Talk:Finlandization

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I wonder what "liberal" in liberal democracy indicates. What's the difference between a "liberal democracy" and a simple "democracy"?

I've made a link of the term, in case someone would feel like filling in.
-- Ruhrjung 12:27 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

As opposed to popular democracy or organic democracy -- Error

Removed this since the author seemed to have a misunderstanding of the context of Finlandization. The term was generally used in a context that presupposed that is was a very bad thing. I don't know of any "proponents of Finlandization".

The concept of "Finlandization" in foreign policy indicates how a nation could make a deal with the Soviet Union without losing its sovereignty. Finland cut such a deal with the USSR in the late 1940s, basically reverting to her 19th century traditions. Finland did not challenge USSR's foreign policy, but exerted to keep her independence. Authorities on Finnish foreign relations often argue, that proponents of the Finlandization-term persistently failed to mention, that Finland had achieved its negotiating position after successfully fending of military attacks of the Soviet Union in the Winter War and the Continuation War. If Finland had attempted to get a "Finlandization" deal in the 1930s or 1920s, she might likely have wound up like Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania at the time.

-- User:Roadrunner

User:Roadrunner also included the following:

Finlandization is an expression coined during the Cold War to express the process of turning into a country which maintained internal autonomy but did not challenge the Soviet Union - similar to that of Finland.

I must admit to be a bit questioning.

First of all, the expression "maintained internal autonomy" gives a clear hint at the situation for non-sovereign states. While it might have been a totally motivated wording for Finland as an autonomous Grand Duchy, and possibly also of Soviet-satelites such as DDR, I can't see this to be an appropriate or correct wording for independent Finland.

Secondly, the User:Roadrunner's given reason for the exclusion is based on a misunderstanding. The text speaks of "proponents of the term" not proponents of Finlandization.

-- Ruhrjung 06:54 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

With all due respect, the following--though true--is way off-topic for an article on Finlandization:

This "middle-ground" position resulted in paradoxes like the Finnish Air Force flying both MiG Soviet planes and the American F-18 Hornet.

The Hornets we bought long after the Finlandization brickbat had been well and truly decommisioned. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick

OK. Can you put something then about how the Finnish Army carefully balanced its buyings between East and West and how this was unusual in the world? -- Error 00:52 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)


I could, if I weren't so ignorant. I suppose I could do some research and come back to you. But if someone else knows about this, feel free to add it. The only thing that comes to my mind is that Finland tried to have a strong domestic defence materials industry. But that isn't what you are asking for... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 14:38 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, if the strong industry is a consequence of Finlandizaion it is worth mentioning as well. Did they sell to both sides? -- Error 00:31 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

well, if it is, it is something that I have no knowledge about. Please someone, who actually knows something about Finnish procurement practises, feel free to step in... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 00:51 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

A quick look in my copy of "Suomen puolustusvoimat ennen ja nyt" shows that Finland bought some british jet fighters (Vampires and Folland Gnats), tanks (Charioteers) and a frigate in the fifties. After that it seems to be only stuff from Sweden and the Soviets. -- Jniemenmaa 12:57 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I don't see any credible evidence to back an assertion that Finland procured hardware from both sides just to maintain the policy of neutrality. Finland was, quite simply, one of the very few places on earth that could. Finland was also a relatively poor country for much of the cold war. This, and its extensive bartering agreements with the Soviet Union often made otherwise inferior Soviet technology the preferred, or indeed the only choice. Markonen 15:27 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I have made some changes to the article, which I will motivate in the following:

Finlandization is a process by which a small nation can maintain relative sovereignty by avoiding challenging a neighboring superpower and adopting a policy of neutrality. This echoes Finland's policies vis-à-vis the Soviet Union after the second World War and during the Cold War.

I object against the notion of relative sovereignty. Maybe with exception for superpowers, sovereignty can always be shown to be somehow limited. There is however no reason why the limitations should be emphasized in this context. At this time Finland was much more a sovereign country than was West-Germany.

Further, it's highly questionable if the brief period between the Second World War and the Cold War is appropriate to mention here. The Finno-Soviet relations were exceptional, as the Paris Peace Treaty wasn't concluded, until 1947. The start of the Cold War is often determined to the autumn of 1945.

Finally, I question the confusion of the concept of "nation" with "sovereignty". Rulers and states can be sovereign, also nation states, but not nations.

In the aftermath of WWII and Finland's two wars against the Soviet Union, Finnish leaders realized that opposing the Soviets head-on was no longer feasible.

Although I agree to the indirect notion of independent Finland's policy towards USSR as "opposing head-on", I beg to remind that Finland had three wars during WWII, that the shift in Finnish policy came earlier than the wording above indicates, and that "Finland's two wars against the Soviet Union" seem to be circumventing the fact that both of those wars followed USSR attacks on Finland - both without a declaration of War - and at least the first attack totally unprovoked.

Germany, Finland's ally in the wars, had been conquered while the neighboring Sweden had demonstrated its willingness and ability to stay neutral of a military attack on Finland.

