Coming Home or Moving Home? - CiteSeerX

Coming Home or Moving Home?

‘Westernizing’ Narratives in Finnish ForeignPolicy and the Reinterpretation of

Past Identities

CHRISTOPHER S. BROWNING

ABSTRACTWith the end of the Cold War, historical revisionism became popular inFinland. Central to such revisionism has been the notion that Finlandhas come home to assume its rightful and natural place in the WesternEuropean family. Such narratives are politicized, serving as a way tojustify an increasingly Western-oriented foreign policy. In the firstinstance, the article analyses the foundations of such Westernizing nar-ratives in order to expose their politicized nature. Secondly, it is shownthat as a consequence of a particular reading of the Cold War periodthrough a return to the Finlandization debates of the late 1960s–1980s,‘West’ and ‘Europe’ are understood in contemporary debate largely interms of an opposition with Cold War Finnish foreign policy and ColdWar characterizations of Soviet/Russian identity. Finally, the articlefocuses more explicitly on the emplotment of Russia within Finnish dis-course. In constructing Westernness and Europeanness in terms of anopposition to a rather ambiguous emplotment of Russia as a potentialthreat, it is shown that engaging with the ‘feared’ neighbour has in factbecome an opportunity for the Finns to construct positive images ofthemselves as a participant in the Western civilizing mission in Russia.

Keywords: Finland; Finlandization; identity; foreign policy; historicalrevisionism

Introduction

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union the attractions of historicalrevisionism of the Cold War period have become increasingly popular inFinland, with lively historical debate accompanying the sense of liberationbrought about as a result. Of particular emotive appeal has been the notionthat after the historical parenthesis of the Cold War Finland has finallycome home to the West, the most concrete and symbolic manifestation ofwhich has been Finland’s membership in the EU.The expressed view is that

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culturally and politically Finland belongs and has always belonged in theWest and is now returning to these natural, organic origins. For example, theForeword to a recent volume edited by Tuomas Lehtonen is unequivocal onthis point, noting that ‘the country has taken its natural place as part ofWestern Europe to which it is bound by centuries of history’ (1999: 5;emphasis added). This point is supported by the two time-lines included inthe book, both of which show Finnish history to have begun in 1150 with the‘Europeanizing’ crusades of St. Eric and Bishop Henry and to have endedin 1995 with membership of the European Union. Having ‘joined’ Europe,Finland is depicted as having reached its historical telos and as havingcompleted its national mission. Such arguments are representative of whatcan be termed a ‘Westernizing’ narrative in current debates about Finnishidentity and Finnish foreign policy.

Central to Westernizing arguments has been a return to the Finland-ization debates of the Cold War period accompanied by a series of scathingattacks, most particularly directed against the previously ‘untouchable’aura of former President, Urho Kekkonen (1956–81), and the ‘unity’ thatgripped Finnish society from the late 1960s.1 From being understood as aperiod of sagacious and inspiring Finnish statesmanship, during which theFinns managed to establish favourable relations with both the East andWest and to carve out an identity of Finland as a neutral and moral actor ininternational affairs, the period is now depicted differently. Critics fre-quently compete with each other in their desire to coin the most ‘shocking’adjectives and metaphors by which to describe the period. For example,Timo Vihavainen has gone so far as to depict Cold War Finland as a nationgrovelling on its stomach (1991). As Mikko Majander has put it, such viewsstart with the claim that Kekkonen made a Faustian deal with the Sovietsin 1943–44 ‘after which he acted in constant symbiosis with his foreignmasters’ (1999: 89). Such narratives not only reappraise the virtues of ColdWar Finnish foreign policy, but also reappraise Cold War notions of theSoviet Union as a great power predominantly concerned with its legitimatesecurity interests. From being a trustworthy friend, the Soviet Union/Russiais now understood as having been a subversive enemy and consequentlysuch critiques characterize the Cold War Finnish foreign policy of goodneighbourly relations with the neighbour to the East as having been a totalaberration and betrayal of the ‘Western’ Finnish self.

Such (re)presentations of Finnish history are highly political. This isbecause the stories we tell of a society’s past not only condition what wethink of ourselves now, but also point to directions for future development,by shaping what relations and actions with others are acceptable to us.As the historian Simon Schama has put it, history is ‘a story we carry withus’ (quoted in The Observer, 31 January 1999: 19). In shaping our identity,our interpretations of history are therefore explicitly politically loaded. Inthis respect, revisionist Westernizing critiques of Finlandization and theKekkonen era are attempting to ‘liberate’ the Finns from the perceived dis-tasteful ‘legacy of the past’ by exposing the past for ‘what it really was’(Järä, 1999: 6). Through their denunciations of the past, of the politics ofCold War Finland and the society which evolved around it, such critiques

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de-legitimize the continuation of past policies and are therefore an attemptto break out of post-war Finnish identities in favour of a reconstructed‘Western’ identity for the nation.

This paper is concerned with exposing the politicized nature of suchessentializing narratives which posit the existence of an organic, natural andeffervescent Western identity of Finland. Finns have had prior nationalidentities distinct from the purely Western identification which have feltequally as real and natural but which have relied on different stories of theself for their justification. Finnish Cold War identities of neutrality and ofFinland as a bridge between East and West were just as real and efficaciousas post-Cold War ‘Western’ ones feel today. Thus, rather than coming hometo the West, Finland is actually undergoing an identity transformation — itis in fact moving home.

The article is divided into three parts. Firstly, as it is the Cold War periodthat has been the main focus of Westernizing revisionist accounts, a briefanalysis of this period illustrates that a Finnish identity of a neutral statebetween East and West did achieve widespread resonance amongst thepopulation. The fact that this between-East-and-West identity in turn waspremised on its own revisionist account of inter-war history signals theextent to which identities are not ‘out there’ to be found, but are con-structed in our discursive attempts to create an historical framework withinwhich our present experiences will become intelligible to us.The paper thenanalyses more explicitly how Westernizing revisionist accounts operatein their attempt to construct a ‘Western’ identity for Finland and to pushFinnish foreign policy further down the Westernizing road. In particular, thearticle focuses on how the language utilized and the stories told attempt toconstruct for the audience the reality of the situation and make what isin fact not natural seem natural, what is in fact moving home feel likecoming home. Central to such stories is not only a castigation of the priorFinlandized self, but also a negative reappraisal of Soviet identity which isin turn inscribed onto present-day Russia and Russians. In particular, whilstWesternizing narratives privilege ‘West’ as a positive identification, it willbe shown that West only gains substance in opposition to the negative (ifambiguous) emplotment of Russia in Westernizing discourses.The final sec-tion examines more explicitly just what the Westernizing road entails forFinnish foreign policy and the construction of national identity. In short,in constructing post-Cold War Finnish identity in opposition to the priorFinlandized self and a negative emplotment of Soviet/Russian identity, inessential respects it is the ‘fear’ of Russia as representing instability and dis-order that has become the defining object and reference point of Finnishidentity and foreign policy.

Methodologically, the paper sits in the realm of constructivist approachesand is informed by a narrative theory of identity and action that contendsthat action only becomes meaningful in the process of narrating a constitu-tive story of the self (e.g. Carr, 1986; Ringmar, 1996; Schrag, 1997). Import-antly, utilizing a narrative theory of identity and action focuses on thetemporal nature of subjectivity and points to the fact that identities arenever pre-given, as they are generally presented in more traditional realist

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and liberalist approaches to International Relations, but are rather emer-gent as part of an ongoing performance reaffirming subjectivity and identity(Laffey, 2000: 431).2 In turn, this position enables us to retain an importantposition for actors in constituting and ordering their social world, whilstunderstanding that such freedom is limited by the particular historical con-text and the availability of meanings present at that time. To the extent thatparticular narratives become naturalized and taken for granted, they struc-ture perceptions of the present and rationalize certain courses of action. Inthe case of Westernizing narratives of Finnish foreign policy, those mostvociferous in constructing and propagating the discourse have tended to befrom the younger generation of Finnish scholars. However, as the narrativehas become more widely accepted, and has entered the national conscious-ness more generally, it has become established across much of the politicalspectrum as one way in which the Finns have been able to emplot them-selves in the post-Cold War world. On the other hand, it is important tostress that this is not the only pertinent narrative of identity in Finnish dis-course. Not least, the Westernizing narrative often appears to sit ratheruneasily alongside a continuing official foreign policy of non-alignment.

