alternatehistory.com
Thirty-two: Salomo
Thirty-two: Salomo
”Harrumph!”
The man in round, steel-rimmed glasses and a heavy, high-quality winter overcoat nearly slipped on the icy pavement, steadied himself by grabbing at the wall on his right side. A young man walking down the street in the other direction made as to offer him a hand in assistance, but Salomo Vaara dismissed him with a wave of his free, left hand.
Vaara was going up Fabianinkatu, past the university's main building, and, spefically, the new annex that was completed only three years previously. He was on his way to his office in the Metsätalo [1]. The walk of c. 800 metres had been something of his morning constitutional since he found an apartment of his own in Ullanlinna, in an airy art nouveau building. That meant that he could give up living together with his daughter the university student, no doubt at the moment sitting in one of the lecture halls of the very building he was passing.
Salomo Vaara liked the fact that now, for once, he could at least temporarily keep an eye on his oldest daughter, and get first-hand information on how the girl lived here in the Finnish nation's capital, studying to become a doctor. But then, on the other hand, him living in the very same rooms with a female university student poorly suited either Sisko Vaara or her father, now for the while a high-ranking bureaucrat in the Ministry of Supply. Both Vaaras had things to do and people to meet, and Salomo Vaara himself had found out that as a section head in the ministry, he often needed to work late even at home, and then have informal meetings there, too. And Sisko had her studies, her books, her activities with the Savonian Nation...
And her boyfriend, of course.
Salomo Vaara didn't think the journalist Tapio was a bad sort. Not at all, he seemed like a smart and hardworking fellow, after the kind of fashion one expected newspapermen to be. Highly politically aware, too, Vaara thought, after having has a few candid discussions with the young man who surely had the gift of the gab, even if he hailed from the Ostrobothnian area rather than from Eastern Finland. And not a political extremist by any means, even if there were things the two men disagreed about.
To be honest, Salomo thought that this young man would make a fine husband... to some girl somewhere. But not necessarily to his Sisko. You always wanted your kids to have the best. And Salomo Vaara thought that his daughter deserved better than a mere journalist. For one thing, someone from a better family than the Ostrobothnian who would have no real inheritance coming to him from his father, a pastor tending his flock in Isokyrö.
Salomo Vaara, true to form, had checked up on the boy. And found him wanting.
He made his way up the icy street, now past the University Library. The winter had been the coldest in the decade, and Helsinki had received its share of ice and snow as well. Now in late March, it was still wintery. But it was not nearly as warlike as it had been still a couple of months ago. The military's readiness had been drawn down all through early 1940, and especially here in the capital that meant that you rarely saw men in military uniforms on the street these days. Especially not in ordinary army uniforms. To be fair, navy uniforms were a more common sight, still, there being a navy base in the capital, and for example the Finnish Navy's coastal defence ships and submarines wintering in the military harbour at Katajanokka and the Suomenlinna fortress, respectively.
What you saw more these days was policemen. They were almost at every street corner, serious men in winter overcoats and warm headgear, with truncheons and pistols. Some went about on horseback, too, in small mounted patrols. As Salomo Vaara understood, military presence in the capital had been reduced especially because of Soviet criticism of Finnish militarism and ”warmongering”, the protests Moscow was making practically weekly in the Pravda and officially to Foreign Minister Voionmaa via their embassy in Helsinki. By President' Paasikivi's insistence, then, the Finnish military was being made less conspicuous in the capital. Stepping up police presence was the other side of the coin. Salomo Vaara believed that Kekkonen, the Second Minister of the Interior, was the man behind boosting police numbers in the capital area, to the point of bringing in officers from the provinces to supplement local numbers, and increasing police staff with temporary constables, more often than not drafted from the ranks of the Civil Guards.
