Soviet Union got kid glove treatment in Finnish textbooks during Cold War
Janne Holmén's dissertation sees subtle change in approach after Soviet collapse
Janne Holmén
|
|
|
Finnish school textbooks handled the Soviet Union in a very cautious manner in Finland in the 1970s.
At the same time the United States was openly criticised over its policy in Vietnam, for instance.
The approach changed in the 1980s, when both great powers were portrayed with equal neutrality. As it was not considered prudent to write in a very critical manner about the Soviet Union, criticism of the United States was also avoided.
The approach changed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The fallen superpower was examined more openly than before, and matters were taken up in school textbooks, which had been avoided in previous decades.
These are some of the conclusions drawn by researcher Janne Holmén in a doctoral dissertation at the University of Uppsala, which compares the image of the United States and the Soviet Union projected by Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian school textbooks during the Cold War.
Holmén writes that the content of Finnish schoolbooks reflected changes in the political climate. This was most clearly seen after the war when the old books, which were seen as openly anti-Soviet, were taken off the shelves.
In later years the impact was indirect. The content of books was influenced by factors such as the work of the Finnish-Soviet Society, cooperation with Soviet researchers, and scrutiny by the National Board of Education.
The change after the breakupof the Soviet Union was gradual. The content of the books changed slowly, as new editions of the books were introduced, for instance.
Holmén detects a pro-EU slant in today’s schoolbooks.
Finnish writers are clearly more upbeat about the ability of the European Union to function than the authors of books used in Swedish and Norwegian schools.
In the introduction to his nearly 400-page book, the 28-year-old Holmén says that it took him five years for him to write the dissertation. The work was slowed down somewhat by his victory in the marathon in the European Championships in Munich in 2002.
Helsingin Sanomat
|
| 8.5.2006 - TODAY |
 Soviet Union got kid glove treatment in Finnish textbooks during Cold War |
|
