Coming Home or Moving Home?`Westernizing' Narratives in Finnish Foreign Policy and the Reinterpretation of Past Identities

Abstract

With the end of the Cold War, historical revisionism became popular in Finland. Central to such revisionism has been the notion that Finland has come home to assume its rightful and natural place in the Western European family. Such narratives are politicized, serving as a way to justify an increasingly Western-oriented foreign policy. In the first instance, the article analyses the foundations of such Westernizing narratives in order to expose their politicized nature. Secondly, it is shown that as a consequence of a particular reading of the Cold War period through a return to the Finlandization debates of the late 1960s-1980s, `West' and `Europe' are understood in contemporary debate largely in terms of an opposition with Cold War Finnish foreign policy and Cold War characterizations of Soviet/Russian identity. Finally, the article focuses more explicitly on the emplotment of Russia within Finnish discourse. In constructing Westernness and Europeanness in terms of an opposition to a rather ambiguous emplotment of Russia as a potential threat, it is shown that engaging with the `feared' neighbour has in fact become an opportunity for the Finns to construct positive images of themselves as a participant in the Western civilizing mission in Russia.

Full text

Coming Home or Moving Home?
“Westernising” Narratives in Finnish Foreign Policy
and the Re-interpretation of Past Identities
By Chris Browning
UPI Working Papers 16 (1999)

1
THE HUMAN SPATIALITY AND GEOHISTORY SEMINAR
UNIVERSITY OF TURKU
3-4.06.99
“Linking the European East and West: The Baltic Sea Area Within the Framework of
European Integration”
Coming Home or Moving Home? “Westernising” Narratives in Finnish
Foreign Policy and the Re-interpretation of Past Identities
By Chris Browning
(All comments welcome)
Visiting Researcher, Department of International Politics,
Finnish Institute of International Affairs, University of Wales, Aberystwyth,
Mannerheimintie 15 A, Penglais,
00260 Helsinki. Aberystwyth.
Finland. Ceredigion.
Wales, UK.
Email: christopherbrowning@hotmail.com

2
Introduction
#
“Finland has come home, but she is not used to being at home”
Risto Penttilä quoted in Tomas Ries – ‘Lessons of the Winter War’
http://virtual.finland.fi/
21.01.99
Since the end of the Cold War it is widely accepted that Finnish foreign policy
has oriented increasingly towards the ‘West’, the most pertinent and concrete example
of which, to date, has been accession to the EU. Implicit in many commentaries is the
assumption that this orientation is a natural phenomenon, the natural culmination of
an effervescent Finnish ‘Western’ cultural identity. Whilst the rhetorical style perhaps
differs espousers of this view draw on Herderian and Hegelian assumptions,
essentially arguing that after the unfortunate interruption and deviation from its true
path occasioned by the Cold War the Finnish ‘national spirit’ is now back on its
rightful historical and linear course to national fulfilment and blossoming. Looking
into the nation’s history such discourses see Finland’s cultural and political roots as
lying in the West and hence posit that with the break-up of the Soviet Union Finland
is returning to these organic origins in Western civilisation, with all the effects for
foreign policy such a ‘Western’ identity will entail. This is what we may term the
‘Westernising’ narrative of current debates about Finnish identity and Finnish foreign
policy. On this basis the Finnish Cold War foreign policy of neutrality is
characterised, either as having been a total aberration and betrayal of the Finnish
‘Western’ Self, or, and perhaps more commonly, as having been the best possible
option available to the Finnish elite at the time: constrained by the dictates of power,
agile Finnish political leaders were able to manoeuvre the Finnish ship of state
through the various pitfalls and traps waiting to beguile them in the stormy waters of
great power Cold War politics. Now free of such power dictates these current
‘Westernising’ discourses are attempting to push Finnish foreign policy towards the
West, legitimising such a move to the Finnish public and the wider international
audience on the grounds of Finland’s claimed historical Western identity. To note the
title of this panel discussion, “Defining New Identities Between East and West’, for
Westernising discourses there is no between about it. As an organically Western state
why would Finland want to be between East and West any longer? On this basis the
#
I thank Hanna Ojanen and Christer Pursianen for helpful reflections during the drafting of this paper.

3
Finnish neutrality of the Cold War period merely disguised the true Finnish identity, a
ruse so that Finland could in the future once more live as its true self when conditions
once again permitted.
The opening quote by Risto Penttilä, a former leader of the Young Finn Party and an
academic on Finnish foreign policy, that “Finland has come home, but she is not used
to being at home”, reflects something of this Westernising narrative. From its Cold
War hideaway Finland is returning to the comforts of home. At the same time though
Penttilä problematises just how natural this home identity is for the Finns. The Finns
are not used to being at home. Similarly, in the article this quote is taken from Tomas
Ries also immediately goes on to add that after four years of EU membership
“familiarity with home is becoming all the more apparent in Finland”. Both Penttilä
and Ries point to an interesting contradiction. Home was not really home before, this
Western home is only becoming more like home, more familiar. This undermines the
justification for arguing Finland is an organically/naturally Western state since Finns
are still unsure what it is to be Western. What this points us towards however, is that
Finland is undergoing an identity transformation – it is in fact “moving home”, rather
than “coming home”, the implication being that Finns have had prior national
identities distinct from a purely Western identification which have felt equally as real
and natural and which have relied on different stories of the self for their justification.
At the same time the ‘Westernising’ narrative of post-Cold War Finnish foreign
policy is far from being uncontended. Other narratives of the history and identity of
the Finnish self exist in contradiction and contestation with the Westernising narrative
and such contradictions are also evident in various aspects of Finnish foreign policy
which rely on these different, and far from complementary, understandings of the self
and of others. Thus, although we can posit that an identity transformation is underway
in Finland from the dominantly accepted Cold War understanding of Finnish identity,
it is far from certain as to where any reorientation will end up.
In this paper I explore three central issues raised here. First, I outline how narratives
of the nation’s history play a decisive role in the construction of national identities.
Second, I aim to further problematise the Westernising narrative of Finnish foreign
policy by showing, in the first instance, that Finnish Cold War identities were just as
real and efficacious as post-Cold War ‘Western’ ones are and, in the second instance,

4
to illustrate more precisely how Westernising arguments operate, the premises they
use and how they reinterpret history. In particular there will be a focus on how the
language they use and the stories they tell attempt to construct for the audience the
reality of the situation and make what is in fact not natural, seem natural, what is in
fact moving home feel like coming home. Finally, I will analyse two central
contradictions I currently see in Finnish foreign policy. The first of these is the point
that different aspects of Finnish foreign policy rely on starkly contradictory
understandings of the Finnish self in relation to perceived understandings of Finland’s
principle constituting other, Russia. The second, and closely related, is the ambiguity
of the term ‘West’ in these debates.
History, Narrative and Identity
Narratives, or telling stories about ourselves of how we understand ourselves and
others and the unravelling world about us, are a vital if often unconscious aspect of
our lives which serves as “a way of organising experience and making sense of the
world in which we live, that is to say, of constructing meaning”.
1
In this respect,
“Narrative is not just an explanatory device, but is actually constitutive of the way we
experience things”.
2
In a disparate confusing world beyond our individual or
collective control narratives of the self constitute an essential way in which selves are
able to establish a sense of belonging, order and security vis-à-vis their social
environment. In Calvin Schrag’s terms the self is really a “narrating self… a
storyteller who both finds herself in stories already told and strives for a self-
constitution by emploting herself in stories in the making”. Indeed, for Schrag such
storytelling is the essence of selfhood: “To be a self is to be able to render an account
of oneself, to be able to tell the story of one’s life”.
3
By establishing a linear story
from who we were in the past up until the present narratives create a framework
within which our experiences become intelligible to ourselves and to others. On this
basis history, narrative and identity are clearly intricately intertwined concepts. As the
1
Claire Moon (1998) ‘True Fictions: truth, reconciliation, and the narrativisation of identity’. Paper
presented at the Aberystwyth Postinternational Group conference on “Linking Theory and Practice:
Issues in the Politics of Identity” held at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, September 9-11, 1998.
2
Mark Johnson quoted in Calvin O. Schrag (1997) The Self after Postmodernity (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press) p.23
3
Calvin O. Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity, p.26