In the Ministry of Supply, at least, many had taken to calling Kekkonen ”the Minister of the Police” by now. The title was not at all official, but it was a telling one. The actual Minister of the Interior, Pekkala, was very careful in all things to do with the Soviets and their demands, and he would have rather allowed, for example, left wing protests in the capital to be organized unhindered than surrounded them with a strong police cordon like Kekkonen was likely to do. To Vaara, it seemed very much that the Ministry of the Interior was divided on the matter of how to deal with the challenges posed by the USSR's pressure on Finland, and the demands of the domestic far left.
To be honest, the whole government seemed to be divided, too. In the Ministry of Supply that was obviously seen in how Minister Tanner had to constantly balance between viewpoints that on hand required qualified trust towards Moscow's words, and in other extreme suspicion for what the Soviet government told Finland. The frustration of it all was palpable to Vaara, who had to meet with Tanner weekly these days.
After the library, the street sloped down towards Kaisaniemi. Vaara made his way carefully down to his current place of employment. Morning sun was rising above Metsätalo when he finally reached his office, only to see his secretary waiting for him, looking anxious.
”Good morning, Inspector Vaara”, the woman said standing next to the door.
”Morning, Ms Hakola”, Vaara said, taking his hat off, ”is there something you want to tell me?”
The woman smiled carefully.
”The gentlemen are already in the conference room...”
Damn it. Only now Vaara remembered that an extra meeting had been called promptly at eight, to discuss recent matters with the Soviet trade deal.
The clock on the wall was now one past.
Quickly shedding his overcoat, he grabbed the folder Ms Hakola handed to him and briskly walked into the conference room on the second floor.
”Ah, Inspector Vaara, we were just starting out. Do sit down”, said Juuramo, the head of Food Supply.
”Now as we're all here, I'll yield the floor to Director Sorsimo. Please, Director.”
The man in charge of the State Grain Warehouses, Onni Sorsimo, looked up from his papers and nodded to the assembled men in their suits and ties, and a couple in military officer's uniforms.
”Good morning, gentlemen. Like you know, last week we received the first transport of Soviet wheat, by train via the Karelian Isthmus. The arrival of the train was well publicized, thanks to Utrio [2]...”
He nodded to a man sitting on the left side of the room.
”...and as I was briefed on the new trade treaty and the general arrangements by Ramsay [3] two days ago, I am here now to settle practical issues over the remainder of these Soviet grain shipments...”
An aide went around the room, handing out small stacks of sheets with typed text on them.
Juuramo chimed in just then, clearing his throat.
”If you don't mind.... That's the text of the trade treaty. It is confidential information, so we fully expect you to keep it to yourselves. We'll be making parts of it public in the next few weeks, but it'll all be done centrally through the propaganda section. Any suggestions on that, come to me or Utrio.”
Sorsimo looked at the man and nodded his head.
”Yes, the treaty. For myself, I am happy to say that after crunching the numbers, I can tell you that if, and that's an ”if” of some size, we are able to actually get all the grain deliveries the USSR has promised to us in this trade deal over the following six months, Finland will make it until the next summer's harvest.”
There was some nodding and positive murmur in the room.
”...but like always with the Russians”, the director continued, ”the Devil is in the details. The payment terms are very detailed, and there are ways this deal may still backfire on us. Apparently, this is by design. Ramsay told me that Molotov was not at all understanding towards the suggestions from our side to simplify the terms...”
Salomo Vaara was now skimming the treaty text himself, like several others in the room, and he could already see some of the obvious hooks embedded into the legalese.
”This, however, is not why we are here today. It is, for the most part out of our hands, an issue Tanner, Ramsay and others will need to deal with. We are here to organize the distribution and deliveries of this grain, how ever much of it we'll actually get, for the benefit of the Finnish people. To that end, I would like to...”
What followed was an exercise in the mathematics and logistics of grain distribution in terms of Finnish economic geography. This was what Salomo Vaara was doing in his job at the ministry. Particularly, he was tasked with organizing the middle part of the distribution, as it were, the work of the trade mills across different parts of Finland. Grain arrived to the country by ship, or by train as it would from the USSR. Those shipments would be first directed to the grain warehouses ran by Sorsimo's organization. Here, the grain deliveries would be unloaded, inspected and measured. After this, they would be delivered across the country to a number of mills that would make flour out of the grain. Vaara's job was to organize this system of trade mills: which companies across the provinces had the ability to handle the arriving shipments of grain, process them, and then deliver the products to either to the local economy through different intermediaries, or then to state purposes like to the military.
