Pictures of Helsinki circa 1907

The Helsinki City Museum has a nice online exhibition of pictures taken of Helsinki sights by Signe Brander in the early 1910s. The pages are in Finnish, but navigation is pretty simple. There are two tours ("kierros"), each of which have several objects ("kohde"), each of which feature several pictures ("kuva"). "Panoraama" takes you to a panorama view and "animaatio" to an animation view, where applicable.

To keep things political, here's an animation (of sorts) of a workers' May Day parade.

Brander has captured the bleeding edge of early 20th century political advertising, from prior to the first unicameral parliamentary election in 1907.

Here's a shot of the inaugural service held at St. Nicholas' Church (a.k.a. the Helsinki Cathedral) and here's a parade from the church to the Imperial Palace (a.k.a. the Presidential Palace).

There's also a pretty panorama view from the church dome.

Finally, for those interested in a bit of social realism, Brander also photographed Töölö and the area's ordinary folk.

Against the wall

It's book review time. I've been reading "Seinää vasten vain!" - Poliittisen väkivallan motiivit Suomessa 1917-18 by Mikko Uola, which concerns the motives for political violence in Finland prior to and during the Finnish Civil War. I found it be an interesting look at well-known events from a different perspective as usual. The book focuses on the question of how the Reds and the Whites justified their own or their side's actions. Quite a bit of material from the era is quoted - newspaper articles, diary entries, letters, speeches.

Uola seems to see the Reds as aggressors - appropriately, in my opinion - who were driven to violence by their ideology in combination with circumstances that made them believe the revolutionary moment had come. He points at lies and exaggerations told about bourgeois violence in socialist newspapers, and how these stories were used to justify violence directed against the bourgeois. Työmies, the former Social Democratic Party organ that ceased operation after the Civil War, is not painted in flattering light by its own articles.

One tangible aspect of the conflict highlighted in the book is the importance of the police. The non-socialists saw setting up a police force loyal to the government to replace the prior arrangement of workers' guards policing the cities as imperative to maintaining order and protecting themselves. The Reds, by contrast, were strongly opposed to the idea and became especially fearful after they lost the 1917 parliamentary election and the right-wing Svinhufvud Senate took power.

Joseph Stalin makes a cameo to tell a Social Democratic meeting that "In the climate of war and decadence, the revolutionary movement about to be ignited in the West, and the Russian workers' revolution's growing victories, there are no such dangers and difficulties that could withstand your onslaught." Good one, Joe.

The final chapters of the book, dealing with events of the war itself, are tragic. The events make for a text-book example of a circle of violence.

Nazi rings

Andrew Curry, reporting for the Spiegel, wrote about a charity drive with a difference:

A Finnish charity is selling rings engraved with a swastika to raise money for the country's 80,000 World War II veterans.

The article is pretty good in giving the background, despite carrying the atrociously punny title "Nazi or Nice? Finns Snap Up Swastika Rings for Christmas".

(Two minor mistakes I spotted: 1.) The rings aren't being sold by "the Finnish Veterans' Association". There's no organization by that name, as far as I know. Rather (fi), the campaign is run by several Finnish veterans' associations operating through an organization called Veteraanivastuu. 2.) R-Kioskis aren't supermarkets. They're kiosks, as the name implies.)

Quoting Curry, Prerna Mankad wrote on Foreign Policy's Passport blog:

But with neo-Nazism reportedly growing in Finland's European neighborhood, brandishing Nazi symbols may easily convey a different message than the one Mikkonen and the Finnish Veterans' Association seem to have in mind.

The post's title is "Finnish charity selling Nazi rings for Christmas". Mankad takes it as a given that we're talking about Nazi rings carrying Nazi symbols. The campaign would of course dispute (PDF) those assumptions. For sure there's room for confusion if someone doesn't know the history, but Mankad has presumably read Curry's article. It's not all a clever ploy to get away with wearing Nazi rings, you know.

Finally, the Telegraph's Harry de Quetteville penned a more sympathetic article.

Soviet posters

Some of this stuff is pure gold. Also, the cigarette ads are amusing.

