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Four: The Summer of Innocence
It was high summer for a people revelling in its freedom and youthful growth. Walking the streets of the city, I looked at the smiling faces of the young men and women about their everyday business, saw the determined, sweaty construction workers in their honest work, and spied high above a lone falcon soaring over the buildings, playfully reaching for the clouds.
It was a summer of innocence.
Would things ever again be as good, as pure, as lively and radiant as they were now, I wondered.
The answer came with a cold gust of wind, but young and naïve as I was, I didn’t bother to listen.
Mika Waltari: Päiviemme määrä (”The Number of Our Days”), 1960.
Four: The Summer of Innocence
Over two decades later, the writer Mika Waltari would dub the middle months of 1939 ”a summer of innocence” in his acclaimed novel Päiviemme määrä (”The Number of Our Days”). In retrospect, it is indeed not hard to see the summer in this way. Despite the instability growing in much of Europe at the time, in Finland the general atmosphere was quite optimistic. The Great Depression had passed the nation relatively lightly, and in the late 30s Finland experienced healthy economic growth based on increased foreign trade, mostly centred on the well-developing wood industry’s products. The standards of living were improving, the paychecks growing. And novel products to use your money in kept arriving in the stores. New companies and new industrial plants were built, the state supported the development of national infrastructure and the electrification of the nation had been well underway after the construction of the first major hydro plant in the Imatrankoski in Southern Karelia in the late 20s. Additional mineral deposits were found in different parts of the country, and new mining operations were planned. Some of them were already being realized: in the very north of the country, in Arctic Sea-hugging Petsamo, the left arm of the Maid of Finland, the construction was underway for a major nickel plant, on cooperation with the British-Canadian Inco-Mond company.
Slowly but surely, Finland was opening up to Europe, just like the young intellectuals and writers of the Tulenkantajat (”The Fire Bearers”) movement, a member of which also Waltari was, were demanding through their work. Helsinki was a more international city by the day – and would be even more so by 1940. In the Finnish capital, the general arrangements for the 1940 Olympics, awarded to Finland by the IOC after Japan had to forfeit the games planned to be held in Tokyo due to the international criticism caused by the war with China, were progressing well. In the warm summer months of 1939, the work to build the new Olympic stadium in Helsinki continued apace with the effort to construct all the other Olympic venues in time. The stadium was to be completed by the end of the year, like the new velodrome and most of the Olympic Village, and by the admission of the German Olympic organizer Carl Diem who visited Finland in early August, the fact that the Finns had had only half the ordinary time for this effort at their use was not at all readily apparent.[1] By and by, the Finnish Olympic Committee was sanguine of success in every way. In July, the Finnish newspapers reported that after recent discussions with European and American authorities and media organizations, the Helsinki games would become the Olympic Games to most widely reach international audiences through the radio waves so far.
In early July, Finland elected a new parliament for the ninth time in the short history of the Republic. By and large, Prime Minister Cajander’s coalition cabinet dominated by the Social Democrats and the Agrarians received strong support from the electorate, with both the ruling parties gaining new parliamentarians. In the new Eduskunta, the SDP had won 85 and the Agrarian League 56 seats. The biggest loser was the far right, nationalist Patriotic People’s Movement that lost almost half of its seats and dropped to only 8 members of the parliament. Even if the young and eager Agrarian Minister of the Interior, Urho Kekkonen, had ultimately failed in his 1938 effort to abolish the whole nationalist party as ”anti-democratic” and as dangerous to the nation as far left groups were, the fallout from his efforts to do this appeared to hurt the far right much more than it did the moderate Agrarians.
While abroad the Finnish elections received a lot less interest than the other, generally more worrying and negative developments in more southern parts of Europe, the limited foreign commentary that did appear saw the Finnish political system in a favourable light. In an article on Finland, the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung estimated that the results of the elections now showed to the world that the Finns in general supported democracy, parliamentarism, and neutrality policies that were based on Finland cooperating with its neighbour Sweden and staying well out of international disagreements.
At this time, of course, the discussions between the Finnish and Soviet authorities about Soviet territorial demands, ones that had been started on the insistence of the Soviet diplomat Boris Yartsev [2] in the spring of 1938, were not yet known among anyone else than a very limited number of Finnish and Soviet leading politicians and diplomats. These discussions had been continued on a higher level in the spring of 1939, but the Finnish government had that far flatly rejected all Soviet demands.
