Researcher Pekka Turunen debunks beliefs that the occupation of Czechoslovakia gave rise to the military actions of Finland and the Soviet Union in the fall of 1968.
Nonfiction book
Pekka Turunen: Cold peace. Kekkonen, military intelligence and the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Athena. 527 pp.
More grown up the nation will not forget August 21, 1968: occupation tanks, furiously protesting crowds in Prague, crackling news reports, the shadow of war over Europe. On February 24 of this year, those images were activated when Russia again attacked its neighbor, now Ukraine.
Of the Cold War conflicts in Europe, the Czech occupation was the most far-reaching. It alienated the Slavic peoples, the Czechs and Slovaks and the rest of the Eastern Bloc from the illusions of Soviet friendship.
It also struck a chord in the larger communist parties in the West, the outflow of membership accelerated, although not as drastically as after 1956 in Hungary. It has been considered that the end of the Soviet Union began in August 1968.
At the state level, the West reacted to the invasion in a restrained, even tame manner, but the aggressive nature of the Kremlin was more permanently etched in the lasting memory of hundreds of millions of people. When the Operation Danube of half a million soldiers descends on a small country, it also leaves a mark on the bystanders.
Fresh in weight Cold peace – in his work war researcher Pekka Turunen sets out the more official military spheres of 1968, from around the world and above all from Finland – the subject title of the book Kekkonen, military intelligence and the occupation of Czechoslovakia specify the interest and research question.
What crisis measures did the occupation cause on both sides of our eastern border?
Turunen takes the speeches, memories and rumors of his contemporaries as his starting point. For more than half a century, rumors have been heard that the occupation in Finland led to the cancellation of conscripts’ vacations, the transfer of troops and exercises, and the strengthening of coastal defenses.
If not for the implementation of a movement, then for raising the readiness of the swashbuckling.
We were also noticing the concentration of armored columns and other forces behind the eastern border, and groups of warships were curving menacingly towards our territorial waters.
This wild Turunen uproots the undergrowth of oral history throughout the book. His method is to compare rumors with archival information and interviews with contemporary officers. For the veracity of the previous stories, he gets a plus or minus zero for his partners; the situation at the borders remained normal, the Defense Forces prepared but did not overreact.
Finland was not threatened by occupation, although there have been rumors of such a thing.
The researcher often operates with auxiliary concepts borrowed from psychology: false memory, false memory, time shift. He considers the stories about the Czech occupation to be “the most significant false memory of Finland’s recent history”.
In false memories, people therefore feel that they are remembering “something non-existent that never happened”. Or the memory could have connected something that happened to another, more dramatic, time.
In his conclusions, Turunen leaves no room for reservations: “All traceable memories of exceptional activity have turned out to be false memories.”
Source work in Turunen is diligent. He has carefully combed through the archives of the corps departments, military counties and the General Staff, talked to the soldiers and made use of literature. Rumored cases are convincingly debunked, and it cannot be questioned at least without archival checks.
There were a couple of more active moments. For example, on September 4th, half a hundred Soviet ships maneuvered in the Gulf of Finland, which could be followed surprisingly well in good radar weather. There was also other activity near the coast, but not to the extent that has been talked about.
Myths are crumbling.
The army prepared, shall we say moderately, but the commander Yrjö Keinonen phlegmaticity catches the eye. After the occupation, a week passed before he appeared from his leave at his post, and the practical responsibility was left to his close men, such as Lt.-Gen. To Lauri Sutela. Keinonen’s line seems to have been that when you do nothing, you don’t make mistakes.
Commander of the Defense Forces Yrjö Keinonen (left) and Lieutenant General Lauri Sutela were in charge of the Finnish army during the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Sutela became commander of the Defense Forces in 1974.
They don’t occupy big Western military intelligence knew how to foresee, it was thought that the August exercises of the Warsaw League would remain exercises. But there was one gang that knew how to anticipate: the Swedish military’s signal intelligence FRA! The well-resourced and positioned FRA saw and reacted to the future 3–4 days before the H-moment.
Jokes about the Swedish army should stop.
Cold peace contains very cold facts. Pekka Turunen’s wit is strong, while his somewhat mechanical conclusions sprinkle the work with an unnecessary harshness. Criticism of sources and doubt should also be aimed more at one’s own thoughts.
Stress, tension, a sense of danger and fatigue increase the risk of false memories – but does that still prove that all the “exceptional” memories that came out of the occupation are false memories? Not all historical events can be found in the archives.
Comment: Does the general even pretend to remember when there is no trace left in the archives?
in the 1990’s I was investigating the strike at the Arabia factory in Helsinki in October 1948. I had received a general-level tip that the army had a plan to go into action to counter a supposed communist takeover.
The archives were spotless for the case. However, I aimed for evp officers, those who were active in the fall of 1948. It was agreed that the departure of the officers’ department on 22.10. From Santahamin, the hard pipe to Arabia was coming true, and the car guys at Autolinna on Mechelininkatu were also ready to leave at night.
Finally, someone gave an order: stop the operation. We can imagine the situation in Arabia, without the last minute stop: hundreds of strikers against an armed army.
One of the officers I reached out to was lieutenant general evp., who Pekka Turunen now uses as a reliable source from 1968. Were the memories of this general 20 years older fake memories, because the archives do not tell about them?
What about half a dozen other soldiers?
Brother Pekka Leppänen
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