In Finland there has been a lively debate on finlandization and constant demand for political lustration ever since the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. A significant addition to this debate is Pekka Virkki’s new book “Jälkisuomettumisen ruumiinavaus” (“The autopsy of post-finlandization”) which is mapping the signs and forms of finlandization until Russia’s intervention to Ukraine in February 2022 and the consequent Finnish membership to Nato.
It is obvious that the Finnish membership will have an impact on our vision of Finland’s political history. For the first time it is possible to learn, how Finland’s position was seen in Nato and what kind of military plans Nato had on Finland during the Cold War.
Thus, the impulse to review history will this time originate from the West, not from the East, where Moscow’s archives will be closed for us at least until the end of Vladimir Putin’s rule, perhaps even longer.
Did the Soviet Union threaten Finland militarily during the Cold War?
What did the Finns believe in?
In our eyes the Cold War world was composed of three major actors only: There was the big, bad and militarily overwhelming Soviet Union; the small, good and but militarily outnumbered Finland and the indifferent West where Finland’s difficult position was not understood or was distorted on purpose.
In this unfortunate situation, where no assistance would be expected from the West, Finland was conducting her foreign and security policy tenaciously and skillfully by maintaining her republican values, democratic social order, market economy and the rule of law.
This was our own achievement, which we owed to no-one else.
In the West the only positive exception from the Finnish point of view was Sweden, the only country to which Finland’s independence was an existential question. We believed that should the Soviet Union threaten Finland militarily, Sweden would immediately seek membership in Nato, which the Soviet Union wanted to avoid at any cost. We did not know that Sweden was in fact all the time protected by security guarantees of the United States – but neither did most of the Swedes.
In Finland there have always been people who have discarded this view. During the Cold War they were politically in the margins. There were those who believed in help from the West. There were those to whom our values were superior to those of the soviets’ and we should have made this point loud and clear – the way Sweden did. We should have spoken more and openly about the poor social conditions and backward economic system in the East. And then there were those to whom the Soviet military threat was simply a hoax.
These views found a new sounding board when the Cold War ended. In hindsight it was easy to claim that the Soviet Union had not threatened Finland militarily. It had, however, sent through ambassador Aleksei Belyakov, in the early 1970s, a top secret order to the leadership of the Finnish Communist Party to immediately start preparations to change the social system in Finland and to proceed into socialism.
But since this order was concealed from the people, it was easy to say that no threat ever existed. Thus, it has been concluded that adulation and kowtowing of the Soviet Union (which is an undeniable fact) was never necessary for security policy reasons. It was a voluntary choice by Finnish politicians in order to keep presidents Urho Kekkonen and Mauno Koivisto as well as the parties supporting them in power.
A widely believed threat perception
During the Cold War Finland’s foreign and security policy was based on a myth which all political parties gradually adopted.
We were told that Finland had ended up into the Soviet sphere of influence as a consequence of two lost wars and three peace treaties.
The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance of 1948 was simply a recognition of undeniable geopolitical facts. As Finland’s political leeway slowly improved in time, the Finns, however, developed their own interpretation of the treaty – which was never accepted by the other party.
The interpretation was based on three points.
Firstly, it was highlighted that Finland’s aspiration to stay out of the conflicts of greater powers was recognized in the preface of the treaty. This became the cornerstone of the Finnish policy of neutrality.
Secondly, it was emphasized that everything possible should be done to avoid the activation of the so-called consultation clause of the treaty. This would happen if Finland, or the Soviet Union through Finnish territory, would be militarily threatened by Germany or by a country in alliance with it.
Thirdly it was understood that the activation of the consultation clause would destroy the credibility of neutrality, might lead to unpredictable domestic consequences and would cause an aggressive reaction in the West.
This was the horror scenario with which the Finnish people, in order to avoid military cooperation, was determinedly guided to support the “friendship policy” in all other fields.
Did Finland really have a possibility to leave the Soviet sphere of influence?
But what if the reality was different?
Now it is clear that during the Cold War the world view of the Finnish people as well as the political elite was far too narrow. When Nato’s files open, what kind of alternative reality might perhaps emerge from them?