5
historian Simon Schama therefore notes, history “is a story we carry with us”,
4
for it
is the stories we tell about our, and our society’s, past which condition, not only what
we think of our (collective) self now, of who we are, but which also impinge on our
understandings of the identities and interests of others. This is for the reason that all
stories of the self presuppose specific relations with and understandings of other
selves. Indeed, to reiterate something of a gospel of truth in the literature on identity,
the self’s identity is constructed more in relation to what it is not than to anything
else. Thus, the notion of Finland’s between East and West identity of the Cold War
presupposed a definable East and West between which to be. At the same time there is
never any single story of history, in fact, history is very much at the mercy of
narrating selves in the present possessed of the ability and often the need to be
creative with the narrative and to engage in re-readings and re-interpretations of the
past. Being temporalised the self relies on re-interpreting past experiences in terms of
conditions the self finds itself in now as a result of developments in the wider social
environment out of its control.
5
The self inevitably faces the need to reposition itself
in the face of new developments and this requires retrospectively revising, selecting
and ordering past details and experiences “in such a way as to create a self-narrative
that is coherent and satisfying and that will serve as a justification for one’s present
condition and situation”.
6
As such narratives are as much about the future as about the past in that they contain
implicit assumptions of the current and the potentialities for the future emerging
identity of the self. As Schrag notes, the descriptive and prescriptive aspects of
discourse are often two sides of the same coin. “A description of the state of affairs in
regard to overpopulation is also a normative judgement that issues a call for social
change and political action”.
7
Similarly, a description of a nation’s historical
experience and its identity as, for example, ‘Western’, also implies similar
prescriptive action for the nation’s leaders into the future. Importantly, therefore,
narratives of the past are carriers of power in that they attempt to construct our
experience of social reality and thus our future being. In this respect the ‘facts’ of
history are constituted in the very narrative, which likewise also serves to attempt to
4
Quoted in The Observer, 03.01.99, p.19
5
Calvin O. Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity, p.37
6
Polkinghorne quoted in Calvin O Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity, pp.37-38, footnote 14

6
construct for us what we value and what our social conscience should be, all of which
is implicit in the very process of narrating to us who we are and where we are going.
8
As such different narratives of the self also exist as competing claims to knowledge in
which current political disputes are projected into the past.
9
Different narratives of the
nation as, say, Western or of a between East and West identity, are each attempting to
appropriate and clarify the truth of the nation’s history and identity for the population
and hence to legitimise certain future courses of action. And, to this extent, different
narratives exist in competition with each other in their attempt to attain hegemony and
hence the right to define the ‘we’ of the nation. At the same time therefore, narratives
of history can also carry the prospect of the ‘liberation’ from the ‘legacy of the past’,
10
which, as we will see, is one aspect central to ‘Westernising’ narratives in the current
Finnish foreign policy debates. Such narratives of liberation operate essentially on the
basis of exposing the past for ‘what it really was’, therefore offering a claim to
knowledge about the ‘truth’ of the past, which competes with previously accepted
interpretations and understandings and which must, thus, by implication be untrue and
even deceitful.
Narratives can therefore be viewed as being in conversation with each other with each
propagating a different set of relationships between the self and others with recourse
to particular implied readings of history for evidence. In espousing one particular
narrative the propagators of that narrative are appealing to an audience who may
simultaneously be telling contrary narratives and thus may or may not be receptive to
the first narrative. One story may be modified and incorporated into the other or they
may continue to exist in antithesis until one or the other attains a hegemonic position
and is thus largely able to silence the competitor from the public gaze. Indeed, such
was the position during the Cold War period when the Finnish political elite, and in
particular president Kekkonen, successfully muted voices deviating from the
Paasikivi-Kekkonen line by establishing a particular narrative framework of Finnish
identity throughout society so encompassing that dissenting voices were largely
7
Calvin O. Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity, p.92
8
Calvin O. Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity, pp.92-94
9
Gerhard Brunn (1992) ‘Historical Consciousness and Historical Myths’, in A. Kappeler (ed) The
Formation of National Elites (Dartmouth: European Science Foundation, New York University Press)
p.334
10
Hanna Järä (1999) Dealing with the Past: The Case of Estonia (Helsinki: UPI Working Papers; The
Finnish Institute of International Affairs, No.15) p.6

7
excluded, being tarnished with the brush of irresponsibility and illegitimacy as
representative voices of the Finnish self. This in itself points us towards the ways in
which narratives can act in the construction of collective identities, and in this case
national identities. Thus, whilst psychological literature can point us towards the need
of the individual to identify with a wider social in-group vis-à-vis a differentiation
from out-groups,
11
it is the language and symbolisations that are utilised in specific
narratives which are able to create across a group of people a feeling of a shared
national experience and a common identity – that is, to use Schama’s terms, to create
an historical memory we (collectively) carry with us. At the same time it is the
language and entailed symbolisations of a narrative which also act to construct the
boundaries between in-groups and out-groups, between us and them, between the self
and others.
Given the ‘vexatious fact’ of the social world, which continually changes and
transforms beyond anyone’s control,
12
such boundaries differentiating the self from
others are in constant need of reaffirmation and at times even reconstruction in order
to reflect developing perceptions of changing conditions. For example, the ending of
the Cold War has, for many Finns, stripped the Finnish identity of neutrality of its
contemporary relevance by removing its foundational premises of the world as split
between two mutually hostile blocs of East and West. To this extent accepted
concepts, which derive from conceptions of self identity in relation to the identity of
others, now appear for many as redundant. The result, as Erkki Toivanen has noted, is
the emergence of “a general desire to make a fresh start”.
13
This is as much as to say
Finns feel the need to reconceptualise the Finnish self in respect of the new conditions
facing them. The Westernising narrative is one, if contested, such aspect of this debate
over the place, the identity, of Finland and the Finns in the post-Cold War world.
11
On the need to identify with an in-group see, for example, Mary Caputi’s discussion of the theories
of Kristeva and Volkan. Mary Caputi (1996) ‘National Identity in Contemporary Theory’, Political
Psychology (Vol.17, No.4)
12
I take this concept from Margaret Archer who argues that society is vexatious for the reason that
“’society’ is that which nobody wants in exactly the form they find it and yet it resists both individual
and collective efforts at transformation – not necessarily by remaining unchanged but altering to
become something else which still conforms to no one’s ideal”. Margaret Archer (1995) Realist social
theory: the morphogenetic approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p.2
13
Erkki Toivanen (1994) ‘Finland’s Quest for Security’, in Walter Goldstein (ed) Security in Europe:
The Role of NATO after the Cold War (London: Brassey’s) p.65

8
As noted in the introduction Westernising narratives claim for Finland a national
identity which is naturally, even organically, ‘Western’. In the above it has been
argued that as identities rely on narratives for their construction of realness such an
essentialist claim is misleading and serves overtly political purposes. In the following
section I wish to problematise the Westernising claim further.
Westernising Narratives and the Re-interpretation of History
Meet the Physician: Cold War Finnish Identities
Finnish identity has not always been Western. At times, it has in fact been premised
on precisely not being Western or Eastern. For example, Øle Waever has shown how
during the Cold War “Nordicity” became an intrinsic element of the national identities
of all the Nordic states. Nordic identity he notes, was “a model of the enlightenment,
anti-militaristic society that was superior to the old Europe”.
14
Thus, Nordic identity
was the promise of a better future and as such it was premised precisely on its
differentiation from the militaristic Cold War combatants.
15
Norden was not East or
West, it was a third way based on humanitarian principles, peace, co-operation and
disarmament, and not least on a distinctive model of the welfare state. In a similar
vein we can note Urho Kekkonen’s famous phrase in a speech to the United Nations
in 1961 that: “We see ourselves as physicians rather than judges; it is not for us to
pass judgement nor to condemn, it is rather to diagnose and to try to cure”.
16
The
physician is a very positive image here, it also carries moralistic tones reminiscent of
Waever’s point, in that as Finnish neutrality was justified on the basis of keeping out
of the conflicts between the great powers it can be seen to presume that the judges,
those willing to condemn, sentence, pass judgement and execute punishment, were
these very great powers. By contrast Finland stood aloof , occupying the moral high
ground, the benevolent physician.
14
Øle Waever (1992) ‘Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War’, International Affairs
(Vol.68, No.1) p.77. For a similar set of arguments also see, Hans Mouritzen (1995) ‘The Nordic
Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument: Its Rise and Fall’, Journal of Peace Research (Vol.32, No.1)
pp.9-21
15
Øle Waever, ‘Nordic Nostalgia’, p.79
16
Speech entitled “Finland’s attitude to problems in world politics” delivered to the General Assembly
of the United Nations on 19.10.1961 and reprinted in Tuomas Vilkuna (ed) Neutrality: The Finnish

