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rfmcdonaldGiving just a little bit of territory to Finland can change quite a lot when the time comes. Thanks to Jussi Jalonen for providing some interesting speculations.
* * *
The Nordic countries generally have been interests of mine on account of their--forgive me the pun--nordic nature: sparsely populated countries, these countries are
characterized by long distances and harsh climates and resources that can only be exploited with difficulty, characterised by strong social welfare nets built on the basis of generations of invested social capital. Two countries in particular interest me. First comes Estonia, a nation that came late to the formation of its nation-state and--arguably with Latvia--the only Nordic nation-state that suffered the massacres of the Nazi and Soviet states, of interest to me mainly for its rapid recovery to Norden. The other country is Finland, now a model Nordic state but once a country that compelled to ally with Hitler in order to secure its frontier province of Karelia.
My biggest complaint with the book is that Heikkinen chose to begin his moderately serious culture history directly in 1946, one year after the atom-bombing of Hamburg that ended the Second World War. I disagree with him on this choice: The Winter War and the Continuation War directly determined the fate of Karelia and all of Finland. It's not inconceivable that Russia post-Barbarossa revival could have taken it as far as the Gulf of Bothnia, if not further; it's not inconceivable that Finland would have been forced to maker territorial concessions, as Bulgaria did to Greece. The specific actions of the war--the axes of Finland's advances, Germany's scorched-earth campaigns around doomed Leningrad and along the White Sea coast and the airpower severing of Bolsheviks' sea route to Britain--directly determined the concentration of population and economic assets. Viipuri has remained prosperous, and the Ingrians saved from Leningrad oblast were settled--with some difficulty, as the author notes-- in the province, but as we know from the Spanish war displaced populations rarely return to their homes if too much time passes. There's a reason that Karelia hasn't regained its pre-Second World War population: too much damage has been done. The neglect of the economic aspects of post-Second World War Karelia is a serious lacuna, especially inasmuch as this directly determines the cultural environment of and produced by Karelia.
Heikkinen does a much better job examining the way that Karelia was strategically positioned in various group imaginations in the wider world by active Finnish propagandists as early as the Winter War. To the Finns, Karelia remained their critical eastern frontier, the source of the myths and the musics that helped define Finnish identity, at the same time proof of Finland's diversity by hosting the Swedish and Russian minorities still extant today, and relatively incidentally a frontier. To Finland's fellow Nordics, Karelia was a strategically critical frontier holding back post-Bolshevik Russia. To Russia, Finland was nothing more than the illegitimate frontier of a state indirectly responsible for millions of Russian dead. The wider world, the author argues, came to view Karelia is just another meaningless frontier, of less note than the reannexation of Ukraine or the Yugoslav invasion of Venetia. Heikkinen's exploration of the Russian perspective is somewhat repetitive, himself admitting that the Russian perspective began to shift from the above described theme only in the post-Vasilyev liberalization period, but the rapid convergence of Finnish perspectives with that of wider Norden is quite notable, motivated by a common Nordic sense of threat by an angry Russia and a chaotic Germany. Something of this made it into the wider world but what I wasn't aware of was the extent to which not only Swedes and Estonians but Danes and Norwegians came to identify with Karelia as just another Nordic territory, tourist daytrips from Helsinki or Tallin to Viipuri playing as much a role as that of Norwegian forestry combines looking for another untapped frontier. Denmark had to split its attentions between Germany and the threat to the east, but Sweden and Norway saw in Karelia the territory necessary to defend Norden's heartlands and hence concentrated accordingly on the joint militarization with Russia. This "Karelianism" even made it into children's literature--I can remember reading about the adventures of the Eriksson twins, caught behind the Russian front lines with secret messages to give to the Finnish commanders, back when I was in elementary school. Karelia, Heikkinen convincingly argues, was the geographical framework for not only Finnish nationalism within its Nordek framework but for the Nordek and political Norden itself. The cost of this militarization to a frontier province is documented in detail with populations being moved wholesale to defensible positions and many simply leaving altogether, to urban Finland or to Sweden for work. In brief, the image of Karelia drove out the reality of this province.
Heikkinen's conclusion that Karelia's days as a frontier might be over strike me as premature. The Russian government still complains that Petrograd is hemmed in by Nordek's Finnish and Estonian member-states, and the Nordek-Russian frontiers are still tightly sealed. Opinion surveys suggest that Russians see Nordics as hypocritical slow-witted pedants, while Russians are viewed by Nordics as violent and/or sexually promiscuous criminals. Karelia would benefit from an opening-up of frontiers, as the natural land interface between Russia and Nordek, but until these stereotypes are removed--and the sixty years of pervasive cultural programming that helped create these stereotypes--Karelia is set to languish in suspension.
