Book details history of extradition of Soviet defectors and refugees

Prisoners of war and Ingrians - later escaped POWs and defectors - sent back to USSR

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By Veli-Pekka Leppänen
     
      "The Frontier Guard and (Security Police chief) Armas Alhava recommend humane helpfulness at Finland’s expense. I have given orders years ago that defectors must be turned back at the border. Why were things done differently again?"
      This was what an irritated President Urho Kekkonen scribbled in the margin of a Foreign Ministry memo concerning the matter of two men who had fled to Finland from Soviet Karelia in 1959. The men, Vilho Forsell and Pekka Tupitsin, were soon sent back. The same happened to most asylum-seekers.
      The case is one of those examined by Jussi Pekkarinen and Juha Pohjonen in their book Ei armoa Suomen selkänahasta. Ihmisluovutukset Neuvostoliittoon 1944-1981) ("No mercy at Finland’s Expense. Extraditions to the Soviet Union 1944-1981"). Pekkarinen primarily focuses on the cases of escaped prisoners of war, and others who were sent back between 1944 and 1955 under terms of peace agreements. Pohjonen concentrates on defectors who crossed the border into Finland until the end of the Kekkonen presidency in 1981.
      The work complements the process, started by Elina Sana in her book Luovutetut ("The Extradited"), in which she wrote on the handing over of foreign Jews to Germany during the Second World War. The process is aimed at examining past Finnish policies on deportations, extraditions, and refugees. There is reason to look in all directions.
     
Finland was in an awkward bind with respect to escaped Soviet prisoners of war, because the Kremlin was in a position in which it could use Finnish soldiers still being held at Soviet camps to pressure Helsinki on the issue. For this reason, the escapees were pursued enthusiastically; help was even sought from Sweden.
      The barter trade in humans died away when the Soviet Union declared an amnesty in 1955.
      The quotation from Kekkonen goes back to the period of uncertainty in relations with the Soviet Union in the late 1950s.
      The selfishness of the state was not humane, in broad terms, but it was, nevertheless, a necessary virtue; there was no intention to pander to human rights considerations "at Finland’s expense".
     
In questions surrounding defectors the decision was always political, and in the 1950s there were some symptoms of "humane helpfulness". The Forsell-Tupitsin case represented a turn toward a harder line, regardless of the ethnicity of the defectors: from 1960 to 1981 only two Soviet defectors were given residence permits in Finland, while nine got through to Sweden. One committed suicide while in Finland.
      It should come as no surprise to contemporaries that Finland was no refugee’s paradise during the Cold War. In any case, the book allows the reader to see the "daily weather" - a barometer of relations with the Kremlin - along with the trump cards constantly held by the Kremlin, which forced Finland to act as it did. There are no prizes for fair play in competitions between states.
      The extraditions remained a bilateral matter until the 1970s, when some defections started attracting attention around the world. The case of the "rubber boat man of the Gulf of Finland" in the summer of 1973 was even seen as a threat to Finnish aims at promoting détente.
     
A study without source references is problematic, and this is what happened in this case, even though the authors feel that leaving them out improves the study’s "readability" by doing so.
      Kekkonen biographer Juhani Suomi tried leaving out references in the first instalment of his series of books on Kekkonen, which was published in 1986. However, he was criticised for this, and the rest of the books in the series were annotated.
      The possibility to check on the origin of information is one of the basic rules of historical works. The tragedies linked with the expulsions are likely to bring out relatives who want to track down information and learn more.
      Here is one example of a problem: the book mentions four ex-Finnish Soviet spies who were caught in Finland during the war (miraculously, they survived), and were sent back against their will in the autumn of 1944. It was an interesting gang of four, but there are no names or footnotes; everything is left to guesswork by the reader.
     
Pekkarinen and Pohjonen set up a new vantage point in the shadows of recent history. The theme is competently set in its framework, examining both tattered human stories and the actions of many Finnish officials. Sweden’s role as a safety valve of escape also comes out.
      Nevertheless, the content of the interrogations is examined in excessive detail. The writers are afraid to strike at the core of each separate case without a biography a couple of pages long. More crystallisation of the issues would have been in order, if the purpose of the exercise was to enhance readability.
      Pekkarinen and Pohjonen will have to confront the issue of footnotes and references later. In other respects the book can be welcomed as a necessary piece of basic research probing through a sensitive area with expertise and without fanaticism.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 15.9.2005

More on this subject:
 Background: Escapes, defections, and extraditions

Previously in HS International Edition:
  President Kekkonen insisted on sending back Soviet defectors (15.9.2005)
  Elina Sana wins Tieto-Finlandia prize for book on wartime expulsions (9.1.2004)
  Wartime refugees made pawns in cruel diplomatic game (11.11.2003)

Helsingin Sanomat