Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
You can tell there was a lot of emotion in the statement.
Kind of OT, but I watched an interview with Alexander Stubb, a former PM of Finland discussing the topic of "Finlandization" as it would relate to a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The concept in Finland was to be proactive in not antagonizing Russia by actually legislating it. From what I understand, Finland had laws and rules about what could be published or publicly stated about Russia, and to promote a foreign policy that kept Russia happy. The former PM absolutely did not promote this idea.
I found it interesting that Finland at one time accepted restrictions on freedom in exchange for security. I don't blame them and understand why they felt it was necessary, but interesting because today, Finland leads many categories that measure freedom, including freedom of the media (which I think ranks 1st in the world). When I think of Finland, I have the impression of a country that is fiercely independent. Not an aggressive country, but definitely always prepared.
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Those things are mostly inaccurate, but there's a LOT of misinformation about that era around, even in Finland.
The myth of finlandization as it's discussed today is mostly an ahistorical pummeling tool certain people on the right direct at the left.
Actual finlandization was a lot more about the right and center deciding that Finlands commercial interests with Soviet Union were more important than anything else. Security was a part of it of course,, but if trade with Soviet Union hadn't become a massive source of wealth for Finland, Finlandization likely never happens.
As for how it worked, again it was mostly just about people in power, from politicians to businessmen to news editors etc, kind of all agreeing that talking smack about Soviet Union is a bad idea, and each enforcing that through their own means, rather than specific laws. It's something that can happen quite easily in a small country, as the people in power all know each other.
The extent to which criticism of Soviet Union was prohibited is also massively exaggerated. It was certainly a thing, but you could absolutely get books or articles or songs published on that topic for example. You could of course get a lot of public #### if you did it, or even worse be ignored to death, which obviously created a chilling effect. But it's not hard at all to find anti-soviet talk from that era.
Not that there wasn't plenty of genuinely pro-soviet thinking on the left, but that didn't really change during this period from what it was before, it was the center and right changing their stance that really created this era. SInce for the the right Finlandization wasn't ideological but purely practical, paradoxically criticizing the Soviet Union became mostly a leftist thing, as it was very much part of leftist infighting. (For an example, the two then-major left wing parties condemned Prague Spring 1968 quite strictly, while no other party said anything.)
Finlandization wasn't caused by any one factor, but rather there was a period where most people regardless of their political leanings kind of all agreed that we shouldn't talk smack about the Soviet Union, all for their own reasons. Some of it was security, some of it was ideology, but a lot of it was money.
Soviet Union wasn't just a huge trading partner for Finland, it was also an extremely profitable one, because Finland was one of the very few countries in the world that could pretty freely trade with both the Soviet bloc and the Nato bloc. That special trade position is a key reason why Finland very rapidly went from a poor mostly agricultural country to a rich industrialized country during the Cold War era.
As I like to put it, it's easy to get righteous about it now, but Finlandization worked out extremely well for us in retrospect.