If they can't speak foreign languages now, they certainly couldn't before
Finnish politicians have only needed foreign language skills since EU membership; the interpreter's job was neverending
By Unto Hämäläinen
In his time, Finland's long-serving President Urho Kaleva Kekkonen used his broad shoulders to deflect criticism against unpopular decisions with a hearty "Blame me; blame Kekkonen".
Now we are not exactly about to blame the late president, but perhaps a few critical words are in order.
Kekkonen should have studied foreign languages, in particular English and Russian, and he should have spoken them more boldly.
If Kekkonen had done that in the days of his pomp - and he enjoyed a great deal of power in his time - then other politicians would have followed suit in a flash.
Kekkonen's predecessors J.K. Paasikivi (1946-56) and Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim (1944-46) both had a head for languages.
Paasikivi spoke Russian and German fluently, even though his English was not up to much.
The cosmopolitan Mannerheim was a modest polyglot, with fluency in Russian, English, French, German, and Polish, and a decent smattering of Chinese at his disposal as well.
Kekkonen was born in 1900 and he went to school at the beginning of the 20th century.
English was not taught in those days, and Kekkonen did not want to study Russian, as he deemed it unpatriotic in the years before the Grand Duchy of Finland - then being seriously put upon by its Czarist masters - took its independence in 1917.
The young Urho Kekkonen could not have begun to imagine how necessary Russian skills would have been for him in the future.
In the autumn of 1944 Kekkonen began to deal with relations with the Soviet Union, first as Minister of Justice during the war-responsibility trials, and from 1950 as Prime Minister.
He carried on this work nearly every day for the next 37 years, until he retired from the presidency in the autumn of 1981 on health grounds.
During the years of the Finnish-Soviet Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, also known as the YYA Treaty, Kekkonen spoke millions of words in Finnish and heard millions more in Russian - and nearly every word had to be translated from Finnish to Russian and Russian to Finnish. It was a colossal interpreting contract.
As far as is known, Kekkonen did not deliver a single speech in Russian during the entire four decades.
In official discussions, Kekkonen had along his own Finnish interpreter. For decades the job was handled by Consul Kustaa Loikkanen.
The interpreters were with Kekkonen on dozens of state visits and also of course when Soviet leaders were in Finland.
But the relations between the leaders in Helsinki and Moscow had to be so tight that they could not simply be nurtured through official discussions.
It was necessary to have a hot-line that was always open.
Hence for thirty-seven years Urho Kekkonen has his own liaison-man, who served first in the so-called Allied Control Commission (the "Allied" in the name disguises the fact that there were actually 200 Soviets and 15 fairly docile British members on the Commission) and thereafter in the Soviet Embassy on Helsinki's Tehtaankatu.
The President met on almost a weekly basis with the embassy's "rezident", the KGB Chief of Station in Helsinki.
Kekkonen had the habit of writing up a brief report on his discussions in his diary.
These entries have subsequently been published in book form, from which it has been possible to read that president and rezident exchanged more than pleasantries: Kekkonen got to hear news from Moscow, and sent off his own greetings from his Tamminiemi home.
The language for these talks was always Finnish.
The KGB station chief was expected to speak good Finnish and to be able to translate the messages he carried back and forth into the respective languages in such a way that no misunderstandings would occur.
The rezident's services were also used for interpreting between Kekkonen and the Soviet leadership on such occasions as the hunting trips to the Zavidovo nature reserve (where Leonid Brezhnev had a dacha) or other unofficial discussions.
The position of KGB Chief of Station was generally taken only by an experienced man who had served in Helsinki on several previous occasions, and who was a member of the clandestine "Suomi Group" in the Kremlin.
Members of this outfit spoke Finnish, read Finnish newspapers - and knew everything it was pertinent to know about Finnish politicians.
The system was not completely watertight.
In Ratakatu 12, the recent history of Finland's Security Police (SUPO), there is a story of how the link with the Kremlin almost snapped in the mid-1970s when a gentleman named Anatoli Gluschenko was appointed as rezident.
He had previously been on assignment for the KGB in several countries, but came to Helsinki from outside the "Suomi Group".
Gluschenko had one big handicap: he didn't speak Finnish.
Kekkonen - and all the important Finnish politicians who swam in Kekkonen's wake - began to avoid Gluschenko and to seek out suitable partners from within the Soviet Embassy who did speak Finnish.
Talking English with the local "pet Russian" was not a success.
Gluschenko had other flaws as well that caused the Finns to wonder if he was made of the right stuff.
The Security Police would keep an eye on the doings of the KGB leading-lights in town, and wrote up reports on them.
A SUPO agent practically fell off his chair when he spotted Gluschenko having lunch in the restaurant of the swanky downtown Hotel Hesperia - with Mrs. Gluschenko.
"Not one previous KGB station chief has lunched out in this manner, but rather they have only eaten in restaurants in the company of Finns and on business", the agent tut-tutted in his report.
Before very long, Moscow realised that the appointment had been a mistake.
Anatoli Gluschenko was called home, and we have not heard a word about him here since then.
The errant wife-luncher was replaced by a very safe pair of hands in the shape of Lt. Col. Viktor Vladimirov.
