Text and photos by Johannes Nikitin, University of Helsinki and University of Eastern Finland
In Finland, Finnish-Estonian writer and activist Sofi Oksanen is, in my opinion, one of the best-known advocates for talking about Stalin’s terror, Kremlin, KGB, FSB, Russian human rights and Vladimir Putin’s government. Before February 2022 Sofi Oksanen’s speeches and books about Stalin’s terror “Stalinin lehmät” was very eye-opening in Finland and told a lot about the government in Moscow and how Moscow treated its neighbors as well as different nationalities within the Soviet Union (Finno-Ugric people, Tatars, etc.). Sofi Oksanen is a person who is not afraid to talk openly about problems between Finland and Russia. As a primer, after the Finnish Winter War and Continuation War, the period of so-called Finlandization began. Finlandization is a kind of state-level self-censorship under which it was not okay to criticize Moscow and the Kremlin’s decisions. This was partly due to the fear that Finland could get into another war with Moscow or the Soviet Union. It seems that fear did not go away in 1991 when the Soviet Union officially collapsed. Today we have discussions in Finland regarding whether Finlandization is still happening even if we finally joined NATO. Even if Finland had the Winter War and Continuation War with Moscow, most of the population was against joining NATO until the war in Ukraine escalated horribly in 2022. A sad reality finally hit Finns in the face.
The “Resilience of Baltic and Eastern European democracies” course in Riga handled many different kinds of these “red flags” when talking about the Finlandization phenomena. Our second lecture was titled “How to Stay Afloat Through Difficult Times” by Inese Voika. We talked about regaining independence in 1991 and what happened during the revolution. I have seen too many times in Finland that the most popular media outlets, such as YLE or Helsingin Sanomat, use the term “independence” instead of “re-independence.” It is alarming when Finland does not mention in practice that the Baltic countries were illegally occupied by Moscow.
Saying that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were part of the Soviet Union, without mentioning these facts, is not an action that a state that calls itself honest – like Finland –should ever do.
Even though Finland joined the European Union before the Baltic states, we can see that all Baltic states have been already part of NATO before Finland. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania tried to warn Finland beforehand that the Russian Federation was not to be trusted. In Finland, the response was that “it is just Baltic hysteria.” Later, Finland itself joined NATO with panic when seeing how the War in Ukraine escalated in 2022. Different conflicts initiated by Moscow, like Chechnya in 1999, the 2008 Georgian War, and the illegal annexation and occupation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014, did not trigger Finland enough to join NATO earlier.
Inese Voika mentioned that European values are human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, and human rights. I also think that listening to other countries which have the same problematic neighbor should be included in this list. That is why I also considered it important that we also visited the Museum of Occupation as well as the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga. International university courses like this would help Finns to understand more about the problems related to the Russian Federation and Finlandization. In my own free time, I also saw Stalin’s Terror Memorial next to Tornakalns train station. The open-air museum’s wagon used to take Latvians to Siberian gulags. This reminded me of Sofi Oksanen’s stories about how Moscow has treated Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians.
- This blog is a part of a blog series written by the BAMSE Riga intensive course students. The blog series analyses the concept of resilience from five different viewpoints: democracy in crises, regional responses, social consequences, relevance of history politics and cultural approaches. This blog belongs to the relevance of history politics part of the blog series. Read more about the blog series on Bamse News & Events website.