Meet the Physician: Cold War Finnish Identities

Finnish identity has not always been portrayed as Western. At times, it hasin fact been premised on precisely not being Western or Eastern. For ex-ample, Ole Wæver has shown how, during the ideological conflict of theCold War, ‘Nordicity’ became an intrinsic element of the national identitiesof all the Nordic states. Nordic identity he notes, was ‘a model of theenlightenment, anti-militaristic society that was superior to the old Europe’(1992: 77; also, see Mouritzen, 1995: 9–21). Nordic identity was the promiseof a better future and, as such, was premised precisely on its differentiationfrom the militaristic Cold War combatants (Wæver, 1992: 79). Ideologically,Norden was not East or West, it was a third way based on humanitarianprinciples, peace, cooperation and disarmament, and on a distinctive modelof the welfare state. This is not to say the Finns did not feel a cultural affin-ity towards the West: they did.3 However, at a time when ideological defini-tions dominated cultural ones, the Finnish policy of developing a positiveand friendly relationship with the Soviet Union and of neutrality towardsconflicts between the great powers, presented the West with a disturbinganomaly in which Finnish claims to ‘Westernness’ appeared hypocritical.Simplistically, whilst hawkish ideologues in the East and West conceptual-ized the Cold War as a choice between either destruction of the other ordestruction of the self, the Finns believed ideological tensions could bemeliorated and cooperation developed. Ultimately, this notion of Finlandas ‘between East and West’ was to facilitate certain demarches in Finnishforeign policy as the Finns developed an understanding of themselvesas bridge-builders facilitating ways of reducing tensions. This was the tenorbehind Urho Kekkonen’s speech to the United Nations in 1961 in whichhe characterized Finns as ‘physicians rather than judges’ whose task it was,


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not ‘to pass judgement nor to condemn’, but rather to ‘diagnose and to tryto cure’ (1973: 94). The physician is a very positive image. It also carriesmoralistic tones reminiscent of Wæver’s point, in that as Finnish neutralitywas justified on the basis of keeping out of the conflicts between the greatpowers it can be seen to presume that the judges, those willing to condemn,sentence, and execute punishment, were the great powers. By contrast, Fin-land stood aloof, occupying the moral high ground, the benevolent physician.

Thus, rather than being ‘Western’, in an historically and ideologicallysuperior sense, the West and its institutions (particularly NATO) were seenas a destabilizing force and a threat to world and Finnish security (Forsberg,1999: 112). From the perspective of the dominant Finnish narrative of thetime, an important essence of Western identity was understood as beinganti-East, and more specifically as anti-Russian. In Finnish narratives theEast was depicted differently. Whereas in salient Western narratives theWest was depicted in opposition to the evil expansionist Eastern empireand as such stood as the upholders of humanity’s freedom and morality, inFinnish narratives the East was emploted more favourably, not as an enemybut as a potential friend. This Finnish conception of the East, the SovietUnion and Russians, and hence also of Finnish identity in the world, itselfrested on the emergence of a new dominant narrative of the Finnish selfand of Finnish history at the end of the Second World War.

In brief, the essence of this narrative, to a great extent initiated and cham-pioned by the historical revisionism of Juho Paasikivi (president 1946–56)and Urho Kekkonen (president 1956–81), was that it was Finnish nationalidentity of the inter-war period which was responsible for Finland’s warswith the Soviet Union. This inter-war identity, it was claimed, had beencharacterized by widespread russophobia in Finnish society and the depic-tion of the Soviet Union as Finland’s hereditary enemy (Singleton, 1981:275;Allison, 1985: 5, 17). Russophobia, as Luostarinen notes, was ‘the notionthat Finland and Russia cannot live in peaceful co-existence’ and resultedfrom the Finnish Civil War of 1918 between the victorious bourgeois Whitesand communist-inspired Reds (Luostarinen, 1989: 128).4 In short, the resultwas that the Finns widely saw themselves as ‘the Western World’s outpostin the East’, facing an evil and expansionist communist empire which, itwas later claimed, resulted in Finland abandoning ‘itself in a national reck-lessness which left little room for a more sober and politically practicalviewpoint’ (Pajunen, 1969: 8). For example, Kekkonen explicitly sought toundermine the accepted, and in his eyes sanitized, view of history thatexplained the Finnish–Soviet wars of 1939–44 by depicting Finland asan ‘innocent’ piece of ‘driftwood’ caught up in the hostile machinations ofgreat power politics. By contrast, Kekkonen ‘exposed’ inter-war Finnishsociety as openly oriented towards Nazi Germany.5 As such, it was arguedthat Finnish proclamations of neutrality at the end of the 1930s simply werenot believed by the Soviets and consequently Finland ‘legitimately’ becameviewed by them as a security threat. In these narratives, the impression per-vades that in the inter-war period foreign policy was hijacked by the allureof ‘national aspirations, and deep emotionalism [which] combine[d] to formnational policy’ in an anti-Soviet direction (Mazour, 1956: 200).


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The emergence of this new and increasingly dominant narrative follow-ing the end of the war essentially served to elicit a narrative closure on thepast it depicted. The narrative retold history and claimed to tell it ‘how itreally was’ with the implication that negative views of Russians had beenmisconceived. Russians were resurrected from their negative position in thecollective Finnish consciousness whilst at the same time the Finns werebeing ‘liberated’ from the chains of their inter-war past. The Soviet Union’ssecurity concerns were no longer conceived of as pig-headed expansionism,but as legitimate. Indeed, the notion that Soviet interests in Finland werepurely strategic, defensive and legitimate was inscribed into the nationalmemory through historical texts that drew an historical continuity betweenthe concerns of the Soviet leadership and those of Russia’s tsars, all the wayback to Peter the Great.6 Of particular importance in this new narrative wasPaasikivi’s appropriation of the scientific language of the Enlightenment asa description of his own policies. The appropriation of terms such as real-ism, rationalism and pragmatism as intrinsic elements of the language of thenew narrative essentially delegitimized both inter-war foreign policy andcurrent contending views as irrational and therefore as irresponsible andnon-viable. Such a description of the past entailed a prescription for actionin the future. In this instance the previously irrational and hot-headed Finnswould now become pragmatic and circumspect, less prone to nationalistemotional outbursts, but rather viewing the world through the lenses of‘cool rationalism’ (Mazour, 1956: 200) and the ‘unsentimental calculationof the national interest’ (Jakobson, 1980: 1042). Thus, through a particulardescription of the past, a different future became possible ultimately basedon the reconstitution of Soviet identity in Finnish eyes. RepositioningSoviet identity vis-à-vis the Finns in the new narrative likewise served as adeparture for Finnish identity in the Cold War conflict away from an ideo-logical preoccupation towards one based on realpolitik.

