Book review | Finns were afraid of the Soviet Union, even though decades had passed since the Second World War

Nonfiction book

Antero Holmila: Finns’ Cold War. Athena. 336 pp.

In autumn and summer 1968 two young girls went to the forest to pick raspberries:

“When we heard the sounds of the plane, we thought that now the Soviet Union would attack Finland. We ran home and left the berries unpicked,” says the 65-year-old woman Finns’ Cold War – in the book, written by a professor of history at the University of Jyväskylä Antero Holmila.

The book’s material is the answers received in the memory data collections of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS) and Svenska Litteratursällskapet. Holmila has also received material collected by many other communities and researchers. Ordinary people who are offered the opportunity to talk about the Cold War get a voice.

The occupation of Prague in August 1968 affected the mental landscape in a shocking way. In Turku and on the social media of the time, the brutal attack by the Soviet Union was horrified, and current information was obtained from the media.

Rumors about what happened on the eastern border and in Finland’s sea areas also moved almost as quickly. Word of mouth told how the Soviet Union was rolling out tanks and warships there. As they spread, the rumors swelled, and after a few weeks, a large part of Finns expected the Soviet Union to attack Finland.

I recognized myself from the story of the frightened girls in the berry forest. I was 14 years old and I was into sprinting. After the occupation of Prague, I changed my regular jogging route from fields to forest paths, because I calculated that I would survive better under the cover of trees if I was shot at.

Antero Holmila (b. 1979) hits a sensitive spot in the memory of us elderly Finns, when he asks what kind of emotional climate Finnish children grew up in, when still twenty years after the end of World War II, the occupation of Prague sparked strong fear reactions.

“You don’t have to stretch your imagination to come to the conclusion that the war was strongly present in the Finnish mental landscape. Of course, the presence was not everyday, but it was activated very sensitively”, Holmila evaluates.

Last fall appeared researcher Pekka Turunen book Cold peace proved that our fears had been greatly exaggerated. In the fall of 1968, nothing very unusual happened on Finland’s borders.

The rumors turned out to be fake news in today’s terms, but they did their job. The Finns were scared and the fear affected their behavior in a surprising way.

One memoirist insightfully sums up how the occupation of Prague “also opened eyes, but also closed mouths”.

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The Finns became friends of the Soviet Union in droves.

The panic caused by the occupation receded into the background and a sympathetic attitude took over. The Finns became friends of the Soviet Union in droves.

It was no longer enough that the president Urho Kekkonen and ministers made warm-hearted yya speeches. The Finland–Neuvostoliitto Society gained many new members, the number of tourists in Leningrad increased, trade with the East expanded, cultural exchange diversified.

However, Holmila estimates that genuine friendship did not reach the deep ranks of the people: “The main thing was suspicion and fear. Trust and friendship were just the surface.”

from the 1970s became twofold. Finnish politics became Finnish, and the concept of “official foreign policy” guided society and also public speech. Good relations with the East came first.

On the other hand, the economy was westernized. The country became prosperous, and the difference in living standards with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries grew. The more Finns went to the East, the more sympathetic they were to the system there.

“Ordinary people often made conclusions based on their own observations, which were more profound than the conclusions of trained Soviet historians,” writes Holmila.

The Soviet Union also lost its appeal in party politics. Skdl and Skp lost the elections and their internal conflicts escalated. Confidence in the Soviet system waned even among those who continued to believe in the idea of ​​socialism. Gesture of Alenius and Aarne Saarinen the masses did not qualify the Soviet Union as a model country for socialism.

Cold War lasted almost fifty years and ended in Europe in the late 1980s. In our country, it continued for a couple more years and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in Christmas 1991. Only then did the languages ​​become completely free.

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The Cold War lasted almost fifty years.

As one memoirist writes: “You hadn’t been allowed to talk like that for ages. So it burst out as explosively as a hidden and concealed truth can.”

Finns’ Cold War completes our picture of the post-war period. The collected material can be used for what it is worth. Holmila backs up the citizens’ stories with her sharp observations and at the end of the book connects the memories of the Cold War with Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

Correction 21.5. at 4:48 p.m.: Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in August 1968, not in the spring, as the caption previously read.