9
Indeed, rather than being ‘Western’ the West and its institutions (in particularly
NATO) were seen as a destabilising force and a threat to world and Finnish security.
17
From the perspective of the dominant Finnish narrative of the time an important
essence of Western identity was understood as being anti-East, and more specifically
as anti-Russian. In the Finnish narratives the East was depicted differently. Whereas
in salient Western narratives the West was depicted in opposition to the evil
expansionist Eastern empire and as such the West stood as the upholders of
humanity’s freedom and morality, in Finnish narratives the East was emploted more
favourably, not as an enemy but as a potential friend. This Finnish conception of the
East, the Soviet Union and Russians and hence also of Finnish identity in the world,
itself rested on the emergence of a new dominant narrative of the Finnish self and of
Finnish history at the end of the Second World War. In brief, the essence of this
narrative, to a great extent initiated and championed by Juho Paasikivi, was that it was
Finnish national identity of the inter-war period which was responsible for Finland’s
wars with the Soviet Union. This inter-war identity, it was claimed, had basically been
characterised by widespread russophobia in Finnish society and the resulting
depiction of the Soviet Union as Finland’s perivihollinen – the hereditary enemy.
18
Russophobia, as Heikki Luostarinen notes, was “the notion that Finland and Russia
cannot live in peaceful co-existence”.
19
In short, the result was that Finns widely saw
themselves as “the Western World’s outpost in the East” facing an evil and
expansionist communist empire the result of which was that Finland abandoned “itself
in a national recklessness which left little room for a more sober and politically
practical viewpoint”.
20
As such it was argued that Finnish proclamations of neutrality
at the end of the 1930s simply were not believed by the Soviets and as such Finland
Position. Speeches by Dr Urho Kekkonen (London: Heinemann; 1973) Translated by P. Ojansuu and L.
A. Keyworth
17
Tuomas Forsberg (1999) ‘Between Neutrality and Membership: Finland’s and Sweden’s Place in the
NATO Family’, in NATO 50 mapping the future. The Washington Summit 23-25 April 1999 (London:
Agenda Publishing Limited) p.112
18
Fred Singleton (1981) ‘The Myth of Finlandisation’, International Affairs (Vol.57, No.2) p.275; Roy
Allison (1985) Finland’s Relations with the Soviet Union 1944-84 (Macmillan) pp.5,17
19
Heikki Luostarinen (1989) ‘Finnish Russophobia: The Story of an Enemy Image’, Journal of Peace
Research (Vol.26, No.2) p.128. Luostarinen argues that to understand the emergence of Russophobia
we need to go back to the Finnish Civil War and the founding of the First Republic, which saw a
separation of Finland from Russia at the state level, but more importantly at the ideological level in
consequence of the victory of the Whites over the Communist inspired Reds. As such the Soviet Union
became characterised as representing that aspect of Finnish society which had sought to destroy the
bourgeois state.

10
became viewed as a ‘legitimate’ security threat. Finnish rhetoric had made them
untrustworthy and hence the Soviets necessarily felt obliged to deal with the Finns
with force. In these narratives therefore the impression pervades that in the inter-war
period foreign policy was hijacked by the allure of “national aspirations, and deep
emotionalism [which] combine[d] to form national policy”.
21
The emergence of this new and increasingly dominant narrative following the end of
the war essentially served to elicit a narrative closure on the past it depicted. The
narrative retold history and claimed to tell it ‘how it really was’ with the implication
that negative views of Russians had been misconceived. Russians were resurrected
from their negative position in the collective Finnish consciousness whilst at the same
time the Finns were being ‘liberated’ from the chains of their inter-war past. Exposing
history ‘for what it was’ served as a way of moving forward, of becoming. The Soviet
Union’s security concerns were no longer conceived of as pig-headed expansionism
but as legitimate.
22
Of particular importance in this new narrative was Paasikivi’s
appropriation of the scientific language of the Enlightenment as a description of his
own policies. The appropriation of terms such as realism, rationalism and pragmatism
as intrinsic elements of the language of the new narrative essentially delegitimised
both inter-war foreign policy and current contending views as irrational and therefore
as irresponsible and non-viable. As Schrag put it, the description of the past entailed a
prescription for the future. In this instance the previously irrational and hot-headed
Finns would now become pragmatic and circumspect, less prone to nationalist
emotional outbursts, but rather viewing the world through the lenses of “cool
rationalism”
23
and the “unsentimental calculation of the national interest”.
24
Thus,
through a particular description of the past a different future became possible
ultimately based on the reconstitution of Soviet identity in Finnish eyes.
20
Aimo Pajunen (1969) ‘Finland’s Security Policy’, in Ilkka Heiskanen, Jukka Huopaniemi, Keijo
Korhonen and Klaus Törnudd (eds) Essays on Finnish Foreign Policy (Helsinki: Finnish Political
Science Association, Vammala) p.8
21
Anatole Mazour (1956) Finland: Between East and West (London: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc)
p.200
22
For example, in a speech in 1967 Kekkonen noted, “I have read in the history of Russia that she has
been attacked fourteen times in the last 150 years… It is justifiable to claim that if the leaders of a great
country… were not concerned about the security of their country, they would not be fulfilling their
duty”. Speech entitled, “Finland’s Path in a World of Tensions”, delivered at the General Church
Meeting in Vaasa, Finland on 06.01.1967, in Tuomas Vilkuna (ed) Neutrality: The Finnish Position.
Speeches by Dr Urho Kekkonen, p.196
23
Anatole Mazour, Finland: Between East and West, p.200

11
Repositioning Soviet identity vis-à-vis the Finns in the new narrative likewise served
as a departure for Finnish identity in the Cold War conflict.
The distinctiveness of this new identity in relation to the West became particularly
evident in the Finlandisation debates of the 1960s-1980s. In the West Finland’s ‘good
neighbourly’ relations with the Soviet Union, as the Soviets liked to term it,
25
were
regarded with utmost suspicion. Coined in internal political debates in Germany
‘Finlandisation’ implied “subservience to the Soviet Union and a tendency to
anticipate and comply with Soviet wishes even before they are formulated”.
26
Finlandisation implied a distinctly negative and expansionist view of the Soviet Union
and of communism and as such protagonists of the concept tended to view Finland as
a Soviet Trojan horse, dressed in Western garb but under Soviet control.
27
By
contrast, defenders of the tendency of Finnish decision-makers to pay heed to Soviet
wishes and concerns saw such a policy as the pragmatic and rational course of action
given Finland’s geopolitical position and its different and less suspicious
understanding of Soviet identity.
28
To this extent the contesting interpretations of the
Finlandisation hypothesis thus represented competing claims to knowledge about the
world in which each narrative attempted to frame reality by implicitly invoking
different images and identities of actors in the world. From the Western viewpoint the
Soviet Union was seen as aggressive and subversive and communist society the
specter, to use Walter Lacqueur’s phrase, of an unpleasant and fearful alternative to
Western liberal democracy to be contained at all costs. By contrast such views of the
Soviet Union, particularly in respect to Finland, were seen as misconceived in Finland
and as deriving from a distinct lack of knowledge of Finland, the Soviet Union and
Finnish-Soviet history. It was therefore such a view of Soviet identity, as distinct from
that held in the West, which facilitated the construction of a between East and West
24
Max Jakobson ‘Substance and Appearance’, Foreign Affairs (Vol.58, No.5) p.1042
25
For example, see Y. Goloshubov (1978) ‘The USSR and Finland – Good Neighbourly Relations’,
International Affairs (Moscow) (May) pp.12-18; A. Medvedev (1981) ‘USSR and Finland – Good
Neighbours’, International Affairs (Moscow) (February) pp.80-84
26
Fred Singleton (1978) ‘Finland between East and West’, World Today (Vol.34, No.8) p.325
27
Two writers in particular have gained notoriety for their Finlandisation attacks on Finnish foreign
policy: Walter Laqueur and Nils Orvik. See Walter Laqueur (1977) ‘Europe: The Specter of
Finlandization’, Commentary (Vol.64, No.6); and for a summary of Orvik’s position see David Kirby,
Finland in the Twentieth Century (London: C. Hurst and Company) p.188 and Roy Allison, Finland’s
Relations with the Soviet Union 1944-84, p.2