The distinctiveness of this new identity in relation to the West becameparticularly evident in the Finlandization debates of the 1960s–80s. In theWest, Finland’s ‘good neighbourly’ relations with the Soviet Union, as theSoviets liked to term it (see Goloshubov, 1978: 12–18; Medvedev, 1981:80–4), were regarded with suspicion. Coined in internal political debates inGermany, ‘Finlandization’ implied ‘subservience to the Soviet Union anda tendency to anticipate and comply with Soviet wishes even before theyare formulated’ (Singleton, 1978: 325). Finlandization implied a distinctlynegative and expansionist view of the Soviet Union and of communismand, as such, protagonists of the concept tended to view Finland as a SovietTrojan horse dressed in Western garb but under Soviet control.7 By con-trast, defenders of the tendency of Finnish decision-makers to pay heed toSoviet wishes and concerns saw such a policy as the pragmatic and rationalcourse of action given Finland’s geopolitical position and its different andless suspicious understanding of Soviet identity (e.g. Jakobson, 1980: 1040;Berndtson, 1991: 26; Maude, 1976: 23). To this extent, the contesting inter-pretations of the Finlandization hypothesis represented competing claimsto knowledge about the world in which each narrative attempted to framereality by implicitly invoking different images and identities of actors in


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the world. From the ‘ideological’ Western viewpoint, the Soviet Unionwas seen as aggressive and subversive and communist society the specter, touse Walter Lacqueur’s phrase, of an unpleasant and fearful alternative toWestern liberal democracy to be contained at all costs. By contrast, inFinland, such views of the Soviet Union, particularly in respect to Finland,were seen as misconceived and as deriving from a distinct lack of know-ledge of Finland, the Soviet Union and Finnish–Soviet history.8 It was there-fore such a view of Soviet identity, as distinct from that held in the West,which facilitated the construction of a between-East-and-West identity forthe Finns, and enabled Kekkonen to promote an international image ofFinland as a physician, a healer of rifts and a mediator in the prevailingideological conflict. Given this the current Westernizing claim that Finlandhas always been ‘Western’, that Finland is coming home, must be seen as aretrospective view of history in that today’s conceptions of identity areimplanted back on the past and taken to be self-evident in the whole ofhistory. Importantly, therefore, we need to analyse just how the narrativesof Finnish post-war history being told in revisionist Westernizing accountsserve to reconstruct collective memories of Finnish history in such a way asto make ‘moving home’ feel like ‘coming home’.

Towards Revisionism: Finlandization Revisited

As noted in the introduction, the central historical reference point in thisrespect has been a resurfacing of the Cold War Finlandization debates.However, rather than rejecting the Finlandization hypothesis as before,Westernizing narratives of Finland’s post-war history actually seek toexpose what they see as having been a very real and malignant Finnish ill-ness. Thus, whereas during the Cold War the Finns defended their position,arguing, like Max Jakobson, that Finland was ‘at the mercy of’ itinerantcolumnists with only ‘superficial and fragmentary’ knowledge of the Finnishposition (Jakobson, 1984: xiii), we are now told that those columnists werein fact right, that Finlandization ‘was not merely a figment of the imagina-tions of Western journalists and anti-Soviet scholars, but a part of Finnishreality’ (Penttilä, 1992: 41).

According to this view, during the Cold War years, and especially duringKekkonen’s presidency, an ‘official religion’ of ‘national self-censorship andofficial admiration of the neighbour to the east’ was established acrossFinnish society (Penttilä, 1992: 41). In fact, it is argued that ‘for a countrywith liberal democratic traditions there was an unnatural degree of con-sensus’ (Majander, 1999: 88) to the detriment of the consideration of differ-ent opinions (Tapaninen, 1994: 113) and self-censorship reached alarmingproportions with the steady integration of the media ‘with the state and itsforeign policy’ (Salminen, 1999: 171). All of these factors, it is contended,seriously undermined and damaged Finnish democratic institutions andtraditions (Toivanen, 1994: 64). Rather than having skilfully avoided the pit-falls of Cold War power politics to maintain a position of magnanimousneutrality, the Westernizing narrative contends Finland in fact became com-


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plicit with the propaganda of the Soviet totalitarian empire with its expan-sionist communist ideology and agenda. In this light, rather than being theprime examples of Finland’s bridge-building and healing role, in calling for aNordic Nuclear Weapons Free Zone and proposing the Conference onSecurity and Cooperation in Europe with its ultimate ratification of the post-war division of Europe, Finland was in fact playing the tune of the Sovietpiper (Majander, 1999: 89). Whilst the West came in for criticism, the mediarefrained from attacks on the Soviet Union, towards which totalitarian andStalinist society the Finns retained an illusory level of optimism (Vihavainencited in Penttilä,1992:42;Aunesluoma,1999:98).This Westernizing narrativeof Finnish history has therefore come to accept the dominant Western viewof the Soviet Union during the Cold War as an expansionist evil empire andFinland’s peaceful coexistence with its neighbour as akin to flirting withthe devil. In Westernizing narratives the responsibility for such a dangerousliaison is generally placed at the feet of the Finnish political elite and in par-ticular Urho Kekkonen, whose relationship with the Soviet elite is widelyinterpreted as having gone beyond the bounds of normal and acceptablediplomatic practice. Indeed, Kekkonen’s playing of the ‘Moscow Card’ isnow often held as having been a euphemism for the legitimization of author-itarian style politics at home.9

Such descriptions of the past are politically loaded. In ‘crying out aloudhow Finlandised they were in past decades’ (Majander, 1999: 88), such nar-ratives shut the book on what is now often perceived as a misguidedimmoral episode. As such, the Westernizing narrative implies Finland’sfuture should be in antithesis to this reconceptualization of both the ColdWar Soviet other and the Finnish prior self. By exposing the past for whatit was, by writing the ‘real’ history of post-war Finland as Finlandized, thenarrative opens up the possibility for future liberation and transforma-tion. This transformation away from the previous between-East-and-Westidentity is made more palatable by the Westernizing narrative’s generalvilification of Kekkonen and other ‘Finlandized’ Finnish elites of the time.In placing the responsibility for Finland’s dealings with the ‘devil’ withKekkonen (Majander, 1999: 89), the Finnish people as a whole are absolvedfrom blame. Kekkonen, it is implied, through playing the Moscow Cardestablished himself as ‘an autocrat whose dominance suffocated true demo-cracy’ (Virkkula, 1993: 32) and who, from this all-powerful position, duped,misguided and led astray the nation from its true path and historical tra-ditions. As such it becomes possible to say the Finns are ‘coming home’ totheir Western roots as Finland’s Cold War identity was not ‘really real’, itwas the fabrication of immoral leaders.10

Liberation

As noted, therefore, the Westernizing narrative contains within its verypremises and various emplotments of the self in relation to others, its pre-scriptions for a future ‘becoming’ of Finland – i.e., not only does it open theway for liberation it tells us what that liberation will be by constructing forthe audience Finnish society’s future values and social conscience.


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Internally, the narrative’s description of post-war self-censorship and auto-cratic style politics in Finland establishes this prior self as a negative otherfrom which the ‘real’ Western Finland needs to distance itself. The explicitinjunction is for the establishment of more open and transparent politics,support for freedom of expression, and the delinking of the media from thestate to its development into a ‘fourth estate’ free to challenge the politicalestablishment and to say ‘how things are’ (Salminen, 1999: 171).

Externally, the effect of the narrative is to push Finland further into inte-gration with Western institutions, membership of which had been pre-viously denied by the Soviets’ categorization of them as anti-Communist. Inits terms, the Westernizing narrative basically delegitimizes the Cold Warpolicy of neutrality by claiming to show that the Western understanding ofSoviet identity and intentions was the correct version. The Finns werewrong and as such neutrality was akin to free-riding on the back of Westernsecurity institutions established to contain the Soviet threat. At the sametime, the narrative provides another justification for greater Western inte-gration through its critique of Kekkonen as having misled the Finns and theconsequent argument that Western integration is therefore only ‘natural’.Indeed, the equation of membership in previously taboo ‘Western’ institu-tions with an understanding of ‘Westernness’ in national identity was wellillustrated by the fact that the 1994 referendum on EU membership widelybecame understood as a question of civilizations. As Max Jakobson has putit, those who voted ‘yes’ did so, for the most part, because membership wasseen ‘to affirm Finland’s Western identity’ (Jakobson, 1998: 111; also, seeArter, 1995: 383). Membership was thus seen as a passport to the WesternEuropean club. A ‘no’ vote, on the other hand, came to represent the threatof remaining isolated on Europe’s ‘eastern’ periphery (Ingebritsen andLarson, 1997: 217, 218).11 Furthermore, the very logic of such thinking, ofseeing Westernness and Europeanness as lying in membership of Westernand European institutions, has provided a powerful rationale to engageever more deeply with those institutions. Notably the Finnish governmenthas been unequivocal in its desire to place Finland at the heart of the EU,most visually through EMU, which is easily conflated with the idea that thisalso puts Finland at the heart of ‘Europe’.

