The brave Finns
Richard West
Helsinki Within hours of coming to Finland, I heard someone remarking: 'We've had 40 wars against the Russians and lost them all, but who is having a good time and who is having a bad time now?' The remark was misleading, since modern, independent Finland has fought only two or possibly three wars against Russia. The rest were fought during the seven centuries up till 1809 when Finland was part of the Swedish Kingdom fighting against the Tsars; and in 'Great! One could get a hangover cure at the same time.' those 40 wars Finland was always a battle- field. The Finns still dislike the Swedes, for reasons I hope to explore next week, but first one must look at Finland's relationship with its larger, eastern neighbour.
From 1809, the Finns enjoyed a measure of independence under the Tsars, including a parliament, the status of archduchy, and greater freedom of worship and use of their language than under the Swedes. Even dur- ing the Tsarist reactionary or despotic inter- vals, the Finns suffered less than for in- stance the Poles, or the Russians them- selves. At times when the Russians could not receive a passport to travel west, they contented themselves with a visit to Finland with its comparative freedom. The Finnish parliament under the Tsars was the first in the world to extend the franchise to women•
The oddness of Finland's position in north-east Europe is expressed in the life of her national hero, Carl Gustav Emil Man` nerhenn, who was born in 1867. In spite of his German-sounding name (later the cause of many aspersions), his faimly was originally Dutch but had come to Sweden during the 17th century and had then gone to live in Finland. The Finnish national hero spoke Swedish, Russian, French, Ger- man and English before he started to speak his own language; and that not well. The man who was later to win fame fighting the Russians served 30 years in the Tsarist army, was for eight years military governor of Poland, spent two years as a kind of Russian spy in China and Central Asia, and fought for the Tsar in the Japanese war and again the 1914 war, when he commanded the army in Romania. But that was only the start of his long career.
When revolution broke out in 1917, in nearby St Petersburg, the Finns were divid- ed between the Reds and the Whites and also between those wanting to stay with Russia and those wanting independence. (There were Whites and Reds on both the independence and the pro-Russian side.) In December 1917, the Finns in Helsinki pro- claimed independence and soon afterwards asked General Mannerheim to be both Co mmander-in-Chief and Regent. It was an invitation hedged with doubts. Some Finns distrusted Mannerheim as a reactionary; others because he had served so long for the former imperial power; others because he spoke the language of Sweden, a still more ancient enemy.
The events of 1918 were confused and bloody. The Red and White Finns fought a civil war in which there were mass murders on both sides. The British, who now sup- ported the Bolsheviks in order to keep them fighting the Germans, landed at Arch- angel, where they were joined by the Red Finns against both Finnish and Russian Whites. In March 1918, General Manner- heim was obliged to ally with the Germans, so that Finland later had to pay war repara- tions. However, Finland had won her in- dependence. In 1919, Mannerheim failed to be elected president of the country he had helped to create, and went into private life. Then in 1933, the year that Hitler came to Power, the government called back Man- nerheim to be Field-Marshal and chief of the general staff in case of a new attack from aggressive neighbours.
The attack was to come not from Ger- many but the Soviet Union. In late 1939, the Soviets demanded a readjustment of frontiers to give them better defence of St Petersburg (now renamed Leningrad after the agitator). When the Finns declined, the Russians attacked in December, expecting a walk-over victory.
The Finnish ski-troops replied with a heroism and savagery that astonished the Russians and earned the admiration of all the rest of the world. (When we played Russians and Finns' at school, the smaller boys like myself had to take the side of the hated Russians.) The Finns were never defeated but made peace in March 1940 from want of supplies. They kept their in- dependence, and so were much better off than Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, whom Stalin invaded later that year, murdering up to a third of their populations. When Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, the Finns had a chance to take revenge; rather wisely they did not take it. Although Finnish troops recaptured some of the regions ceded after the earlier Winter War' they did not join in the siege of Leningrad; they could not have fed the captured population; nor did they like the Nazis. Field-Marshal Mannerheim was a Francophile and Anglophile who had little love for the Germans and detested Hitler.
When the Fahrer came on an uninvited visit in 1942, Mannerheim spent the whole inter- view puffing cigar smoke into the face of that anti-smoking fanatic. When the Finns made a truce with the Soviet Union in 1944 they engaged in a still more ferocious war to drive the Germans from Lapland. The Finns were thus the only people to fight in both world wars against both sides.
When Mannerheim was elected president in 1946 Stalin, of all people, applauded the choice. He respected a man and a people prepared to fight him twice to the death. It is true that Russia obtained a peace treaty that slightly restricted the size of the Finnish army, exacted reparations, and made the finns promise not to invade the Soviet Union again. And the Finns once more lost the Karelian district including a tenth of their forests.
Nevertheless Finland is free while most of Eastern Europe suffers the Russian Empire. While Russia has plundered rich countries like Czechoslovakia, Finland is prospering out of Russia. Finland sells Russia ships, in- cluding most of its ice-breakers. Finnish building companies have constructed towns in Russia; the Finnish workers have sometimes actually gone on strike in Russia. Since 80 per cent of their imports from Russia come in energy (mostly oil), the price rise ten years ago meant that the Finns can now sell the Russians more consumer goods under an equal trade agreement. Also the Finns can refine the extra fuel and sell it to the West as petrol, making a profit. In some ways Finland enjoys the same rela- tionship with the Soviet Union as Hong Kong does with mainland China.
The Finns rightly resent the Western talk about Tinlandisation', implying that they and similar countries are client states of the Soviet Union. Finland, in spite of the peace treaty restraints, has a sizeable and efficient army with one million reservists on recall. In the event of attack, these men could be used either in large units or smaller guerrilla groups in the forests and lakeland. The Finns have paid particular heed to defence policies worked out by the Yugoslays; they are very, very interested in what is happen- ing in Afghanistan. It is true that the Finns turn back most refugees from the Soviet Union, which is sad but realistic. Anyway, it is not for us to sneer, the country that sent back millions of Russians to Stalin's firing squads. We send back almost all the Chinese we catch escaping to Hong Kong.
The hardest thing to understand about the Finns is how they can be so tough on the Russians while having so many communist voters. The Party is smaller and rather split but still rivals the Social Democrats for the Left vote. Many are grandsons of Reds from the civil war. Some are what they call `forest communists' from the poor north; some are refugees from the Karelian regions taken by Russia. Yet no Finnish communists live or want to live in Russia. Who would? If the Russians attacked again, even the Finnish communists would no doubt join in giving them a bloody nose.
Previous page
