Editor's note: The following material has been collected and created as a part of the Minne 1984
project, conducted under the auspices of Swedish Royal Academy of Letters and funded by the Government of Sweden.
The project was started after fears were raised among the KVHAA and the general community of historians that due to the conditions within the Provisional Province of Ostrobothnia and the Finnish National Authority (from hereon PPO and FNA) , there was a grave danger of altogether losing the historical sources, eyewitness information and war-time recollections still extant in these areas. After a series of discussions within the KVHAA and the government, as well as between several universities, a plan was agreed on to collect appropriate sources and information, to interview local people and to generally gain a more complete understanding of the events that took place in Finland during the winter of 1983-1984 and the following years.
Altogether more than thirty volunteer researchers were sent to the PPO and the FNA, accompanied by Swedish security personnel between the years 2007-2012. A preliminary report of the results was submitted to the KVHAA and the government in 2014. While parts of the report have been declared secret under the Security of the Realm Act, the public results of the project will be published in their entirety during early 2015.
In the meanwhile, anyone interested in the project and the wartime conditions in Finland is welcome to peruse this preliminary collection of interviews, recollections and sources. Also some public parts of the project's report have been included, with the approval of its several authors.
In Uppsala on Remembrance Day 2014,
Jan Holmén
Project Secretary
Researcher in Nordic History, Uppsala University
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President Mauno Koivisto prepares for his New Year's Speech on January 1st, 1984. FNA archives.
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Even if things look bad now, they will be even worse in the future.
Attributed to President Mauno Koivisto, early 1980s.
I. Diplomatic Manouvres in the Dark
During the latter part of 1983 the escalating crisis between the main Cold War players was also reflected to the political conditions in the Nordic area. In Finland, President Koivisto and Prime Minister Sorsa's wide-based coalition government were walking a tightrope of maintaining a facáde of Nordic-model neutrality and at the same time appeasing a Soviet government bent on upholding the contractual obligations bestowed on Finland in the 1948 Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance.
The international consensus at the time was that if a war broke out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the Agreement would give Finland no other option than to be joined to the defensive apparatus of the Eastern bloc, never mind the Finnish government's protests of neutrality. This is why in western war plans Finland was usually written off in advance as the nation was expected to be taken over in short order by the Red Army. To counter this, the US war plans had since the 1960s included a number of nuclear targets in Finland, to be obliterated to deny the Warsaw Pact the opportunity to use the Finnish soil as a springboard for operations against Norway and Sweden.
As soon as the international situation started to deteriorate towards war, the Soviet government begun to push the Finns to take steps that would integrate Finnish national defense with that of the Rodina. In Soviet planning, Finland was a part of the defensive ring around the greater Leningrad area, whether willingly or through the application of military force. Already in the late summer of 1983 the Finnish government received news through the Soviet ambassador, Vladimir Sobolev, that Moscow wanted to conduct military exercises with Finnish forces ”in the immediate future”. This was just a precursor of things to come. In early November with nary a few days' warning, a surprise delegation arrived in Helsinki, led by Marshal Dmitri Ustinov and including, amongs others, the second-in-command of the Soviet forces in the Leningrad Military District.
...News at 8.30. President Koivisto's planned state visit to the United States of America has been cancelled. A spokesman for the President's Office said that the decision was made due to security concerns...
Koivisto and Sorsa were duly alarmed, especially as the latter had just returned from Stockholm where he had talked in length with that fellow Social Democrat, Olof Palme, about the need to maintain ”real neutrality” as long as possible during the crisis. The two had released a joint statement proposing an international conference in to be held Stockholm to act as a venue for dialogue to defuse the situation. With hindsight, their October discussions show a surprisingly naive belief (or perhaps a desperate hope) that a war is still to be averted and that Nordic nations could act as doctors to cure the great powers from their near-terminal brinkmanship...
...has dispersed a large pro-Soviet ”peace” demonstration in central Helsinki, sparked by the events in East Berlin. At least fifty demonstrators have been arrested. After several popular protests in the capital during the last weeks, the Helsinki police commissioner promised yesterday to step up efforts to maintain order in the capital region. The Soviet Embassy has condemned the actions of the police, saying that the Finnish government ”has taken an anti-Soviet political stand by interfering with the recent protests”...
