2. Main Historical Divisions in Finnish Society

The tendency toward consensual political culture is not the only reason why the Finnish case is interesting in a comparative setting. Finland's relevance is basically due to two main factors: its location and the positive outcome of the story. The fact that Finland is located ‘far in the North’, bordered mostly by the sea and the almost uninhabited forests of Russia, and being sparsely populated herself, could be easily interpreted as a historical development that evolved ‘separately’, and hence is so ‘different’ that it is not liable for serious comparison. However, on the contrary, because of its location, Finland has maintained strong connections to Scandinavia (through its being a part of Sweden for more than half a millennium), to the Baltics and Russia. At the intersection of three different historical paths (in terms of religion, socio-cultural structure or even language families), Finnish political culture has merged influences from very different directions, showing traces of the Scandinavian and genuinely Eastern-European together with those typical to the ‘small nations’ of Europe.Reference Hroch¹ Finns have shared the fate of many Eastern European nations, which had to develop a high culture in the vernacular to keep up with nineteenth-century western nationalism, and which established their own state in the aftermath of the collapse of the two multi-ethnic empires after the First World War. At the same time, it seems that, compared with other Eastern Central European nations, Finland gave different answers to similar questions. Finland is a success story in terms of well-being and welfare (some of the central notions of present-day political discourse and Finnish identity), and is rising from a backward province of the Russian empire to a wealthy state that is a fairly important, even if small, player on the international scene. Finland tends to end up in a leading position in various published lists of countries based on competitiveness, level of education, innovation, and lack of corruption.

However, viewing things from the viewpoint of Eastern-Central European ‘small nations’, Finland has had to face similar challenges, and the crises that can be considered as turning points from the point of view of political culture might seem familiar from the histories of other European countries.

As for the challenges and crises, the Napoleonic wars brought about significant changes in the geopolitical position of the territory now known as Finland, as the Eastern provinces of Sweden were annexed by Tsarist Russia. The establishment of the (semi-) autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland created the frame in which a national culture, economy, political and legal system could be developed. 1848 did not affect Finland in the same way as it did most of Europe (in Finnish history books it appears as the ‘silly/crazy’ spring of Europe). However, the way the challenge was handled has been considered symptomatic. As opposed to the useless rebellion of the Poles, Finns stayed loyal to the Tsar, and they gained more political freedom on the long run.

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, concurrently with the formation of modern party politics, the sources of the two basic divisions appeared that were to determine political culture for a longer period of time. These were nationalism and the labour movement. Even though at first sight these forces might appear as distinct, they showed themselves intertwined at several points of Finnish history.

As linguistic nationalism emerged, contradictions between Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking (mainly bilingual) elite groups became the most fundamental points of reference, which also served as the basis for party formation. For decades, Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers maintained different and competing conceptions of European culture, national symbols, but also of far more practical questions. In a unique way, linguistic nationalism as a political discourse suddenly disappeared after a century of omnipresence in the political sphere. The other rupture, which is connected to nationalism, was the relationship to Russia. After the turn of the twentieth century, while the juxtaposition of the Finnish and Swedish parties was still powerful, the conflicts between collaborators and active opponents of Russification came to the fore. As Finland gained independence after the First World War, the former attitude lost its relevance, while the latter developed into the ‘Russia hatred’ which, having achieved a central position in inter-war period discourses, became the central force of history in some interpretations of the Finnish past – at least during the Second World War. In contrast to anti-Swedish feelings, these attitudes are still present in Finnish political culture.

By far the most momentous events are connected to the years 1917–1918. Finland proclaimed her independence in December 1917, and the Civil War took place during the next spring. At that point, the main dividing line seemed to be between the bourgeois parties and social democrats, and the achievement of the independent state was, in a way, an outcome of this conflict. At the same time, anti-Russian sentiments played an important (although indirect) part in the outbreak of the civil war. Anti-bourgeois hatred merged with anti-Swedish sentiments on the red side. However, probably the most important factor was the aggression and war crimes committed by both sides.