At the same time, the Westernizing narrative’s description of the pasthas also resurrected NATO from a negative interpretation in the Finnishconsciousness as a potential threat to security, to the positive interpretationthat it was precisely this institution that facilitated the containment of com-munism. The fact that NATO no longer carries such negative connotationsas in the past can be seen in the 1998 statement of Anneli Taina, the thenMinister for Defence, that Finland is ‘betrothed’ to NATO.Thus, ‘NATO haschanged in official rhetoric from a four-letter word to an acronym of a lover’(Heikka, 1999: 31). Such images are not neutral because they convey expec-tations of future Finnish behaviour to other states and to the Finnish peopleand, as such, also carry notions of Finnish identity.12 Such expectations arefurther supported by the Finns’ keen participation in NATO’s Partnershipfor Peace programme, and by the steady harmonization of Finland’s defence


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forces with NATO systems (Vaahtoranta, 1998: 11), all of which makes con-tinuing official proclamations of non-alignment somewhat confusing.

Such a resurrection of NATO needs to be seen in the context of a recon-struction of the NATO mission and its raison d’être since the end of theCold War. As Williams and Neumann have noted, from being ostensibly amilitary alliance NATO has steadily reconceptualized itself in culturalterms, the essential identity and history of which is now ‘understood as oneof cultural, or even civilisational commonality centred around the shareddemocratic foundations of its members’ (Williams and Neumann, 2000:367). The result is that NATO is no longer solely understood as a militaryalliance but as a security community. Consequently, new members arenot seen merely as ‘allies in the traditional sense, but as societies whichnaturally belonged to NATO by dint of their political structure and culturalvalues’ (Williams and Neumann, 2000: 371; emphasis added). As such,the reconceptualization of a state’s membership of NATO beyond a simplemilitary alliance and in terms of the state’s adherence to a civilizational pro-ject, provides an emotional rationalization for future Finnish participationmuch in the same way as the Finns have ‘naturalized’ EU membership. AsTuomas Forsberg of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs has noted,NATO membership supports ‘an identity of belonging to the family ofWestern market-oriented democratic states’ (1999: 112).

A further result is that security, too, has been re-envisioned in culturalterms. To a considerable degree, territorial defence has been replaced withthe defence of ‘the cultural and civilisational principles now held to be thefoundation of NATO itself’ (Williams and Neumann, 2000: 369). Securitythreats to NATO, therefore, are no longer seen to derive from changesin the balance of power within the states’ system, but from ‘the absenceof specific, democratic cultural and political institutions’ that results ininstability and potential disorder (Williams and Neumann, 2000: 369–70). Inconsequence, the reconstruction of NATO in cultural terms has also pro-vided NATO with a new ‘civilizational’ mission to eradicate instability andcreate order by disseminating Western values around the world.13 Import-antly, the NATO discourse parallels ‘civilizing’ rhetoric underlying EUaspirations to spread a value-laden construction of Europeanness to theEast (Daskalovski, 2000) and is implicit in the Finnish initiative of theNorthern Dimension recently adopted as official EU policy. This rhetoric isalso apparent in the aims of the OSCE and the Council of Europe, withinboth of which Finland is an active participant. It is also notable that it isprecisely this ‘new’ NATO, concerned with crisis management and facilitat-ing stable conditions for democratic development, as opposed to the ‘old’NATO of military alliance and territorial defence, that Finland would pre-fer to join (Forsberg, 1999: 112).

Positioning Russia

The position of Russia in these discourses is ambiguous. Russia is not simplydepicted as the defining other, the enemy to be excluded. Rather, Russiatends to be represented as a potential locus of instability that needs to be


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imbued with the stable, orderly values of Western culture and drawn intothe ‘we’ of EU-Europe and NATO: its alterity needs to be eradicated. ThatRussia is viewed in such a way in Finland is clear. Official Finnish policy, forexample, is that Russia is a cause of uncertainty rather than an explicitsecurity threat (Forsberg, 1999: 113), and it is such a view that provides amotivation for foreign policy initiatives such as the Northern Dimension,and much of Finnish policy in the OSCE and the Council of Europe regard-ing Russia. Moreover, the representation of Russian society as a site ofchaos and instability has permeated public discourse with an emphasisplaced on such negative issues as prostitution, drugs trafficking, the RussianMafia, pollution, poverty, the degeneration of the rule of law and nuclearhazards. As the title to an article appearing in the international edition ofHelsingin Sanomat put it, ‘The Wild East begins just across the border’(Pihlaja, 1999). Such negative representations of Russia have become soprevalent that the term ‘post-Finlandization’ has been coined to depictthe ‘current Finnish tendency, in which Russia and everything Russianis presented in an utmost negative light’ (Majander, 1999: 92; see alsoRotkirch, 1996: 198–9). The positive element to such a discourse is thatRussia and Russian society can be reformed, civilized and incorporated intothe ‘West’ and ‘Europe’. The negative element is that if Russia refuses orfails to become like ‘us’ it stands to be reconstituted as a highly negativeother for Finland and the West. By not immersing itself in Western civiliza-tion there is in fact a danger that Russia will become represented as a‘civilizational’ challenger to the West once more and be reconstituted inWestern eyes as a military threat.

Fears that ultimately this is how things will develop are apparent andhave resulted in contending representations of Russia and NATO in Finland.In this respect the Westernizing narrative’s negative description of Sovietidentity and intentions during the Cold War and its positive understandingof ‘Western’ identity in the form of NATO’s opposition to the expansionistEast, has become a catalyst in equating present-day Russia with the SovietUnion and thus legitimizing Finland’s membership of NATO and the EU asa way to move the Finnish–Russian relationship from a bilateral to a multi-lateral level (Pursiainen, 1999). However, on this reading, ‘coming home’ ispotentially coming home to join the ‘old’ Cold War NATO with its emphasison territorial defence. Despite the more ambiguous representations ofRussia as a site of instability, it is notable that the negative emplotment ofthe Soviet Union in the past in Westernizing narratives is now also widelyinscribed onto present-day Russia. As Vaahtoranta and Forsberg note, acommon mode of thought in Finland today is to believe that a great powerstatus is an essential aspect of Russia’s identity and that ‘Russia sees her-self as the centre of the Eurasian civilisation and fundamentally differentfrom other civilisations’ (Vaahtoranta and Forsberg, 1998: 193, 194). In 1999,this view was supported by a much publicly debated report by the FinnishInstitute of International Affairs. In particular, the report noted that ‘Russiais not committed to the principles of democratic peace and common values’and that ‘Its chosen line of multipolarity implies that Russia is entitled toits own sphere of influence and the unilateral use of military force within it’


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(Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 1999: 1). Interestingly, formerPresident Mauno Koivisto has also expressed such views, arguing that, inRussian thinking, land, once conquered, is always a part of Russia, and thisincludes Finland (Koivisto,2001).On this understanding,NATO membershippotentially is seen as providing security for Finland against a Russian neigh-bour with a propensity for expansionism.14 Consequently, it is importantto realize that both images of ‘new’ and ‘old’ NATO and potentially‘progressive’ and ineradicably ‘degenerate’ Russia pervade Finnish dis-course. Moreover, rather than standing in opposition to each other, it is clearthat the Finnish fear is that a relationship of partnership with Russia mighteasily meld into one of civilizational threat.

