I was reading a German article on Finland as a migration destination the other day. I don’t want to be mean but some articles are better left unwritten. I wouldn’t recommend it because it was rather weak and contained some things that are factually incorrect. As it is unfortunately common, the article included the obligatory history sketch. Now I wouldn’t bother writing a post about a weak article if it wasn’t for the fact that it included the umpteenth reference to Finlandization and misrepresenting what it means. The author presented it as meaning neutrality in the post-war period, implying that Finlandization was just a nasty term by people who didn’t like Finland’s politics of neutrality. But that is not what it means. If Finlandization was merely neutrality, it would be called neutrality.
Interestingly, I have seen misrepresentations or misunderstandings of Finlandization especially in German media and online debates. It isn’t only the clustering within the German linguistic sphere that makes the term interesting, it is also its origin: Finlandization was coined by German political scientists and popularized by the Bavarian political firebrand and former German defence minister Franz Josef Strauß. The emergence of the term in Germany might explain why it resurfaced in Germany in the context of the crises that unfolded in and around Ukraine after 2013. But more on that later.
So what is Finlandization (suomettuminen)? It is related to political and military non-alignment which is probably why people tend to conflate the two terms. But there is a difference and it is so stark that you cannot use the terms interchangeably. Finlandization is a descriptive term for a particular set of political circumstances. It means that a country, like the eponymous Finland during the Cold War period, is de jure independent and neutral but is still subjected to interference by a great power in its domestic and international affairs. It is, therefore, de facto not (entirely) independent. Most Finns loathe the Finlandization period because the price they had to pay to stay nominally independent was high and the experience humiliating. Finlandization is a term with a negative connotation and not to be confused or equated with jolly neutrality.
Finland escaped World War II with its independence intact but the first post-war years were a tumultuous period of uncertainty during which many people feared that independence might slip away again. Those years, from 1944 to 1948 or 1949 are sometimes referred to as vaaran vuodet, the years of danger. Nominal independence had a price tag. Besides war reparations, loss of territory and being forced to prosecute its own politicians for war crimes in a war Finns did not want, Finland had to pay a political price, too. During the entire period of the Cold War, Finland lived within the maelstrom of Soviet power and all Soviet leaders made ample use of it and interfered permanently in Finnish political, cultural and economic affairs (Boris Yeltsin apologized for this during a state visit in 1992). Today’s consensus is that Finland was not really independent. It was a time in which domestic and foreign policy could not be separated because what Moscow thought, or possibly thought, had to be always factored in. History books were censored and communists, in their typical fashion, kept tabs on people in universities and elsewhere and people had to watch their tongue. There was a constant struggle over control of the unions between the social democrats and the communists. Politicians that were disliked in Moscow were barred from certain political offices or dismissed shortly after the Soviets expressed mild discontent with their appointment. Governments fell when the Soviets didn’t like it and Finland’s eternal president Urho Kekkonen (1956-82) also stayed in power for so long because he became their favourite. Ironically, Kekkonen was not a communist and Finland’s communists were not exactly held in high regard in Moscow.
The politics of the Kekkonen era are one of those strange political periods that are fascinating to unpick in hindsight now that we know its beginning and its end. While Kekkonen pursued Finlandization as a policy, he didn’t create it - that, circumstances did - but he could only remain in power for so long because Finland was precisely in this particular situation. He was thus as much an enabler of Finlandization as a product of it. His biggest asset was his rapport with consecutive Soviet leaders which allowed him to manipulate the Finnish political scene into the bizarre situation where virtually all relevant parties wanted him to remain in power, as did the Soviets, who were arguably as much manipulated by him as he was by them.
That Finlandization was without any viable alternative is an oft-repeated claim but there is of course no way we can truly know. What we know is that Finlandization was inseparably intertwined with Kekkonen’s own political career and ambitions and that he had an interest in being seen as the only person who can navigate the murky political waters of Soviet proximity.
Kekkonen’s time in office was not only a time of subjugation to Soviet power but also a period of semi-authoritarianism and self-censorship that undermined Finland’s democratic character and left a stain on its political history. He made politicians and entire governments resign not only because of what the Soviets might have been thinking but also to undermine political alliances that could have, if left unchecked, solidified into a bloc with the power to oust and replace him. He publicly harangued journalists and send them countless letters in protest because their writings “could damage relations with the Soviet Union”, a statement that can be understood as the Finnish version of Maggie Thatcher’s “There is no alternative”. In Kekkonen’s 25 years as president Finland saw 21 governments and 12 prime ministers while his successor Mauno Koivisto presided only over four governments and three prime ministers in 12 years.