In terms of consolidation, the main issue in the inter-war period was the ‘unification’ of the people after the Civil War, which had pulled the two sides apart. This influential metaphor, while it served reconciliation as its purpose, also implied the possibility to develop the idea of ‘Two Finlands’. The internal enemy was the communists, but external enemies, ‘others’ in a nationalist sense, were also important. Emerging linguistic nationalism was targeted against the Swedish-speakers, but especially against the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland. Sweden was seen partly as a bridge to the West, but also as a threat to autochthonous Finnish culture. The USSR was seen as the source of evil, and the extremely negative image of it also affected the attitudes towards old Russia and Russians. In a fascinating transformation, the negative traits of the Soviet system were projected upon the Russian people, and communism was explained by racist arguments (the Slavic people were unable to produce positive culture, hence they created Bolshevism).

After the First World War, Finnish society and political culture were burdened with several conflicts. In the given situation, however, the Finnish elite chose to heal the wounds and opted for unity. This was mainly the task of the Finnish-speaking right-wing elite, but almost all major groups took part in the process. Even though the Swedish-speaking population went through a phase of ‘Eastern Swedish’ nationalism, in the long run they too opted for the Finnish nation-state. Although the left felt considerable resentment after the defeat in the Civil War, the SDP participated actively in strengthening the parliamentary system in inter-war Finland.

The aftermath of the Second World War brought significant social tensions, but, on the level of political culture, consensus seems to have won again over polarization. Despite those tensions and the obvious attempts by the communists to guide Finland on the path of communism, the parliamentary system, and even the party system proved to stay surprisingly stable. Language ceased to be a dividing line (which is remarkable in a time of crisis), and class appeared as the relevant division in society.

3. Politics of Consensus and Recent Challenges

Even though most Finnish families have forefathers and relatives involved in the conflict on either side of the red/white division, the last few decades have witnessed the virtual disappearance of past divisions, and the emergence of the politics of consensus, which is widely held as the most typical feature of Finnish political culture. While the notion of consensus as a category to describe the specificities of Finnish political culture is inevitably a stereotype, and thus might easily be considered a myth, the stability and calmness of the Finnish political system (the party-system) is remarkable.

Recently, however, some of these traits of the Finnish political system have come to be contested. In 2011, the True Finns – who are described in the international press as extreme rightist, nationalist, xenophobic, etc – won a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections. A landslide victory is understood in a very special way in Finland: the aforementioned stability of the Finnish political system actually means that the regular changes in the share of votes received by a given party from one parliamentary election to another have been between 1 and 2% during the last 40 years. This rose to a whole 5% during the 1990s, but those changes did not affect the overall share of the three big parties. It was the predecessor of the True Finns, the Finnish Countryside Party, which managed to shake the Finnish party-system in at least one election, which happened 41 years earlier. It was perceived then as a ‘shocking election’; however, the impact of the Countryside party did not last. In this context, the 15% by which the True Finns raised their share of votes from 4% to 19% appears as unprecedented. For many average educated people, referred to as city liberals in the Finnish public discourse, this victory of the True Finns questioned their faith in the openness, tolerance, and future-orientation of the Finnish people. Furthermore, True Finns defined themselves against the so-called old parties, and thus against the traditional politics of consensus. This again raises doubts whether the Finnish story in terms of overcoming the consequences of past trauma can be considered as complete or irreversible.

In the following I will try to answer some of these doubts. First, I make an attempt to establish a, not exhaustive but sufficient, list of topics, myths and narratives, which appear as crucial for traditional national historiography. Later, I examine the current state of the crucial elements of these narratives and proceed to the question of whether the populist challenge is likely to bring about any changes in the state of affairs.