Furthermore, this negative view of Russia has been paralleled by aresurrection of the inter-war period in Finland. From Kekkonen’s depictionof the period as a time of shameful chauvinist nationalist sentiment, whichblinded the Finns from correctly perceiving the ‘true’ nature of the Russians,the re-reading of the Cold War period in revisionist Westernizing narrativesimplies that inter-war Finns were actually correct in their assessments (e.g.see Vihavainen, 1998). Consequently, inter-war Finland is no longer heldup as a warning of the dangers of right-wing nationalist sentiment, but isoften depicted as a time of democratic development and moderation. Forexample, Finland: A Cultural Encyclopedia, published by the Finnish Lit-erature Society in 1997, has somehow ‘forgotten’ and managed to ‘writeout’ the less salubrious bits of Finnish inter-war history as if they neverhappened or were not very important in the development of the nation.Despite the Encyclopedia’s aim to show how Finnish culture has developed‘in its broadest sense’ and how this has affected Finnish national characterand identity, it is notable that whilst the Encyclopedia includes articles onsuch things as ‘climate’ and ‘coffee’, there is no mention of such right-wingnationalist inter-war phenomena as the Lapua Movement, the AcademicKarelia Society, the idea of Greater Finland or Russophobia.15 What isextraordinary about this is that Finnish cultural development throughoutthe inter-war period was explicitly political and these issues were a key partof this. For example, hatred and fear of Russians and the belief in GreaterFinland were intrinsically important in shaping such things as how the Finnsunderstood their national epic, the Kalevala. Notably, the Kalevala wasinterpreted as providing support for the view that the Finns stood as the‘outpost of Western civilisation’ protecting it from the barbarian and degen-erate ‘Eastern’ Russian savages. Likewise, it was also seen to provide evi-dence for a forthcoming Greater Finland, a Greater Finland that the mostromantic of Finnish nationalists believed should even extend beyond theUrals (Wilson, 1976: 94–102).

Finally, the Westernizing narrative also contains within its structure animportant tool of critique against dissenters. In making a claim to the truthof Finland’s Finlandized past, which is essentially portrayed as having beenthe result of immoral autocratic political leaders, it encompasses withinits framework the propaganda to label opponents as irresponsible andimmoral and to de-legitimize competing claims regarding Finnish identity.As Majander notes, the term ‘Finlandized’ is frequently thrown as slander


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at those persons deemed not to have learned the lessons of the past(Majander, 1999: 89). Similarly, in a recent editorial Helsingin Sanomatreferred to the ‘many ex-Stalinists who have opposition to NATO in theirblood’ (cited by Reuters, 10 May 1999). Labelling someone ‘Finlandized’ or‘Stalinist’ discredits them from having a ‘legitimate’ opinion, particularly onRussia and Finnish–Russian relations. In this light it is interesting to seehow Martti Valkonen responded to what he took as an ‘accusation’ of ‘post-Finlandization’ levelled at him and his co-editors, Anne Sailas and IlmariSusiluoto, in a review of their book, Venäjä – jättiläinen tuuliajolla [Russia— a drifting giant] (Rotkirch, 1996). In his response,Valkonen retorted withthe accusation that those going round labelling people as post-Finlandizedare setting themselves up as the ‘watchful guardians of morality … [that is,of] … what can be written about Russia without offending it.The campaignbrings to mind’, he continues, ‘the Soviet period of self-censorship, whichwas controlled by Finland’s eastern neighbour. Self-censorship was Fin-landisation, which made Finland, in the eyes of both West and East almosta satellite of the Soviet Union’ (Susiluoto et al., 1996: 291). Similarly, in 1998Valkonen continued his Westernizing offensive in a book on the presentcontinuation of Finlandization in Finland (Valkonen, 1998), all of which ismeasured to push Finland further down the Westernizing narrative’s road.Finally, Valkonen’s strong response interestingly illustrates the extent towhich Finlandization and post-Finlandization are widely understood aspolitically charged concepts in Finland rather than as neutral academicdescriptions. It is notable, therefore, that Finnish politicians have also triedto utilize the ‘Finlandized’ reinterpretation of Cold War history for politicaladvantage by blaming opponents for the sins of the past. For example,Paavo Väyrynen, a senior member of the Centre Party, has accused theSocial Democrats of passing Kekkonen (notably also a Centre Party mem-ber before becoming president) on the left during the 1970s and goingbeyond anything Kekkonen ever envisaged in relations with the Soviets. Inretort, Paavo Lipponen, the SDP prime minister, has sought to sanctify thehistorical heritage of his party whilst denigrating that of opponents. Thesystem was terrible, Lipponen acknowledges; however, unlike the parties ofhis political opponents Lipponen is adamant that ‘My party just avoidedgetting drawn into this type of business’ (cited in Cooper, 2000: 312–14).

Identity, Foreign Policy and the Ambiguous Emplotmentof Russia

The fact that in revisionist Westernizing narratives the positive identifica-tion attached to ‘West’ gains its substance in relation to various construc-tions of Russia and the East has resulted in such notions becoming manifestin narratives underlying aspects of Finnish foreign policy. As we have seen,the emplotment of Russia in Finnish discourse has been rather ambiguous.On the one hand, Russia is seen as symbolic of instability and chaos, themirror of ordered (Western) Europe. On the other, Russia is sometimesrepresented as threatening in a more traditional realist perspective, as an


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inherently expansionist great power. Either way, Russia is presented as astranger, a foreigner to the European home, a cause of anxiety.Yet, it is pre-cisely Russia’s perceived alterity that is the productive force in construc-tions of Finnishness in Westernizing narratives. Russia’s difference is thus tobe cherished, as it is the relationship with Russia that has made it possiblefor the Finns to express a self-identification of themselves as Western at all.As such, Russia has been an essential progenitor of various demarches inFinnish foreign policy. On the one hand, there have been attempts toexclude Russia completely from the boundaries of Finnish self-identificationand to confine Russia to the ‘outside’. Such strategies rest on feared con-structions of Russia as a traditional realist threat. For example, the wishto exclude Russia is evident in the desire to submerge the Finnish self inWestern institutions of the tabooed past and in the determination withwhich Finnish leaders are keen to present the new ‘EU face’ of Finland indiscussions with their Russian counterparts.16 Such fears are also expressedby the fact that NATO membership remains open, fuelling suspicions thatdespite official rhetoric, the Finns do view NATO as an anti-Russianalliance of last resort. Of course, paradoxically this desire to exclude Russiaonly ties Finland to Russia more tightly as the desire only reinforcesRussia’s position as an important other in Finnish identity politics. On theother hand, attempts are also clearly being made to engage with Russia andto assimilate Russia into the Western self by eradicating its cultural andsocial differences to conformity with Western norms. Resultant policies, asthe Northern Dimension (discussed shortly), but also Finland’s policytowards Russia within the OSCE and Council of Europe, are founded onconstructions of Russia as a site of instability and disorder and explicitlyaim to combat such threats. In this respect, engaging with the Russian otherhas provided the Finns with an opportunity to construct a series of positiveimages of the Finnish self and the role Finland can play in the post-ColdWar world. One aspect of this has been a re-inscription of the notion thatFinland can continue to be a bridge between East and West even if Finlandnow firmly identifies with the Western camp. However, as we will see, thesepositive notions of Finnishness are constructed at the expense of negativeand patronizing depictions of Russia and Russians that also threaten tore-inscribe the Cold War division between East and West as the definingelement of international politics.

The Northern Dimension

The Finnish initiative of the Northern Dimension is particularly pertinentin this respect. Launched within the context of the EU in 1997 the aim ofthe Northern Dimension is to stabilize the north of Europe by assimilatingthe Baltic States and Russia into the Western democratic community. Rest-ing on Western theories of democratic peace (Vaahtoranta and Forsberg,1998: 206) the Northern Dimension initiative ostensibly promotes a West-ern agenda of ‘European’ (read EU) values and Western conceptualizationsof cooperation, the rule of law, respect for human rights and liberal demo-cracy and so forth, that aims to eradicate the fearful ‘East’ once and for all


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and to make the Russian ‘other’ a part of the West European ‘we’. On thisreading, if Finland is coming home to the West it is also hoping Russia willcome along as a lodger.

The Northern Dimension is interesting in a number of respects. Firstly,founded on the desire to overcome the alterity, instability and chaos asso-ciated with Russia, Russia’s difference has become the catalyst for an ini-tiative that enables Finns to express, develop and assert their Europeanidentity (Heininen and Käkönen, 1998: 9–10) and to replace Finland’sformer peripherality with centrality at the heart of ‘EU Europe’ (Lehti,2000). However, this assertion of Finland’s ‘Europeanness’ is founded pre-cisely on a negative construction of the difference of Russia and the subse-quent belief in the superiority of the West. In the Northern Dimension,Russians are emploted as the ‘needy’ who want (need) to ‘learn to be likeus’. By contrast, Finland (the West) is emploted in the role of a charitableteacher showing the Russians the way to the Promised Land of Westernsocial justice and prosperity.17 Prime Minister Lipponen has even depictedthe civilizing of Russia as the new national mission arguing ‘Finland’s taskis to bring Russia into the realm of European co-operation’ (quoted inRistimäki, 1999: 4).18 However, this positive self-image is constructed at theexpense of a negative and patronizing discourse of Russia. Paradoxically,therefore, the premises of the initiative threaten to re-inscribe the veryEast–West division it purports to eradicate.

