Smoke gets in your eyes

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By Ilkka Malmberg
     
      What a nice straightforward life we lead these days: the TV news tells us that the forests are ablaze in Western Russia, that the smoke is wafting over into Finland, and that people in Lappeenranta are coughing.
      Now would we have been told this, say, 20 years ago?
      Ye-ess, more than likely, in August 1986 that is, but with some degree of circumspection. In April 1986 we had just had Chernobyl, you see, and the rumour-mill would have been working overtime: just exactly what is it that is burning there in the Soviet Union?
      And the information would have come from the other side of the border very slowly and in dribs and drabs.
     
But what about thirty years ago? Our Finnish media outlets would then have tried to ignore the entire pall of smoke drifting our way. They simply did not have forest fires in the Soviet Union.
      When eyes had started to sting and asthma-sufferers were displaying symptoms, there would have been talk of Finnish brush fires and of how terribly careless the Finns are in dropping matches and cigarettes, and so on.
     
If some newspapers had written about the smoke from the east, others would have produced tut-tutting editorials with headlines like No need to poke the fire or Playing with smoke, or Saunas burn down here, too, don't you know.
      And as a last resort, if all else failed, a correspondent from the Finnish Broadcasting Company would have done a stand-up in Red Square to tell us that in the Soviet Union they take the view that forest fires are a perfectly natural event, even something quite desirable for the land.
      Thirty years ago the "coughing" in Lappeenranta would have been political.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.8.2006


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Smoke from Russian forest fires reaches west of Finland (14.8.2006)

ILKKA MALMBERG / Helsingin Sanomat
ilkka.malmberg@hs.fi