This is factually wrong. All of it. Germany was USSR's ally in the Winter War, Finland's co-belligerent in the Continuation War, and Finland's sole enemy in the Lapland War. Neither was Sweden neutral during the Winter War, and the wording above is misleading also for Sweden's policies during the Continuation War and Germany's "Crusade against Bolshevism".

Under this mutual assistance pact, Finland was obligated to resist armed attacks by Germany or its allies against Finland, or against the Soviet Union through Finland, and, if necessary, accept Soviet military aid to do so.

It's important to note that the Soviet military aid had to be requested from Finland - although this wasn't established from the begining.

At the same time, the agreement recognized Finland's desire to remain outside great-power conflicts, allowing the country to adopt a policy of neutrality during the Cold War. This policy precluded Finland from participating in the Marshall Plan and guided the country to take neutral positions on Soviet overseas initiatives. As a specific example of the tradeoffs stipulated by this policy, signing the Warsaw Pact could be avoided by keeping very cool relations to NATO and western military powers in general.

It wasn't Finland's neutrality-policy which made Finland abstain from the Marshall Plan. The wording on "avoiding signing the Warsaw Pact" gives the wrong impression.

It was a persistent fear of US foreign policy experts that Western Europe would be Finlandized, leading to a continent that no longer supported the United States nor opposed the Soviet Union.

This is of course wrong. The most of the continent was already behind the Iron Curtain. What made strategists nervous were concerns for Western Europe.

Tuomas

See, stir the pot a little, and someone steps up to produce a much better article :) Thanks, Tuomas, for your work. What I object to in the language you reverted back into the article is this talk about Finlandization being a bilateral a "deal"; While that may be true in a semantic sense, we don't want to leave the impression that a single treaty alone codifies the whole concept of Finlandization. it is clear that Finns pretty much stumbled in the dark with regards to how much conformance with the Soviets was really needed, and this illustrates the unilateral aspects involved.
Also, most of my changes were only made to improve the language of the article in order to get rid of clumsy costructs such as "leading to situation in which Western Europe no longer supported the United States". In this case, you objected to a single word in the rewritten version ("continent"), and chose to revert the whole paragraph.
Markonen 11:41, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Regarding language, I think I understand your feelings pretty well. Our language, when we try to express ourself in foreign tongues, gets clumsy. And the balance act between retaining factual correctness and producing readable prose suitable for the www-medium is no easy exercise. And when we feel we have went out of our way to produce a good text, someone else disagrees for some reason or another, ...and that had been OK if only the changes had led to improvements, but when not... (I had a similar experience very recently in the Swedish language wikipedia, and I discovered that I got more hurt than I would have expected. I won't write anything for the Swedish clowns in the future ...at least not in the nearest future.)

I agree to have done some changes by simple copy-and-paste, which I understand if you react against. On the other hand, I aimed at factual correctness, which I hope you appreciate.

Then regarding Finnish understanding and usage of the Finlandization-term, I must admit it might be an impossible task to describe. But I hope you agree that what in the article's current revision is called a "revertion to 19th century policies" was both a radical change and a successful change, why I think "the deal" defends its position to be mentioned first. But you are certainly right that the pact of 1948 in no ways was an agreement between equals - and absolutely no Finn would in his heart believe so, although we maybe choose to pretend.

I am not too fond of the disposition of this article, but I don't know really how it should best be improved. However, I can understand if you ask why the self-censorship aspects of Finlandization are mentioned in the nineth paragraph, while "the deal" aspect is mentioned in the third paragraph.

I removed the following wordings, and replaced it with a rather detailed report on Finland's varying foreign politics during the world wars and inbetween, and a reference to Germany's Stalingrad-defeat.

  • Finnish leaders realized that opposing the Soviets head-on was no longer feasible.
  • Germany, Finland's ally supporter ...had been conquered
  • Sweden had demonstrated its willingness and ability to stay neutral of a military attack on Finland. unwillingness to go to war, even for the sake of Finland's. Finland had to meet Russia on her own, without any greater power's protection.

I had in my mind the possibility to write something on how the February manifesto and the October revolution had made the idea of trustful relations to Russia an impossible thought for generations of Finnish politicians, and that only dire neccessity could make them overcome their aversion against Paasikivi's line. ...but I arrived at the conclusion that there already was too much on Finland's pre-WWII history, which maybe isn't quite relevant.

...besides, I would like to remind that what the Swedes had demonstrated was basically nothing else than their sincerity when they in the 1930s had insisted on exertions for improved Finno-Soviet relations. That Helsinki had made miscalculations on the relative strengths of different Swedish opinions, and underestimated the importance of Social Democracy in general and Pacifism among Liberals, Agrarians and Social Democrats in particular, that is another thing.

Paasikivi had been (a less than successful) ambassador to Stockholm in the late 1930s, and maybe the Finnish disappointment in the too limited support during the Winter War makes us blind for President Paasikivi's skillful use of Swedish self-interests for Finland's advantage during the Cold War.

I put in your wordings again. :-)

Feel free to improve both language and disposition. Can you make it without revealing any bias, and without introducing factual errors, you are worth much praise.