Vladimirov spoke quite excellent Finnish, and it didn't bother the Finns so very much that his past included work at a high level with the KGB's "wet" operations, focusing on assassinations and sabotage.
Every politician of any significance in the Finland of the time had to have a partner in the Soviet Union and their own "pet Russian" keeping the wheels oiled at home.
They were also needed by industry and commerce. These were the days of massive bilateral trade deals with the eastern neighbour, and as much as 20% of Finland's exports went to the Soviet Union.
Political tourism to points east developed and flourished.
Towards the end of the 1980s, things had gone so far that practically the entire nation - fortunately only through the agency of its elected representatives - was standing on the platform in Helsinki waiting for the next train to Moscow.
Finnish delegations criss-crossed the broad expanse of the USSR, and Russian delegations were equally commonplace in the Finnish capital.
One would have thought at this point that the Finns would have been falling over themselves to sign up for Russian language courses.
But it was not the case: a Finnish politician who spoke fluent Russian was a very rare phenomenon, if one does not include the old hardline Communists who had been trained in Moscow.
One of the rare exceptions was Mauno Koivisto , the President who followed Kekkonen in 1982.
A good many years before that, when Koivisto was on his first visit to Moscow as Prime Minister in 1968, his language skills caused a certain amount of consternation.
"At our first luncheon in Moscow, he surprised both the hosts and the visiting entourage by delivering his thanks in fluent Russian, without recourse to paper. The situation that followed was quite comical, when Koivisto politely pointed out to his hosts that he would need the services of an interpreter in order that the Finns around the table would also know how pleased he had been with the refreshments and the table discussions. After he had delivered his little speech, he seemed extremely satisfied, not least with himself", recalls Koivisto's good friend and Social Democrat colleague Seppo Lindblom in his book Manun matkassa ("On the Road with Manu").
The same "non-lingual" phenomenon was repeated when the Finns fostered closer relations with other countries in the Socialist bloc.
One of the favourite destinations was Budapest, the beautiful capital of the People's Republic of Hungary, a country that Finns have often felt drawn to through the "shared identity" of the Finno-Ugric language connection (albeit that the languages' affinities with one another are not so great that the average man in the street would notice).
The experienced ambassador pairing of Kaarlo and Rea Yrjö-Koskinen represented Finland in Budapest in the late 1970s.
"During the two year that we spent in Budapest, the flow of Finnish visitors to Hungary never stopped. Something like 3,000 people a year passed through our house: politicians, choirs, cultural figures, and large delegations", reports Rea Yrjö-Koskinen in her memoirs.
Again, one would have thought that the Finns would have eagerly been learning the local language.
There is no evidence that a single Finnish cabinet minister or MP would have been able to speak Hungarian.
Two Finnish women who had been living in Hungary for some years acted as interpreters for the delegations.
The women were kept so busy that they had cars and chauffeurs on call all the time.
They interpreted for the politicians when they held discussions, and they also helped travellers out with their everyday problems.
At the highpoint - or perhaps it is better described as a nadir - there might have been three Finnish ministers visiting Budapest on independent assignments at any one time.
In the end, Kaarlo Yrjö-Koskinen got so cross with the situation that he sent off a sternly-worded letter to his masters at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Helsinki, urging them to advise the ministers to go to one of the Western capitals for a change.
The diplomat's appeal had no impact. The political tourism continued for another decade in the same vein.
At the end of the 1980s, Jaakko Iloniemi, another immensely experienced diplomat, drew up a summary of the ministers' most popular destinations.
Budapest was still ensconced at #1.
Even though the East was the most important point of the political compass for Urho Kekkonen, he did also travel to the West.
However, before his first official visit to the United States in the autumn of 1961, Kekkonen had to undertake some intensive language tuition.
A private teacher came to his residence at Tamminiemi, and the tutoring paid off.
Kekkonen managed quite well when he addressed a luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington.
"The English text of the speech had been read aloud for him on tape by his English teacher, and by listening over and over to the recording he was able to polish up his delivery. He managed to pull off the address so naturally that the listeners were astonished and rather disappointed when he did not reply in English to the questions that had been put after the speech, but instead turned to me as his interpreter", writes Max Jakobson in his book Veteen piirretty viiva ("A Line Drawn on Water").
Jakobson was one of Kekkonen's few close confidants and went on to a glittering career in the diplomatic service, including being the Finnish Ambassador to the UN from 1965-71. He undoubtedly made for a good interpreter.
Kekkonen met President John F. Kennedy in the White House, and he did not need to have Kennedy's remarks interpreted into Finnish, but he was obliged to deliver his own lines in Finnish. Jakobson again did the honours in English.
Unfortunately, Kekkonen did not continue with his English lessons. As far as he was concerned it was enough that he could read English books and periodicals.
The President could always get translation help from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, which in those days was "the President's Ministry".
Right into the 1990s, the President of the Republic, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Foreign Ministry dealt with international matters more or less exclusively.
It was no accident: that is just how things were. Other ministers and other ministries were practically forbidden to maintain direct links with the ministers and ministries of other countries.
