COMMENTARY: Once more with feeling - Finland needs another economic saviour

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By Annukka Oksanen
     
      The heavy war reparations and the trade with the Soviet Union in the post-war years brought Finland - screaming silently - from being an impoverished largely agrarian society into a successful industrial country.
      Hundreds of thousands flocked from the countryside to the factory towns of Finland or headed for the industrial plants of Sweden in search of a better life.
     
The change when it came was a violent one, as they always seem to be hereabouts.
      When push comes to shove, Finland always seems to experience a bigger bang.
      The traumas of the 1960s and 1970s - of migration to the 'burbs and to Sweden - took a long while to heal, but by the latter half of the 1980s, the country was firing on all eight cylinders and the pace was heady.
      Yes, we had a casino economy of sorts, but above all the the forest, metals, and engineering industries were in their pomp and the country was booming.
      Admittedly the old textiles industry had fled to places like Portugal, and one or two other centres of production had also gone abroad, but the bilateral trade with the Soviet Union guranteed rich and stable export income.
     
Then, all of a sudden, the Iron Curtain parted, the Soviet Union disintegrated before our very eyes, and devaluations of the markka thrust a country that had amassed considerable foreign currency debts onto its knees.
      The change was a violent one, once again.
      The deepest recession experienced by any of the industrial nations tossed people hither and thither without mercy.
      The future looked pitch-black.
      What on earth were we to do after the cushion of the Soviet trade was gone?
     
Nokia came along, with its dizzying rise.
      Finland once again had a powerful locomotive driving the economy. It is hard off-hand to think of any Western country where one company could be said to have changed the society quite so much.
      Nokia's success generated unprecedented tax revenues for the state coffers and material well-being for the people. And at the same time the company's surge brought a new self-confidence and belief in the future.
      The Nokia phenomenon was on a par with the war reparations, in that it shoved Finland bodily into a new phase: that of being a high-tech powerhouse - the "northern skunkworks" described admiringly by Wired magazine.
     
For the first time, the modern Finnish economy now lacks a credible locomotive.
      Nokia is still big in Finland, but right now it looks as if it does not have the wherewithal to become an economic champion and saviour a second time around.
      Equally, there is no rescue in sight from the forest industry, which has closed down mills in Finland with numbing regularity, and the engineering industry is not a candidate, either, although it is doing well enough for now.
     
Sovereign debt crises are hurting the eurozone, food prices are heading upwards at an alarming rate, and the centre of gravity of the global economy is steamrollering at a hectic pace towards Asia.
      We do not know as yet whether the crunch when it comes will be of the familiar violent variety, or whether we will get by this time with a gentler bump.
      What we do know is that we are fumbling around in a time of change.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.6.2011
     
     
     


See also:
  COMMENTARY: Musty smells coming from the once-vaunted northern skunk works (22.2.2011)

ANNUKKA OKSANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
annukka.oksanen@hs.fi