--Tuomas 01:37, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I would like to argue that what you call Pacifism among the Swedish political leadership better should be called for instance anti-Activism, if Activism is understood as similar to what USA recently has shown in Iraq - and Germany during both world wars. Their stance was, basically, that Sweden oughtn't engage in warfare outside of its borders, as defensive wars are fought from a morally superior position. Sweden re-armed drastically from the late 1930s and on, which those alleged "pacifists" didn't oppose.

But I note that you don't mention Sweden in the article, which I think is wise. ;-))
-- Ruhrjung 05:15, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Huge imbalance in the article?

Am I Hallucinating, or is this article largely about Finnish history. Since us Finns didn't used to use the term, and still only do so ironically, should there not be much more about the uses that the term served in those countries who actually did use the word! Of course I could be wrong, but as it stands the article seems awfully lopsided to put it mildly.
-- User:Cimon avaro

No, your perception is obviously unaffected by the heat. Maybe one solution would be to write articles on the Paasikivi doctrine, the Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, and the Kekkonen-era? Then much of the stuff would better fit there, and could be moved.
--Ruhrjung 06:12, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Uhm. Actually that isn't what I was thinking at all. Rather I was thinking how thin this article is on the domestic policy ramifications of wawing the "We Must Oppose The Danger Of Finlandization At Any Cost" flag during election campaigns frex. in BRD and the "competition" of "who is most anti-Finlandization". It seems to me that the stuff that should really be at the focus of the article is all before the Table of Contents! And that is cursory to the max. This article should be about the rhetoric usages of the term at least much as a discussion whether the term had any real basis at all.
That said, I took another look at the article. Maybe the "historical backround" section is a bit heavy in proportion to the subject. It would still need to be summarised in my opinion. But what I would really like to see is what domestic political ramifications the "Finlandization" rhetoric had for those who used it. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick

There is a lot of emotion, reflecting a lot of historical pain, on this page. This just my perspective, from somebody who has almost no connection to Finland, the Soviet Union, and the European theatre of WW2. Can somebody work on the overall editing to incorporate all the different perspectives? It's disconcerting to sense the implicit argument going on between different authors. Naif 03:19, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Finnish success?

Although Finland fought well, clearly they lost both the Winter War and Continuation War. The Soviets were much too powerful. Though the Finns won some battles and didn't make it easy for the Soviets they lost both wars badly and in no way sucsessfully fought off the Soviet advance. The best they did was make it harder for the Soviets to advance and the Finns wound up losing more territory than if they had accepted the change of land with no war. The fact the Soviets were so unprepared led Nazi Germany to believe the Soviets were ripe for the plucking so to speak. Had Finland accepted the overture of land for land and no war, they would've retained their land and Germany wouldn't have been assured at how badly the Soviets were trained.

The military success doesn't mean that Finns won. It simply means that Finns were able to hold attacker so long and inflict enough losses to it that it become inconvenient and even dangerous for attacker to stick on its original plans and forced it in a negotiated solution.
You are assuming in your text that Soviet Union would have been satisfied if its original demands were granted. The available evidence doesn't support that. The Baltic states granted what the SU wanted but the SU continued demanding more and more until they were annexed to the SU. And after the Winter War, the SU started using similar policy towards Finland, demanded troop transfer rights, opposed alliance with Sweden, demanded control of Petsamo mines, demanded the dismissal of ministers etc. -just the similar demands which were used with Baltic states!
On the other hand, you would be correct about the size of the country. Based on the agreements O.W.Kuusinen did with the SU, most of the East Karelia would have been incorporated to Finland. On the other hand, the front line would have crossed Finland most likely twice and compared with statistics from Estonia, it would have doubled the casualties country suffered in the WWII. Also the GNP would be about the half/the third of the current one and there would be half a million Russians living among the Finns.
Without the Winter War Soviets would have maintained their delusion that the Red Army was the strongest of the armies in the world. So, instead of attacking unprepared, Nazi Germany would have made more careful preparations with its attack and the SU wouldn't have started corrective actions but a year later, when it would have been perhaps too late to save the country. --Whiskey 05:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of the term

Hello everyone. I have found the following page[1] which states the following:

Le terme de « finlandisation » a été inventé en 1953 par Karl Gruber (ministre autrichien des Affaires étrangères). Il a été repris par l'Allemand Franz Joseph Strauss pour dénoncer les dangers de l'Ostpolitik allemande, et désignant les limitations imposées par un État puissant à l'autonomie d'un voisin plus faible. Processus par lequel, sous le couvert de maintenir des relations amicales avec l'URSS, un pays voit sa souveraineté diminuer. La Finlande s'est insurgée contre ce terme.

or in English translation

"Finlandisation" as term was invented in 1953 by Karl Gruber, the Austrian minister of Foreign Affairs. Franz Joseph Strauss used the term to denounce the dangers of the German Ostpolitik as a reference to the limitations imposed by a powerful state upon the autonomy of a weaker neighbour. Through this process the sovereignty of a country is reduced under the guise of friendly relations with the USSR. Finland rebelled against [the usage of]] this term.

As far as I can tell, there is no mention of this in the article. Therefore, I would like to request your comment on the above to see if this can be introduced into the article. RedZebra 13:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

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