knew exactly what was going on, but this group was not very large. And keeping silence, in the 'time of stasis', was considered the greatest of virtues.

Finland, in other words, had experience of the Soviet Union, a practical understanding born of the experiences and co-operation of visitors to the Soviet Union. But the transformation of this potential into scholarship that met academic criteria began late, in the social sciences not until the 1980s.

It is not, however, possible to draw the conclusion that Finland lagged behind the western countries in its knowledge of Russia. This knowledge can, in fact, be compared to the folk tradition. That tradition has to some extent been recorded in joke-books and memoirs. It is a tradition with its own history, its own run-seingers and interpreters.

Let us take as an example the story of the Finnish building worker who was supposed to fly on holiday to Sochi, on the Black Sea, but missed his plane in Krivoi Rog in southern Ukraine, deep in the interior. The description of how the monoglot Finn in search of a beach finally wore out the military police, befriended the secretary of the police chief and, having got his papers in order in the space of two days, got to Sochi, beats any survival course.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these stories. All of them open up a perspective on a country that, in the West, was abhorred as a totalitarian dictatorship but of which even ordinary Finns knew that that was not quite true. Rather, the Soviet Union was a country in which almost anything was possible. The folk tradition tells of just this: tragicomic events, miraculous escapes, incomprehensible festivals, in brief: all of human life.

In Russia, too, Finns have been considered special. Finns were to the Russians, as they sometimes said, pochti svoi, 'almost our own'. The root of nemets, the word used to describe Germans and Swedes, on the other hand, is nemoi, 'mute'…

These thoughts came to mind after I had read Anna Rotkirch's assessment of 'Finlandisation'. Every Finnish generation builds its own image of Russia. It is also an emotional process, as we can deduce from Rotkirch's anxiety and moral eloquence. In Finland, unlike in more westerly countries, this process also has a central importance in terms of national identity.

From Anne Kuorsalo (formerly Sailas)

co-author, Venäjä - jättiläinen tuuliajolla

('Russia - a drifting giant', Edita, 1996)

Saturday morning in Maarianhamina, the capital of the Åland islands, is quiet, even the cafés seem closed. We have plenty of time before the ship leaves. We are in Maarianhamina for a debate about the Russian threat, hosted by the minority seminar of the Åland Peace Institute. We decide to visit the library, in a fine new building in an inviting location by the sea.

By chance, I happen to leaf through a copy of Books from Finland 3/1996. I cannot describe what a surprise the magazine offers, for it criticises our book Venäjä - jättiläinen tuuliajolla ('Russia - a drifting giant'), although Anna Rotkirch, the author of the piece, does not trouble to mention the book - let alone its writers - by name.

Rotkirch takes four pages to reveal that Finland, long known world-wide for Finlandisation, is now afflicted with a new disease, 'post-Finlandisation'. The symptoms, according to the author, are a simple and unanalytic, normative children's picture-book mode of speech in which Russia and Russiannness are seen in an entirely negative light.

As examples of this perverted 'post-Finlandisation', Rotkirch mentions the titles of three of the chapters of our book 'The Hopeless Challenge of Creating a Morality', 'Corruption Permeates Everything', and 'The Unending Decay of Valuable Buildings'. I wrote the chapters in question. Their titles and contents give, in my opinion, a realistic if unpleasant image of Russia, and I do not accept the mark with which Rotkirch has tried to brand me.

On the night of the same Saturday, we meet, in Turku, an old friend, born in Moscow, who is now researching Russia in the service of a western university. He says he has just paid a visit to his home town and begins to describe his impressions: 'In Moscow you cannot take a single step without having to pay a bribe…' I burst out laughing. My friend's eyes reflect disbelief and embarrassment when I try to explain what it is about this almost infinitely melancholy affair that I find amusing.

Home at last, I dig out a copy of the respected newspaper Segodnya, published in Moscow. It is dated 24 September 1996, and it features an international examination of corruption, 'The Transparency International Corruption Perception Index 1996'. There have been 54 countries in the study: Russia occupies 47^th place, after India; the only countries that are rated more corrupt are Venezuela, Cameroon, China, Bangladesh, Kenya, Pakistan and Nigeria. Whom are we to believe, the international study and my Russian friend or Anna Rotkirch?

