Historian k

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Living Next Door to the Bear How Finland managed
to survive as a Western Democracy? Finland
lecture at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the
Group Mare Balticum 2013 from the USA Seppo
Hentilä Professor of Political History University
of Helsinki January 29, 2013
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Finland In the North of Europe, between Russia
and Sweden Helsinki on the 60th northern
parallel Surfice Area 330 000 Sqkm Common
border with Russia ca. 1 200 km From the 12th
Century to 1809 Swedish Territory From 1809 to
1917 autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russien
Empire Since 1917 independent Republic
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Important historical turning points Finland
during the 20th century Declaration of
Independende December 6, 1917 Civil war between
Whites and Reds Spring 1918 36 000
victims Winter War from November 1939 to March
1940 Finland managed to prevent the Soviet
invasion In June 1941 Finland joined Hitlers
Operation Barbarossa ca. 200 000 German troops
were stationed in Northern Finland The war aim
was to conquer territories which had been ceded
to the Soviet Union in the peace of the Winter
War 1940 Continuation War 1941-1944
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Finnish troops occupied large territories in
Russian Karelia until to lake Onega Finland
was Germanys Waffenbruder or co-belligerent
no treaty of alliance was signed Finlands
separate peace with the USSR on September 19,
1944 War against the German troops which were
still in the North of Finland During the last
few years heated debates on the nature of the
Finnish-German cooperation Was Finland waging a
Separate War?
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Finland lost the war but it was not occupied by
the Soviet troops Helsinki remained one of the
three European capitals which was not occupied by
the enemy troops during the Second World War (the
other two capitals were London and
Moscow) Finland remained a Western country, but
it was a neighbour of the Soviet Union and
politically within the Soviet influence, while
also having a strong and active Communist Party
(ca. 25 per cent of votes in the parliamentary
election of 1945) Contemporaries experienced the
situation as threatening, and in the West
Finland's position was considered difficult in
the extreme But Finland survived she was the
only country within the Soviet sphere of
influence which did not become a communist
satellite at the end of the 1940s
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Marshall C. G. Mannerheim (1867-1951) Commander
of the Finnish Army during the war and the first
President of the Republic after the war 1944-1946
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J. K. Paasikivi (1870-1956) President of the
Republic 1946-1956
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Urho Kekkonen (1900-1986) President of the
Republic 1956-1981
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Mauno Koivisto (born 1923) President of the
Republic 1982-1994
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Martti Ahtisaari born 1937 President of the
Republic 1994-2000
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Tarja Halonen born 1943 President of the
Republic 2000-2012
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Sauli Niinistö born 1948 President of the
Republic 2012-
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Finlands democracy and the Western judicial and
social system all survived, the market economy
became a flourishing success, and by the 1960s
Finland developed into a welfare state with a
standard of living among the highest in the
world How did this kind of succes story
become possible?
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The years of danger, 1944-1948 The terms of
the interim peace agreed in Moscow on September
19, 1944 were hard on Finland The province of
Karelia in the South-East was lost, ceded to the
USSR, and the Karelian refugees, 400 000 people
ten per cent of the Finnish population, had to
be resettled further west War reparations were
to he paid The highest members of the wartime
political leadership were to be put on trial
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A Soviet naval base was set up just 20 kilometres
from Helsinki, and, what was worse, to the west
of the capital on the Porkkala peninsula, which
was to he leased to the Soviet Union for 50
years The Allied (Soviet) Control Commission, a
body established by the USSR and Great Britain,
arrived in Helsinki to monitor implementation of
the terms of the peace treaty Free elections
were held as early as March 1945, at a time when
the rest of Europe was still at war There was
fear of Soviet intervention, but despite requests
by the leaders of the Finnish Communist Party
they did not receive any concrete support from
their comrades in the Kremlin
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Finland left between the blocs In February 1948
Stalin proposed to Finland the same sort of
friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
treaty as the Soviet Union had just concluded
with Hungary and Romania The Communists had just
seized power in Prague Was Finland to go the way
of Czechoslovakia? The Swedish press was
already writing that Finland's absorption into
the Communist bloc was complete in all but
name The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and
Mutual Assistance (FCMA) between the Republic of
Finland and the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics was signed in Moscow on April 6, 1948
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The Finnish-Soviet treaty differed decisively
from those between the USSR and her satellites
Finland was entitled to remain outside disputes
between the superpowers and was not forced into
military pact with the USSR The military
articles obligated Finland to defend her own
territory if Germany or some other country
allied to Germany were to attempt to invade the
Soviet Union through Finland Under Article 2
Finland undertook to negotiate for Soviet
assistance in the event of being unable to resist
the invader unassisted this so-called
'consultation article' was from the Finnish point
of view the most dangerous part of the treaty
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During the late 1960s Brezhnev refused to accept
any direct statement on Finnish neutrality,
preferring instead the tortuous formulation of
"the Paasikivi-Kekkonen line, which is based on
the treaty of cooperation and mutual assistance
and includes Finland's intention to pursue a
peaceful policy of neutrality" The friction in
Finnish-Soviet relations was due to Finland's
attempts at the end of the 1960s and beginning of
the 1970s to reorganise her political and trading
relations with the West, this time with the
European Economic Community (EEC)
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Finlandization
Welcome Comrade Kekkonen! Who would ever even
think about that you could be Finlandized!