All contact took place only "through official channels" via the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the embassies and missions abroad.
Other ministers managed their rare international meetings and trips with the aid of interpreters.
The services of the hard-pressed interpreters were quite necessary, because even into the 1980s a good many ministers had risen to cabinet office on the back of a relatively primitive elementary school education.
Even those politicians who did have a head for languages only came out with the essential stock phrases, since they seldom actually found themselves engaged in demanding political discussions.
In those days it was enough to remember the liturgies of emphasising towards the East the importance of the YYA Treaty and towards the West the significance of Finnish neutrality, and to remember to stress - regardless of compass direction - the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) and the nuclear weapons-free zone in the Nordic countries.
The Prime Minister, too, steered clear of dealings with foreign affairs during the Kekkonen era, so it was quite possible for Martti Miettunen - who spoke no foreign languages whatsoever - to lead two governments in the mid-1970s.
It was sufficent for the PM that his relations with the neighbours to the East were in order, and Miettunen's were: he was chosen while Prime Minister to be the Chairman of Suomi-Neuvostoliitto-Seura (the Finland-Soviet Union Society).
Mauno Koivisto and Kalevi Sorsa (Prime Minister in four governments totalling ten years in office between 1972 and 1987) were the first "new era" PMs who had a broad and adequate skill in foreign languages.
In addition to English, Sorsa spoke excellent French (he worked for UNESCO in Paris for six years before going into politics), and Koivisto had his Russian.
Ahti Pekkala managed without a shred of foreign language ability for five years as Minister of Finance as recently as the early 1980s.
Fortunately Pekkala moved north to become the Governor of Oulu Province at just the right moment in 1986, as immediately after his departure the Finnish economy began to be opened up to Western financial markets, and that required some language smarts from the minister responsible.
The next two Finance Ministers, Esko Ollila and Erkki Liikanen, had both been exchange students in the United States and they consequently spoke good English.
Liikanen noticed - and he was probably among the first to do so - the significance of French, and he started to learn a new language while he was still at the Ministry of Finance.
French was a huge benefit to him as the Finnish Ambassador to the European Union when Finland launched EU accession negotiations in the early 1990s.
The talks over Finnish membership in the EU were suddenly looming large in the room and demanding an altogether different type of language ability from what had hitherto sufficed.
Quite simply, one could not get by with the old phrases strung together.
Yes, in Brussels it was possible to call up an interpreter in official negotiations, but that was just the point: the most important things were getting resolved in the ministers' unofficial meetings or over the phone.
In the evenings and over the weekend you had to be able to wade through hundreds of pages of agreements written in a language other than Finnish.
Had there been people around with a relaxed and natural skill in English or other languages, they could have been put to good use and could have kept things moving along nicely.
Unfortunately they were in very short supply indeed.
The Finnish civil servants were coming close to hitting the panic-button when the inevitably awkward agriculture negotiations got going in 1993.
During the negotiations, Finland's corner was being argued by two Ministers of Agriculture - Martti Pura and Mikko Pesälä - who spoke nothing but Finnish.
Disaster was averted in large measure by the fact that at the same time, between March 1993 and February 1995, Finland's Foreign Minister was Heikki Haavisto.
Haavisto spoke English well, and what is more he was the former Chairman of the Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners (MTK), so he knew agriculture matters like the back of his hand.
Mikko Pesälä, to his credit, was so chastened by his experiences as a minister in the multilingual battle-zone that he thereafter studied English intensively, and he ended his long career as a Member of the European Parliament.
Other Finnish politicians, too, found themselves being forcibly immersed in a cold bath of foreign languages in the 1990s.
Parliament sent those who wanted to learn off on language courses abroad, and ministers had private language tutors hired for them.
Before the Finnish EU Presidency stints in 1999 and 2006, all ministers were ordered into intensive language learning.
Even so, many politicians who might have held a portfolio refused the offer on the grounds that their foreign language skills were weak or non-existent.
One such was Timo Kalli, the leader of the Centre Party's Parliamentary wing.
The Agriculture Ministry job that Kalli turned down went to Sirkka-Liisa Anttila, who only started learning English in her forties, after she became an MP.
All the jolly friendship jaunts to the East stopped abruptly at the beginning of the 1990s, when the Soviet Union imploded and the socialist system collapsed in the other Eastern European countries.
Thereafter the call for interpreters fell away dramatically, since nearly all of the new leaders of the former Warsaw Pact countries spoke English.
All the same, some things in the language-traditions department have not changed since Kekkonen's day.
Whenever Finnish and Russian leaders sit down around an official negotiating table, the interpreters are still present at their shoulders.
It was only last winter that the practice changed, and even then it was "only" in a meeting of foreign ministers.
For the first time ever in relations between Finland and Russia (and the Soviet Union), Alexander Stubb and his opposite number Sergei Lavrov sat down to official talks and spoke only in English.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print in the October isue of the Kuukausiliite monthly supplement
UNTO HÄMÄLÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
unto.hamalainen@hs.fi
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| 6.10.2009 - THIS WEEK |
 If they can't speak foreign languages now, they certainly couldn't before |
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