12
identity for the Finns, and enabled Kekkonen to promote an international image of
Finland as a physician, a healer of rifts and a mediator in the prevailing ideological
conflict. Given this the current Westernising claim that Finland has always been
‘Western’, that Finland is coming home, must therefore be seen as a retrospective
view of history – meaning today’s conceptions of identity are implanted back on the
past and taken to be self-evident of the whole of history. Importantly, therefore, we
need to analyse just how the narratives of Finnish post-war history being told by the
Westernisers are attempting to reconstruct collective memories of Finnish history in
such a way as to make ‘moving home’ feel like ‘coming home’.
Putting the Physician in a Straitjacket
A useful and representative starting point is the following statement by Jukka
Valtasaari, Secretary of State at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs:
“No longer are we watching developments from a position restrained by
the straitjacket of our Cold War neutrality”
29
Straitjacket is interesting here, it is doing something and conjures up certain
negative images. Straitjackets prevent you doing what you want to do, they constrain
you, they suppress your movement and action and prevent you from demonstrating
your true expressions. Being in a straitjacket also carries the assumption that you are
somehow (mentally) ill (or at least need to be repressed). So from being the physician
of post-war neutrality interpretations (justifications) of the time, with the positive
connotations for identity that entailed, Finland is now being represented as the
physician in a straitjacket – the ill physician. This is to say that Finland was having to
be suppressed to prevent itself from voicing its true opinions.
30
Now the Cold War is
28
See Max Jakobson, ‘Substance and Appearance’, p.1040; Erkki Berndtson (1991) ‘Finlandization:
Paradoxes of External and Internal Dynamics’, Government and Opposition (Vol.26, No.1) p.26;
George Maude (1976) The Finnish Dilemma (London: Oxford University Press) p.23
29
Jukka Valtasaari speech entitled, ‘A Finnish Perspective on the Changing Europe’, delivered at the
Academy for Social and National Development of Uzbekistan on 08.01.1999.
http:virtual.finland.fi/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=1101&intNWSCategoryID=2
. The same
statement was also included by Valtasaari in a slightly amended version of the same speech delivered
at SASS, Shanghai on 10.05.1999.
http:virtual.finland.fi/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=2610&intNWSCategoryID=2
30
A more positive view of this argument is that whilst constrained by the power dictates of the Cold
War and Finland’s geopolitical position, Finnish leaders oriented Finland as far West as was

13
over Finland is out of the straitjacket and no longer needs to be suppressed. Finland’s
true identity can come out. If Finland is moving to the West we should not be
surprised, that is what we should in fact naturally expect for as Risto Penttilä noted,
on this reading Finland is coming home.
One method of justifying this move Westwards has being in a resurfacing of the Cold
War Finlandisation debates. However, unlike before when this was largely an
international debate, in the 1990s it has been overwhelmingly of internal dimensions.
Rather than rejecting the Finlandisation hypothesis as before, Westernising narratives
of Finland’s post-war history actually seek to expose what they see has having been a
very real and malignant Finnish illness. Thus, whereas during the Cold War the Finns
defended their position arguing, like Max Jakobson, that Finland was “at the mercy
of” itinerant columnists with only “superficial and fragmentary” knowledge of the
Finnish position,
31
we are now told that those journalists were in fact right, that
Finlandisation “was not merely a figment of the imaginations of Western journalists
and anti-Soviet scholars, but a part of Finnish reality”.
32
According to this view during the Cold War years, and especially during the tenure of
Kekkonen as president, an ‘official religion’ of “national self-censorship and official
admiration of the neighbour to the east”
33
was established across Finnish society.
Accordingly it is argued that “for a country with liberal democratic traditions there
was an unnatural degree of consensus”
34
to the detriment of the weighing up of
different opinions
35
and self-censorship reached alarming proportions with the steady
integration of the media “with the state and its foreign policy”,
36
all of which it is
pragmatically and realistically possible given the premises of the Paasikivi-Kekkonen line. For
example, Erkki Toivanen argues “The direction of the policy was clear – Finland was firmly steering
for the West while looking over her shoulder to the East. Finland joined all the major western
institutions – the World Bank and the IMF, the OECD, EFTA and the Council of Europe. Each step
had to be ‘cleared’ with Moscow. It was not an easy process. To overcome Soviet objections and
reluctance, Finnish governments had to make concessions and thus give added credence to accusations
of finlandisation”. Erkki Toivanen, ‘Finland’s Quest for Security’, p.65
31
Max Jakobson (1984) Finland Survived: An Account of the Finnish-Soviet Winter War 1939-40
(Helsinki: Otava Publishing Co.) p.xiii
32
Risto E.J. Penttilä (1992) ‘Official Religions’, Books From Finland (No.1) p.41
33
Risto E.J. Penttilä, ‘Official Religions’, p.41
34
Mikko Majander (1999) ‘The Paradoxes of Finlandization’, Northern Dimensions (The Finnish
Institute of International Affairs Yearbook) p.88
35
Jaakko Tapaninen (1994) ‘End of the Line’, Books From Finland (No.2) p.113
36
Esko Salminen (1999) The Silenced Media: The Propaganda War between Russia and the West in
Northern Europe (Macmillan Press Ltd) p.171

14
contended seriously undermined and damaged Finnish democratic institutions and
traditions.
37
Rather than having skilfully avoided the pitfalls of Cold War power
politics to maintain a position of magnanimous neutrality, the Westernising narrative
contends Finland in fact slid down the Eastern precipice to become the propaganda
mouthpiece of the Soviet totalitarian empire with its expansionist communist ideology
and agenda. In this light rather than being the prime examples of Finland’s bridge-
building and healing role, in calling for a Nordic Nuclear Weapons Free Zone and
proposing the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe with its ultimate
ratification of the post-war division of Europe, Finland was in fact playing the tune of
the Soviet piper.
38
Whilst the West came in for criticism the media refrained from
attacks on the Soviet Union towards which totalitarian and Stalinist society,
Vihavainen argues, the Finns retained an illusory level of optimism.
39
As such the
Westernising narrative of Finnish history has therefore come to accept the dominant
Western view of the Soviet Union during the Cold War as an expansionist evil empire
and Finland’s peaceful coexistence with its neighbour as akin to flirting with the
devil. In Westernising narratives the responsibility for such a dangerous liaison is
generally being placed at the feet of the Finnish political elite and in particular of
Urho Kekkonen who’s relationship with the Soviet elite, in these accounts, is widely
interpreted as having gone beyond the bounds of normal and acceptable diplomatic
practice. Indeed, Kekkonen’s playing of the ‘Moscow Card’ is now widely
understood as having been a euphemism for the legitimisation of authoritarian style
politics at home.
Once again, though, the Westernising narrative’s description of the past is serving as a
prescription for a possible future Finnish identity. In constructing both Finnish and
Soviet Cold War identities negatively, and therefore the Finnish-Soviet relationship as
morally anathema, the narrative again serves to erect a closure around this part of
Finnish history. In “crying out aloud how Finlandized they were in past decades”
40
this aspect of the Westernising narrative psychologically acts to shut the book on what
37
Erkki Toivanen, ‘Finland’s Quest for Security’, p.64
38
Mikko Majander, ‘The Paradoxes of Finlandization’, p.89
39
See Risto E.J. Penttilä, ‘Official Religions’, p.42 which is a review of Timo Vihavainen (1991)
Kansakunta rähmällään. Suomettumisen lyhyt historia [A nation flat on its face. A short history of
Finland] (Helsinki: Otava). Also see Juhana Aunesluoma (1999) ‘Grim Tales’, in Northern Dimensions
(The Finnish Institute of International Affairs Yearbook) p.98 which is a review of Timo Vihavainen
(1998) Stalin ja Suomalaiset [Stalin and the Finns] (Helsinki: Otava)