Veterans hate trifling entertainment

There's a new play in the Finnish National Theater that reinterprets Väinö Linna's The Unknown Soldier. The fact that the Helsingin Sanomat's critic liked it should give one pause, but since I haven't seen it, I shan't comment any further. Instead I'd like to discuss an idea presented in this post (fi) by Heidi Hautala, a Green League MP.

Hautala liked the play a lot, which is fair enough, but the message she saw in it is, to be frank, utter poppycock. According to her, the play sends the message that "our fathers and grandfathers didn't fight and die so that" - and there's no good way to finish the sentence at this point - "trifling entertainment and confusion over human fundamental questions would reign in the land."

Now, that strikes me as nonsense. Did the veterans of our wars fight so that light entertainment wouldn't be available to willing consumers, and if so, did they go see Lapatossu ja Vinski olympiakuumeessa for its deep philosophical content? Did they serve in the Winter War because they opposed confusion over human fundamental questions? How on earth would the reasoning there even work? "Communist indoctrination might not convince everyone, thus leaving some confused. This must be opposed!"?

The point is: If you want to whine about how modern life is rubbish, that's your prerogative, but don't attribute your hobbyhorse to others and then appeal to their authority. Because they too think you're an ass, I'm sure of it.

Mannerheim movie

I got to say, I have a bad feeling about this (fi). Renny Harlin, Markus Selin, and Mikko Nousiainen? It's like making a movie about George Washington with Jerry Bruckheimer producing, Michael Bay directing, and Ben Affleck portraying "G" (as he'd be called throughout the film).

The article mentions that some Russian financiers backed out after a disagreement about the script. It'd be interesting to know what the Russians wanted changed - maybe it was the scene where Mannerheim, operating deep within enemy lines in 1940, punches out Stalin?

If at some point in the movie Mannerheim doesn't get to shout, his neck veins bulging, "THIS... IS... KOLLAAAAA!" then I, for one, will feel cheated.

All Finnish newspapers 1771-1890

The Finnish National Library now offers in digital format all newspapers published in Finland between the years 1771 and 1890, free of charge. The archive is even searchable - the search feature appears to have some problems, but you should be able to work around the issues. Browsing by name of newspaper and date works, too, if you know what you're looking for.

I searched for my surname and have spent the last 30 minutes reading about criminal ancestors: a couple running a brothel in Mikkeli, or at least offering lodging to women of loose morals; a Kurkijoki man who committed suicide by shooting himself in the gut after getting mixed up in the disappearance of a drunken ex-soldier; a skilled artisan - blacksmith, carpenter, stonemason, and watchmaker - from Rautalammi who kept getting arrested for theft... Great stuff.

Swastika eyes

Thanos Kalamidas had a rather odd article in Ovi Magazine. While riding the Helsinki metro, Mr Kalamidas has spotted a handful of young people wearing swastikas. This, he argues, has something or other to do with the Continuation War. I'll let him explain:

I have often heard the excuse that in front of the USSR that was going to take over Finland the only chance left was to ally with the Nazis during WWII and I have heard it often and I always find it very poor. Finland is not the only country neighbouring with the horror. The rest of us learned since we were very young how much horror there is behind this symbol and there are countries, including Germany, that considers the symbol illegal.

Often in Finland I have the feeling that people are proud for this past and it really makes you wonder. How much history have they learned? Hitler was worse than Stalin and the Nazis much worse than any kind of Red Army or Bolsheviks. Do young people in Finland know that?

[...] I’m not going to blame these young people for what they did, I’m going to blame the state that never bothered to teach them the truth but let them believe that the Nazis were allies to help them defend their country from the bad Bolsheviks who were coming to... eat them!

Elsewhere Kalamidas warns darkly of a future increase in intolerance. Maybe someone with access to reams of poll data and a lot of free time could prove that former Axis countries and assorted hangers-on are less tolerant than former Allied countries. All I can say is that a recent Eurobarometer survey (PDF) found Finns to have the most positive views about immigration in the European Union. The people of Greece had, alas, second most negative views after the Maltese. The question needs to be asked: has the Greek state failed to make it clear to its citizens that the Nazis were bad?

The obvious point to make here is that neo-Nazism isn't a phenomenon that is constrained by World War II front lines. Thus, attributing right-wing extremism to national views of World War II is arguably a tad misguided.

