Security Police evaluated Finns’ intelligence and sex habits

Papers of first year of SUPO made public on Friday

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By Tuomo Pietiläinen
     
      “Not seen as much of a genius, and therefore not considered capable of espionage.”
      This is the brusque assessment of investigator E. Holtinkoski on manual labourer Eino Soutukorva, who was suspected by an informer - or snitch - of the Finnish Security Police (SUPO) of espionage in the north of Finland in 1949-1950.
      The report, drawn up in Kemi, is one of hundreds that were made public on Friday, when the papers of the first year of SUPO’s operations, 1949, were made public at the Finnish National Archive.
      The papers reveal that it was easy to find oneself in the archives of the fledgling Security Police. Unexplained cash reserves were enough for a suspicion of espionage, in addition to extensive travel, opulent lifestyles, or simply being a radio amateur.
      Soutukorva was spared further investigations by his perceived level of intelligence, but many other suspicious individuals, considered to be intellectually astute, underwent interrogations on the basis of tidbits given by informants.
     
In addition to intelligence, SUPO monitored Finns’ sex habits. Especially incriminating was if a suspect was a homosexual - as one journalist suspected of espionage was, according to a SUPO analysis.
      “There had been rumours circulating in the community for a longer time that Nuotio was a person who was sexually ill [a homosexual] and that he liked to spend time with young boys for that reason, and that he paid boys for small services”, wrote SUPO detective Eetu Jarhola in his report, in which a full page was devoted to evaluating the sexual habits of a suspect.
     
Other reasons for suspicion of espionage were if a person had attended the Red Officers’ School in the Soviet Union, or if he had been held as a Prisoner of War there. Usually everything linked with communism or the Soviet Union was cause for suspicion.
      Already in the 1950s SUPO began to monitor the activities of companies owned by the Soviet Union, such as the oil company Teboil, the car importer Konela, and the Soviet film distributor Kosmos Film, as well as companies owned or controlled by the Finnish Communist Party.
      SUPO suspected that Soviet-owned companies were used as covers for espionage, and that Finnish Communist Party-owned companies were used as covers for transferring money from the Soviet Union into the coffers of the Finnish communists.
     
Among religious groups, SUPO kept tabs on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as the Lutheran Church, and especially the Orthodox Church.
      Even opinion pieces in the press were followed.
      Columns by Yrjö “Jahvetti” Kilpeläinen in the Social Democratic Party newspaper Suomen Sosialidemokraatti found their way into the SUPO files.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.1.2009

More on this subject:
 Petronella left behind mug shots and fingerprints

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Security Police open older archives (2.1.2008)

TUOMO PIETILÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
tuomo.pietilainen@hs.fi