Academic pressured by “useful idiots” during Finlandisation period

Tauno Tiusanen saw decay of Soviet system before recognising it was politically acceptable

print this

By Jukka Tarkka
     
      Tauno Tiusanen was the Professor Emeritus at the universities of Glasgow and Lappeenranta, who brought upon himself reactions of disgust and horror ever since he was a young scholar in the late 1970s, by saying what everyone else could have seen if only they had dared look. The emperor had no clothes.
      The official truth proclaimed by Moscow spoke that Marxism-Leninism had finally broken the obstacles to human happiness. In the Soviet system social equality, a harmony of nationalities, prosperity, enduring peace, and a dazzling economic growth were being implemented without the ecological disaster typical of capitalist exploitation.
      Tiusanen is part of the school of comparative economics, which saw as its mission the examination of the reality of the Soviet Union, using the same scale that Western research examines all other realties.
     
The method showed that the prevailing reality of the Soviet system was one of psychological and physical terror, oppression aimed at the destruction of minority nationalities, material want, technological backwardness, totalitarian militarism, the waste of natural resources, and the destruction of the environment.
      In the West, all of this was no more than an observation confirming old experience-based information. Orwellian terror and blatant propaganda have managed to stifle human thinking in the past as well.
      But when Tiusanen put forward these observations of his in Finland during the Cold War, it was seen as a sacrilege and a threat to the nation. It simply was not possible for some whipper-snapper with a master’s degree to know more than the top leadership of a superpower, which had good will toward Finland.
      It was not only the fundamentalist communists who felt this way. Many career-oriented conservatives and bottom-line oriented businessmen with a vested interest in trade with the Soviet Union felt this way.
     
Tiusanen faced difficulties in Finland. He made his way into the core of an international research community in comparative economics, got his doctorate, and was invited to one of the leading institutions in the field, Glasgow University, as a professor.
      Tiusanen established an extensive network of researchers in the field, some of whom were also in the Soviet Union. He travelled all around the Soviet block, and also collected information from the grass roots.
      His message did not become more moderate, but it did get some international resonance. Attitudes of Finnish experts began to change. Tiusanen became the attraction of seminars held behind closed doors on trade with the east, but that was hardly ever mentioned.
      The most enlightened journalists began to use Tiusanen as a source of information, but his name, which raised the wrath of some, was often not mentioned in the stories. He could only be interviewed for current affairs programmes of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) with the specific permission of the company’s director-general.
      Tiusanen had a group of supporters who understood him. Some of the names were surprising. In the late 1980s President Mauno Koivisto invited him into his background groups evaluating developments in the east. The most positive evaluation of Tiusanen’s books in the early 1990s was in Kansan Uutiset, the organ of the moderate majority faction of the Finnish Communist Party.
     
Tiuisanen has much to say in his book, which disperses the structure of the densely-written work somewhat. A determined rewrite, or even just a tough edit to eliminate repetitions would have done much good.
      Nevertheless, Tiusanen is able to describe the theoretical structures and development of the Soviet system and its economy with an unusual degree of clarity. The Soviet system was not a creation of Karl Marx, but rather one of Josif Stalin. It was only called Marxism-Leninism.
      The Soviet satellites were not monolithic constructions. The differences between the Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, and Polish systems both with the Soviet system, and with each other are dramatic to read. There are subtleties even in totalitarianism.
     
Tiusanen was pained by the mindless attitudes of Finnish superficial politics and the media. On the other hand, the attitude of Soviet officials toward this somewhat odd researcher was primarily one of concerned interest.
      Quite a few officials of a number of socialist countries were buzzing around Tiusanen, trying to guide the victim of capitalist indoctrination to see the light.
      Tiusanen describes in a delectable manner, how political operatives of those countries, who made a living of lying, would squirm on the inside, as not all of them were stupid. They knew who was really right.
      Tiusanen never received actual threats from his foreign minders. The pressure was usually in the form of either friendly-sounding advice, or at times arrogant attempts at censorship. Attempts to silence him, and death threats came from Finnish zealots. Tiusanen revels in referring to them as useful idiots, just as the great Lenin once taught.
     
Tiusanen is burdened by the legacy of Finlandisation to the extent that he does not mention any of them by name.
      Judging from the conditions described, one could guess that one of those who tried to shut him up is a minister in the present government [see link].
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 22.8.2009
     
Jukka Tarkka is a political scientist and occasional columnist.
     
Elämä rautaesiripun varjossa. Toisinajattelijan päiväkirja (“Life in the Shadow of the Iron Curtain. A Diary of a Dissident”). Edita Publishing


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Minister denies allegations in Tiusanen memoirs (25.8.2009)
  Aamulehti: Historians call for thorough examination of Finlandisation era (8.10.2007)
  Mantra against Finlandisation (26.10.2006)
  Finlandisation changes direction (4.10.2000)

Helsingin Sanomat