4. The ‘Great Myths’ of Finnish Historiography

As mentioned earlier, the two main forces, which are responsible for the historical divisions in Finnish society, are nationalism and the idea of class struggle. The role of the Civil War of 1918 as the most important event that shaped attitudes toward a common past is, in my view, an outcome of the interplay of several factors. Obviously, the fact that the Civil War affected the lives of many Finnish families (as the number of casualties rose to over 1% of the whole population), and most communities witnessed some manifestation of red or white terror, must be counted as central among the factors. But I would not underestimate the fact that those two main historical divisions became interconnected in the events of the Civil War and especially in its later interpretations.Reference Hämäläinen²

When it comes to Finnish nationalism, its story can be told as the story of an emancipator movement, through which the mostly poor, Finnish-speaking majority gained both inner and outer freedom, and a possibility to develop its own state. The ethnic/linguistic division inside the political elite, which appeared in the form of competing nationalist projects in the nineteenth century, has assumed a certain importance from time to time, but never really competed with the relations to Russia. Even though Finnish nationalist thought, in terms of academic discussions on nation, has centred on the notion of state since the time of the Hegelian thinker and central figure of nineteenth century Finnish nationalism, Johan Vilhelm Snellman,Reference Loima³ nationalist discourses had inevitably included the language issue, some elements of the ideology known as Russia hatred,Reference Immonen⁴ and some reflections on the topic of the place of Finns in a Finno-Ugric setting or, more generally, among the big families of nations.

In my view, Finnish traditional (‘national’) historiography is a teleological narrative, which has its climax in the achievement of the independent state, and centres on maintaining this achievement. The white interpretation of the Civil War, which was dominant in inter-war discourses, saw it as a ‘War of Independence’, through which the Finns ultimately gained and deserved statehood. This also served as a weapon to beat the left as enemies of the nation, since if the Civil War was no conflict between political sides, but a war between the Finns and Russians, those who fought on the red side must be Russians, or at least traitors.

When, starting with the 1960s, the re-evaluation of the axioms of traditional historiography began, those axioms, which were the most difficult to contest because of raising serious sentiments, were exactly those that were connected to elements of the narrative of independence. One of the most important controversies was over the position of the Finnish Grand Duchy inside the Russian empire. Contemporary intellectuals and lawyers developed the idea of a real union based on a contract between the emperor and the estates,Reference Jussila⁵ which was then broken by the Russian party, and Russification thus created the moral basis for the fight for independence. The fundamental position of this theory partly explains the strength of legalism, which is a peculiar feature of Finnish political culture. Contesting the views of nineteenth-century lawyers, thus, could be seen as an attack on the most valuable achievement history could offer: independence.

Now, if we summarize the main topics that constituted the traditional narrative of national historiography, which was in many ways connected to the white interpretation of modern history, these are connected to the notion of independence in one way or another.

This narrative has Russia as the Significant Other, in opposition to which the Finnish people had maintained their continuous struggle throughout history, and were bound to search for precedents of the Finnish statehood in the past. The ‘great myths of Finnish history’, as Osmo Jussila presents it in his similarly titled book,Reference Jussila⁶ thus include a good number of these issues. The first is the creation of a past in the Middle Ages, or even before, in which the Finns are not simply passive sufferers of history. Maybe the most important conceptual invention was the ex post factum creation of Sweden-Finland as a supposed-to-be-state union to correct this mistake of the flow of history, which left the Finnish people without the possession of any political entity throughout the centuries of Swedish rule.

Statehood appeared as crucial in this narrative for several reasons. First of all, the eminence of the already-mentioned Snellman and his thinking steered the discussion in this direction. But also, the moral basis for Finland's secession from Russia was not simply the right for self-determination of a distinct ethnic group or nation, but self-determination derived from its status as an already autonomous state. The positioning of the provincial gathering of the estates to listen to the speech of the Emperor, the Tsar, in Porvoo in 1809 as a parliamentary act of solving a union between the Tsar and the estates, which granted Finland autonomy (or established Finland as an autonomous state), served this purpose very well. And most importantly, there is the very idea of a Finnish autonomy inside the Russian empire itself, which is proved by Jussila to be an invention of Finnish legal experts during the course of the nineteenth century, and which completes my mention of the most important ‘myths’ that serve as a background to modern history.

