Among friends - Finnish-Soviet treaty in retrospect

print this

By Jaakko Hautamäki
     
      The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics had won, and the small country Finland accepted its defeat. After two lost wars, the arch-enemy was again a beloved neighbour.
      This relationship was sealed on April 6th, 1948 in Moscow. The First Secretary of the Communist Party, Josif Stalin, smiled as he watched Finnish Prime Minister Mauno Pekkala and Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov sign the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between Finland and the Soviet Union.
     "YYA", the three initials of the Finnish name of the treaty, crystallised the fate of Finland for the decades that followed.
     Standing near Stalin stood the Deputy Speaker of the Finnish Parliament, Urho Kekkonen, who, as President, would later become the staunchest backer of the policy of friendship.
     
Once the papers were signed, it was time to raise the glasses. Ever since then, glasses were always raised on April sixth - and on many other occasions, whenever the opportunity arose.
     Sitting before the glasses, the minds of the Finns were haunted particularly by the first article of FCMA, in which Finland committed itself to repulse an attack by "Germany or another country allied with it", either "with the assistance of the Soviet Union, or in conjunction with it".
     The Finnish delegation probably got little comfort from the fact that the Soviet Union had signed treaties involving even greater bondage. Contrary to what happened to the Baltic Countries, Finland was not occupied.
     There were no alternatives to the FCMA, or to friendship. The close relationship soon extended everywhere - to economics, science, culture, sports, and politics. The Germans invented a term for the Finnish policy of accommodation: Finlandisierug - "Finlandisation" - hardly a flattering idea.
     But why did the toadying go so far? Perhaps the veterans of Finland of the FCMA Treaty can enlighten us.
     
In the municipality of Lehtimäki on the shore of Lake Ähtäri stands a house, where Eino Uusitalo, 83, is spending his retirement. Uusitalo, who served as a minister in several governments, and who was close to President Kekkonen. He has been accused of being one of the most Finlandised of Finland's politicians.
     From 1956 to 1986 Uusitalo took part in every annual celebration of the FCMA treaty at the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki. In 1975 he proposed that the 19th of September, the anniversary of the signing of the interim peace that ended hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1944, should be taken as Finland's second independence day.
     Writer and historian Timo Vihavainen sees this as an amazing manifestation of poshlot - insincere sweetness.
     
Uusitalo sits in his favourite chair and smiles broadly. Thanks to his ear-to-ear smile, he was known as "Smiling Eino" to his friends, and as "Smarmy Eikka" to his opponents.
     There were times that even Uusitalo did not feel like smiling. In November 1958 he took part in a trip to Moscow by a delegation of the Agrarian League (later the Centre Party). Suddenly, the attitudes hosts of the visit that had been quite friendly until then turned frosty - "including the service". The Finns were not served vodka any more. Uusitalo had no problem with that, as he was not a drinking man, but the cutoff of the vodka was a message that trouble was afoot.
     The brusque treatment continued when Uusitalo was supposed to go back to Finland. His hosts said that no ticket was available for him for the morning train to Helsinki.
     "We ended up having a conflict. I said that Members of Parliament were not allowed to be absent without permission. After negotiations, I got on the train, but the rest of them were left behind."
     The cold-shoulder treatment was the result of the "night frost crisis". The Soviet Union, which objected to the composition of the government of Social Democratic Prime Minister K.-A. Fagerholm, withdrew its Ambassador from Finland and caused problems for trade relations between the two countries. The pressure ultimately led to the resignation of the Fagerholm government in January 1959.
     
The moments of horror experienced in Moscow made Eino Uusitalo a friend of the Soviet Union in body and soul.
     He is angered by claims that Finland would have been on all fours in front of the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
     "I would say that the responsibility lies with the Western powers. After the war they handed Finland into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union - this in spite of the fact that they knew that the Finnish system of values was Western.
     Uusitalo remains bitter toward the Western powers.
     "It was a terrible thing to do, that is impossible to understand or accept. And then they have the nerve to say that we were subservient."
     Apparently Uusitalo forgets that Finland fought in the war alongside Hitler's Germany. In his view, Finland should have been put in the same zone as Sweden.
     "Not in the Western camp, but as a neutral country. Then we would not have needed the FCMA."
     Finland had to take the conditions into consideration, because the fate of the country was in the hands of the Soviet Union.
     "No better options were available. We noticed that if we deviated from the past, the stronger hand would win. That is what happened in 1958 and during the Note Crisis of 1961."
     In the Note Crisis, the Soviet Union proposed military consultations under the terms of the FCMA Treaty, making reference to a threat from Germany. The crisis blew over in negotiations between Kekkonen and Khrushchev in Novosibirsk. Uusitalo continues to speak of Kekkonen's "great victory" in averting the consultations.
     