After the elections, the coalition cabinet that had been led by Prime Minister Aimo Cajander since 1937 continued with the essentially same team of ministers, neither President Kyösti Kallio or the main parties seeing a need for a reshuffle. Generally, there were more policy disagreements between the politicians and the military leadership than between the main parties themselves. After the elections, a row flared up again between the Agrarian Minister of Defence, Juho Niukkanen, and the Social Democrat Minister of Finance, Väinö Tanner, on one side, and the chairman of the National Defence Council, Field Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim, on the other. The issues were Mannerheim’s demands for more money to the military, and a bigger mandate for him as the head of the Defence Council, and Niukkanen’s and Tanner’s opposition to these demands. In the event, the president supported Mannerheim’s mandate but failed to give strong backing to an enlarged defence budget. In the conditions prevalent in late July 1939, Prime Minister Cajander did not believe that war would touch Finland for a long time to come. The President generally agreed with the assessment of the man who was more of a university professor than a career politician by skills and inclinations.
The approaching Olympics were seen as ready fodder for the nascent Finnish movie industry as well. In the summer of 1939 the production company Suomi-Filmi was shooting an Olympic-themed comedy in Helsinki, based on the popular characters of Lapatossu, the lazy, laid-back joker played by Aku Korhonen, and Vinski, his often straight-man sidekick (Kaarlo Kartio), called Lapatossu ja Vinski olympiakuumeessa (”Lapatossu And Vinski In Olympic Fever”). The film directed by the well-established Yrjö Norta was to premier in early September. When the production of the film was ongoing, however, a tragedy struck the Finnish film world. At an event connected with the premier of director Valentin Vaala’s Rikas tyttö (”The Rich Girl”) in Hämeenlinna, the movie’s leading actress Sirkka Sari climbed on the roof of the Hotel Aulanko, on a lark, and fell down a chimney she had mistaken for a viewing platform. The promising young actress died at age 19 and the tragic death was widely discussed in the press during the following days and weeks. Sari’s funeral on August 5th at Muolaa on the Karelian isthmus was attended by a massive number of people.
On the Karelian isthmus, a bone of contention between the Finnish and Soviet governments in 1938 and 1939, the summer nevertheless showed its best sides to visitors and tourists. Terijoki near the border was a town known for its spas and sandy beaches already in Tsarist times. Then the town by the Viipuri - St.Petersburg railway was patronized by the well-to-do from the nearby imperial Russian capital, who built many pretty villas among the sand dunes next to the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Now in 1939 most of these villas were owned by Finnish summer guests: after a major number of the villas had not been reclaimed by their pre-1917 owners after the area passed to Finnish ownership in the post-revolution days, they had been taken over by the Finnish state and auctioned off to interested citizens. Many a family had been able to acquire an affordable summer villa they hoped would solve their summer vacation-related questions for many years to come. Even for the people who could not afford an entire villa as their own or even on temporary lease, the hotels and inns of the Terijoki area allowed a good base of operation from where to hit the beaches in the sun.
At the other end of the Finnish southern coast, the streets of the little coastal town right next to Turku were almost filled with people on this sunny August day. Naantali, the sunshine town, was each year becoming a more popular place for tourists arriving, it seemed, from all parts of the nation. Not only was the town pretty and cozy with its old wooden houses, it also could boast a fine, big medieval church and, the most important feature of all, a well-regarded spa and a number of high-class establishments for those with an interest in wining and dining.
Along the sunny street, an older man in a light-colored summer suit and a panama hat was walking casually. Soon, he was joined by a woman of the same age. Followed discreetly by a small number of young and fit men in sensibly-cut suits, then couple made their way towards the waterfront.
The man with a panama hat, his face decorated with a set of heavy, drooping mustaches nodded and smiled to people passing him and his wife on the street, many of them recognizing the Republic’s first couple on a daily outing in the streets of the nation’s summer capital. For here in Naantali, on an island just off the town centre, within a view of the stony medieval church, stood Kultaranta [3], the Finnish presidents’ official summer residence.
As he walked on, with his wife Kaisa's hand in his, President Kyösti Kallio was increasingly drifting deeper into his own head. His mind floated in a flow of free association. He had not slept very well recently, his poor health causing him trouble almost daily, and it made him irritable. It also made it hard to focus on things, sometimes.