Practically, Vaara's office negotiated deals with provincial mills, kept the lists of the Ministry's partner companies, their capacities, and their ability to hold on to agreements. In this work, Salomo Vaara had not forgotten where he came from. If at all possible, he tried to direct this trade towards people and companies he worked with in North Savonia. Why, just yesterday he had been in contact with the Oy Gust. Ranin company in Kuopio, in anticipation of distributing the Soviet grain deliveries.
Even if Salomo Vaara was in constant contact with his oldest resident son in Vaarala, with biweekly phone calls as well as a steady stream of letters by mail, and even if he kept up a similar dialogue with his North Savonian political allies as well, and his business contacts, these days he sorely thought that his need to remain in the capital badly cut him off from his ordinary life and work in Kuopio. He had needed to give up his seat in the municipal board back home, temporarily, with another Agrarian Party man taking his spot, and he still was not quite sure his son Veli could handle the matters of the Vaara farm as well as he should have. And then there were all his banking interests, and a myriad other issues besides...
In short, Salomo Vaara wished that now that the most acute threat of war with the Soviet Union had passed, it seemed, the situation would also normalize in other ways, and he could finally say that his promise to work in the Ministry of Supply ”for the duration of the emergency” was fulfilled. Then, then he could with good conscience resign his post and return to his normal life in the Savonian countryside.
Later, when Vaara was having lunch in the Metsätalo cafeteria, he saw minister Tanner sitting there, too, with one of his top aides. Seeing the look on the minister's face, and the obvious tiredness and weariness emanating from his entire being, Salomo Vaara wondered if his hopes of returning to home and a measure of normalcy were much too optimistic after all.
...
...
The shadow thrush laughs on the gate to the north
A wrong morning serves porridge made out of the wrong grain
There's four around the table, and one of them grows silent
Under the birch on the shore, they curtsey to the Creator
The priest smiles, even if he mangles his sermon
The amen and the waves wash out the blood on his collar
The land of low currents
Dams ignoble deeds
On the shore the snakes are dancing
For our wedding again
The land of low currents
Forces to ignoble deeds
On the shore the snakes are dancing
For our wedding, yet again
Viikate: Alhaisen virran maa (2020)
...
Notes:
[1] ”The Forest House”
[2] Untamo Utrio, a prominent journalist, writer and publisher, hired as the head of propaganda by the Ministry of Supply in January 1940.
[3] Henrik Ramsay, the influential businessman and politician of the Swedish People's Party, was recently made Second Minister of Supply. Ramsay was practically in charge of foreign food purchases at this time, due to his wide-ranging connections with foreign trade interests.
....
To Be Continued...
A view of the southern Esplanade in Helsinki, from Fabianinkatu towards Erottaja. March 1940.
The Helsinki City Museum
The Helsinki City Museum
Thirty-two: Salomo
”Harrumph!”
The man in round, steel-rimmed glasses and a heavy, high-quality winter overcoat nearly slipped on the icy pavement, steadied himself by grabbing at the wall on his right side. A young man walking down the street in the other direction made as to offer him a hand in assistance, but Salomo Vaara dismissed him with a wave of his free, left hand.
Vaara was going up Fabianinkatu, past the university's main building, and, spefically, the new annex that was completed only three years previously. He was on his way to his office in the Metsätalo [1]. The walk of c. 800 metres had been something of his morning constitutional since he found an apartment of his own in Ullanlinna, in an airy art nouveau building. That meant that he could give up living together with his daughter the university student, no doubt at the moment sitting in one of the lecture halls of the very building he was passing.