Secondly, the Northern Dimension also frames the bounds of ‘Europe’and ‘Europeanness’ in Western terms, much in the same way as Williamsand Neumann argue NATO has managed to do in the process of its recon-stitution as a cultural security community (2000). The interesting thingabout the Europe of the Northern Dimension is that it is seen in terms of acivilizational ‘project’ that is potentially open to all. The key word here ispotentially. Through its desire to disseminate particular Western concep-tions of cooperation, human rights, liberal democracy, environmentalismand the rule of law, the Northern Dimension actually establishes a standardof ‘Europeanness’ to be met before a society will be accepted as ‘European’and as having made the transition from student to teacher to become oneof ‘us’. As President Halonen has argued, Finland’s policy towards Russia isto support its efforts to become a country sharing ‘European values’ (citedin Helsingin Sanomat International Edition, 1 September 2000). As ForeignMinister in 1998, she commented that despite its difficulties Russia ismoving towards constructing a state of ‘European type’ (cited in KansanUutiset, 16 December 1998).The point is that, on this reading, Europe is notabout geography but about adherence to a particular set of values asdefined by the West and now including Finland. The discourse of theNorthern Dimension is thus symbolically very powerful. According toHalonen, Russia may be geographically in Europe but it is not yet ‘Euro-pean’, although, through participation in the Northern Dimension it mayyet redeem itself. Not to engage with Finnish and EU approaches throughthe Northern Dimension, however, is to be ‘un-European’ in Western terms.In short, the Northern Dimension is a particular Finnish version of the gen-eral appropriation of the notion of ‘Europe’ by the West, such that one


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can only be ‘European’ to the extent that one adheres to Western classifi-catory standards (Daskalovski, 2000). Thus, if Russia does not accept theNorthern Dimension, and its emplotment within the discourse as a studentof the West, it threatens to place itself outside notions of Europeanness, toreconstruct the barrier between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and rather to emplot Russiaas a non-European civilizational challenger to the West, a potential cause ofinstability and disorder, and certainly of Western anxiety.19

This leads to a third point, that in the Northern Dimension the respons-ibility for how the Finnish/EU–Russian relationship will develop is shiftedonto Russia. This is for the reason that the standards of ‘Europeanness’established in the Northern Dimension are Western standards and are notup for negotiation. Russia either complies or it does not; the responsibilityfor whether Russia becomes civilized is Russia’s alone. Consequently,the Northern Dimension can in fact be viewed as both a vehicle of thepotential assimilation of Russia into the (Western) European ‘we’, therebyeradicating the threat of instability and disorder, or of Russia’s potentialexclusion. It is notable in this respect that, since its initiation, some Russianshave become much less enthusiastic about the Northern Dimension and thepatronizing emplotment of Russia entailed therein. Some suspicious voiceshave even begun to see it as a plot to further dissolve and fragment Russia,and as being the vehicle of Western neo-imperialism.20 It is also notable thatsince the early 1990s nationalist voices have emerged in Russia that chal-lenge the whole notion that Russia has anything in common with the Westwhatsoever (Williams and Neumann, 2000: 378–9). Given the dualistic con-struction of the discourse it is likely that negative Russian responses to theNorthern Dimension (and to NATO, the EU and OSCE) will only feed intoa reconstitution of Russia as a threat in more conventional terms and in there-inscription of a normative divide that places Russia outside ‘Europe’.Given the structure of the discourse, only such either/or possibilities appearto have been conceptualized as existing for Finnish/West-Russia relations.As Ambassador René Nyberg has succinctly put it, ‘From the Europeanstandpoint, Russia must catch up or it will run the risk of falling back intofateful isolation’ (Nyberg, 2000).

The Physician at the Gateway

Fears of Russia’s difference, of its ‘non-Europeanness’, and more particu-larly fears that ultimately Russia will not assimilate Western Europeanvalues have also been a catalyst to a re-inscription of the Cold War identityof Finland as a physician and bridge-builder in world politics. This is par-ticularly manifest in the Finnish policy of non-alignment and ‘restraint’ inquestions of NATO membership which is frequently presented as part ofFinland’s contribution to world stability and peace (Archer, 1999: 57; also,see Ahtissari quoted in Austin, 1999: 81). The contention is that wereFinland to join NATO it would provoke Russia into action against theBaltic States. As Jakobson notes, such an argument is essentially a re-hashing of the Nordic Balance concept ‘according to which the neutrality ofSweden and the self-imposed restraints of Norway’s role within NATO


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helped Finland maintain its independence’ (1998: 144). In such argumentsthe Finnish self-image is highly positive and beneficent. Aware that, for themost part, Russians view NATO suspiciously as an anti-Russian organiza-tion, the Finns present themselves (though not officially) to the BalticStates as an example of moderation to be copied. Indeed, there is evensomething self-righteous in this image and construction of Finnish identity,which again parallels the tone of the physician rhetoric of the Cold Warperiod. Denying itself NATO membership, denying ‘full’ participation inthe West, Finland can be seen to be sacrificing itself for the benefit of others.Such self-sacrifice is not just made for the benefit of the Baltic States, butfor the West in general, for the assumption is that if Finland joined NATO,leaving the Baltics isolated, tension between East and West at large wouldinevitably increase. It is also made for the benefit of democratizing forces inRussia by not giving ammunition to nationalist forces there. The image isthus of a ‘responsible’ and ‘good’ Finland to some extent martyring itselffor the benefit of humanity.21 This desire to maintain a high internationalprofile as a contributor to world and regional peace can also be seen in theFinns’ continued activism in the realm of crisis management and peace-keeping operations.

Finally, the centrality of Russia’s difference, understood in terms of thethreat of Eastern instability in opposition to Western order, as a foundationfor the emplotment of Finnish identity in the post-Cold War world has beenclearly evident in proclamations of Finland as a ‘Gateway to the East’. The‘Gateway’ metaphor has largely been used as an economic strategy toattract Western companies interested in doing business with Russia to basetheir operations from Finland. In short, the Gateway concept utilizesWestern/Finnish fears of the Eastern other to the Finns’ benefit, not justeconomically but more importantly in terms of constructing a positiveimage of Finland as ‘Western’ at the expense of perpetuating a negative‘Eastern’ image of Russia. Whilst the Gateway implies an opening and thepossibility of fruitfully interacting with Russia, Russia remains strange anddifferent, not ‘us’, not ‘Western’. However, as with the Northern Dimension,the strangeness and unfamiliarity of Russia is a positive resource forFinland as the central locus against which Finland can construct a self-image of Westernness. The central element of the ‘Gateway to the East’, inthis respect, can be discerned in an article written by Nils-Christian Berg,the Chief Executive of the Invest in Finland Bureau, in a propaganda pub-lication of the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1995. As Berg notes:

In contrast to the former Soviet Union, where political stability is unprovenand commercial law and practices are problematic, in Finland incoming indus-trialists find an environment where they feel at home. (1995: 25)

Berg’s identification of Russia with political and commercial instabilityplays on traditional prejudices in Western thought concerning the East,which see the East as representing irrationality, unpredictability and thechaos of a Slavic people with an unfamiliar and menacing society.22 The‘Gateway to the East’ points the Western mind to reports of the Russian


