1989: Finland stood in background as Europe freed itself
Dreams of spring of 68 turned into revolution of 89
By Aki Petteri Lehtinen
Last year the baby boomers remembered the spring of their lives. Middle-aged people wearing flowered shirts were seen on television and in concerts reviving the frenzy of freedom from 40 years earlier, which was linked especially with the springs of Prague and Paris in 1968.
Also in people’s minds was the shocking August of that year of hope, when the tanks of the Warsaw Pact rolled into Czechoslovakia. Totalitarian communism crushed “socialism with a human face” both in Prague, and in the minds of many Finns.
Europe continued to live split in two, and Finland kept going within the limits of the Finnish-Soviet treaty of Friendship of Security, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (FCMA).
This year 20 years will have passed since the iron curtain was torn down, and when people were again able to open their eyes and their mouths.
The totalitarian and authoritarian governments of Central Europe fell in 1989, and tens of millions of people were freed from political control in a revolution that was nearly bloodless.
A prerequisite of culture is freedom, and it was not until 20 years ago that it was realised. Shouldn’t the special year after liberation be celebrated?
“Certainly. In a way, the Second World War did not end until the events of 1989 took place”, says journalist Martti Puukko, a journalist who lived for a long time in Poland and the Baltic countries.
Historians such as Peter Englund and Eric Hobsbawm have spoken in a similar vein, calling the 1900s a “short century” of nationalism, fascism, and communism, as well as the iron curtain.
The century began with the First World War in 1914, and ended with the abolition of the Soviet Union in 1991.
“However, in Finland these years were not a cause of joy for everyone, as many believed in the eternal nature of the Soviet Union and communism”, Puukko adds.
Commemorations of the collapse of the Berlin Wall are to be expected in November. However, the symbol of the Cold War easily leaves the struggle for freedom that took place elsewhere in its shadow.
The iron curtain got its first cracks already in the early summer of 1989, and in the autumn, when the Hungarians opened their border to East Germans seeking to reach the West.
Tens of thousands of them fled, and it was not just any old trip abroad. From 1966 to 1988, about 13,500 had tried to flee to the West through Hungary, and only 300 had succeeded.
Erkki Pennanen, a seasoned editorial writer with Helsingin Sanomat sees the connection between the emphasis on the Berlin Wall and the year 1968.
“The dramatic crushing of something always gets more news coverage, and is remembered better than peaceful development. The arrival of the tanks of the country's own allies in the centre of Prague in 1969, and the taking of the country’s leaders to Moscow were a shock to all Finns, including Finnish Communists. Because of the events of Prague, 1968 is not a year that merits a celebration, and 1989, for its part, threatens to be left with very little attention in Finland.”
Martti Puukko takes up the events of the Baltic States, which are often forgotten. He followed them in Latvia in 1988-1989.
“At that time, people in the Baltic countries walked with their heads held high for the first time in a long time.”
On August 23rd, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which sealed the division of Eastern Europe into two spheres of influence, more than two million demonstrators opposing the Soviet occupation formed a human chain 600 kilometres long, stretching from Tallinn, via Riga to Vilnius.
Ulla-Maija Määttänen, who already then was a journalist of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) based in Estonia, sees the event as a climax of the smouldering development toward independence of the Baltic countries.
“It was about then that the blue, black, and white flags of Estonia flew for the first time, and in the same year Estonian became the country’s official language.”
At about the same time Martti Puukko met tourists from Czechoslovakia in Riga.
“They did not expect changes in the communist system for at least the next ten years.”
Nevertheless, the so-called velvet revolution changed the administration in Prague already in the same autumn, and author Vaclav Havel, who had previously been in prison, became the new president. The reform policy of Mikhail Gorbachov had made multiparty elections possible in the Soviet Union already in March 1989, and soon thereafter, the Solidarity movement was legalised in Poland.
The peaceful nature of the revolutions is seen as noteworthy by Teivo Teivainen, a professor of international politics.
“One of the great lessons of 1989 for civic organisations was that it is possible to achieve changes in a very spontaneous manner. Even at that time, radical left-wing politics in Finland meant the admiration of the Soviet Union.”
In Teivainen’s view, the Finnish attitude toward Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries was “shamefully dismissive” at the time.
“Because of Soviet leftism, it had been difficult in Finland to represent the critical left.”
Nevertheless, the Soviet Union was creaking at the seams already in the early part of 1989. At that time, journalist Markus Leikola followed the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Nothing of the kind had been seen before.
“In the global context of the Cold War, it was a huge event. The world of the Cold War was seen, in all of its frightening aspects, as a stable place, but the times were clearly changing, and the world was becoming more uncertain.”
Leikola, who worked both for YLE and the newspaper Iltalehti in 1989, sees the events of that year as the prerequisite for Finnish membership in the EU. However, he prefers not to place the years 1968 and 1989 in any ranking order.
“Fortunately, nowadays there is freedom to choose, without any interference what one feels is worth celebrating.”
Political historian, Professor Seppo Hentilä notes that Finns were largely outsiders in the events of 1989.
“Only the final disintegration of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the significance of the FCMA treaty liberated Finland of caution in foreign policy.”
Estonians were especially critical of President Mauno Koivisto over the fact that Finland did not support the independence of the Baltic countries until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
“Finland looked into the mirror of the Soviet Union until the very end, but submitted its application for EU membership just a couple of months after the Soviet Union fell apart.”
The Baltic States and the countries of Eastern Europe grabbed onto the opportunity as soon as it came, and surprisingly enough, the change came to us all.
An exception to this is pointed out by political scientist and Russia expert, Dr. Ilmari Susiluoto, who served in Moscow in 1989 at the Foreign Trade Academy.
He says that in the same year he attended a seminar organised by NATO and the Pentagon, where there was a map speculating on the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
“The Americans pondered if the model of Finlandisation would be good for the East Europeans as well. I said that it would not work for the others, because Finland had benefited so much from its trade with the East.”
According to Susiluoto, Finns had no need to distance themselves from communism, because “our establishment had been accustomed to just laying around”.
“Our politicians wanted more deals, because they were under the impression that Russia had a hell of a lot of gold and collateral”, Susiluoto laughs.
It was only after the Soviet Union and trade ties with the Soviets collapsed that Susiluoto feels that Finland began to become normalised again.
He sees as the most important aspect of 1989 that Soviet forces did not fire a shot when East Germany collapsed.
“Otherwise history could have taken a completely different course”, Susiluoto says.
In the decade that followed, the Finns became excited about Russian oil, which Susiluoto feels again infected the Finns with a sense of importance.
“The Russians see us as a little bit simple and naive, but trustworthy, and they are not completely wrong. Perhaps the fate of a chukhna like this is always to understand these things a bit late”, Susiluoto muses.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.8.2009
AKI PETTERI LEHTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
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| 4.8.2009 - THIS WEEK |
 1989: Finland stood in background as Europe freed itself |
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