As for being eaten by bad Bolsheviks, that naturally wasn't Uncle Joe's merry minions' goal; rather, they would have been content with purges and deportations and what have you. Sadly, letting the Soviet army in - followed by Nazi rule, followed by more Communist command - put a considerable dent into the populations of several other countries unfortunate enough to be located between Germany and Soviet Union. These examples suggest that, had the Bolshies not been turned away, a sizable percentage of Finnish youth of today would not have been born. Admittedly not being born hurts less than falling victim to cannibalism.

Among the whitest people in Europe

Apropos of James Watson's imitation of Tatu Vanhanen, Alterdestiny and Lawyers, Guns and Money cite the case of John Svan, a Finnish immigrant to the United States, whose petition for citizenship was opposed by the US government on the account that he was "a Mongolian" and thus ineligible due to the Chinese Exclusion Act.

A spot of googling reveals that the judge was one William A Cant from the fair state of Minnesota. Luckily for Mr Svan and a sixteen other Finnish immigrants who had been denied citizenship, Judge Cant determined that "[i]f the Finns were originally Mongols, modifying influences have continued until they are now among the whitest people in Europe."

In 1911 the congressional Dillingham Commission produced a Dictionary of Races and Peoples, which addressed the Mongolian question thusly:

Finnish immigration has been larger in recent years than that of most other races having so small a population. It is practically confined to the Western Finns or Finns proper. These are Caucasian rather than Mongolian in appearance, while the Eastern or Volga Finns, who are not known to come as yet to America, show distinctly their Asiatic origin. They are divided from the Finns proper by a broad band of Great Russians which extends through Central Russia from north to south. The Lapps and Samoyeds, another very different stock, may be called the "Northern Finns".

[...] Until 1809 Finland was a part of Sweden, and before the dawn of history the Finns and Swedes were no doubt intermingling. This will account in part for the prevailing blondness and European cast of countenance amongst the Finns, which has led the Bureau of Immigration to put them into the "Teutonic division" of races. But the entire Ugro-Finnic stock seems to have been, in origin, lighter in color than most other Mongolians, perhaps as a result of their northern residence. Formerly they were taken out of the Mongolian grand division by certain ethnologists and put into a separate division of "ailophylian whites". Whatever their original stock, the Finns of Finland are today the most truly European of any race possessing a Mongolic speech, and in some respects their institutions are abreast of any in Europe.

"The most truly European of any race possessing a Mongolic speech" - take that, Hungarians!

This excerpt (PDF) from History of the Finns in Michigan by Armas K E Holmio provides a lengthy look at the origins of the idea of Finns as Mongolians and theorizes on why the notion persisted in the United States even after it had been discarded in Finland.

Cold War legacy

On Monday Aamulehti published a little survey (fi) of historians on the topic of Finlandization. Predictably they wanted more research done, which is fair enough. What I found disagreeable in the article, however, was Professor Henrik Meinander's argument that the "grip of Cold War" is to blame for Finland's not entirely parliamentarian system of government - that "Kekkonen's long shadow" showed in the '90s constitutional reform so that power wasn't moved entirely to the government.

I think the exact opposite is the case. Urho Kekkonen's legacy was a big reason why power was moved from the President to the government. As I've written before, the changes addressed the most negative sides of his presidency. If you replace him with a string of presidents who use their powers in a more modest and uncontroversial manner, it's questionable whether any reform at all would have occurred. These sort of arrangements tend to have a great deal of inertia.

Meinander also says (my translation), "In a normal Western country foreign policy decisions can be voted upon in the parliament. In Finland it is feared that the parliament is so immature in the area of foreign policy that it mixes up road construction debates with foreign and security policy."

I'd take issue with the definition of a "normal Western country" as one which places all foreign policy power on the government and the parliament Such prototypically Western countries as France and the United States don't fit this model. As for not trusting the parliament on foreign policy issues, again we're discussing something that predates the Cold War. (See, for example, the section on the "Long Parliament" in the recently reviewed Kansanvalta koetuksella.)

To be fair, maybe there's more to Meinander's argument than could fit on the pages of Aamulehti.

PS: The article prompted historian Markku Jokisipilä to post a presentation he gave on the topic of remembering the post-war era in Finland. (Scroll down past the Finnish introduction for the English portion.) It's pretty good.

