Culture|Book review
Diplomat Pertti Torstila became attached to Hungary early on – and describes moments in the turmoil of world politics.
Memoirs
Pertti Torstila: Mission to Budapest. Siltala. 320 s.
Diplomatic memoirs the formula has been released over time. No longer do ambassadors just steel chronologically times events, contacts, or dinner placements at each station. It has opened up, also in expression and interpretation.
Experiences are compared and analyzed, directions are anticipated. Confidentiality, of course, concerns a lot of information, no longer your own views.
Pertti Torstila (b. 1946) went on a 44-year long journey at the State Department – from an assistant’s stool to the Secretary of State’s office. His Posting to Budapest his work is related to the said newer memoir genre. He doesn’t empty his entire safe on paper, but striking glimpses from the trip.
“The end result is a contemporary certificate that complements the timeline, not a scientific account,” he describes.
In half a century, Torstila draws portraits and thinks about phenomena, describes and justifies Finland’s foreign policy choices.
Why in the middle of the picture is Budapest, even though he worked longer elsewhere, with tougher posts? Because Torstila was enchanted by the Magyars as a little boy (the heroes of the 1952 Olympics!) And as a diplomat, he wanted to learn about life behind the Iron Curtain – and was sent to Hungary.
Not the dream of many career diplomats in 1976.
He learned Hungarian quickly, and the delegation was led by an original language difference Paul Jyrkänkallio. Finland and Hungary, and Urho Kekkonen and Janos Kádárin, a warm special relationship marked the interactions that Torstila puts down well. In the Cold War between East and West, it was a rare relationship, mutually beneficial.
Admittedly, there were doses of more cynical realism.
Torstila is drawing clearly the main goals in Finnish foreign policy. The aim was not to translate (whatever became apparent) but to survive, to survive.
Throughout the 1970s, there was a silent test of power unknown to the general public, a struggle for neutrality culminating in the communics – Keijo Korhonen in words: a foreign policy trench war between Finland and the Soviet Union.
Kekkonen was at the helm or Koivistothe exchange rate was not drastically changed before the end of the Soviet Union.
Pertti Torstila participated in the OSCE meeting in Helsinki in 1975.
The most effervescent episodes from Torstila’s career is an eyewitness certificate which he gives Martti Ahtisaari negotiations in the summer of 1999, in which Slobodan Milosevic eventually bowed to Serbia’s abandonment of Kosovo.
“I was next to the president in hot Belgrade in the early days of June, when he had to defeat the resistance of a stubborn Serb leader.”
He describes Ahtisaari’s negotiation skills in dense situations, with a polite but rock-hard grip. The breakthrough came, Serbia withdrew.
Ahtisaari and his group flew to report to Cologne, where the Union’s leadership was nervously waiting. It was a joyous process of peace diplomacy – and if only something similar could be seen in Europe again.
Of the other hectic moments Torstila writes, however, Belgrade is the biggest success.
In his portraits Torstila sees the essential. Ex-President of Hungary (1990-2000) Árpád Gönczia he describes so sympathetically that he would have gladly read even longer about this “Uncle Árpi,” the father of the Hungarians.
Modern Hungary, Orbania and Fidesz, he analyzes sharply. The impasse in society is undeniable, with major issues to be resolved in the April elections.
Posting to Budapest gives an impressing reading session in many places. And not least because Torstila masters the condensed Asian pros style.
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