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Mafia and the general breakdown of the rule of law in Russia, thus askingWestern businessmen whether they really want to base production inRussia? In contrast to this negative construction of the Russian other, it isimplied Finland is all Russia is not. Finland is a law-abiding and orderlysociety, transport works on time, power supplies are guaranteed and busi-nessmen need not worry about assassination for their failure to pay pro-tection money. In short, as Berg puts it, Western industrialists coming toFinland will find it just like home. Likewise the concept draws on more thanFinland’s geopolitical position and societal conditions. The claim is alsomade that as a result of its Cold War experience Finns know and haveexpertise in dealing with Russians. Urpo Kivikari, for example, even goesso far as to claim that as a result of Finland’s bilateral trade with the Eastduring the Cold War the Finns developed an explicit understanding of theHomo Sovieticus and of the ‘Russian soul’ (Kivikari, 1995: 34). For his part,Berg draws parallels with Tsarist times and the period of the Grand Duchywhen ‘Finland was an important conduit for trade with the West’, andargues that, as a result of this, ‘Finland is recognised as having a deep, long-standing, practical understanding of how to organise trade in this region’(Berg, 1995: 25). Importantly, the Finns have been fairly successful in pro-moting the Gateway concept abroad, along with its implied positive imagesof Finland as a ‘Western’ country much akin to home, in contrast to nega-tive non-Western images of foreign Russia. Such success can be seen in anarticle in the Economist in 1997 assessing the reasons why Acer computersdecided to base their operations for the Russian market in Finland. Thearticle compares the ‘orderly calm of Finland’ with the ‘feral badlands ofRussia’ and notes that beyond the border ‘lies a Russia where criminalgangs prey, potholes gape, and the next place southbound for a decent cupof tea is Turkey’. Furthermore, and paraphrasing Berg, ‘Finland, with itslaw-abiding business environment and highly developed infrastructure,offered a vision of everything Russia was not’ (Economist, 6–12 September1997: 89–90).

Conclusion

Whilst the focus of this article has been a deconstruction of Westernizingnarratives of Finnish history, with the aim to show how they appropriatethe ‘truth’ of history for their own political agenda, it is clear that the claimof such revisionism, that with the end of the Cold War the Finns have comehome to their natural and organic origins in the West, has been influen-tial. Common conceptions of Finnish identity, and underlying premises offoreign policy, are widely imbued with the dogmas of Westernizing inter-pretations that construct notions of Finnishness in terms of an opposition tothe Finlandized Finland of the Cold War and the inherently expansionistand potentially subversive Soviet/Russian other across the Eastern border.The emplotment of contemporary Russia in these narratives constructingFinnish self-hood is interesting. Despite negative views, Russia is not totallyabandoned in Westernizing constructions of Finnishness. Indeed, Russia is


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the defining element of what it is to be Western and Finnish in these narra-tives. Consequently, despite the claim that the Finns are coming home tothe West it is only by maintaining contact with Russia that the notion ofcoming home gains any resonance or meaning. Moreover, we have seen thatit is only through such engagement with Russia that the Finns, with theirparticular reading of Cold War history, are even able to express their West-ernness at all.

On the one hand, Finnish fears that contemporary Russian identity ismerely an extension of Soviet Cold War identity, which in Westernizingnarratives is now depicted as having been aggressive, subversive, author-itarian and expansionist, has resulted in a desire to submerge the Finnishself in Western institutions in the quest for collective security guarantees.Such a rush to the West is clearly linked with a desire to expunge the SovietUnion, contemporary Russia, and recent Finnish history (now understoodas treacherous) from the national memory and to draw on a selective read-ing of history that casts Finland as a member of the Western family.However, in such stories the Soviet Union, contemporary Russia and theFinlandized past remain ever present in the national subconsciousness,the constant fear of the East and disillusionment with the past standing asan incentive to further immerse the Finnish self into a ‘West’ constructedin opposition to the East. On the other hand, Russia is not simply fearedbut also sometimes seen as ‘reformable’ — as Westernizable — and itscurrent ‘difference’ from the West an opportunity for the Finns to main-tain something of their Cold War role as a bridge-builder and physician.The clear difference being, however, that whilst during the Cold War theFinns constructed an identity for themselves as between East and Westin ideological terms, now bridge-building clearly starts from the assumptionthat Finland is already on the Western side. Thus, whereas during the ColdWar the Finnish physician diagnosed the conflict between East and Westas that which needed to be cured, prescribing that different ideologicalsystems could peacefully coexist, now the disease to be remedied is seenas the ‘East’ itself. This ambiguity in post-Cold War understandings ofRussia in Finland, between seeing Russia as a constant threat to be ex-cluded and an opportunity to be engaged with and through which theFinns can feel themselves to be playing a role in the civilizing mission of theWest, was well illustrated by Martti Ahtisaari during his presidential term(1994–2000). Whilst Ahtisaari campaigned extensively for the NorthernDimension view of the possibilities for the integration of Russia with theWest, therefore positing a view of the potential to engage and reformRussia, at other times he also drew on the Westernizing premise of a greatpower Russia inextricably different to the West, and argued that Russiawould not become democratic in his lifetime (Vaahtoranta and Forsberg,1998: 194).


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Notes

I thank Hanna Ojanen, Christer Pursianen, Kaija-Leena Vaarala, Michael Williamsand the two anonymous reviewers for Cooperation and Conflict for helpful com-ments in drafting this paper. Further thanks go to the staff and researchers at theFinnish Institute of International Affairs where much of the research for this paperwas conducted.

1. An overview of these debates can be seen in a series of articles for the journalBooks From Finland over the past decade (Penttilä, 1991, 1992; Virkkula, 1993;Tapaninen, 1994; Kivinen, 1992).

2. It should also be noted that the ‘rationalist’ end of the constructivist approach,as exemplified by Alexander Wendt (1999), has also recently been criticized fortaking particular agents, subjectivities and identities for given. In Wendt’s case hehas been accused of reifying the identity of the state. See Doty (2000: 138) and Smith(2000: 160–1)

3. However, it is interesting that Russian (Byzantine/Eastern) influences onFinnish culture were also resurrected during the Cold War. For example, Finland’sorthodox traditions were often noted.The period when Finland was a Grand Duchyof the Russian Empire (1809–1917) was also given a more positive twist. Whilstinter-war histories had tended to depict the period as one dogged by conflicts andhostility between the Finns and Russians, the period was now seen in a morepositive light, as ‘an age of unprecedented economic, cultural and social growth, ofpeace and of a national revival in Finland’ (Korhonen, 1969: 33). Such a reappraisalclearly went a considerable way in breaking down inter-war depictions of Finlandas an outpost of Western culture in favour of an image of Finland as a culturalborderland. However, despite this, there was never any great doubt amongst themajority of Finns that their central cultural, philosophical and political traditions layin the West.

4. As Luostarinen argues, the crucial aspect of the Civil War in the emergence ofRussophobia was the fact that the First Republic became founded on a separationfrom Russia at two levels. Firstly, there was the separation of Finland from Russia atthe state level. However, secondly, and more importantly, with the victory of thebourgeois Whites over the communist-inspired Reds Finland was also separatedfrom Russia at an ideological level. As such the Soviet Union became character-ized as representing that aspect of Finnish society which had sought to destroy thebourgeois state.

5. For example, in a speech delivered to the Paasikivi Society on 25 September1964 Kekkonen argued that ‘Hitler’s shadow had fallen on us at the end of the 1930sand Finnish society as a whole cannot absolve itself of having adopted a certain atti-tude of sympathy to it’ (1973: 164). For examples of the ‘driftwood’ interpretation,see Korhonen (1961) and Wuorinen (1948). The Wuorinen text was actually auth-ored by Arvi Korhonen.

6. For example, in a speech in 1967 Kekkonen noted, ‘I have read in the historyof Russia that she has been attacked fourteen times in the last 150 years…. It isjustifiable to claim that if the leaders of a great country … were not concerned aboutthe security of their country, they would not be fulfilling their duty’ (1973: 196).Also, see Holsti (1964: 64) and Jakobson (1984: 14).

7. Two writers in particular have gained notoriety for their Finlandization attackson Finnish foreign policy: Walter Laqueur and Nils Orvik. See Laqueur (1977). Fora summary of Orvik’s position, see Kirby (1979: 188) and Allison (1985: 2).