Democracy on test

As a part of the Finnish Parliament's centennial celebration, it published a 12-part book series on the history of the Parliament. I've been reading what to me seemed like the most interesting part of the series, Kansanvalta koetuksella ("Democracy on Test"). The book is divided into three sections: Vesa Vares deals with the years 1907-1919, from the birth of the unicameral parliament to birth of the republican constitution, encompassing the second period of Russification and the Civil War. Mikko Uola writes about the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on political extremism from the left and the right. Mikko Majander writes about the so-called "Long Parliament" of the war years and the first post-wars election. It would have been nice to include another chapter on the post-wars years that would have assessed the impact of Soviet influence and addressed all the Kekkonen-centric wrangling.

I recommend the book if you're interested in the topic and can read the language. The authors are fair and informative and despite the Parliament-commissioned nature of the publication, they don't shy away from controversial topics. I also appreciated the numerous large historical photographs and other illustrations. For example, the reproduction of a 1919 drawing of Mannerheim in full military regalia riding the lion from the coat of arms (page 133) is pretty wonderful. Note carefully the lion's happy expression. The National Coalition Party's and Patriotic People's Movement's joint election poster from 1930 on page 225 is also some kind of a classic. ("Remember: Socialism is communism's brother.") I'm also partial to the 1920 photograph on page 157 in which Kullervo Manner, Yrjö Sirola, the Rahja brothers, and a few other Finnish communists in Moscow are studying a big map of Finland.

CIA, friend of Finnish social democracy

Mikko Majander has the goods:

The US Central Intelligence Agency began to fund Finland's Social Democratic party in the latter half of the 1940s, according to a book launched Tuesday by Mikko Majander, a Finnish historian. [...]

According to Dr Majander, 1949 was a key important watershed in the official US approach to Finnish politics as it marked the time when the Americans became convinced, thanks to the suppression of a Communist-led strike movement, that Finland had not turned into a Soviet satellite. The US viewed the SDP as the only significant force capable of keeping communism in check in Finland.

That the KGB funded the Communist Party is well-known and it stands to reason that the other side didn't stand pat. Still, it's good to have proper research on the subject.

The choice of parties is interesting. I'm fairly certain that the National Coalition Party also received funding, but the Social Democrats seem to have been the CIA's favorites, perhaps due to their battle with the Communists for the control of the labor unions.

I wonder, does this mean we can credit the CIA for the welfare state?

Rusi's list

This should provoke some reactions:

Lawyers working for Alpo Rusi, a Finnish diplomat and former presidential aide, presented a list of a dozen people who they claim had "maintained regular contact with officials of the German Democratic Republic's Helsinki embassy in 1969-77".

I'm starting to get the feeling Rusi has something against Social Democrats.

The full list:

Matti Ahde MP (Social Democratic Party)
Seppo Halminen (Social Democrat)
Matti Kekkonen, son of Urho (Centre Party)
Pekka Kuusi (Social Democrat)
Lars Lindeman (Social Democrat)
ex-PM Paavo Lipponen (Social Democrat)
Jouko Loikkanen (Centre)
Pentti Poukka (National Coalition Party)
Jukka Rusi (Social Democrat)
ex-PM Kalevi Sorsa (Social Democrat)
Ulf Sundqvist (Social Democrat)

NB: These people haven't been proven to have done anything.

Koivisto: No Karelia offer

As you'll no doubt remember, Kainuun Sanomat recently claimed that Russia had offered to return Karelia to Finland and that then President Mauno Koivisto turned them down. Koivisto stayed mum for a while, but now he's speaking and he's not amused:

"No offers were made by the Soviet Union, or after that, by Russia, for re-examining the border, nor were there any proposals from Finland. No working groups were set up by me, and I do not know that any others would have done so either. There is no foundation to this", Koivisto said in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat at his home in Helsinki.

You can't accuse him of making a non-denial denial.

Meanwhile Kainuun Sanomat has let it be known (fi, link to Google cache 'cause the original is dead) that Jaakko Blomberg, back then the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, told them about the working group. Blomberg has denied knowledge of such a group to several media outlets.