15
is perceived as a sordid immoral episode. As such the Westernising narrative implies
Finland’s future ‘becoming’ will be in antithesis to this reconceptualisation of both
the Cold War Soviet other and the Finnish prior self. By exposing the past for what it
was, by writing the ‘real’ history of post-war Finland as Finlandised, a claim which
was vehemently denied at the time, the narrative opens the possibility for future
liberation and transformation. This transformation away from the previous between
East and West identity is made more palatable by the Westernising narrative’s general
vilification of Kekkonen and other ‘Finlandised’ Finnish elites of the time. In placing
the responsibility for Finland’s dealings with the ‘devil’ with Kekkonen
41
the Finnish
people as a whole are abnegated from blame. The need to identify those ‘responsible’
in the narrative preserves the nation as a whole as sacrosanct, uncompromised and
free from shame and therefore as resurrectable to a better, truer and moral future.
Kekkonen, it is implied, through playing the Moscow Card established himself as “an
autocrat whose dominance suffocated true democracy”
42
and who, from this all
powerful position, duped, misguided and led astray the nation from its true path and
historical traditions. As such it becomes possible to say the Finns are ‘coming home’
to their Western roots as Finland’s Cold War identity was not ‘really real’, it was the
fabrication of immoral leaders.
On the other hand, this Westernising interpretation of a Finlandised Finland and of the
responsibility of Kekkonen is controversial and contested in Finland. Indeed, as
Virkkula notes, “political history has become a kind of national sport”,
43
particularly
centred around an ongoing and largely televised debate between the historians Hannu
Rautkallio and Juhani Suomi. Whilst Suomi sees Kekkonen as “a great patriot,
intellectually as well as tactically superior to any other Finnish politician, the man
who saved the country by skilfully mixing appeasement and resistance in exactly the
right portions under constant Soviet pressure”,
44
Rautkallio has acted as the
prosecutor for the Westernising narrative’s more sombre interpretation of Kekkonen.
In constituting the ‘facts’ of history differently the important point to note is that the
40
Mikko Majander, ‘TheParadoxes of Finlandization’, p.88
41
Majander notes that this revisionist view of history “starts off by claming that Kekkonen made a
Faustian deal by entering into close relations with Soviet representatives already in 1943-44, after
which he acted in constant symbiosis with his foreign masters”. Mikko Majander, ‘The Paradoxes of
Finlandization’, p.89
42
Simopekka Virkkula (1993) ‘Sins of the fathers?’, Books From Finland (No.1) p.32
43
Simopekka Virkkula,’Sins of the fathers?’, p.31

16
different narratives construct competing notions of Finnish identity and the identity of
others in the present, all of which will have different implications for foreign policy.
As noted, therefore, the Westernising narrative contains within its very premises and
various emplotments of the self in relation to others, its prescriptions for a future
‘becoming’ of Finland – i.e., not only does it open the way for liberation it tells us
what that liberation will be by constructing for the audience Finnish society’s future
values and social conscience. To simplify we can posit an internal and external
dimension to this national liberation. At the internal level the narrative’s very
description of post-war self-censorship and autocratic style politics in Finland, both of
which are interpreted negatively and as having been unethical, establishes this prior
self as a negative other from which the ‘real’ Western Finland needs to distance itself.
The explicit injunction in this negative story of the past is for the establishment of
more open and transparent politics, support for freedom of expression, and the
delinking of the media from the state to its development into a ‘fourth estate’ free to
challenge the political establishment and to say “how things are”.
45
At the external level the effect of the narrative is to push Finland further into
integration with Western institutions. In its terms the Westernising narrative basically
delegitimises the Cold War policy of neutrality by claiming to show that the Western
understanding of Soviet identity and intentions was the correct version, the Finns
were wrong and as such neutrality was akin to free-riding on the back of Western
security institutions established to contain the Soviet threat. At the same time, the
narrative provides another justification for greater Western integration through its
critique of Kekkonen as having misled the Finns and the consequent argument that
Western integration is therefore only ‘natural’. Notably such Westernising narratives
of Finland’s past Finlandised self were utilised in the campaign to make Finland a part
of the European Union.
46
At the same time the Westernising narrative’s description of
44
Mikko Majander, ‘The Paradoxes of Finlandization’, p.89
45
Esko Salminen, The Silenced Media, p.171
46
Anna Rotkirch (1996) ‘Finlandisation and post-Finlandisation’, Books From Finland (No.3) p.199.
Interestingly the ‘No’ campaign against EU membership also utilised the concept of Finlandisation as a
propaganda tool, instead arguing that Finnish membership of the EU would itself be an instance of
Finlandisation towards a great power which would damage national unity and independence. Mikko
Majander, ‘The Paradoxes of Finlandization’, p.91. Hans Mouritzen makes much the same argument in
his 1993 article, ‘The Two Musterknaben and the Naughty Boy: Sweden, Finland and Denmark in the
Process of European Integration’, Cooperation and Conflict (Vol.28, No.4). Whilst not using the term

17
the past has also resurrected NATO from a negative interpretation in the Finnish
consciousness as a potential threat to security to the positive interpretation that is was
precisely this institution which facilitated the containment of communism and thus
provided peace and stability for the West’s liberal democracies. The fact that NATO
no longer carries such negative connotations as in the past can be seen in the recent
rhetoric of Tarja Halonen, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Anneli Taina, the then
Minister for Defence, that Finland is respectively either “cohabiting” or “betrothed” to
NATO. Thus, “NATO has changed in official rhetoric from a four-letter word to an
acronym of a lover”.
47
Such images are not neutral for they convey expectations of
future Finnish behaviour to other states and to the Finnish people and as such also
carry notions of Finnish identity. Indeed, in Finland the notion has widely taken root
that the political elite are performing a fait accompli as regards NATO membership
and Finnish citizens are already getting accustomed to this potential and developing
aspect of Finnish identity.
48
Not least the dropping of the (discredited?) term
‘neutrality’ for ‘non-alignment’ has been interpreted, in particular by Paavo
Väyrynen, as a “deliberate semantic shift on the part of those (especially on the
political right) who viewed a policy of non-alignment as a first step down the road to
military alignment”.
49
Indeed, in the context of the Westernising narrative Finnish
NATO membership could be interpreted as the crowning symbolisation of Finland’s
Western rehabilitation following the end of the Cold War. This is for the reason that,
in the interpretation presented here, the Westernising narrative is premised on a
negative constitution of Soviet identity and intentions during the Cold War and a
positive one of ‘Western’ identity in the form of NATO’s opposition to the
expansionist East. In this respect in the terms of the Westernising narrative NATO
membership would be the ultimate resurrection of the Finnish self from its post-war
Finlandisation, Mouritzen argues that Finland has basically exchanged ‘adaptive acquiescence’ towards
the Soviet Union with adaptive acquiescence towards the EC.
47
Henrikki Heikka (1999) ‘The Evolution of Russian Grand Strategy and Its Implications on Finnish
Security’, Northern Dimensions (Finnish Institute of International Affairs Yearbook) p.31
48
Tuomas Forsberg, ‘Between Neutrality and Membership’, p.114. Tapani Vaahtoranta (1998) ‘Why
the EU, but not Nato? Finland’s Non-Alignment in Post-Cold War Europe’, Northern Dimensions
(Finnish Institute of International Affairs Yearbook) p.4
49
David Arter (1996) ‘Finland: From Neutrality to NATO?’, European Security (Vol.5, No.4) p.628.
The same argument has also been expressed by Western diplomats in Helsinki. For example, Reuters
recently reported one Western diplomat as saying: “The change of wording shows they are trying to get
away from the Cold War rhetoric and make sure there are no obstacles to their participation in
developing common European defence”. Reported at http://virtual.finland.fi/news
on 10.05.1999. At
the same time the fact that no major political party has excluded the NATO option and that the defence