8. For example, President Mauno Koivisto complained that, ‘It is obvious that


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those who use that word [Finlandization] possess no knowledge of our country’shistory nor of present-day circumstances; none, at least, worth mentioning’ (1985:20). Such rhetorical exclusions can also be seen in the title of Max Jakobson’s bookFinland: Myth and Reality, which makes it clear that he is going to expose negative‘Finlandized’ versions of Finland’s position as mythical (Jakobson, 1987).

9. Playing the ‘Moscow Card’ was a euphemism for Kekkonen’s utilization of hisposition as the ‘man trusted by the Kremlin’ in order to cement his political positionat home. The most famous example occurred when Kekkonen managed to get re-appointed as president in 1974 via an ‘exceptional law’ that rescinded the need forelections. The background to the matter was discussions between Kekkonen andSoviet leaders in 1972 regarding Finland’s wish to sign a Special Relations Agree-ment with the EEC. The Soviets were fearful of a possible change in direction ofFinnish foreign policy. Kekkonen responded that he would personally guaranteecontinuity. Given that a presidential election was shortly due, such a promise wascontroversial. However, Kekkonen announced he wished to continue as presidentbut was unwilling to fight an election campaign. Despite some outrage at his dis-regard for the democratic process, Kekkonen got his way. See Hentilä (1998).

10. In contrast to this critical view of Kekkonen, a contending narrative can alsobe identified that tends to preserve the reputation of the Cold War political elite(particularly Kekkonen). On this reading, Kekkonen is presented as an exceptionalpolitician, the saviour of the nation, whose intricate understanding of realpolitikenabled him to strategically utilize a policy of neutrality to thwart Moscow’sadvances. This view has been greatly elaborated by Kekkonen’s biographer JuhaniSuomi (Majander, 1999: 89). In many respects this narrative is the preserve of theolder generation, who are negatively implicated in the critical Westernizing narra-tive. In this narrative, therefore, the defence of the past often appears as part of aneed to defend people’s reputations in the present. On the other hand, this narra-tive itself also pushes Finland down the Westernizing road. Presenting neutrality ashaving been a pragmatically and strategically deployed device of foreign policygrounded in realpolitik denies neutrality to have had any emotional efficacy for theFinns. Instead, neutrality is presented as having been a ‘pragmatic tool’ utilized toward off Soviet advances whilst facilitating Finland’s steady integration with theeconomic institutions of the West. For such interpretations, see Jakobson (1998: 90);Lipponen (2000); President Ahtisaari cited in Harle (2000: 9). Seeing neutrality thisway denies Finland was ever really between East and West at all, but was rather aWestern outpost fighting its own (largely misunderstood) battle against the East.Like the more critical narrative, this narrative, in its own way, legitimizes the notionof Finland as ‘coming home’ to the West now that the constraining structures of theCold War balance of power have been removed.

11. It is also notable that Westernizing arguments of Finland’s past Finlandizedself were explicitly utilized in the campaign to make Finland a part of the EU(Rotkirch, 1996: 199). Interestingly the ‘No’ campaign against EU membership alsoutilized the concept of Finlandization as a propaganda tool, instead arguing thatFinnish membership of the EU would itself be an instance of Finlandization towardsa great power which would damage national unity and independence (Majander,1999: 91). Elsewhere Hans Mouritzen has also made much the same argument(1993). Whilst not using the term Finlandization, Mouritzen argues that Finlandhas basically exchanged ‘adaptive acquiescence’ towards the Soviet Union withadaptive acquiescence towards the EC.

12. Indeed, in Finland the notion has widely taken root that the political elite areperforming a fait accompli as regards NATO membership and Finnish citizensare already getting accustomed to this potential and developing aspect of Finnish


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identity (Vaahtoranta, 1998: 4; Forsberg, 1999: 114). Not least the dropping of the(discredited?) term ‘neutrality’ for ‘non-alignment’ has been interpreted, in particu-lar by Paavo Väyrynen, as a ‘deliberate semantic shift on the part of those (espe-cially on the political right) who viewed a policy of non-alignment as a first stepdown the road to military alignment’ (cited in Arter, 1996: 628). The same argumenthas also been expressed by Western diplomats in Helsinki. For example, in 1999Reuters reported one Western diplomat as saying: ‘The change of wording showsthey are trying to get away from the Cold War rhetoric and make sure there are noobstacles to their participation in developing common European defence’ (Reuters,10 May 1999).

13. For example, in 1990 the North Atlantic Council argued that, ‘In the midst ofchange, tendencies towards greater insularity must be resisted. We seek to spreadthe values of freedom and democracy that are at the heart of our transatlanticpartnership so that past labels of East and West no longer have political meaning’(quoted in Williams and Neumann, 2000: 370).

14. From the perspective of the Westernizing narrative, the fact that NATOmembership remains open, that the defence forces are integrating with NATOstructures and that Finland remains unwilling to abandon conscription and the useof landmines, all seems to posit a pessimistic view of Russia underlying this strategy.

15. Other things also deemed unworthy for inclusion include the Civil War, theContinuation War and Finlandization.

16. For example, writing in Helsingin Sanomat, Unto Hämäläinen has noted thatuse of the word ‘Finland’ has declined rapidly in official statements. Rather, he notesa statement by Lipponen regarding the Russian presidential elections in which‘Finland’ was replaced by the words ‘European Union’. Thus, Lipponen stressed,‘We are following closely in the European Union …’, and ‘…we understand in theUnion …’ (Helsingin Sanomat, 29 March 2000). The stress on the ‘we’ of the EUemphasizes to the Russians that the Finnish relationship has moved from bi-lateralism to multilateralism.

17. This is an adaptation of an argument made by Hønneland (1998: 292) withrespect to the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. Boichenko and Heikkinen (1999) havedrawn the same conclusion from an analysis of cross-border cooperation of Finnishand Russian women’s organizations in the Karelian republic. In particular, theynote how the relationship is generally understood in terms of the help, advice andexpertise the Finnish women can give to their Russian counterparts. The Finns areseen to have everything to offer the Russians, whilst the Finns believe the Russianshave nothing to give in return.

18. An alternative understanding of the Northern Dimension might dwell on thematerial elements of the policy. Reading documents, articles and speeches on theinitiative it is possible to draw the conclusion that all the West is interested inthrough the initiative is opening up resource-rich northern Russia for exploitationby Western capital (for an overview, see Browning, 2001: 20–1). On this reading, therhetoric of values and norms that the Northern Dimension is always couched incould be seen as merely a rhetorical disguise for Western exploitation. In the Finnishcase, however, such rhetoric seems rather genuine, with the economic integration ofRussia with Europe (particularly of its gas and oil networks) seen as an enlightenedsecurity policy much akin to the thinking that underlay the formation of theEuropean Coal and Steel Community in 1951 (Rantanen, 2001: 77). However, whilstthis material dimension is clearly important the focus of this paper is on the implicitidentity discourses which surround such policies as the Northern Dimension.

19. This paragraph draws on a similar argument made by Williams and Neumannin relation to NATO–Russian relations (Williams and Neumann, 2000: 372–4, 380).


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20. Such a view can be seen in the complaint of Slavo Hodko, the head of the St.Petersburg International Cooperation Centre, that: ‘The northern dimension seesRussia solely as a source of raw materials but overlooks the development of thecountry’s industry and tourism. It is in our national interests that we should not justsell raw materials’. Quoted in Demari and cited at http://virtual.finland.fi/news/ on6 April 1999.

21. Interestingly, the idea that the Finns have sacrificed themselves for the bene-fit of Western civilization has a tradition in Finnish nationalist thinking extendingback to understandings of the Winter War of 1939–40: the contention being that theFinns’ decision not to accept Allied aid in fact saved the West from a Soviet–Nazialliance.

22. For such analyses of the East and of Russia in Finnish and Western thought,see Medvedev (1998), Bäckman (1998), Neumann (1999).

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CHRISTOPHER BROWNING is a Research Fellow at CopenhagenPeace Research Institute and a doctoral candidate in the Departmentof International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. HisPh.D. thesis focuses on Finnish foreign policy and the construction ofnational identity.Address: Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, Fredericiagade 18,DK-1310 Copenhagen K, Denmark.[email: [email protected]]


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