In the summer of 1970 the FCMA Treaty was extended for 20 years. Naturally, Uusitalo was in Moscow with Kekkonen for the occasion.
     "In the grand hall of the Kremlin there was a long table. We were there looking at each other. The leaders of the Soviet Union praised our good relations and Kekkonen's life's work. Kekkonen said that all of Finland's parties want to keep the treaty without any changes, and emphasised the policy of neutrality.
     The two returned from that trip in a buoyant mood. Kekkonen had managed to slip the important mention of Finnish neutrality into the final communiqué, Uusitalo recalls, flashing his famous smile.
     Uusitalo himself was in a tense situation in the summer of 1977 when a hijacked Aeroflot plane landed at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. Interior Minister Uusitalo dealt with the incident so quietly that the media gave him the Golden Lemon. This "award" went to the person who kept the most secrets in the year.
     Finland and the Soviet Union had signed a treaty on hijackings in the spirit of the FCMA Treaty, under which hijackers were to be returned to their home countries.
     When the crisis blew over, a Soviet minister praised Uusitalo for dealing with the incident in a way that strengthened friendly ties between the countries.
     After the hijacking the rock band Sleepy Sleepers recorded a piece called Kaapataan lentokone Moskovaan ("Let's Hijack a Plane to Moscow"). It was removed from Finnish jukeboxes and the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) did not give it airplay out of foreign policy considerations. The band was boycotted at dance halls.
     Instead of rock critical of the Soviet Union, YLE preferred to air programmes in which journalists Pentti Kemppainen and Leena Pakkanen informed listeners that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has 15.5 members, and that the symbol of the state, the hammer and the sickle, signified the alliance of the workers and the peasantry.
     In Lehtimäki in South Ostrobothnia, a clock is still ticking, which the Interior Minister of the Soviet Union gave his colleague as a gift 30 years ago. Uusitalo returns to the subject of supplication.
     "Finland is in the front row among nations, and people have the nerve to say that Finland was on all fours toward the east. Finland is standing gloriously upright, but the Soviet union fell. Who is the one who was down on all fours?"
     Uusitalo does admit that Finland did not always get high points for style in its policy toward the Soviet Union.
     "However, even in ski jumping, the length of the jump is taken into consideration. We had to employ unusual methods. I will not give up this opinion."
     Uusitalo visited the Soviet Union in 1988 for the last time. At that time the Finns met President Mikhail Gorbachov in the Kremlin and heard about perestroika. Alcohol was only consumed secretively, as Gorbachov was a temperance man.
     
The anti-drinking campaign of the Soviet Union came too late for many Finnish businessmen involved in trade with the Soviet Union.
     The year 1973 was the 25th anniversary of the FCMA treaty, and Finland was busy negotiating a free trade agreement with the European Economic community. It the spirit of FCMA, the Finns travelled to Moscow to iron out the conditions in the EEC pact.
     When the meeting was to begin, Finland's main negotiator was lying, passed out on the floor. Attempts were made to get him to wake up. As if in a slow-motion film, he began to put on his underpants. Before that, he needed a hefty shot of vodka.
     Watching the process was a young civil servant, Kari Holopainen, who later became the head of the section of trade with the Soviet Union at the Bank of Finland.
     For Holopainen, now 67, the whole process of trade with the Soviet Union was such a traumatic experience that when he retired, he wrote a book which he published at his own expense, on all that he had gone through. Today's text message scandals pale in comparison with the book's stories about the female assistants of Finnish civil servants.
     "One high-ranking civil servant and large-scale consumer of vodka once said that Moscow is a place where you can't be sober. There was a grain of truth to that. We were under considerable pressure", Holopainen recalls.
     In Moscow he was responsible for the so-called clearing account of the Bank of Finland, which constituted a kind of trade agreement between Finland and the Soviet Union. Under the terms of the agreement, imports and exports had to balance out.
     Similar arrangements were unimaginable in trade with developed countries, such as Britain and Germany.
     At first, the system was beneficial for Finland as well, but in the final stages, it mainly served the interests of the Soviet Union, because the country had run out of cash. Finland was casually hit up for clearing account credit.
     
Alongside the machinations of the accounts, many promoted their own interests both in the Soviet Union and Finland. Trade also had mysterious linkages with politics.
     "The businessmen involved in trade with the Soviet Union came out in favour of Ahti Karjalainen as President in 1981. The central idea there was that Karjalainen would arrange deals for the businessmen. This was nonsense. Nobody could plan on what happens to the price of oil, and 90 per cent of the value of imports from the Soviet Union was tied to oil", Holopainen said.
     When the price of oil declined in the late 1980s, everything was in turmoil. The Soviet union incurred debt, and great problems emerged in finding something to import.
     Finally, in April 1986, Foreign Trade Minister Jermu Laine (SDP) proposed that Finland buy a nuclear reactor from the Soviet Union. The idea came to nothing, when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred four days after the proposal was made.
     Finland would try to import anything that moved at least somehow. In those years Holopainen also drove a Lada.
     Holopainen feels that the most sinister aspect of trade with the Soviet Union was that the Soviet partner was constantly taking money out Finnish pockets.
     "And there was never the political strength in Finland to say that this will not do. The Cossacks will take whatever you don't hold on to."
     