I find this a rather strange story. It's difficult to figure out who's telling the truth here, because neither option makes much sense. I'm currently inclined to think that someone misunderstood something or someone else misspoke. On the other hand, Kainuun Sanomat is an average Finnish regional daily. What incentive would they have to do something as awfully risky as lie about what Blomberg said to their reporter? Alternatively, what incentive would Blomberg have to fib? To better assess the situation, one would need to find out what precisely Blomberg said.

Headline of the day

Verkkouutiset (fi): "Human's destructive fury has a long and bitter history". I'll say.

(The article is about the new book "Hävityksen historia" - "History of Destruction" - by Juha Tahvanainen, Mika Rissanen, and Sami Koski.)

Ryti's war diaries

I recently read "Käymme omaa erillistä sotaamme - Risto Rytin päiväkirjat 1940-1945" ("We Fight Our Own Separate War - Risto Ryti's Diaries 1940-1945"), expertly edited by Ohto Manninen and Kauko Rumpunen. It's a rather informative look into Ryti's wartime career and thoughts, with Manninen and Rumpunen filling in the blanks left by Ryti, and other sources frequently quoted to see how they match with Ryti's writings.

As far as Ryti's basic approach to foreign policy is concerned, the diaries support the common analysis. Ryti's decisions stem from a cool-headed, usually accurate analysis of what is best for Finland. Only his fear of Bolshevism can rival his patriotism as a motivating factor. At the early stages of the Continuation War both tug him in the same direction, but when they come in conflict, ideological concerns once again yield to national interest.

In hindsight Ryti's analysis of the Western Allies is quite poor. He tells visitors that the United States, should the war continue, is in danger of experiencing social upheaval. He instructs British and German guests that Britain and Germany ought to make peace so they can combat the real danger to Europe, the Soviet Union. He doesn't seem to understand that the Western Allies see Nazism much like he sees Bolshevism - as a threat to civilization that should be combatted vigorously.

Several times Ryti defends democracy to German diplomats with an inventive argument. He describes the Finnish system as a "peasant democracy", the result of hundreds of years of historic development, which is peculiarly suited to Finland's needs. The Finnish people, Ryti notes with pride, have never experienced serfdom and thus cherish their traditional freedoms. I wonder what Nazis made of the argument that dictatorship is the right system for Germany because Germans used to be serfs and are thus servile.

Disturbing to a modern reader is the incident where Ryti spoke approvingly of eugenics. It was a common affliction of the era, of course, but it's still disappointing. This raises the question of who's the most enlightened World War II leader. Churchill's candidacy has certain problems. Roosevelt's civil rights record could be better. All the dictators are obviously right out of the question.

Most boring presidency ever

The Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) is showing as a summer rerun "Presidentit" (2005), a drama series on Presidents of Finland. It dramatizes some small part of their presidency, with a narrator popping in at the beginning and end of each episode to give some background. The series suffers from some overacting and clumsy exposition inserted into the dialog, but it's commendable that YLE is at least trying to popularize the country's history.

For many Presidents, there's an obvious choice for that one dramatic moment to put in film. To give a few examples, Pehr Evind Svinhufvud's episode deals with the Mäntsälä rebellion, Kyösti Kallio's with the start of the Winter War, and Juho Kusti Paasikivi's with the negotiation of the Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance. With Risto Ryti and Urho Kekkonen, there's a lot from which to choose.

The series goes through the first ten Presidents, but there's no episode for the current incumbent, Tarja Halonen. This got me to thinking: what moment in her presidency would make for good TV? We didn't join the EU, the Soviet Union didn't break up, there were no notable foreign policy crises, no vitally important treaties were negotiated, wars didn't end, wars didn't start, no one rebelled, no threats our democracy emerged, and there were no divisions to heal. This has been the most boring presidency ever.

An aspiring dramatist would probably be forced to go with former Prime Minister Anneli Jäätteenmäki's resignation and Halonen played a rather small role in that particular drama. There's always the campaign for a second term, but even that was more important to Halonen as a person than Finland as a country. She has steered clear of NATO, but there's no drama there because there has been precious little conflict.

Point is: we're not living in interesting times. To alleviate the boredom, Halonen should get to work in creating some dangerous foreign policy crisis in which catastrophe can only be averted at the nick of time by acting with determined, steely resolve. If she gets to punch out a terrorist, so much the better.