In her article for Books from Finland, Rotkirch also characterizes as post-Finlandisation the fact that not one prominent Finn has criticised the war in Chechnya. But Rotkirch fails to consider what the Chechen war tells of the challenge of creating a moral code in Russia. I believe the Chechen war has finally demonstrated how difficult the creation of a moral code after the Soviet period is. The leadership of a Russia that now calls itself a democracy sent troops to Chechnya to kill Chechens in their struggle for independence and has justified the use of force by saying that the Chechens are Russian citizens. If this justification is accepted, it tells of the decline of morality both within Russian and outside it.

The decline of the system of values also demonstrates the same moral problems. The Soviet Union systematically destroyed churches and other monuments of the tsarist period as part of an attempt to efface previous history. Sergei Romanyuk's excellent book, Moskva Utraty (Moscow 1992) records about 300 destroyed churches and prominent buildings. A much larger proportion of the architectural heritag was destroyed by simply allowing churches, palaces and buildings to rot where they stood.

Everyone who has visited Russia and who refuses to see the decay of fine buildings is either partially sighted or fails to stray outside Moscow's city centre. There, the restoration of buildings has, fortunately, begun through the market economy, literally at the last minute. Just as I write, in the chapter of our book entitled 'The Hopeless Challenge of Creating a Morality': 'Surprisingly, it is in the ruined places of worship that the first positive signs of the new age are to be seen. In recent years, churches and monasteries have begun to be restored, so quickly that in Moscow even the architectural landscape of the city has changed, as golden crosses and cupolas glitter again in their former places.'

From Martti Valkonen, co-author,

Venäjä - jättiläinen tuuliajolla

('Russia - a drifting giant', Edita, 1996)

Finland had barely managed to free itself of the unpleasant brand of 'Finlandisation' when a group of fine fellows started to push a new brand in describing debate and information about Russia. The new idea is to seek marks of disparagement and the formation of a negative image of Russia. These fine fellows brand the mark of 'post-Finlandisation' on Finns who, they claim, take a hostile attitude to Russia. These watchful guardians of morality talked about what can be written about Russia without offending it. The campaign brings to mind the Soviet period of self-censorship, which was controlled by Finland's eastern neighbour. Self-censorship was Finlandisation, which made Finland, in the eyes of both West and East, almost a satellite of the Soviet Union.

Such a debate may seem strange to non-Finns, for surely no healthy nation feels it necessary to brand its members with such marks. In Finland, however, this is the sober truth, and in the new debate one does not hear humour any more than convincing arguments - only ardent feelings.

It is highly ironic that, just as Finland is trying to leave 'Finlandisation' behind it and become a normal European country, Anna Rotkirch should wish to offer the readers of Books from Finland an image of Finland as a country undergoing 'post-Finlandisation'.

Rotkirch used as a damning example a new Finnish book about the Soviet Union and Russia in the period of transition, Venäjä - jättiläinen tuuliajolla ('Russia - a drifting giant', Edita, 1996). I am one of the book's three authors. I lived in Moscow as a correspondent for Finnish newspapers for two periods, 1969 to 1973 and 1991 to 1995. In my time I have been criticised by Soviet diplomats for having written in plain language about the Soviet Union. Now that Russia exists again, one or two Russian diplomats have even listed writings of mine that, according to them, should not have been published.

I thus have experience of the tolerance thresholds of the diplomats of Finland's eastern neighbour. The reception of our new book demonstrates that Rotkirch's tolerance threshold is lower.

Let us examine the matter in the light of current debate in Finland. An old friend of mine, a convinced communist, who decades ago attended, in Moscow, the compulsory courses of the upper party school, and whose wife is Russian by birth, said curtly and openly that Russians might consider the book anti-Russian.

'Russians themselves say exactly the same about their own country, and the decay and the problems, the corruption and the inefficiency, the abhorrence of work and the evasion of tax. But foreigners, they believe, should not say the same, or even quote the opinions of their Russian friends about Russia,' commented this Finnish communist. 'Russians hold fast to their rights to criticise their own conditions, it is a national obligation and a virtue, but God help the foreigner who does not satisfy himself with praising the greatness of Russian culture. So that is why your new book may be anti-Russian in Russian eyes.'

Rotkirch branded our book anti-Russian and 'post-Finlandised' for the same reasons. She claimed the book disparaged Russia and the Russians. She believes Russians should be written about 'with respect'.

Rotkirch has perhaps not noticed that the most anti-Soviet people were to be found in the Soviet Union itself: it was they who overthrew the Soviet Union. And she does not appear to have realised, either, that if one looks for the most stalwartly anti-Russian people, among their first ranks are the Russians themselves, who do not merely criticise, but eagerly hammer their country and each other in the strongest of terms.