In the 1980s Finland's neighbour suffered from a tremendous shortage of goods, but it lacked the goods to pay for it. Consequently, the goods exchange protocols were made in a spirit of wild optimism.
     
Not all trade was bilateral. Convertible currencies were transported through third countries, and Soviet oil trading, and Soviet credits also played an important role. Soviet trading oil came from countries including Libya, which used the money to pay for arms purchases from the Soviet Union. Bilateral trade ultimately took place in a manner that skirted the edges of legality.
     Holopainen has a name for the special arrangements - the cocker spaniel phenomenon, recalling the behaviour of his dog Tim. In its ravenous need for money and goods, the Soviet Union would gobble up all of the food in its cup, looking surprised and expecting more when it was finished.
     The final disaster in Soviet trade began to emerge in the 1980s, when the clearing account was completely out of balance.
     "Our leaders did not want to believe this. They did not believe that the Soviet Union was in disarray."
     The spirit of the FCMA treaty also dictated the terms of trade with the Soviet Union, which Finland followed all the way to the bitter end.
     Finland had to pay a high price for this friendship. The collapse of trade with the Soviet Union significantly deepened the Finnish recession of the early 1990s.
     But even Holopainen admits that it was "better to engage in trade than in war".
     
Finnish hockey fans who were alive in the golden age of the FCMA treaty, in the 1970s, probably have still not recovered from the annual World Championships, where the Mikhailov-Petrov-Kharlamov chain kept circling the Finnish goal, as Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretyak stood idle at the other end of the ice.
     Although the battle was intense, there were extensive friendship and cooperation activities in sports as well.
     In the 1970s the Finnish Workers' Sports Federation TUL would send athletes every year to training camps in Sochi, Yalta, and Moscow.
     "The athletes and the coaches were treated like state guests. Once across the border, everything was available - food, drink, and a bundle of roubles. Everything was based on annual official agreements", says Martti Kempas, former head coach of TUL at the association's head offices in Itäkeskus in the east of Helsinki. In his cabinets, trophies and other memorabilia from the FCMA years gather dust.
     At that time, there were more than 100 people employed by the TUL. Now there are only about 20. But Kempas is still working for the association.
     He learned coaching in the east, and ultimately got a doctorate in Leipzig in East Germany.
     He attended meetings on athletic medicine in the Soviet Union, but he says that he was kept outside the secrets of sports doping. However, even he noticed that just about anything was available in the pharmacies.
     "There were also Finns who went to the pharmacies."
     
The Soviets were interested on completely different things when they visited Finland.
     "The guests often had huge amounts of alcohol with them when they came through the customs. We would go to pay off the fines. That happened quote often. Sometimes the hotels would be trashed during tournament visits. There was plenty of drinking going on. All of the toasts were bottoms-up, and there were very many of them."
     
This year, as the FCMA treaty turns 60, Martti Kempas is in Portugal in the Algarve, coaching his son Antti Kempas, who is preparing for the 50 kilometre walking race at the Beijing Olympics.
     In the days of the FCMA treaty, the final preparations would have taken place in Sochi with full board, but the Kempas family are in Portugal with their own money, and that of their sponsors.
     
All good things come to an end - including the FCMA.
     In the autumn of 1989 revolutions rolled over Eastern Europe, and the clay feet of the Soviet Union began to crumble. A year later the Finnish leadership saw its opportunity, and on September 21st, 1990 the Finnish government announced that the stipulations of the Paris Peace Treaty that had restricted what Finland could do had lost their meaning. In the same connection President Koivisto gave a new interpretation to the FCMA Treaty as well.
     Unilateral disengagement worked. The agreement which had Finnish regulated foreign policy, and domestic policy, finally ceased to exist when the Soviet Union split up the following autumn.
     What was Finland liberated from?
     From a treaty that obligated Presidents Paasikivi, Kekkonen, and Koivisto to negotiate with the Soviet leadership over significant issues affecting Finland, and about the smallest of movements toward the West.
     From exceptional circumstances that spanned the time from the end of the war all the way to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
     From a friendship, which would not, even with the best of imagination, be seen as a relationship between two equally powerful sides.
     And from the endless glasses of vodka that were raised to toast the FCMA.
     After all of that it is no wonder that today's politicians, pickled from the constant FCMA celebrations, are in no mood to raise a glass for the 60-year-old.
     But which of them would dare take the initiative and propose a second Independence Day for Finland. It would not be celebrated on the 19th of September, the day of the interim peace treaty as Uusitalo proposed.
      More appropriate date to mark Finnish independence would be September 21st, when Finland was released from the Treaty of Friendship Cooperation and Mutual Assistance.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.4.2008


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Aamulehti: Historians call for thorough examination of Finlandisation era (8.10.2007)
  Mantra against Finlandisation (26.10.2006)
  President Kekkonen insisted on sending back Soviet defectors (15.9.2005)
  Max Jakobson recalls heroes and villains of Finlandisation (25.9.2003)

JAAKKO HAUTAMÄKI / Helsingin Sanomat
jaakko.hautamaki@hs.fi