Salomo Vaara liked the fact that now, for once, he could at least temporarily keep an eye on his oldest daughter, and get first-hand information on how the girl lived here in the Finnish nation's capital, studying to become a doctor. But then, on the other hand, him living in the very same rooms with a female university student poorly suited either Sisko Vaara or her father, now for the while a high-ranking bureaucrat in the Ministry of Supply. Both Vaaras had things to do and people to meet, and Salomo Vaara himself had found out that as a section head in the ministry, he often needed to work late even at home, and then have informal meetings there, too. And Sisko had her studies, her books, her activities with the Savonian Nation...
And her boyfriend, of course.
Salomo Vaara didn't think the journalist Tapio was a bad sort. Not at all, he seemed like a smart and hardworking fellow, after the kind of fashion one expected newspapermen to be. Highly politically aware, too, Vaara thought, after having has a few candid discussions with the young man who surely had the gift of the gab, even if he hailed from the Ostrobothnian area rather than from Eastern Finland. And not a political extremist by any means, even if there were things the two men disagreed about.
To be honest, Salomo thought that this young man would make a fine husband... to some girl somewhere. But not necessarily to his Sisko. You always wanted your kids to have the best. And Salomo Vaara thought that his daughter deserved better than a mere journalist. For one thing, someone from a better family than the Ostrobothnian who would have no real inheritance coming to him from his father, a pastor tending his flock in Isokyrö.
Salomo Vaara, true to form, had checked up on the boy. And found him wanting.
He made his way up the icy street, now past the University Library. The winter had been the coldest in the decade, and Helsinki had received its share of ice and snow as well. Now in late March, it was still wintery. But it was not nearly as warlike as it had been still a couple of months ago. The military's readiness had been drawn down all through early 1940, and especially here in the capital that meant that you rarely saw men in military uniforms on the street these days. Especially not in ordinary army uniforms. To be fair, navy uniforms were a more common sight, still, there being a navy base in the capital, and for example the Finnish Navy's coastal defence ships and submarines wintering in the military harbour at Katajanokka and the Suomenlinna fortress, respectively.
What you saw more these days was policemen. They were almost at every street corner, serious men in winter overcoats and warm headgear, with truncheons and pistols. Some went about on horseback, too, in small mounted patrols. As Salomo Vaara understood, military presence in the capital had been reduced especially because of Soviet criticism of Finnish militarism and ”warmongering”, the protests Moscow was making practically weekly in the Pravda and officially to Foreign Minister Voionmaa via their embassy in Helsinki. By President' Paasikivi's insistence, then, the Finnish military was being made less conspicuous in the capital. Stepping up police presence was the other side of the coin. Salomo Vaara believed that Kekkonen, the Second Minister of the Interior, was the man behind boosting police numbers in the capital area, to the point of bringing in officers from the provinces to supplement local numbers, and increasing police staff with temporary constables, more often than not drafted from the ranks of the Civil Guards.
In the Ministry of Supply, at least, many had taken to calling Kekkonen ”the Minister of the Police” by now. The title was not at all official, but it was a telling one. The actual Minister of the Interior, Pekkala, was very careful in all things to do with the Soviets and their demands, and he would have rather allowed, for example, left wing protests in the capital to be organized unhindered than surrounded them with a strong police cordon like Kekkonen was likely to do. To Vaara, it seemed very much that the Ministry of the Interior was divided on the matter of how to deal with the challenges posed by the USSR's pressure on Finland, and the demands of the domestic far left.
To be honest, the whole government seemed to be divided, too. In the Ministry of Supply that was obviously seen in how Minister Tanner had to constantly balance between viewpoints that on hand required qualified trust towards Moscow's words, and in other extreme suspicion for what the Soviet government told Finland. The frustration of it all was palpable to Vaara, who had to meet with Tanner weekly these days.
After the library, the street sloped down towards Kaisaniemi. Vaara made his way carefully down to his current place of employment. Morning sun was rising above Metsätalo when he finally reached his office, only to see his secretary waiting for him, looking anxious.