18
neutrality, however, on this reading ‘coming home’ is coming home to join the ‘old’
Cold War NATO with its emphasis on territorial defence. The implication in ‘coming
home’ in the Westernising narrative is that the East was a threat, it was expansionist
and it was dangerous. Being West on this reading is that which is not East. Thus, not
only does the narrative describe the past, it also sets out the present and the future
emplotment of the self and of others. Therefore, it can be noted that negative views of
Russia, in line with this understanding of the implications of the Westernising
narrative, have been constructed and have taken hold in Finland. Thus, Vaahtoranta
and Forsberg note that a common mode of thought in Finland today is to believe that a
great power status is an essential aspect of Russia’s identity and that “Russia sees
herself as the centre of the Eurasian civilisation and fundamentally different from
other civilisations. According to this view, Russia is not aiming at joining the Western
structures but is instead strengthening her own significance”.
50
This view was further
backed up in a recent and much publicly debated report by the Finnish Institute of
International Affairs.
51
Likewise Erkki Toivanen notes that “there is some reason to
doubt whether Russia’s imperial habit can disappear overnight or even by the end of
this century”.
52
On this understanding NATO membership is seen as providing
security for Finland against a Russian neighbour with a propensity for expansionism,
an imperial habit. This is a depiction of Russia essentially identical to that espoused
by the West during the Cold War. Even stripped of a communist ideology for world
revolution, expansionism is seen as in Russia’s nature and as an essential part of its
identity. The prevalence of such negative sentiments about Russia have also extended
to a widespread castigation of Russian society with an emphasis being placed on such
negative issues as prostitution, drug trafficking, the Russian mafia, pollution, poverty,
forces are being harmonised with NATO systems also serves to add credence to this argument. Tapani
Vaahtoranta, ‘Why the EU, but not Nato?’, p.11
50
Tapani Vaahtoranta and Tuomas Forsberg (1998) ‘Finland’s Three Security Strategies’, in Mathias
Jopp and Sven Arnswald (eds) The European Union and the Baltic States: Visions, Interests and
Strategies for the Baltic Sea Region (Kauhava: Ulkopoliittinen instituutti and Institut für Europäische
Politic) pp.193,194
51
The Finnish Institute of International Affairs (1999) Russia Beyond 2000: The prospects for Russian
development and their implications for Finland (Helsinki: The Finnish Institute of International
Affairs; No.1) In particular the report noted that “Russia is not committed to the principles of
democratic peace and common values” and that “Its chosen line of multipolarity implies that Russia is
entitled to its own sphere of influence and the unilateral use of military force within it”. p.1
52
Erkki Toivanen, ‘Finland’s Quest for Security’, p.68. Jukka Nevakivi made a similar point in 1997,
arguing that Finland’s geostrategic position remains the same as in the pre-1990 period for the reason
that the “traditional eastern threat still prevails, even though the new Russia is by no means militarily
comparable to former Soviet Union might”. Quoted in Christer Pursianen (1999) Finland’s Security

19
the degeneration of the rule of law and nuclear hazards, to such an extent that the term
‘post-Finlandisation’ has been coined to depict the “current Finnish tendency, in
which Russia and everything Russian is presented in an utmost negative light”.
53
Similarly, whilst officially Russia is not, at least openly, considered a security threat,
but rather as only a cause of uncertainty,
54
from the Westernising narrative point of
view the fact that NATO membership remains open, that the defence forces are
integrating with NATO structures and that Finland remains unwilling to abandon
conscription and the use of landmines, all seems to posit a rather pessimistic view of
Russia underlying this strategy.
Last but not least the Westernising narrative also contains within its structure an
important tool of critique against dissenters. In making a claim to the truth of
Finland’s Finlandised past, which is essentially portrayed as having been the result of
immoral autocratic political leaders, it encompasses within its framework the
propaganda to label opponents as irresponsible and immoral and to de-legitimise
competing claims regarding Finnish identity. As Majander notes, the term
‘Finlandised’ is increasingly been thrown as slander at those persons deemed not to
have learned the lessons of the past.
55
Similarly, in a recent editorial Helsingin
Sanomat referred to the “many ex-Stalinists who have opposition to NATO in their
blood”.
56
Given the generally accepted version of the revealing of the ‘truth’ of
Stalinist society, which has accompanied the opening of the Kremlin archives,
labelling someone as ‘Finlandised’ or as ‘Stalinist’ serves to discredit them and to
silence them from having a ‘legitimate’ opinion on Finland, on Russia and on Finnish-
Russian relations. In this light it is interesting to see how Martti Valkonen responded
to what he took as an ‘accusation’ of ‘post-Finlandisation’ levelled at him and his co-
editors, Anne Sailas and Ilmari Susiluoto, by Anne Rotkirch in a review of their book,
Venäjä – jättiläinen tuuliajolla [Russia – a drifting giant].
57
In his response Valkonen
retorted with the accusation that those going round labelling people as post-
Finlandised are setting themselves up as the “watchful guardians of morality… [that
Policy Towards Russia: From Bilateralism to Multilateralism (Helsinki: UPI Working Papers, The
Finnish Institute of International Affairs, No.14) p.3
53
Mikko Majander, ‘The Paradoxes of Finlandization’, p.92. Also see Anna Rotkirch, ‘Finlandisation
and post-Finlandisation’, pp.198-199.
54
Tuomas Forsberg, ‘Between Neutrality and Membership’, p.113
55
Mikko Majander, ‘The Paradoxes of Finlandization’, p.89
56
Quoted by Reuters and cited at http://virtual.finland.fi/news/ on 10.05.1999

20
is, of]… what can be written about Russia without offending it. The campaign brings
to mind”, he continues, “the Soviet period of self-censorship, which was controlled by
Finland’s eastern neighbour. Self-censorship was Finlandisation, which made Finland,
in the eyes of both West and East almost a satellite of the Soviet Union”.
58
Similarly,
in 1998 Valkonen continued his Westernising offensive in a book on the present
continuation of Finlandisation in Finland,
59
all of which is measured to push Finland
further down the Westernising narrative’s road. Finally, Valkonen’s strong response
interestingly illustrates the extent to which Finlandisation and post-Finlandisation are
widely understood as politically charged concepts in Finland rather than as neutral
academic descriptions. As Rotkirch herself noted in reply to Valkonen and his
colleagues in a continuation of the exchange:
Their reactions say as much about the difficulties of discussing Russia in Finland during the
past few decades, when any kind of interest in or knowledge of the big neighbour was
inevitably placed in some camp, and interpreted as some kind of strategic opportunism.
60
The Ambiguity of ‘Russia’ and the ‘West’ in Finnish Discourse
As we have seen above the Westernising narrative’s claim that Finland is ‘coming
home’ to the West, a claim which has been widely used to interpret developments in
Finnish foreign policy during the 1990s, especially regarding EU accession and
moves towards membership of NATO (e.g., Finland’s participation in the Partnership
for Peace programme and its seat on the North Atlantic Co-operation Council), also
entails the emplotment of a negative view of Russia, the East, away from which
Finland is returning westwards. The Westernising narrative serves to put an
ideological distance between Finland and Russia. Finland is constructed by the
narrative as part of the West in juxtaposition to the Russian Eastern other. With the
Westernising narrative’s reappraisal of Finland’s post-war past as Finlandised
‘coming home’ to the West emplots the West as all that was deemed as anti-Eastern in
57
Anna Rotkirch, ‘Finlandisation and post-Finlandisation’.
58
Ilmari Susiluoto, Anne Kuorsalo, Martti Valkonen and Anne Rotkirch (1996) ‘The legacy of
Finlandisation: an exchange’, Books From Finland (No.4) p.291
59
Henri Vogt (1999) ‘On Finlandization’, Northern Dimensions (The Finnish Institute of International
Affairs Yearbook) p.100. This is a review of Martti Valkonen’s book, Suomettaminen jatkuu yhä
[Continuing to Make Finland More Finlandized] (Helsinki: Tammi)
60
Ilmari Susiluoto, Anne Kuorsalo, Martti Valkonen and Anna Rotkirch, ‘The legacy of
Finlandisation: an exchange’, p.294