Our book does not, of course, disparage Russia or the Russians. We describe the history of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the country, the birth of Russia and the other newly independent states, political struggles, economic reform and its side-effects. The book traces the problems, beginning with corruption and the privatisation that is comparable to a large-scale plundering of the national wealth. It also describes the development of culture and social conditions and gives a picture of the Russian sense of humour and the treasure-chest of subtle anecdotes.

Naturally, the book also notes that Russia is the world's largest and last colonial power, which willingly conquers and subjugates weak border countries. In the same way, it notes that Russians consider their own culture to be greater than those of neighbouring countries. The Russian empire is compared to the British empire, and the colonialism of both is compared. These matters are among the tasks of a respectable work of critical journalism. The book would be incomplete if it failed to deal with these aspects of the extensive Russian character. No one should be alarmed by it, even in Finland: no one is alarmed by it in other countries.

Our book is the first serious journalistic work to be written in Finnish by Finnish writers about the Soviet Union and Russia.

It has, in general, been well-received in Finland. Professionals who follow the literature of the field have noted that it is, at this moment, the best European book about the transition in Russia. Internationally respected Finnish scholars of the Soviet Union/Russia have written very positive reviews of it. They are Professor Sune Jungar of Åbo Akademi, Dr Timo Vihavainen of Helsinki University, Dr Jyrki Iivonen of the Finnish Foreign Ministry and Dr Markku Salomaa and Dr Arto Luukkanen, both Finnish Academy scholars.

It is a strange coincidence that, in addition to Anna Rotkirch, the other negative reviews of the book have come almost without exception from young Finland-Swedish critics, supported by one aged Finland-Swedish journalist. They have conducted an energetic public campaign against the book and us, its three authors. Most of them, in the old days, demanded obedience and respect for the Soviet Union. Now they demand uncritical respect for Russia. They are often university researchers.

Some proportion of Finland-Swedes view the majority of the Finnish population with the same feelings of superiority of which we stand accused by Rotkirch in our relations with Russia. They claim they know how we should relate to Russia and what kind of country it is. They do not reveal their special knowledge of Russia, but content themselves with advising us Finns to remember what belongs to the tsar.

Here in Finland, fear of public power and authority is the root of wisdom, and we do not smile on the presence of anti-Soviets or anti-Russians, or those who are suspected of such sentiments.

Of course the Finns' relationship with Russians is neurotic; but it is not, in general, hostile. There are tensions in it, for relations between neighbouring countries are not in order if one has flagrantly transgressed the rights of its neighbours. The Germans and the French, the British and the Irish understand these matters perfectly well. We can differ about them, but we understand the neurotic nature of the relationships.

The imperialist thoughts and aims of Russia are a fact whose telling is a neutral act. The president of Estonia, Lennart Meri, has noted tellingly that the 1939 agreement between Hitler and Stalin to divide Europe into spheres of interest was an agreement between 'pirates', whose legality was on a corresponding level. Like the Baltic states and the whole of central Europe, Finland suffered from the Hitler-Stalin pact and the world war that it instigated. It is quite clear that Finns who lost their homes and their land wish to regain the territories taken by the Soviet Union with the help of Hitler. It is a human feeling that is supported by the laws of national justice. And nations have the right to their national territory according to the rules of the United Nations. Of course it is permissible to speak about Finnish rights to the lost territories of Karelia, now that the Soviet Union that stole those territories no longer exists, through the actions of Russians, to punish such talk. Such talk is not anti-Russian.

In her article, Rotkirch undervalued the importance of the ceded areas. She claimed that the border between Finland and Russia has moved back and forth from one century to the next. The claim is not true. Finland and Russia have, to date, had only the border of the Treaty of Tartu of 1920 and the borders of the Treaty of Moscow of 1940 and the Intermediate Treaty of Moscow of 1944. There have been no other borders. Rotkirch meant the border between Sweden and Russia, which did indeed move back and forth. There was no Finland then. There was only the eastern province of Sweden, which was inhabited by Finnish tribes. It did not have its own borders: its borders were set by princes in the capitals of Stockholm and Moscow or St Petersburg.

Readers unfamiliar with Finnish history may be bluffed by Rotkirch's mental memories of her grandmother, who as a child swam in the 'border river' between Finland and Russia. In reality, the border between Sweden and Russia ran there 200 years ago. Rotkirch's grandmother can hardly be that old.