The ad hoc Finno-Soviet negotiations that ensued in November-December were tense and despite the Soviets' constant pressure on the Finnish side, Koivisto and the commander of the Defence Forces, General Lauri Sutela, managed to rebuff most of the Soviet demands about deepening military co-operation or allowing the Red Army or the Soviet air or naval assets to use bases in Finland. A ”Finno-Soviet Bilateral Defense Commission” was however created, to include high political and military figures from both sides (as well as a permanent staff), to ”facilitate concrete cooperation based on the FCMA Treaty” as the Soviet side officially phrased the matter. Unofficially, on the Finnish side it soon became known as the Control Commission, as a reference to the group of Soviet military figures who lorded over Helsinki in 1944-1947. To those in the know the Soviet members of the commission (as well as those Finns deemed politically suspect) were likened to champignon mushrooms, according to the old adage to be ”kept constantly in the dark and fed shit regularly”...
The Finnish mobilization was begun during these talks, partly as a way to alleviate Soviet fears of Finland being unprepared for possible NATO incursions in the Baltic Sea area. It was decided by the government before the Soviets demanded such a move, as a way of showing initiative and independent thought to both Moscow and the Western governments. The last thing Koivisto wanted was to act only as a reaction to Soviet demands, in any circumstances. This is also why in the media he vehemently professed Finnish neutrality even as it was agreed that the Soviets start emergency deliveries of military materiel and oil to Finland by January, as a way of propping up Finnish defensive capabilities. The first shipment of new AA missiles crossed the border in already on the last week of December.
...in parliament today. Sorsa's coalition cabinet defeated SKDL's vote of no confidence by a margin of 152-28. The heated discussion continued well into the night, as...
By January 1984 the Finno-Soviet Defence Commission had become an arena of Finnish politico-diplomatic delaying action against any and all Soviet demands. The action on the Finnish side was led by General Sutela, who had been due to retire just before the crisis broke out but had agreed to extend his commission at the top of the Defence Forces as a personal favour to the president. As the weeks progressed, the Soviets became more vocal, and as it seemed, desperate in their demands. The main points crystallised as allowing the Soviet forces, both the army and the air force, the right to use Finnish Lapland and any military facilities there ”for the defence of the USSR” and placing the Finnish radar network to Soviet use for early warning purposes. As the Soviets grew more assertive, the Finnish side in turn waxed more eloquent and byzantine in its rebuffals, while at the same time allowing very minor concessions in an attempt to keep the opponent pacified as long as possible.
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of discussions within the framework of the Finno-Soviet Bilateral Defence Commission at the Palace of the Council of State. Sorsa and Vladimirov discussed various issues...
The key question as regards to the wording of the FCMA Treaty was whether Finland was under a threat of attack ”by Germany or a nation allied with it”. This caused the Finnish government to officially keep up the increasingly unrealistic charade of everything being all fine and dandy in the Nordic area. ”A threat of war? What war?”, would the Finnish negotiatiors ask with honest faces while covering up violations of the Finnish airspace in the north by Western aircraft – openly conceding they had been happening since late November would have massively undermined the Finnish position.
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Minister Paavo Väyrynen meets his Norwegian counterpart, Mr. Svenn Stray in Oslo today to to discuss unspecified questions of mutual interest. Väyrynen will continue his Nordic tour in two days. He is scheduled the meet the Swedish Foreign Minister, Lennart Bodström, on Wednesday...
The Finnish military was never going to defend Leningrad against a Western attack, of course. Since the immediate post-war years, the huge majority of Finnish defensive plans and exercises had predicated on the attack coming from the east. The Finnish military had extensive contacts with Sweden and Western intelligence assets. With the western neighbour, Finland co-operated in secret especially in matters relating to the navy and the air force. Plans were in place for a joint naval defense of the Åland islands and the surrounding area. The Swedish Air Force stockpiled fighters for the Finns, in numbers that went over and above the figure the FAF was allowed to operate according to post-war treaties. Intelligence channels were open, especially towards Sweden. Any troops the Finns mobilized would be most likely arrayed along the eastern border – and a high amount of
maskirovka was taking place to hide this fact from the Soviets.
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of logging has been started in South Karelia. The joint large-scale project by Enso-Gutzeit, Kymi-Kymmene and Imatran Voima will address the current problems of delivering wood both to pulp mills and power stations in the southern part of the country. The State Railways and the Defence Forces will cooperate in the project...
In retrospect, it is clear that given the situation the world found itself in during the first weeks of 1984, the Finno-Soviet situation was also going to come to a head and in short order. The Finnish government could string the Soviets along for only so long; it is surprising that this took as long as it did. In the event, Finland was among the last European nations along the Iron Curtain to be dragged along to the Third World War. When the Soviets finally called Helsinki's bluff, it was too late to...
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