The recent political events if Europe bothered Kallio, despite the glorious summer weather around him. So did the USSR’s attitude towards Finland. What caused him particular grief today was the fate of that young actress who had lost her life in Hämeenlinna – the old man did not understand why God would allow such accidents to happen to young people who had their whole lives in front of them. Just a slight misstep, and it was the end of everything.
The old couple had now reached a wooden pier by the sea, and there the presidential motor boat was waiting for them – modest in size, but all gleaming, well-varnished mahogany nevertheless, at its controls a young, keen soldier attached to the summer house’s staff. The president's second aide-de-camp waited here as well, and made to salute his boss as the old man approached him.
As Kallio stepped on the pier, he continued to contemplate the unfortunate fate of the young actress, and now he felt an even worse twist of pain in his heart. Right after first feeling it, he saw his view of vision dimming and could not feel his wife's hand in his own anymore.
And so, just a mere metre before the president’s second aide-de-camp would have extended his hand to the President of the Republic to help him to the waiting motor boat, the man in the summer suit stumbled and fell. It happened too fast for the aide-de-camp or the president's wife to react. Kallio slipped down from the pier to the water, and on the way struck his head violently to the boat’s side.[4]
Only now the young soldier at the boat’s controls moved, took a couple of steps and swiftly jumped to the water to help the old man. In seconds, the second aide-de-camp got down to the water as well.
As the two men started dragging the president out of the water, with three onlookers rushing to help in what seemed like slow motion, Kaisa Kallio stared at the man she had been married to for 37 years.
Only a quiet whisper left her lips.
”Please, for God’s sake, help him”.
Notes:
[1] Diem was the chief organizer of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He is considered the inventor of the modern-style Olympic torch relay.
[2] An alias. The real name of the man calling himself ”Yartsev” was Boris Rybkin. NKVD officers working at the Soviet embassy in Finland frequently adopted aliases for the duration of their stay in Helsinki.
[3] Or Gullranda in Swedish. The Finnish name can be translated literally as ”Gold Coast”. The handsome granite villa was built during WWI for the millionaire businessman Alfred Kordelin, who had planned it to become the home where he could spend his sunset years. After Kordelin was killed by Red soldiers in 1917, the villa passed eventually to the Finnish state and was made into the Finnish presidents’ summer residence in 1920.
[4] OOC: A PoD.
To Be Continued
It was a summer of innocence.
Would things ever again be as good, as pure, as lively and radiant as they were now, I wondered.
The answer came with a cold gust of wind, but young and naïve as I was, I didn’t bother to listen.
Mika Waltari: Päiviemme määrä (”The Number of Our Days”), 1960.
Four: The Summer of Innocence
Over two decades later, the writer Mika Waltari would dub the middle months of 1939 ”a summer of innocence” in his acclaimed novel Päiviemme määrä (”The Number of Our Days”). In retrospect, it is indeed not hard to see the summer in this way. Despite the instability growing in much of Europe at the time, in Finland the general atmosphere was quite optimistic. The Great Depression had passed the nation relatively lightly, and in the late 30s Finland experienced healthy economic growth based on increased foreign trade, mostly centred on the well-developing wood industry’s products. The standards of living were improving, the paychecks growing. And novel products to use your money in kept arriving in the stores. New companies and new industrial plants were built, the state supported the development of national infrastructure and the electrification of the nation had been well underway after the construction of the first major hydro plant in the Imatrankoski in Southern Karelia in the late 20s. Additional mineral deposits were found in different parts of the country, and new mining operations were planned. Some of them were already being realized: in the very north of the country, in Arctic Sea-hugging Petsamo, the left arm of the Maid of Finland, the construction was underway for a major nickel plant, on cooperation with the British-Canadian Inco-Mond company.
Slowly but surely, Finland was opening up to Europe, just like the young intellectuals and writers of the Tulenkantajat (”The Fire Bearers”) movement, a member of which also Waltari was, were demanding through their work. Helsinki was a more international city by the day – and would be even more so by 1940. In the Finnish capital, the general arrangements for the 1940 Olympics, awarded to Finland by the IOC after Japan had to forfeit the games planned to be held in Tokyo due to the international criticism caused by the war with China, were progressing well. In the warm summer months of 1939, the work to build the new Olympic stadium in Helsinki continued apace with the effort to construct all the other Olympic venues in time. The stadium was to be completed by the end of the year, like the new velodrome and most of the Olympic Village, and by the admission of the German Olympic organizer Carl Diem who visited Finland in early August, the fact that the Finns had had only half the ordinary time for this effort at their use was not at all readily apparent.[1] By and by, the Finnish Olympic Committee was sanguine of success in every way. In July, the Finnish newspapers reported that after recent discussions with European and American authorities and media organizations, the Helsinki games would become the Olympic Games to most widely reach international audiences through the radio waves so far.