I don’t know, but I try to guess.
Finland did not end up in the Soviet sphere of influence as a consequence of lost wars but because of the treaty concluded in Tehran at the end of 1943. The United States and the United Kingdom believed that with the help of the Soviet Union the second world war would end in Germany’s defeat. In order to guarantee this, they accepted that Stalin could keep practically all he had already secured in the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty of 1939. This included Finland which was now fighting together with Germany.
The Western powers’ belief was strengthened, and the Soviet Union’s negotiating position was enhanced by to the total collapse of German forces in Stalingrad in February 1943. In Finland the military drew its own conclusions as well by making clear to the parliament already in April that Germany will lose the war. Since the Finnish armed forces were at the time far to the East of the earlier borders, the politicians didn’t want to hear anything about having to get rid of Germany as soon as possible.
The fate of Eastern Europe was sealed in Yalta in February 1945. But Finland’s fate had been decided earlier, in the autumn of 1944. Finland had managed to get out of the war as an independent nation after Stalin’s plan to occupy the whole of Finland had been frustrated in the decisive ferocious battles of Tali-Ihantala and elsewhere on the Karelian Isthmus in June-July 1944, and the interests of the Soviet Union had been fulfilled in bilateral treaties which the Western powers confirmed in Paris in February 1947.
The division of the world into the spheres of influence, which had originally been agreed upon in Tehran and which had been complemented in Yalta and Potsdam, and finally confirmed in Paris, was adhered to by the leading Western powers during the Cold War, and to an extent even after. It was proved in Eastern Berlin, Hungary, Prague and Poland. And its shadow can be seen in the “reset” of Barack Obama and the “engagement” of George W. Bush.
During the Cold War Finland had neither the right nor a possibility to secede from the Soviet sphere of influence. Since this was originally agreed with the leading Western powers, this fact has never been publicly admitted in Finland – and this remains to be the case until today.
When the Soviet Union collapsed it was enough for Finland to give up neutrality and to join the European Union. The new Russia was believed for far too long to develop into a democratic direction. This period, until the war in Ukraine, is now called a period of post-finlandization.
In reality, Finland’s foreign and security policy was during that time fully in keeping with the US policies of “reset” and “engagement” and the Russia friendly trade and energy policy of Germany. This has not been properly taken into consideration by those who today speak and write about post-finlandization. No urgent need for a final decoupling from Russia was considered necessary, and defending the Finnish interests did not seem to require it either, since unprecedented economic possibilities seemed to open up in Russia’s backward economy.
What was the real reason for the “active peace policy”?
Was the activation of the consultation clause of the treaty of 1948 really the worst case scenario for Finland – or was it simply an excuse with which it was easier to sell and justify the “friendship policy”?
Was there perhaps another worst-case scenario based on an assumption that the Soviet Union would not honour its commitments under the treaty but would invade Finland with a preemptive surprise attack in order to strengthen its position in Northern Europe when believing that a war in Europe was inevitable?
Were there discussions in Nato during the Cold War on would Finland fight or would it give her territory, or part of it (Lapland) voluntarily to be used by the Soviet Union. And what was the outcome of those discussions? How did Nato prepare itself to prevent a possible military utilization of Finland’s territory? Is it possible that since the use of conventional armed forces would have been practically impossible, Nato had to target tactical nuclear weapons to Finland?
Then again, if those are right, who believed that in the hour of need Finland would get help from the West, there should have been plans to that effect. Such plans could not have been drafted without the right to use the airspace, territorial waters and harbours of neutral Sweden. Did Nato and Sweden have common agreements or even plans for such a situation?
All this we may soon get to know.
Was the fear of occupation by a preemptive surprise military attack the real reason why, as the Cold War intensified, the “friendship policy” known to be fake but necessary by most of the Finns, was at times supplemented with the “active peace policy” favouring unilaterally the interests of the Soviet Union?
Since I cannot know for sure, I can only ask: Was the preservation of peace in Europe, at almost any cost, during the Cold War for Finland and the Finns really a matter of life and death?