Some of these elements were still in the making, but some others were ready to use and essential, when the freshly discovered Finnish nation rose to oppose the Russification attempts of the tsarist state. Jussila also lists as a ‘great myth’ the discourse on Russification: referred to as ‘periods of oppression’, in Finnish. If one considers the fact that Finland gained her independence through a gesture of Lenin and the Bolshevik commissars, it is less surprising that the Civil War, which was won by the white side with the support of German troops, got interpreted as a war of independence. Independence became the treasure of the small Finnish nation, which was contested by various enemies. Bolshevik Russia wanted to rob it through its spies and traitors in the war of freedom (or independence), and never ceased from pursuing it. At the same time, it applied deadly pressure on the Finno-Ugric relatives that had lived there from the beginning of history. Additionally, Soviet-Russia, with its authoritarian barbarism, which arose from its Slavic nature, was a continuous threat to the farthest bastion of Western culture.

These are the factors that actually connect the events of the Second World War with the achievement of independence in the minds of many Finns. Just like Christians might celebrate the risen Christ at Christmas, Finns might celebrate independence in connection with the winter war or the continuation war. A quite extraordinary example might shed some light on the eminence of the widely shared idea concerning the relevance of the relative success of the Finnish army in keeping Finland independent. A member of the very small Jewish community of Finland, who thus belongs to the few Jews who actually fought side-by-side with the Germans during the Second World War, writes in his memoirs how he himself was surprised by his own behaviour, when, trying to establish some commercial contacts in socialist Poland, he explained to his complaining Polish fellow trader how Finland remained independent because the Finns fought well and bold, unlike some other nations.Reference Grünstein⁷

5. The Turning Points of Finnish History in Recent Surveys

I do not intend to argue that ‘national historiography’ forms a fixed set of notions, ideas and interpretations, nor that it is not liable to constant change. However, the grand narrative of independence has a capacity to attract the regular citizen and thus, I assume, might appear quite lasting. Additionally, contesting views tend to find their way to schoolbooks relatively slowly, and even then their impact might be limited before there occurs a thorough change of paradigm. While specifying a group of topics as decisive from the point of view of the national narrative might seem admittedly artificial or arbitrary, it corresponds to a large extent to the idea of certain journalists on similar issues. My – although far from exhaustive – list of main controversial issues in traditional Finnish historiography can be contrasted with a survey of the opinions of established historians on the debated events of Finnish history. This also offers us an opportunity to test the changes the last decades have brought about in the perception of national history inside the profession.

Helsingin Sanomat, the largest-circulation daily in Finland, published an article based on five questions sent to all professors of history active in Finnish universities in 2008.⁸ The fundamental idea behind the questionnaire was to measure how much difference of opinion existed inside the profession. The questions were selected to represent debates on ‘turning points’ of Finnish history. Of the 37 professors, 28 sent in answers. Most of them explained, however, that, although popularization of the results of academic research was useful, history was not liable to be turned into a black-and-white confrontation of differing opinions, and instead of focusing on turning points, one should understand the ‘long lines’.

The first question, in chronological order, concerned the occupation of Finland by Russia in 1809. Considering all I have said earlier about the role of Russia as the Significant Other, it seems a powerful indication of a climate change that three out of four professors considered it a positive development. Some comments of the historians were also published alongside the results. Maybe the image of Russia as the eternal evil has faded, but the connection to nation-building and the idea of independence prevails. ‘It was positive if one considers it positive that Finland became Finland. Maybe negative if one pays attention to the life, political culture and maybe even economy of the Finnish population living here,’ argued one. Another professor found another aspect of Finland becoming the country it is now: ‘Finland became considerably bigger than it would have had the chance to become had it become independent from under Swedish rule.’ However, some elements of the good old ‘Russian hatred’ have also been saved for today. ‘As a part of Sweden we would have been saved from adopting a Slavic-inspired authoritarian viewpoint, which is still present in the debate on the role of the president and in the overall Finnish-type longing for leadership.’

A majority of the professors did not accept the idea of a ‘separate war’ either. Additionally, almost none of them considered the Civil War a fight for freedom. Interestingly, it was the role of President Kekkonen that divided this group of top historians. The question was put as ‘Did Kekkonen take Finland unnecessarily close to the sphere of interest of the Soviet Union?’ A slight majority concluded that Kekkonen did not go too far. ‘Kekkonen acted in his time in a way that took the special pressures of international politics into account. He was able to handle the Russians at a time, when the threat of the third world war rested over Europe. Finland made it through as an independent state.’