In the borderland between the kingdom of Sweden and the Russian empire, Finland was forested land pierced by lakes, inhabited by only a few hundred thousand people. In 1809, through the mercies of Napoleon, Finland was transferred from Sweden to Russia as the result of war and Sweden, in return, received permission to take Norway from Denmark. It was naked superpower politics, and it created the autonomous grand duchy of Finland. The Finnish nation was born only 70 years later, and the independent state, with its own borders, 108 years later.

The Finland-Swedes lived here as an upper class, a master race, which adapted itself to rule the country in subordination to the tsar. It is for this reason that some of today's generation of Finland-Swedes still believe they can advise Finns on political foresight. Life in the far north is this kind of tilting at windmills.

As a fresh example of exceptional Finnish servility before the late Soviet Union, Rotkirch wrote that in the days that followed the Moscow putsch of August 1991 the country's biggest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, published an editorial supporting the junta. That this is not true is something that should be revealed to foreign scholars of the press. Helsingin Sanomat published three consecutive editorials about the putsch. The first editorial, the day after the event, opposed the putsch and surmised that it would not succeed. A day later, the paper published another editorial that took the junta seriously and hoped that it would promote Finland's commercial interests. On the third day, the last editorial in the sequence was once again strongly against the putsch and based its claim on its overthrow and the beginning of a new, more democratic period in the Soviet Union.

The newspaper let its stance waver. There were two different editorial-writers. The first reaction was against the coup and for democracy. Only on the following day did the commercial interests of politicians and counsellors surface momentarily to demonstrate that the paper also had Finlandised writers. On the third day, the Finlandised writers fell silent.

Finnish reality is more colourful and complex in values than Rotkirch realises. It is to be hoped that she does not succeed in her masochistic and illogical attempt to brand critical journalism about Russia 'post-Finlandised' and therefore evil, perhaps prohibitable. Her success would bring the mentality of self-censorship back to Finland, a new member of the European Union.

From Anna Rotkirch:

My essay (see Books from Finland 3/1996, pages 196-199) was an overview of two recent debates about the attitudes of Finns to the Soviet Union and Russia. I was interested in the different positions taken in these debates, not in 'revealing' a new illness, moralising, or condemning any particular persons. The second debate, on post-Finlandisation, is still going on in several Finnish publications. The authors of Venäjä - jättiläinen tuuliajolla ('Russia - a drifting giant') seem to perceive any critique of their work, and indeed any mention of the term 'post-Finlandisation', as an attack on them personally and a call for censorship of 'wrong' or 'politically incorrect' views of Russia. This is simply not the case. Their reactions say much about the difficulties of discussing Russia in Finland during the past few decades, when any kind of interest in or knowledge of the big neighbour was inevitably placed in some camp, and interpreted as some kind of strategic opportunism.

This time, Anne Kuorsalo thinks I want to 'brand' her personally because I quoted three chapter titles of the book of which she is a co-author. In fact, the reason why I did not mention the book by name was to avoid labelling the authors (just as I did not mention the actual names of the main participants in the debate about the guilt of the Left). I described a trend, of which the claim that it is hopeless to develop a moral code in Russia is, in my view, a telling example. I did add that the contents of the book are 'considerably more objective', and I am sure Kuorsalo and I agree in general as to the actual state of affairs in Russia, her knowledge of which she quite unnecessarily defends.

The concern of my article was the image of Russians among Finns who do not have the direct knowledge Kuorsalo, her co-authors and I have. For example, I recently spoke to one of my students, who was interested in using some of the interviews I have conducted with teenage girls in Moscow as a basis for her master's thesis. This is a very bright student, who went away and did a lot of background reading on the situation of Russian women. When I saw her again, she had come to the conclusion that the problems especially acute for Russian teenagers are pornography, alcoholism and prostitution! I thought about my 14-year-old interviewees, who said their mothers were their best friends, that in their free time they went window-shopping because they could not afford much else, and besides, they were studying too hard to have much free time… What I am interested in is how to bridge this kind of information gap, not in prohibiting 'unpleasant' facts.

Ilmari Susiluoto writes about the knowledge the Finns have of Russian society. I cannot but agree, even if I fail to see the point of his response. Nowhere in my article did I draw the conclusion that 'Finland lagged behind the western countries in its knowledge of Russia'.

Martti Valkonen is right in correcting me on the date of the appearance of the scandalous editorial in Helsingin Sanomat. He gives an interesting insight into the internal struggles of the newspaper. Alas, what stays in the mind are not the texts that were in line with editorials of other newspapers all over the world, but the one that deviated from them.