In early July, Finland elected a new parliament for the ninth time in the short history of the Republic. By and large, Prime Minister Cajander’s coalition cabinet dominated by the Social Democrats and the Agrarians received strong support from the electorate, with both the ruling parties gaining new parliamentarians. In the new Eduskunta, the SDP had won 85 and the Agrarian League 56 seats. The biggest loser was the far right, nationalist Patriotic People’s Movement that lost almost half of its seats and dropped to only 8 members of the parliament. Even if the young and eager Agrarian Minister of the Interior, Urho Kekkonen, had ultimately failed in his 1938 effort to abolish the whole nationalist party as ”anti-democratic” and as dangerous to the nation as far left groups were, the fallout from his efforts to do this appeared to hurt the far right much more than it did the moderate Agrarians.
While abroad the Finnish elections received a lot less interest than the other, generally more worrying and negative developments in more southern parts of Europe, the limited foreign commentary that did appear saw the Finnish political system in a favourable light. In an article on Finland, the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung estimated that the results of the elections now showed to the world that the Finns in general supported democracy, parliamentarism, and neutrality policies that were based on Finland cooperating with its neighbour Sweden and staying well out of international disagreements.
At this time, of course, the discussions between the Finnish and Soviet authorities about Soviet territorial demands, ones that had been started on the insistence of the Soviet diplomat Boris Yartsev [2] in the spring of 1938, were not yet known among anyone else than a very limited number of Finnish and Soviet leading politicians and diplomats. These discussions had been continued on a higher level in the spring of 1939, but the Finnish government had that far flatly rejected all Soviet demands.
After the elections, the coalition cabinet that had been led by Prime Minister Aimo Cajander since 1937 continued with the essentially same team of ministers, neither President Kyösti Kallio or the main parties seeing a need for a reshuffle. Generally, there were more policy disagreements between the politicians and the military leadership than between the main parties themselves. After the elections, a row flared up again between the Agrarian Minister of Defence, Juho Niukkanen, and the Social Democrat Minister of Finance, Väinö Tanner, on one side, and the chairman of the National Defence Council, Field Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim, on the other. The issues were Mannerheim’s demands for more money to the military, and a bigger mandate for him as the head of the Defence Council, and Niukkanen’s and Tanner’s opposition to these demands. In the event, the president supported Mannerheim’s mandate but failed to give strong backing to an enlarged defence budget. In the conditions prevalent in late July 1939, Prime Minister Cajander did not believe that war would touch Finland for a long time to come. The President generally agreed with the assessment of the man who was more of a university professor than a career politician by skills and inclinations.
The approaching Olympics were seen as ready fodder for the nascent Finnish movie industry as well. In the summer of 1939 the production company Suomi-Filmi was shooting an Olympic-themed comedy in Helsinki, based on the popular characters of Lapatossu, the lazy, laid-back joker played by Aku Korhonen, and Vinski, his often straight-man sidekick (Kaarlo Kartio), called Lapatossu ja Vinski olympiakuumeessa (”Lapatossu And Vinski In Olympic Fever”). The film directed by the well-established Yrjö Norta was to premier in early September. When the production of the film was ongoing, however, a tragedy struck the Finnish film world. At an event connected with the premier of director Valentin Vaala’s Rikas tyttö (”The Rich Girl”) in Hämeenlinna, the movie’s leading actress Sirkka Sari climbed on the roof of the Hotel Aulanko, on a lark, and fell down a chimney she had mistaken for a viewing platform. The promising young actress died at age 19 and the tragic death was widely discussed in the press during the following days and weeks. Sari’s funeral on August 5th at Muolaa on the Karelian isthmus was attended by a massive number of people.
On the Karelian isthmus, a bone of contention between the Finnish and Soviet governments in 1938 and 1939, the summer nevertheless showed its best sides to visitors and tourists. Terijoki near the border was a town known for its spas and sandy beaches already in Tsarist times. Then the town by the Viipuri - St.Petersburg railway was patronized by the well-to-do from the nearby imperial Russian capital, who built many pretty villas among the sand dunes next to the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Now in 1939 most of these villas were owned by Finnish summer guests: after a major number of the villas had not been reclaimed by their pre-1917 owners after the area passed to Finnish ownership in the post-revolution days, they had been taken over by the Finnish state and auctioned off to interested citizens. Many a family had been able to acquire an affordable summer villa they hoped would solve their summer vacation-related questions for many years to come. Even for the people who could not afford an entire villa as their own or even on temporary lease, the hotels and inns of the Terijoki area allowed a good base of operation from where to hit the beaches in the sun.