* * *
The Nordic countries generally have been interests of mine on account of their--forgive me the pun--nordic nature: sparsely populated countries, these countries are
characterized by long distances and harsh climates and resources that can only be exploited with difficulty, characterised by strong social welfare nets built on the basis of generations of invested social capital. Two countries in particular interest me. First comes Estonia, a nation that came late to the formation of its nation-state and--arguably with Latvia--the only Nordic nation-state that suffered the massacres of the Nazi and Soviet states, of interest to me mainly for its rapid recovery to Norden. The other country is Finland, now a model Nordic state but once a country that compelled to ally with Hitler in order to secure its frontier province of Karelia.
My biggest complaint with the book is that Heikkinen chose to begin his moderately serious culture history directly in 1946, one year after the atom-bombing of Hamburg that ended the Second World War. I disagree with him on this choice: The Winter War and the Continuation War directly determined the fate of Karelia and all of Finland. It's not inconceivable that Russia post-Barbarossa revival could have taken it as far as the Gulf of Bothnia, if not further; it's not inconceivable that Finland would have been forced to maker territorial concessions, as Bulgaria did to Greece. The specific actions of the war--the axes of Finland's advances, Germany's scorched-earth campaigns around doomed Leningrad and along the White Sea coast and the airpower severing of Bolsheviks' sea route to Britain--directly determined the concentration of population and economic assets. Viipuri has remained prosperous, and the Ingrians saved from Leningrad oblast were settled--with some difficulty, as the author notes-- in the province, but as we know from the Spanish war displaced populations rarely return to their homes if too much time passes. There's a reason that Karelia hasn't regained its pre-Second World War population: too much damage has been done. The neglect of the economic aspects of post-Second World War Karelia is a serious lacuna, especially inasmuch as this directly determines the cultural environment of and produced by Karelia.
Heikkinen does a much better job examining the way that Karelia was strategically positioned in various group imaginations in the wider world by active Finnish propagandists as early as the Winter War. To the Finns, Karelia remained their critical eastern frontier, the source of the myths and the musics that helped define Finnish identity, at the same time proof of Finland's diversity by hosting the Swedish and Russian minorities still extant today, and relatively incidentally a frontier. To Finland's fellow Nordics, Karelia was a strategically critical frontier holding back post-Bolshevik Russia. To Russia, Finland was nothing more than the illegitimate frontier of a state indirectly responsible for millions of Russian dead. The wider world, the author argues, came to view Karelia is just another meaningless frontier, of less note than the reannexation of Ukraine or the Yugoslav invasion of Venetia. Heikkinen's exploration of the Russian perspective is somewhat repetitive, himself admitting that the Russian perspective began to shift from the above described theme only in the post-Vasilyev liberalization period, but the rapid convergence of Finnish perspectives with that of wider Norden is quite notable, motivated by a common Nordic sense of threat by an angry Russia and a chaotic Germany. Something of this made it into the wider world but what I wasn't aware of was the extent to which not only Swedes and Estonians but Danes and Norwegians came to identify with Karelia as just another Nordic territory, tourist daytrips from Helsinki or Tallin to Viipuri playing as much a role as that of Norwegian forestry combines looking for another untapped frontier. Denmark had to split its attentions between Germany and the threat to the east, but Sweden and Norway saw in Karelia the territory necessary to defend Norden's heartlands and hence concentrated accordingly on the joint militarization with Russia. This "Karelianism" even made it into children's literature--I can remember reading about the adventures of the Eriksson twins, caught behind the Russian front lines with secret messages to give to the Finnish commanders, back when I was in elementary school. Karelia, Heikkinen convincingly argues, was the geographical framework for not only Finnish nationalism within its Nordek framework but for the Nordek and political Norden itself. The cost of this militarization to a frontier province is documented in detail with populations being moved wholesale to defensible positions and many simply leaving altogether, to urban Finland or to Sweden for work. In brief, the image of Karelia drove out the reality of this province.
Heikkinen's conclusion that Karelia's days as a frontier might be over strike me as premature. The Russian government still complains that Petrograd is hemmed in by Nordek's Finnish and Estonian member-states, and the Nordek-Russian frontiers are still tightly sealed. Opinion surveys suggest that Russians see Nordics as hypocritical slow-witted pedants, while Russians are viewed by Nordics as violent and/or sexually promiscuous criminals. Karelia would benefit from an opening-up of frontiers, as the natural land interface between Russia and Nordek, but until these stereotypes are removed--and the sixty years of pervasive cultural programming that helped create these stereotypes--Karelia is set to languish in suspension.