His power had grown to such heights that Finland’s only big constitutional reform in a century of independence weakened the presidential office and imposed a two terms limit, making Tarja Halonen (2000-2012) the first Finnish president with drastically curtailed powers. Today, the president is much weaker, leads only foreign policy and is otherwise reduced to a ceremonial role. The current president’s biggest asset is his ugly and internet-famous dog Lennu about which some dude even wrote a book. Talking about soft power.
This peculiar situation was not, however, a one way street in favour of the Soviets as some people have come to see it in hindsight and it was not without precedent, either. Finlandization’s precursor are the policies pursued while Finland belonged to the Russian Empire (1809-1917). Already back then Finland fared exceptionally well when compared with other imperial subjects and the formal and informal ways Finns used in their dealings with the tsar, who was also Finland’s grand duke, to make the most of the situation were not unlike what Kekkonen and other politicians later pursued during the years of Finlandization. Finland profited from the situation and unlike the Baltics and other countries firmly in the Soviet orbit, the country saw steady progress towards affluence like the rest of Western Europe. Kekkonen’s own motives and ample criticism notwithstanding, he was not a Soviet puppet. Few people doubt that his policies were in the interest of the country and his foreign policy (if we can even make such a distinction) was not unpopular at the time.
Finlandization and Ukraine
Come Ukraine in 2013ff and Finlandization resurfaced in Germany in some circles. I saw Finlandization repeatedly used and conflated with neutrality in online forums and social media at the height of the crises. A few times it was also used by journalists. The point was to suggest Finlandization as a viable model for Ukraine to make it a neutral bridgehead between the West and Russia.
The irony of this idea is that Ukraine before the crisis was already in a situation that was not unlike Finlandization. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine has been going back and forth between heading West and staying East. Not maybe strictly neutral but still neither fully in the orbit of Russia nor clearly on the road to join up with the West. All this time Russia meddled in Ukrainian domestic affairs, least not through energy politics, and did its best to keep it under control. Before the country was torn apart along linguistic and religious lines, one part now clearly heading West, the other staying East, Ukraine was in a situation worse than Finlandization. The point is: there is no point to apply Finlandization to Ukraine. It already had its own messy circumstances to warrant its own label.
Finlandization light
Whether you consider Finlandization good or bad (many Finns think it was bad), it is not mere neutrality. If it wasn’t for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the following decade of a weak, inward-looking Russian Federation, Finland would most likely not be in the European Union, a place where most Finns want to be because they consider Finland firmly embedded in the West and Europe. An important characteristic of Finlandization was precisely that Finland could not choose its alignments and memberships freely, including the economic ones.
Some people argue that a light form of Finlandization is continuing still today, although Finland is less conspicuously obedient than during the Cold War period. Finland remains outside of NATO and a majority of Finns still object to membership, Tarja Halonen was sometimes accused of getting along too well with the Russian leadership and it took quite some effort to make Finland sign up to the sanctions against Russia in the wake of the annexation of Crimea. Despite the sanctions, Finland remains on good footing with the big neighbour and that is not exactly popular in the Baltic countries, especially in Finland’s close cousin Estonia.
One way to look at the current situation is that now that Finland is not under such a powerful influence (read: is not bullied and coerced), Finnish politicians can pursue policies of being the go-between at their own volition (see e.g. the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki). Finlandization didn’t allow Finland to be a bridgehead, not being finlandicized does.
Whether or not Finlandization continues, Finland was a special case during the Cold War period which is why people came up with a term named after it. It does not mean neutrality and people should really stop conflating them. A surefire way would be drop the obligatory history sketch from articles that don’t need it.
Some reading material:
Kirby, David: A concise History of Finland (2006)
Meinander, Henrik: A brief History of Finland (2020)
Osmo et al: From Grand Duchy to a Modern State (1999)
Oksanen, Sofi: A Soviet shadow looms over the Putin-Trump summit in Helsinki