At the other end of the Finnish southern coast, the streets of the little coastal town right next to Turku were almost filled with people on this sunny August day. Naantali, the sunshine town, was each year becoming a more popular place for tourists arriving, it seemed, from all parts of the nation. Not only was the town pretty and cozy with its old wooden houses, it also could boast a fine, big medieval church and, the most important feature of all, a well-regarded spa and a number of high-class establishments for those with an interest in wining and dining.
Along the sunny street, an older man in a light-colored summer suit and a panama hat was walking casually. Soon, he was joined by a woman of the same age. Followed discreetly by a small number of young and fit men in sensibly-cut suits, then couple made their way towards the waterfront.
The man with a panama hat, his face decorated with a set of heavy, drooping mustaches nodded and smiled to people passing him and his wife on the street, many of them recognizing the Republic’s first couple on a daily outing in the streets of the nation’s summer capital. For here in Naantali, on an island just off the town centre, within a view of the stony medieval church, stood Kultaranta [3], the Finnish presidents’ official summer residence.
As he walked on, with his wife Kaisa's hand in his, President Kyösti Kallio was increasingly drifting deeper into his own head. His mind floated in a flow of free association. He had not slept very well recently, his poor health causing him trouble almost daily, and it made him irritable. It also made it hard to focus on things, sometimes.
The recent political events if Europe bothered Kallio, despite the glorious summer weather around him. So did the USSR’s attitude towards Finland. What caused him particular grief today was the fate of that young actress who had lost her life in Hämeenlinna – the old man did not understand why God would allow such accidents to happen to young people who had their whole lives in front of them. Just a slight misstep, and it was the end of everything.
The old couple had now reached a wooden pier by the sea, and there the presidential motor boat was waiting for them – modest in size, but all gleaming, well-varnished mahogany nevertheless, at its controls a young, keen soldier attached to the summer house’s staff. The president's second aide-de-camp waited here as well, and made to salute his boss as the old man approached him.
As Kallio stepped on the pier, he continued to contemplate the unfortunate fate of the young actress, and now he felt an even worse twist of pain in his heart. Right after first feeling it, he saw his view of vision dimming and could not feel his wife's hand in his own anymore.
And so, just a mere metre before the president’s second aide-de-camp would have extended his hand to the President of the Republic to help him to the waiting motor boat, the man in the summer suit stumbled and fell. It happened too fast for the aide-de-camp or the president's wife to react. Kallio slipped down from the pier to the water, and on the way struck his head violently to the boat’s side.[4]
Only now the young soldier at the boat’s controls moved, took a couple of steps and swiftly jumped to the water to help the old man. In seconds, the second aide-de-camp got down to the water as well.
As the two men started dragging the president out of the water, with three onlookers rushing to help in what seemed like slow motion, Kaisa Kallio stared at the man she had been married to for 37 years.
Only a quiet whisper left her lips.
”Please, for God’s sake, help him”.
View attachment 360637
Left: "Visit Naantali, the spa and monastery town", a 1930s travel ad. Right: Sirkka Sari as Anni Hall in Rikas tyttö, 1939.
Left: "Visit Naantali, the spa and monastery town", a 1930s travel ad. Right: Sirkka Sari as Anni Hall in Rikas tyttö, 1939.
Notes:
[1] Diem was the chief organizer of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He is considered the inventor of the modern-style Olympic torch relay.
[2] An alias. The real name of the man calling himself ”Yartsev” was Boris Rybkin. NKVD officers working at the Soviet embassy in Finland frequently adopted aliases for the duration of their stay in Helsinki.
[3] Or Gullranda in Swedish. The Finnish name can be translated literally as ”Gold Coast”. The handsome granite villa was built during WWI for the millionaire businessman Alfred Kordelin, who had planned it to become the home where he could spend his sunset years. After Kordelin was killed by Red soldiers in 1917, the villa passed eventually to the Finnish state and was made into the Finnish presidents’ summer residence in 1920.
[4] OOC: A PoD.
To Be Continued
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