Substance and Appearance: Finland

Max Jakobson

From Foreign Affairs, Summer 1980

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Summary:  As history is written by the victors, so is the agenda of world politics dictated by the powerful. The themes and priorities of the international debate are set by a handful of politicians, officials, editors and scholars in half a dozen capitals: a form of cultural imperialism which is not rendered any less effective by its being unintended. The view of the world underlying influential analyses of international relations reflects primarily the interests and aspirations of the great powers. Smaller nations are treated as objects of policy, statistical units in categories of states classified in terms of their relationship to their respective protectors or oppressors, as ours and theirs?pawns to be gained or lost in the conflicts or deals between the great powers.

Max Jakobson is Managing Director of the Council of Economic Organizations in Finland. He was the Permanent Representative of Finland to the United Nations from 1965 to 1972, and Ambassador to Sweden from 1972 to 1975. He is the author of Diplomacy of the Winter War, Finnish Neutrality, and other works. This article was originally prepared for the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales and is being published simultaneously in Politique Etrangère.

As history is written by the victors, so is the agenda of world politics dictated by the powerful. The themes and priorities of the international debate are set by a handful of politicians, officials, editors and scholars in half a dozen capitals: a form of cultural imperialism which is not rendered any less effective by its being unintended. The view of the world underlying influential analyses of international relations reflects primarily the interests and aspirations of the great powers. Smaller nations are treated as objects of policy, statistical units in categories of states classified in terms of their relationship to their respective protectors or oppressors, as ours and theirs-pawns to be gained or lost in the conflicts or deals between the great powers.

In the case of my own country, Finland, the difficulty of gaining recognition and understanding on her own terms, as an autonomous actor rather than a function of the policies of others, is compounded by the language curtain that conceals the innermost life of the Finnish people from outsiders. Few foreign diplomats, journalists or scholars know Finnish, and only a fraction of the texts needed for a comprehensive understanding of the past and present of the Finnish people is available in other languages. Much of the information about Finland available to foreigners is secondhand and second-rate. Since Finland on the whole has been successful in her efforts to keep out of the quarrels between the great powers, there has been no incentive for those who make policy or influence opinion in the leading capitals of the world to follow Finnish affairs; their knowledge about the country tends to be superficial and fragmentary.

As a result, Finland is forever at the mercy of the itinerant columnist who after lunch and cocktails in Helsinki is ready to pronounce himself upon the fate of the Finnish people. A person visiting, say, London for the first time, who does not know English and has only a vague notion of the significance of Dunkirk or the role of Winston Churchill, would hardly be regarded as qualified to comment on the British scene today. An equally profound ignorance about Finland is no deterrent. Obsessed as they usually are with one single aspect of the Finnish situation, relations with the Soviet Union, visitors from the West almost invariably produce a one-dimensional view of the country, corresponding to the current state of Western relations with the Soviet Union. Thus, in 1939-40, the Finns were idolized for their resistance against the Red Army; in 1941-44, ostracized for continuing to fight the Russians; at the end of the Second World War, castigated for their failure to heed Western advice to trust Moscow; in 1948, written off as lost for signing a treaty with the Soviet Union; and finally, at the present time, they are subjected to a kind of character assassination through the use of the term "Finlandization" to denote supine submission to Soviet domination.

Is it possible that the Finnish people have resigned themselves to ...

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