Nonetheless, they were in full agreement that no taboos existed for the research of Finnish history. All in all, the article suggests that some of the interpretations crucial from the point of view of traditional historiography are actually left behind by professional historians. But what is the case among regular citizens?

The results of a research project intended to survey the image of Finnish history held by the public were published recently.Reference Torsti⁹ The project used questionnaires and interviews involving 1200 people. The basic methodological tool of the research was to separate generations from each other based on the answers. The results showed profound shifts in the understanding of history, especially in younger generations. ‘In the majority of the opinions and interpretations concerning the events of 1918 the most profound aspect is a critical approach and not that of white or red Finland. The interpretation of the older generations concerning the wars (WWII) is not contested, but the younger generations do not seem to have any need to build up a heroic national narrative of the wars, in which the unpleasant and conflictual features would be hidden,’ explained the researchers.¹⁰ When asked about the five most important things in Finnish history, the wars, although appearing regularly on the list, did not make it to the top. Three out of four answers, however, specified Finnish primary education as the most important thing in Finnish history. They did not show enthusiasm towards the great figures of history either, even if Kekkonen and Mannerheim were both mentioned regularly. Some of the interviewees considered the most relevant development (process) from the 1950s onward ‘the change in the everyday life of ordinary people’. According to another interviewee, building the welfare state changed the life of Finnish people more than any other development of the 1900s.

The results undoubtedly tell us about fundamental changes in Finnish nationalism, which are also underlined by Pauli Kettunen.Reference Kettunen¹¹ Globalization and national competitiveness, and the project of a Nordic welfare state are the notions that define those discourses. From our point of view, however, the main moral of these results is that traditional historiography has lost its grip on younger generations, at least partly. At the same time, new nationalism and populism contest the achievements of national consolidation, the norms of political culture, and the generally held consensus. Hence there is the question of whether nationalist populism is making attempts to use historical memory to revive past divisions and conflicts.

6. The Populist Programme

The True Finns is one of those rare parties in the West that proudly define themselves as populists. Populism has a strong tradition in Finland, but its current version merges several ideological patterns considered earlier as separate. The roots of Finnish populism go back to the ideology of Santeri Alkio, who established the Agrarian party a little over 100 years ago. The Agrarian movement was close to the Young Finn party, and was thus affected by linguistic nationalism and some degree of liberalism. One of the most important legacies of this Alkio-type populism is probably legalism, by which I mean a strong belief in the rule of law and the formalities of democracy. The True Finn party was born in the ruins left after the bankruptcy of the previous populist party formation, the Finnish Countryside Party in 1995. The True Finn party shows several similarities to its predecessor, not least through its leader, Timo Soini, who was the last secretary of the Countryside Party. Both parties are frequently described as a one-man show, and some of the rhetoric and vocabulary seems constant.

Timo Soini defines the basis of his ideology as a bringing together of traditional Finnish ‘national populism’ and Euroscepticism. This is, however, not the only invention that occurred recently. Some of the growing popularity of the True Finns was certainly due to the incorporation of certain extreme right-wing elements and xenophobia. These Anti-Muslim sentiments and the opposition of immigration bring the party closer to the extreme right-wing political forces of the West. The third element is a very traditional 1930s-type nationalism that entered the party before the 2011 elections. This mixture seems to have the potential to generate polarization, which is supposed to have disappeared from Finnish public discourses to a large extent. In order to see whether there is an attempt to employ historical memory to increase polarization, I will examine the 2011 election programme of the True Finns, although the purpose is not to give a thorough analysis of the programme.

The first such document available to map the principles and aims of the party is the already mentioned election programme.¹² Compared with the previous programme for parliamentary election from 2007, the one in hand has doubled in extent and it contains an introductory chapter on party ideology (which is also available on the party website), entitled ‘values’. One of the differences with the earlier, very practically oriented, programme is the emphasis on culture. As the party also published an English summary of the programme on the website, I shall use it as long as it is liable for the purpose of analysis.

