Finland

FINLAND is often thought to be behind the Iron Curtain. If so, it is news to the Kremlin. It would be nearer the truth to say that Finland is astride that parlous boundary and upright still only through its own remarkable feats of agility.

In the summer of 1962 the Finns played host to the Communist Youth Festival, which began with tear gas and ended in nuclear explosions. Earlier they received two notes from Russia which seemed to threaten immediate Estonianization; they escaped. Meanwhile, Pentti Nikula has become one of the three best pole vaulters in the world; the Finns have discovered the automobile and the accelerator pedal, but not the brakes; and the only clear statement of foreign policy was issued by the young poetess Sirja Kumo, who declared that her country “must be moved a few inches nearer to the West.”

Finns need no reminder of the fragility of their existence. Forty-five years of independence has been but a series of impossible barriers turned into bare possibilities. Their country is a small country, of necessity neutral. They are prepared to accept the isolation imposed by their geography. And they are willing to face, without help, their great economic problems. But being small and isolated, they are occasionally subjected to wholly irrational demands from the outside, and these they find more difficult to manage.

The Kremlin sends a note

The first note from the Kremlin, seventeen months ago, seemed to be just that. What the great explosion was all about is still a mystery. The note, which spent most of its pages excoriating Denmark and Norway, claimed that there was danger in the Baltic and, according to the Treaty of 1948, called for consultations on mutual defense. But no danger was anywhere visible. True, the West German Defense Minister was planning a visit to Norway, and Germany and Denmark were contemplating a unified command in the Baltic, but that either of these small countries would be party to an attack on the U.S.S.R. was absurd. Whatever the real issue, it was further obscured by wall building in Berlin, by President Kekkonen’s visit to Canada and the United States, by negotiations over a new Finnish-Soviet trade pact, and by the huge nuclear explosions over Novaya Zemlya.

Was this note, after the oblique fashion of such messages, a warning to Denmark and Norway? Was it directed at Swedish trade, or at West Berlin, or at China? Nobody knew. Was it pressure to get Finland to be the first Western country to recognize the proposed East German republic? Or only an elaborate method of forcing Finland deeper into economic dependence upon Russia? Nobody knew. Finland, at the time, was engrossed in an election campaign in which President Kekkonen of the Agrarian Party was being hard pressed by the Social Democratic candidate, Olavi Honka.

After three weeks, a second, more urgent note arrived declaring there was imminent danger of attack through the Baltic and demanding immediate talks, possibly “military concessions.” This was clearly a summons. Finns recognized both the words and music of the exchanges of 1939 which led to the Winter War. Was this, then, a manufactured crisis to be followed by a take-over, Czechoslovakia style? Twice since the war Finns had managed to squeak past similar schemes.

President Kekkonen decided to go at once to see Khrushchev, then in Novosibirsk. At this critical juncture, Honka announced he was withdrawing from the presidential race, and everything was settled with the speed of light: the danger of attack had evaporated, talk of military concessions could be postponed, there was “complete agreement.” Kekkonen was duly elected for his second six-year term. But what there had been complete agreement about, only the principals knew. It is an axiom of Finnish politics that when you do not know something, do not talk; when you do know, do not talk — and above all, do not publish.

In retrospect, however, the most likely guess is that all this megaton diplomacy was set going mainly to ensure the re-election of Kekkonen as President, or, rather, to continue to disrupt and suppress the Social Democratic Party. It is not that the Agrarians are acceptable to the Communists, but that the Social Democrats are a positive menace. Finland’s Communists, the People’s Democratic League, for a long time the largest political party, are well organized and well financed. Finns do not hate Communists, and they do not hate Russians except as agents of Russian imperialism. The People’s Democratic League constitutes a permanent bridgehead for the Kremlin in Finland.

The Social Democrats threaten this bridgehead. Having social and economic aims somewhat similar to those of the Communists but very different political objectives, they appear to be the one party which could bring about the withering away of the Finnish Communists.

With the re-election of Kekkonen, the issue was postponed and the crisis passed. Compared with it the Youth Festival in Helsinki from July 29 to August 6 was merely an annoyance, one of the numerous social obligations of neighborliness. Yet the festival provides an interesting study of young people in general and Finns in particular. After three years of preparation and an expenditure of some $25 million by its Eastern backers, the festival was not a great success.

Finns behaving like Finns

Of course, young people, wherever they get together, will have a noisy, gay time. Some 10,000 came to Finland in national costumes, or duffle coats and sandals, Castro beards, and hairdos inspired by yaks. They bunked in ships or on school floors or in campgrounds especially fenced off for them. Riots and tear gas and truncheons only added spice to the ceremonies.

Many delegates were surprised by the hostility of the Finns. The Finns had not asked to hold this festival; they had tried in every way they could to back out. Student groups other than the Communists had vigorously protested this violation of their neutrality; failing this, they agreed on nonparticipation. Members of the government had made speeches raising “grave doubts.” But after the notes of last year and the agreements in Novosibirsk, it became clear that the government would have to give official welcome to the festival, if only to remain neutral. Newspaper editors would not print anything against the festival — they would not print anything at all.