21
the past. Thus, whilst during the Cold War the Soviet’s negative view towards such
organisations as the EC and the Council of Europe as anti-Communist acted as a veto
on Finnish membership, from the Westernising perspective membership is today
regarded as an essential aspect of Western identity. Being Western implies, from this
perspective, acquiring all that had been denied in the past because of its deemed anti-
Easterness. ‘Western identity’ is therefore largely equated, in the Westernising
narrative, with membership in ‘Western’ institutions. Thus, Max Jakobson has noted
that those voting ‘yes’ to EU membership in the 1994 referendum did so, for the most
part, not as a result of weighing up the economic and social costs and benefits of
membership, but because membership was seen “to affirm Finland’s Western
identity”.
61
Membership was thus seen as a passport to the Western club. By contrast,
the Norwegians could vote ‘no’ without having any need to question whether this
would in some way make them ‘less’ Western, as such a no vote implied in Finland.
Furthermore, from the Westernising narrative’s perspective there is the implication
that Russia should be excluded from Western institutions. Indeed, given the
underlying view here that Russian identity is inherently tied up with notions of being
an expansionist great power such a view indicates that Russian exclusion is essential
in order to defend the West from Russian advances.
However, if we look at other aspects of recent Finnish foreign policy, particularly as
expressed in the Northern Dimension initiative, understandings of Russia and the
West in Finland become much more ambiguous for the reason that the initiative
implicitly relies on a different narrative of Finnish history and hence a different
understanding of Finnish and Russian identities. This narrative is largely predicated
on the Paasikivi-Kekkonen line’s understanding of the Soviet Union and Russia, not
as being an inherently bad and expansionist great power, but merely as having
legitimate security interests and as amenable to peaceful coexistence with the West. It
therefore rejects the Westernising narrative’s essentialist interpretation of Russian
identity and implies a positive view for change. More specifically the Northern
Dimension initiative of the EU aims at stabilising Russia and also integrating Russia
into those very European structures the Westernising narrative would like to exclude
61
Max Jakobson (1998) Finland in the New Europe (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger) p.111. Also see
David Arter (1995) ‘The EU Referendum in Finland on 16 October 1994: A Vote for the West, not for
Maastricht’, Journal of Common Market Studies (Vol.33, No.3) p.383

22
it from. The whole initiative basically accepts the theory of democratic peace that, as
president Martti Ahtisaari has noted, “democracies do not wage war with each
other”,
62
the idea being that “If Russia is integrated economically and institutionally
into the European Union and other international structures, it is less likely that Russia
will pose a military threat to Finland in the future”.
63
The aim is therefore explicitly to
instigate a change in Russian identity. Maybe the aim is not to go quite so far as to let
Russia share the Finnish bed-sit (home) in Europe, but it is to create highly amicable
neighbours with an identity not so different from that of the Finnish Western
European self. On the face of it such a policy appears to derive from a continuation of
Finland’s between East and West identity of the Cold War and in particular on
Kekkonen’s conceptualisation of Finland as a physician and a bridge-builder.
However, as Hanna Ojanen has interestingly argued, the Northern Dimension
initiative can be seen as an attempt by Finnish leaders to customise the EU by
orienting it increasingly towards Finnish concerns and identity questions.
64
To this
extent the initiative can be seen as an attempt by Finnish leaders not only to continue
acting as bridge-builders between East and West but in fact to inspire both Russia and
Western Europe to begin crossing the bridge, meeting in the middle, and thereby
constructing all as being between East and West. That is to say to get rid of the East-
West dichotomy, as understood in Cold War terms, altogether. In this respect the
Northern Dimension initiative threatens to pull the rug from under the feet of the
Westernising narrative. For the Westernising narrative being ‘Western’ is more or less
understood in the Cold War terms of not being Eastern and of representing the East as
a threat. Such a perspective generally implies NATO is an anti-Russian alliance. By
contrast the Northern Dimension threatens to deny the Westernising narrative of its
principle constituting other of Finnish identity by integrating Russia into the West. As
such this narrative tends to understand Finnish integration with Western institutions,
not so much as in response to a negative emplotment of Russia, but as the opportunity
to draw the East and West closer together. Therefore, there is a tendency from this
point of view to look towards a ‘new’ NATO based on collective crisis-management
and commonly accepted principles, rather than as a security organisation directed
62
Ahtisaari quoted in Tapani Vaahtoranta and Tuomas Forsberg, ‘Finland’s Three Security Strategies’,
p.194
63
Tapani Vaahtoranta and Tuomas Forsberg, ‘Finland’s Three Security Strategies’, p.206
64
Hanna Ojanen (1999) ‘How to Customise Your Union: Finland and the “Northern Dimension of the
EU”’, Northern Dimensions (Finnish Institute of International Affairs Yearbook)

23
against Russia. ‘West’, from this perspective, therefore transcends the East-West
divide and places an emphasis on the establishment of co-operation, the rule of law,
respect for human rights and liberal democracy…etc…, and which no longer
constructs the ‘West’ in opposition to the ‘East’. Such a narrative is also reflected by
those people who now look back into history and see Finland’s period as a Grand
Duchy of Russia (1809-1917) as having been a progressive period in Finland’s
historical past. As Vaahtoranta and Forsberg note, “Some people think that the
happiest period in Finnish history was the latter part of the nineteenth century when
Finland was simultaneously a part of the West and a part of Russia”
65
- i.e., a period
which is constructed by them as having also been one when the terms East and West
were less polarised. Thus, for quite different reasons to the Westernising narrative,
from this perspective the panel title of ‘Defining New Identities Between East and
West’ once again appears inapplicable. Whereas the Westernising narrative clearly
puts Finland in the Western camp, this narrative seeks to destroy the dichotomy
altogether.
If Finland does have a potential future identity between East and West it appears to lie
in Finnish proclamations of Finland as a ‘Gateway to the East’. This narrative, aimed
at the West, essentially accepts the Westernising premises of a natural difference
between East and West which will keep the two divided. Similarly, the emplotment of
Russia in this narrative is also implicitly negative. The Gateway to the East argument
has largely been used as an economic strategy to attract Western companies interested
in doing business with Russia to base their operations from Finland. The implication
is clear and plays on traditional prejudices in Western thought concerning the East
which sees the East as representing irrationality, unpredictability and the chaos of a
Slavic people with an unfamiliar and menacing society.
66
The ‘Gateway to the East’
points the Western mind to reports of the Russian mafia and the general breakdown of
the rule of law in Russia, thus asking Western businessmen whether they really want
to base production in Russia? In contrast to this negative construction of the Russian
other, it is implied Finland is all Russia is not. Finland is a law-abiding and orderly
65
Tapani Vaahtoranta and Tuomas Forsberg, ‘Finland’s Three Security Strategies’, p.196
66
For such analyses of the East and of Russia in Finnish and Western thought see, Sergei Medvedev
(1998) Russia as the Subconsciousness of Finland (Helsinki: UPI Working Papers, The Finnish
Institute of International Affairs, No.7) and Johan Bäckman (1998) ‘The Russia-Genre as a

