BOOK REVIEW: History is more than just facts
In his new book, Henrik Meinander examines emotional background of wartime events
By Jukka Tarkka
History Professor Henrik Meinander is looking in a new direction.
In his book, Suomi 1944. Sota, yhteiskunta, tunnemaisema (“Finland 1944. War, Society, Emotional Landscape”), he looks for the big visions from high up and deep down. He investigates how Finland’s most recent wars should be viewed in a situation in which the contemporary generation of grandparents will soon have no emotional connections with, or memories of the Winter War and the Continuation War.
Management of the past can become easier when the experiences at the individual level no longer affect the assessment of history. However, it can also become more difficult.
As the psychological distance grows, it is easily forgotten that politicians and soldiers who have operated in history knew much less about the situation that was going on around them than we do now.
How does the lack of information, the guesswork, beliefs, and emotions affect our decisions? Can the image that comes from the past be correct, if it is based exclusively on facts, if there is no sense of the prevailing atmosphere and psychological moves within the community?
This is a research task that has been made extremely difficult, but Meinander knows what he is doing, and his translator [Meinander wrote the book in his native Swedish] Paula Autio manages to keep up to speed.
The text has the elegance of an essayist, like Max Jakobson and the precision of a researcher such as Tuomo Polvinen, making it a rare treat.
When the sector that is to be observed encompasses a full 360 degrees, it is not possible to cover all of the years of the war. Meinander restricts his analysis to 1944, which is a representative sample of what Finland experienced in the Second World War.
The bombings broke the relative calm of the trench warfare phase. Finland came to the brink of destruction as a nation; there were difficult peace talks, the balance of power between the military and political leadership was a topic of struggle, two dictators were misled, and finally, the interim peace treaty was put into effect, the final remnants of which continued to affect Finland into the early 1990s.
All of this fits into the year 1944.
Finns have grown accustomed to talking about the Winter War and the Continuation War as separate events, which nevertheless belong together.
Meinander points out that they were small side plots in the Second World War, which affected them much more than they affected each other.
The great power leaders did not think how their actions would affect Finland. In the rare instances that they did something specifically for Finland, the purpose was mainly to affect something other than Finland itself.
The scale used by Meinander turns many provincial notions on their heads. Stalin was not merely an executioner of small states. Most of decisions affecting Finland were actually sensible statesmanship work, even though they they twice brought Finland to the brink of total disaster.
Meinander’s academic chair is a Swedish-language professorship, but he keeps his observations that are linked with language very much at ground level, and keeps it very interesting.
When government figures met with Mannerheim to discuss issues affecting Finland’s fate, the men probably spoke in Swedish.
The professor uses convincing arguments to challenge the widely-held notion that a majority of Finland’s Swedish-speakers would have supported the "Peace Opposition". The Swedish-speakers had approximately the same attitudes as the majority of Finland’s Finnish-speakers.
The 61st infantry division had a key role at a crucial moment in the major battle of Tali-Ihantala, when the Finnish defence began to have some success. The regiment spoke Swedish.
The book contains a marvellous assessment of the effect that culture and entertainment had on the overall atmosphere in society during the war. At the same time he makes powerful statements on the classical disagreements in wartime history.
Seeking cooperation with Germany was a consistent result of what was known and believed in the summer of 1940. Things could also have been done differently, but there were no guarantees that it would have led to a better outcome than what occurred, and the outcome could also have actually been worse.
The defensive victory of the summer of 1944 did not immediately feel like a turning point. The men at the front, the ministers in Helsinki and the generals in Mikkeli could not have known in the first weeks of July that the worst was over.
Now we know. In the peace and quiet of archives we can calculate that in August 1944 Finland was better armed than ever before. Perhaps the commitment made by President Ryti to Hitler was unnecessary. At that time nobody could have known how the chaotic final phase of the Great War would affect Finland.
The joke cracked by soldiers in the novel The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna, that Finland made a good second place finish, contains a big truth. The truth is that Finland reached the goal in 1944. Other countries which fought alongside Hitler and which fell into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union managed to do that only in the early 1990s.
The Soviet Union finished first in that year, but after about half a century it disappeared from the map. It won militarily, but lost historically.
Finland almost lost in the war, but won historically.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.10.2009
The writer of the article is a political scientist, researcher, and columnist.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 6.10.2009 - THIS WEEK |
 BOOK REVIEW: History is more than just facts |
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