The Putin generation

Apparently Vladimir Vladimirovich is quite popular in Russia. Undoubtedly the glorious leadership he has provided has a lot to do with it - not to mention the price of oil - but I have to say that the Russian media doesn't seem to put a lot of effort into reporting on the negative aspects of his reign.

I read a few articles in Russian papers on the Finno-Ugric festival attended by President Tarja Halonen and they gave very little attention to the human rights angle that was so prominent in Finnish coverage. For example, Moscow Times somewhat optimistically headlined its story as "Putin Wants Minorities to Feel at Home". Since it was an AP story, it at least mentioned human rights issues, although in a pretty mealy-mouthed manner. Kommersant played its story, "King of the Csardas", mostly for laughs, with the only hint that something might be amiss coming when the reporter paraphrased Halonen's comments.

In other news concerning authoritarian Russian leaders, according to a recent survey, Russian youth think Stalin wasn't half bad:

When asked if Stalin was a wise leader, half of the 1,802 respondents, aged from 16 to 19, agreed he was.

"Fifty-four percent agreed that Stalin did more good than bad," [...]

The majority of respondents thought the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragedy

On the plus side, the results were even worse (PDF) in 2005.

Where could the kids be getting these opinions? The Washington Post reports:

The teaching of history has always been a charged subject in post-Soviet Russia, especially when it touches on the rule of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, whose purges led to the deaths of millions and the notorious gulag system of labor camps.

A textbook that took an unflinching look at Stalin's policies, including his nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939 and the mass deportation of Chechens and other Caucasians during World War II, was pulled by education officials in 2003. [...]

According to the new history manual ["The Newest History of Russia, 1945-2006"], Stalin was brutal but also "the most successful leader of the U.S.S.R."

"As for the methods of coercion used toward the ruling bureaucratic elite, the goal was to mobilize the leadership in order to make it effective in the process of industrialization, as well as in rebuilding the economy in the postwar period," the manual states, while providing few details on the scale and horror of Stalin's totalitarianism. "This task was fulfilled by means of, among other things, political repression, which was used to mobilize not only rank-and-file citizens but also the ruling elite."

I wonder how other countries managed to industrialize without mobilizing citizens to make them more effective. (And when I say "mobilize", I mean "kill".)

Red and yellow

I recently read "Siniristilippumme" ("Our Blue Cross Flag") by Caius Kajanti, a rather thorough account of the history of the flag of Finland. Contemporary newspaper articles arguing about what the flag should look like and what the national colors ought to be are pretty funny from a modern perspective.

The alternatives were red and yellow on one hand and blue and white on the other. Red and yellow came from Finland's coat of arms, which features a golden lion on a red background. Blue and white came from the nature: blue water and white snow.

The book has lots of pictures of different proposals. From a purely aesthetic perspective, my favorite was Akseli Gallen-Kallela's proposal that looked something like this:

You have to admit that it would have made for fine-looking ice hockey uniforms.

Like everything else in Finnish pre-independence politics, even the issue of national colors developed a language component to it. Red and yellow was supported by many Swedish-speakers, perhaps because they went back to the days of Swedish rule, whereas blue and white were supported by the Finnish-speaking right. The latter won, of course, but only after the Civil War had made the color red unpopular.

Incidentally, it's fairly commonly believed that the current flag's white cross on a blue background came from the Uusimaa Jacht Club (Nylandska Jaktklubben), which in turn got the design from the St. Petersburg Yacht Club. According to this book the issue isn't that simple. The Nordic cross form and the blue and white colors were picked independently of each other.

Herring-smokers write books too

Yesterday's Grauniad carried a highly refined example of the "foreign writer travels to Finland and does touristy things" genre. It has it all: lots of lakes, saunas, the Kalevala, huskies, smoked herrings, a classical music festival, and the nightless night. But here's something you may not have known:

The Finish people are keen to impress on visitors their cultural heritage. Much of this revolves around the epic poem, the Kalevala, first published by a Finnish academic in 1835. The poem was put together from the ancient oral histories of the Finnish and the Karelian people from the west of Finland and across the border in Russia.

It was the first book to be written in Finnish, and is seen by many Finns as the cornerstone of both their language and their culture.

Sounds plausible to me.