24
society, transport works on time, power supplies are guaranteed and bosses need not
worry about assassination for their failure to pay protection money. Likewise the
concept draws on more than Finland’s geopolitical position and societal conditions.
The claim is also made that as a result of its Cold War experience Finns know and
have expertise in dealing with Russians.
67
In this respect the ‘Gateway’ narrative
deviates from the Westernising one by implying that the Finns really did know how to
deal with Russia during the Cold War and that Finnish neutrality was therefore not
overly beset by problems of Finlandisation. Though not necessarily spoken about in
the same contexts the security strategy to such a narrative can perhaps be seen in
certain justifications for Finland’s abstention from NATO membership. The argument
being that were Finland to join it would provoke Russia into action against the Baltic
states in preservation of its ‘legitimate security interests’. As Jakobson notes, such an
argument is essentially a re-hashing of the Nordic Balance concept “according to
which the neutrality of Sweden and the self-imposed restraints of Norway’s role
within NATO helped Finland maintain its independence”.
68
Implicitly, therefore, such
an argument, whilst constructing the Russian other negatively, also further emplots
NATO in its classical ‘old’ form as a container of Russian ambitions.
An uncomfortable contradiction exists in Finnish foreign policy for the reason that as
yet no single narrative has attained a hegemonic position amongst the foreign policy
elite and as a consequence Finnish leaders can be seen to utilise different of these
different narratives as justifications for their policies depending on the context and the
immediate audience being addressed. Thus, for example, whilst Ahtisaari has
campaigned for the Northern Dimension view of the possibilities for the integration of
Construction of Reality’, Northern Dimensions (The Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Yearbook)
67
Urpo Kivikari in fact even goes so far as to claim that as a result of Finland’s bilateral trade with the
East during the Cold War the Finns developed an explicit understanding of the ‘Homo Sovieticus’ and
of the ‘Russian soul’. Urpo Kivikari (1995) From a Giant to a Gateway in East-West Trade: Finland’s
Adaptation to Radical Changes in Eastern Europe (Turku: Turku School of Economics and Business
Administration Business Research and Development Centre and Institute of East-West Trade, Series C
Discussion 2/95) p.34. Indeed, Anne Rotkirch notes the Finns have been rather successful in promoting
this image in Europe. Anne Rotkirch, ‘Finlandisation and post-Finlandisation’, p.198. Such success can
be seen in an article in the Economist in 1997 assessing the reasons why Acer computers decided to
base their operations for the Russian market in Finland. The article compares the “orderly calm of
Finland” with the “feral badlands of Russia” and notes that beyond the border “lies a Russia where
criminal gangs prey, potholes gape, and the next place southbound for a decent cup of tea is Turkey”.
Furthermore, “Finland, with its law-abiding business environment and highly developed infrastructure,
offered a vision of everything Russia was not”. Economist 6
th
-12
th
September 1997, pp.89-90
68
Max Jakobson, Finland in the New Europe, p.144

25
Russia with the West, and therefore positing a positive view of Russia’s potential, he
has also drawn on the Westernising premise of a great power Russia in believing that
“Russia will not become democratic in his lifetime”.
69
The result is that Finnish
foreign policies are riven with contradictory understandings of the self in relation to
the others of Russia and the West, but particularly regarding Russia. Thus, whereas
the Westernising narrative attempts to construct Finnish identity through a re-
interpretation of post-war history to make Finland Western in contradistinction to the
Russian East, the Northern Dimension initiative reflects the extent to which many
Finns fear this dichotomy. The Northern Dimension is an attempt to prevent Russia
orienting further East (with all the negative connotations East implies in Western
thought), to prevent the development of a return to authoritarianism, nationalism and
to Cold War politics. Finnish policy makers, therefore, whilst justifying aspects of
Finnish foreign policy, on the one hand, by using the East-West dichotomy between
self and other, are at the same time trying to prevent such a dichotomy developing
again. Ironically, on the one hand they are working on the premise that the Russian
other, in its Soviet communist totalitarian guise, still exists across the border, whilst
on the other hand, the Northern Dimension project relies on the premise that this
identity is no longer of such strength in Russia. The aim is to prevent it developing,
which implies either it does not yet hold sway in the identity politics of the Russian
state with democratic forces being equally able to gain control of the right to define
the identity of the state, or that it simply does not exist.
Conclusion: The Dangers and Comforts of Ambiguity
The aim of this paper has been threefold: first, to illustrate that national identities are
to a great extent constructed out of narratives of history; second, to illustrate that,
given this, Westernising arguments making an essentialist claim to an immutable
Finnish national identity are precisely that, a claim, which through their very narrative
of history attempt to appropriate the ‘truth’ of history for their own political agenda
and; thirdly, that given the existence of other contradictory narratives in Finnish
political discourse Finnish identity, in terms of the understanding of the self in
relation to others in the various stories which the nation tells about its present in the
69
Tapani Vaahtoranta and Tuomas Forsberg, ‘Finland’s Three Security Strategies’, p.194

26
context of its past, is extremely ambiguous. Given the dramatic changes which shook
the international system in the late 1980s – early 1990s and which continue to
reverberate today, such ambiguity in a nation’s identity is inevitable. In the Finnish
case this is especially so given that the end of the Cold War robbed it of its two
central defining poles of difference of the previous half a century. In such periods of
upheaval nations inevitably need time to reinterpret past experiences in terms of the
new conditions facing them. New narratives of history need to be told in order to chart
a linear course of development for the nation which makes the present appear a
natural development of the past. To conclude I will make two points, one concerning
the possible dangers of ambiguity, the other which sees such ambiguity over the
nation’s identity as a cause of comfort.
If there is a danger in the current ambiguity over Finnish identity highlighted in the
narratives analysed above it relates to Russian understandings of Finnish debates. The
public nature of most foreign relations and discourses and the fact that in different
contexts and in front of different audiences Finnish decision-makers utilise different
arguments which draw on different narratives of Finnish and Russian identities,
entails that the Russians hear both positive and negative narratives of the Finnish
emplotment of the Russian self. If there is a danger it is that such ‘two-facedness’ can
lead to unease in Russia as to Finnish identity and intentions. This is to say that the
ambiguity entailed in such multifarious narratives of history and identity in Finland
threatens to cancel each other out by creating confusion in Russia over the ‘nature’ of
the Finnish self and, in this respect, such ambiguity may serve to reconstruct the very
East-West dichotomy the Finns patently fear. In this regard it is notable that some
Russians have become much less enthusiastic about the Northern Dimension, with
some suspicious voices seeing it as a plot to further dissolve and fragment Russia, or
as even being the vehicle of Western neo-imperialism.
70
Such is also, of course, the
danger implicit in the Westernising narrative in which the negative emplotment of
Russia in the narrative in fact threatens to socially construct such a negative image as
reality. Likewise, given that Russia retains an ‘old’ Cold War view of NATO, debates
70
Such a view can be seen in the complaint of Slavo Hodko, the head of the St. Petersburg
International Cooperation Centre, that: “The northern dimension sees Russia solely as a source of raw
materials but overlooks the development of the country’s industry and tourism. It is in our national
interests that we should not just sell raw materials”. Quoted in Demari and cited at
http://virtual.finland.fi/news/
on 06.04.1999

27
in Finland over NATO membership, whether implying membership of the ‘old’ or
‘new’ NATO, further feed into suspicions concerning Finnish identity.
71
On the other hand, much of the ambiguity in Finnish discourse is no doubt a reflection
of uncertainty relating, not just to the future development of Russia, but also to the
future development of Finland’s other neighbours (the Baltics and Sweden), the EU
and NATO, and more generally the international system as a whole. In such
conditions ambiguity may in fact be a comfort leaving greater freedom to respond to
wider developments than would be the case if one of the narratives was to be in a
position of relative hegemony vis-à-vis others. At the same time the continuance of
ambiguity relieves decision-makers of the need to take the grand decisions which
would decrease ambiguity
72
and which would threaten to alienate segments of the
public and certain other states. Ambiguity, in such a view, can be seen as the basis for
broad based support for the reason that such ambiguity can be more inclusive and less
alienating in that it offers a voice to many narratives, thus reducing the radicalised
dissatisfaction which can emerge from the total exclusion of competing narratives as
representative voices of the nation. And as a final word of comfort the freedom to be
ambiguous may be seen as an essential element of a functioning liberal democratic
society, thus making ambiguity difficult to avoid and even of value in itself.
71
For example, in January 1999 Gennadi Selezynov, Speaker of the Duma, expressed such concern
over Finnish intentions regarding NATO, first noting, “We regard the continued policy of alliance in
Europe to be an expression of a new Cold War”, and going on to say, “We know that many people in
Finland take a more optimistic view of the role of NATO. But we have our reasons for concern”.
Quoted in Hufvudstadsbladet, cited at http://virtual.finland.fi/news/
on 28.01.1999.
72
Hanna Ojanen makes this point in relation to the ambiguous nature of the Common Foreign and
Security Policy. For Finland such ambiguity, she argues, “makes it possible for Finland to participate
on its own terms, in organisations as it likes them, while giving a good impression to others and thus
enhancing its credibility as a member country”. Hanna Ojanen (1998) The Comfort of Ambiguity, or the
advantages of the CFSP for Finland (Helsinki: UPI Working Papers; The Finnish Institute of
International Affairs; No.11) p.15

28
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