Tear gas did make the headlines. It had never before been used in Finland, and the people were shocked and humiliated. There was talk of “Cossacks riding in the streets.” Trouble began during the opening evening rally in the square near the Olympic stadium. Thousands of delegates were there, and thousands of onlookers. In the middle of the ceremonies someone started singing the Finnish national anthem, and this, seized on by the crowd, drowned out the loudspeakers. Festival organizers, trying to restore a peace-loving silence, were assailed by rocks and sticks and bottles. Then the police arrived, and the rally was dispersed.

While the Communist press accused the United States of organizing the demonstrations and West German provocateurs and Finnish diehards of “feeding whiskey to hooligans,” it was quite clear after three nights of rioting and the jailing of some sixty persons that the reactions were unorganized. Finns were simply behaving like Finns.

There were, of course, hoodlums having fun in Helsinki and refugees from Eastern countries having their say. There were defections across the border into Sweden. And there were also well-organized anti-festival groups. A large Dutch and Swiss contingent came to protest all nuclear tests and stayed to run a popular nightclub on a ship in Helsinki harbor; the Americans had an exhibit at the Ateneum — “paintings of rags and moult in the best new tradition” ; books were given away by the thousands; and two jazz clubs were at work, it seemed, nonstop. Finnish students booked full hotel rooms and youth hostels; they misdirected festival buses; they set up and ran a special newspaper, printed in three languages, to counter the propaganda of the political meetings.

But the real coup de grâce was delivered by the unknowing left hand of Russia. It came on the next to the last day of the festival, when the Soviets began a new series of nuclear tests. Suddenly the wind of reality blew through the meeting halls, and the shamefaced secretary of the organizing committee found himself tearing up placards protesting all tests, by East or West. Vividly turned into truth were the words of an Asian delegation which had walked out of a political meeting because “youth was being systematically exploited for purposes of cold war politics.”

Probably the festival was a good thing. Few delegates could have missed seeing the glittering shops of Helsinki or failed to notice the uncowering ways of the Finns. They must have learned something about what it is to be a small country, neutral, astride the Iron Curtain, and still alive and kicking.

Finland faces east and west

Delegates would be mistaken if they assumed that Finnish neutrality was merely the product of geography and the bitter lessons of history. It is profoundly psychological as well. There are no hitchhikers in Finland. One often sees men walking the long forest roads from one job to the next, packing their gear on their backs, but no man turns around to see who is coming, and no man will humble himself to his thumb. The same is true of the man up to his elbows in the workings of a brokendown car. He neither asks for help nor expects it. He does not even look up.

The nation itself reacts in much the same way. Yet in political and economic affairs Finnish neutrality is based on a total paradox: in foreign policy Finland asks only to be left strictly alone to go its own way as best it can; and in economics Finland has one foot planted firmly in the East, and one inextricably in the West. For the moment, Finland is prosperous, its arts flourish, its clean, bright architecture is renowned, its books and bookstores are probably unrivaled, its children are well clothed and happy, and the names of its designers — Wirkkala, Poutila, Sarpaneva, and others — are chanted in the civilized world like incantations to excellence.

The heavy debt of war reparations demanded by Russia in 1944 has been turned into a valuable resource. The wholly new industries required of Finland — shipbuilding, wire-rope manufacture, copper products, instruments and tools — have diversified its economic base and now account for 20 percent of its export trade. In its traditional export industries Finland has not only regained its former markets for raw wood, pulp, paper, and lumber, but has supplemented these with new processed wood products - cardboard, fiberboard, wallboard, prefabricated houses.

It is only eleven years since Finland shook off its war debt to Russia. In that short time it has become one of the fifteen most prosperous nations in the world. Its recovery, if less showy than that of West Germany, is even more remarkable, for it had to be begun and carried out without Marshall aid. Yet, as the Finns well know, prosperity is a kind of trap. More than almost any other country, Finland depends upon foreign trade. One quarter of its per capita income is earned through exports. And here the paradox still abides: its exports are strictly divided — metal products to the East, wood products to the West. There is little maneuvering Finland can do. If it is to keep its standard of living it must go with both East and West.

The Common Market

The present impetus for a Common Market in Europe, valuable as it may be for some countries, creates a special new dilemma for Finland. It cannot join because of its agreements with Russia, and it cannot stay out without risking the loss of its best customers, England and Germany.

Some time ago Khrushchev generously conceded that Finland had to develop its markets in the West. He further agreed that it could become an associate member of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA), provided this did not change Russia’s status as “most favored nation” and provided such association did not involve membership in a supranational organization.

It is not yet clear how far the EFTA and EEC countries will go in establishing a Common Market, or whether Great Britain will be a part of it, or how much organization such an association will involve. But if a Common Market comes to Europe, the simplest administrative machinery must inevitably grow into panEuropean institutions — toward the much-discussed federation of Europe.

Thus, the Finns will have to wait and see and make whatever moves are possible. It seems unlikely that their country will be moved many “inches nearer to the West.” Logic would say that little by little this resourceful and energetic people will be incorporated into the Soviet economic empire. Logic would say that, despite occasional outbursts of suspicion, this is Russia’s friendly strategy. Yet the Finns would not be impressed. Their very existence over the past forty-five years is a cool smile in the face of logic.