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During the 1960s, people in West Germany began
to talk of Finnlandisierung Finlandization Take
n literally, this meant becoming like Finland It
was seen as the fate awaiting other Western
countries if they gave too much ground to
Communism As a term, Finlandization became
indelibly engraved on Finland's image abroad, and
it also left its mark on historiography Was
Finland actually Finlandized, and, if so, what
did this mean in practice? It was generally
thought in the West that the Soviet Union
interfered in Finland's internal affairs and
forced the Finns to do as it wanted
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It is beyond question that some Finnish
politicians pursued their own interests in
unscrupulous fashion by bowing to Moscow more
deeply than was really necessary Kekkonen
sometimes used to say When you bow to the East
you bare your bottom to the West, and vice
versa," and it was through such an approach that
Finland managed to secure her vital economic
interests in the West In using the concept of
Finlandization, it is thus essential to examine
the angle of bow and to distinguish when it was
a question of essential management of Soviet
relations in the national interest, when again
plain grovelling in pursuit of selfish political
advantage Finland's relative economic growth
from the 1960s to the early 1990s was more
rapid than that of any other OECD country
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This development saw the poor, predominantly
agricultural Finland grow during the 1960s and
1970s into a Nordic welfare state with one of
the highest standards of living in the world
During the decades when Urho Kekkonen was in
power there was unquestionably a fair amount of
grovelling in relations with the Soviet Union
But at the same time Finland experienced in the
cultural arena, and above all in terms of popular
culture, a process of Americanization, a process
even more marked in Finland than in the other
Nordic countries
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In contrast, there was precious little cultural
influence from Russia amongst the ordinary people
of Finland this was to some extent a problem, in
that so few Finns took the trouble to even learn
Russian language From whatever angle one
chooses to view Finland's survival, from the
situation in the 1940s or from the result in the
1990s, it can certainly be considered a minor
miracle
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Finland managed to preserve the integrity of her
most important political and social
institutions Alone among those ten European
countries which gained their independence in
1917-18, Finland has been able to continue
uninterruptedly on her own chosen path Actually,
Finnish democracy can nowadays be considered one
of the oldest in Europe, in the sense that it has
continued without interruption since 1917 In
2006 Finland was celebrating the 100th
anniversary of universal suffrage for men and
women at the same time
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Finland after the end of the Cold War The
break-up of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s
coincided with deepening integration in the West
Without the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the end of the Cold War, Finland would not have
been able to join the new, political phase in
European integration When the members of the EC
signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992,
establishing the European Union, not many people
in Finland dreamed that they might participate in
such political integration in the near future
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Less than three months had elapsed from the
break-up of the Soviet Union, when the Finnish
government applied to the membership of the Ec in
March 1992 Austria and Sweden had also recently
applied to join, and Norway renewed its earlier
application soon afterwards The question of
joining the EU was in Finland deeply
controversial In October 1994, the matter was
submitted to a consultative referendum Security
policy and agriculture emerged as the central
issues in the public debate
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The supporters of the membership saw a unique
opportunity to join the West, to which Finland
had in fact belonged for centuries, and the EU
membership would confirm Finlands Western
identity Political integration was also seen as
a source of security, particularly against the
background of chaotic conditions in
Russia Opponents of the EU membership claimed
that the EU would deprive Finland of its
sovereignty, opening of borders would bring
refugees, crime and foreign influence
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The farmers feared for their profession given
the harsh climatic conditions, Finnish
agriculture could never compete in an open
market, they maintained The supporters of EU
membership won the referendum, but the margin was
narrow at just under six percentage points (56.9
- 43.1) The nation was divided support for the
membership was strongest in southern Finland and
among well-educated city-dwellers and young
people By contrast, the less-educated, the
older generation and the inhabitants of eastern
and northern Finland were mainly opposed to
membership
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Finland became a member of the EU on January 1,
1995 it was a transition from a country in the
Eastern sphere of influence into an outpost of
the West with incredible speed Finland and the
NATO shall they never meet? Do any of the
previous turning-points of our countrys history
provide a point of comparison? Can we liken the
Finnish EU membership to the arrival of the Roman
Catholic Christianity on the Finnish peninsula in
the mid-twelfth century or to the annexation of
the Grand Duchy of Finland by the Russian Tsar in
1809 or to the Declaration of Independence in
1917 or to Finlands survival of the wars of
1939-1944?
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Thank You for your attention!