All in all, while the programme has some elements of extremist thought, it is for the most part still inside the framework of the ruling political language of Finnish politics. Stating that humanity and equality (the concept of equality or actually equal dignity is the central notion of Finnish political discourse; ‘tasa-arvo’ could perhaps be best defined as the outcome of an emancipator process), plus spiritual growth are the basis of the True Finn ideology might hint at something other than an extreme right-wing ideology. Although it puts forward community as the natural surroundings of any individual, the programme as a whole is surprisingly individualistic. It is actually far from collectivistic in its details. Besides people and nation, and equality of course, the key concepts are sustainable development, invention, and competitiveness.

Most of the actual values the programme lists are not typically specific to any political ideology. Being honest and just are hardly political categories. The authors base the populist ideology on ‘belief and trust in the human being’ in order to distance the party from the ‘old parties’: the left and the right: however they do not explain how. On a political level, the theoretical part of the programme points out the importance of ‘democratic structures’ as opposed to bureaucratic government. ‘Finnishness’ appears already among the values listed, and the nationalist aspect runs throughout the whole text. However, even though the authors of the programme state that the mere name of the party tells that it is based on Finnish culture and Finnish history, the level of the text and the references used hint that this nationalism has not become an integral part of the ideology, at least not yet. While the introduction includes a sentence on popular sovereignty and national self-determination, perhaps a nationalist credo, it clearly gets lost with the problem that people and nation are very close in Finnish terminology and thus it is impossible to use them intertwined.

Additionally, the heavy emphasis on nationalism, although present, influences the actual programme only slightly. One of the chapters that is relevant here is on Finnish culture, which receives notable attention among the various topics. The key conflict is not between national culture and multiculturalism, but between these two and ‘monoculturalism’, which is probably a way to soften the nationalistic tone, but again, it shows the need to remain inside the mainstream political language, and thus question the consensus from inside. It is also remarkable that while it is definitely strange to contemplate the definition and content of national identity and consciousness in a party programme, defining it as selflessness is not a return to inter-war discourses. The idea of interfering in the curriculum of history for ideological reasons is probably alien to Finnish political culture, but again, the actual ideas, such as putting an emphasis on the ‘Finnish miracle’, are future-oriented – teaching how the wars were crucial from the point of view of ‘independence, which is especially important as the Finnish success story’ connects this to more traditional discourses.

Coming to the practicalities and actual aims of the cultural programme, the opposition of national and post-modern arts and the claim that the latter should not be financed by the state is the harshest element. Maybe surprisingly, the programme does not invoke heavy anti-Russian feelings. Russians are mentioned only implicitly, as those who should not be allowed to buy Finnish soil as long as they deny it from the Finns in their own country. The ruling idea towards the ethnic groups that were perceived as enemies by earlier nationalists is reciprocity. The status of the Swedish-speaking community is attacked in several ways, but if Finnish-speaking students are not forced to learn Swedish, in the name of equality, it has to be the same the other way around.

An interesting feature of the programme is its relation to the notion of change and tradition. The objective is not to find original pureness, nor to return to the sources of national identity, but to adapt to the new challenges of the surrounding world. At the same time, the text describing the Euroscepticism of the party is rather naïve but consistent with the ‘theoretical foundation’ of the introduction. The EU is an impossible project, because the people it is composed of will never merge into one single nation and thus it cannot develop into a democratic state, which means that the only democratic direction of development is less EU.

The chapter of the programme that contains the harshest language, and which is probably the farthest from the regular Finnish discourse, is that on immigrants. This is the only part of the text that might be described as extremist. It is an interesting element that the party still argues against the segregation of immigrant pupils. While certain elements of extremism, and a heavy nationalist rhetoric, are present, in terms of political languages the True Finn programme did not question the basics of the Finnish experience. Even though the tradition of linguistic nationalism is brought back to political discussion, it is tame compared with its predecessor or Central-European nationalism. This is not to say that the programme analysed here would represent the True Finn ideology in its entire depth, nor that it is not a serious threat to consensual politics as known in Finland. The True Finns won a great number of seats in the local elections in 2012 and the way they reshape the ways of local policy making will tell us much more about that. But, based on this programme at least, it is unlikely they would employ past divisions of Finnish society or politics of memory to a considerable extent.