Columns Thirty years ago, Finland decided to apply for EU membership, and no one has since come around to decide who is sitting in the Finnish government.

I was an ordinary high school boy from Rovaniemi in the second half of the 1970s, translated from above, without, of course, noticing it himself. I was badly hurt when it was said abroad that we were Finnish and only half independent in the shadow of a bear.

How come? We ourselves had decided to live in harmony and peace with the Soviet Union. Besides, it was our friend. It often reassured his friendship. That’s how my thoughts ran. It took many years of adulthood to get rid of this delusion.

Finnishization the denial was part of Finnish. When we were accused of crawling in front of the Soviet Union, we had to get angry. What the heck? We’re not flirting. After all, we stabbed him in the winter war so damn. It was a draw. It was easy to get advice from the West, behind our backs.

Nowadays, those who approve of Finnishization no longer forbid throwing themselves back. The evidence is muted. A recent way of dealing with troublesome decades has been highlighted in the recent debate: Finnishization is acknowledged, but it is explained as a success story.

The war was wiped out, but the evacuees were settled. The welfare state was built and Nordic democracy was established. Today, be soaked in the happiest country in the world. So Finnishization was a stroke of luck.

I have to ask: is it too late to send a telegram to the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union? It ultimately staged this success for us. Stalin thought only of our best when demanding outrageous war reparations from us after the wars. When they were manufactured, the Finnish engineering industry flourished. For safety: this song contained sarcasm.

And so does this: should we re-translate it, because it has already guaranteed the success of our country once and for all? Should the state leadership state that after thinking about the NATO option for a long time, it had come to the conclusion that it was relinquishing it? There is no application for NATO membership now or ever.

Can a member of the European Union become Finnish when NATO does not even exist as an option for it?

Finland the success story did not begin on April 6, 1948, when the YYA Treaty was signed. It did not start with the night frosts, after which the Soviet Union got the hoof of the Finnish governments. Nor did it begin in 1970, when two thousand events were held in Finland Lenin in honor of the centenary of his birth.

There is no error. Two thousand.

Thirty years will have passed since the beginning of Finland’s real success story. The Prime Minister of Finland Esko Aho and the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Gennadi Burbulis signed a political agreement between Finland and Russia in Helsinki on 20 January 1992. At the same time, the YYA contract expired.

A couple of weeks later, the president Mauno Koivisto announced at the opening of the parliament that Finland is applying for membership of the European Union. Finland took a step towards the West, although it remained stationary.

In the few winter weeks of 1992, Finland officially exchanged the ruins of the Soviet Union for the European Union. Are we now a brawl to the west? We do not. We decided to go there in a referendum. You can also leave from there. It is not a prison of the peoples.

The European Union differs from the Soviet Union in that it has never attacked us, it has not put pressure on us militarily or economically, and it has not pushed scars around to decide who is sitting in the Finnish government.

Without freedom, there is no success.