”Good morning, Inspector Vaara”, the woman said standing next to the door.
”Morning, Ms Hakola”, Vaara said, taking his hat off, ”is there something you want to tell me?”
The woman smiled carefully.
”The gentlemen are already in the conference room...”
Damn it. Only now Vaara remembered that an extra meeting had been called promptly at eight, to discuss recent matters with the Soviet trade deal.
The clock on the wall was now one past.
Quickly shedding his overcoat, he grabbed the folder Ms Hakola handed to him and briskly walked into the conference room on the second floor.
”Ah, Inspector Vaara, we were just starting out. Do sit down”, said Juuramo, the head of Food Supply.
”Now as we're all here, I'll yield the floor to Director Sorsimo. Please, Director.”
The man in charge of the State Grain Warehouses, Onni Sorsimo, looked up from his papers and nodded to the assembled men in their suits and ties, and a couple in military officer's uniforms.
”Good morning, gentlemen. Like you know, last week we received the first transport of Soviet wheat, by train via the Karelian Isthmus. The arrival of the train was well publicized, thanks to Utrio [2]...”
He nodded to a man sitting on the left side of the room.
”...and as I was briefed on the new trade treaty and the general arrangements by Ramsay [3] two days ago, I am here now to settle practical issues over the remainder of these Soviet grain shipments...”
An aide went around the room, handing out small stacks of sheets with typed text on them.
Juuramo chimed in just then, clearing his throat.
”If you don't mind.... That's the text of the trade treaty. It is confidential information, so we fully expect you to keep it to yourselves. We'll be making parts of it public in the next few weeks, but it'll all be done centrally through the propaganda section. Any suggestions on that, come to me or Utrio.”
Sorsimo looked at the man and nodded his head.
”Yes, the treaty. For myself, I am happy to say that after crunching the numbers, I can tell you that if, and that's an ”if” of some size, we are able to actually get all the grain deliveries the USSR has promised to us in this trade deal over the following six months, Finland will make it until the next summer's harvest.”
There was some nodding and positive murmur in the room.
”...but like always with the Russians”, the director continued, ”the Devil is in the details. The payment terms are very detailed, and there are ways this deal may still backfire on us. Apparently, this is by design. Ramsay told me that Molotov was not at all understanding towards the suggestions from our side to simplify the terms...”
Salomo Vaara was now skimming the treaty text himself, like several others in the room, and he could already see some of the obvious hooks embedded into the legalese.
”This, however, is not why we are here today. It is, for the most part out of our hands, an issue Tanner, Ramsay and others will need to deal with. We are here to organize the distribution and deliveries of this grain, how ever much of it we'll actually get, for the benefit of the Finnish people. To that end, I would like to...”
What followed was an exercise in the mathematics and logistics of grain distribution in terms of Finnish economic geography. This was what Salomo Vaara was doing in his job at the ministry. Particularly, he was tasked with organizing the middle part of the distribution, as it were, the work of the trade mills across different parts of Finland. Grain arrived to the country by ship, or by train as it would from the USSR. Those shipments would be first directed to the grain warehouses ran by Sorsimo's organization. Here, the grain deliveries would be unloaded, inspected and measured. After this, they would be delivered across the country to a number of mills that would make flour out of the grain. Vaara's job was to organize this system of trade mills: which companies across the provinces had the ability to handle the arriving shipments of grain, process them, and then deliver the products to either to the local economy through different intermediaries, or then to state purposes like to the military.
Practically, Vaara's office negotiated deals with provincial mills, kept the lists of the Ministry's partner companies, their capacities, and their ability to hold on to agreements. In this work, Salomo Vaara had not forgotten where he came from. If at all possible, he tried to direct this trade towards people and companies he worked with in North Savonia. Why, just yesterday he had been in contact with the Oy Gust. Ranin company in Kuopio, in anticipation of distributing the Soviet grain deliveries.
Even if Salomo Vaara was in constant contact with his oldest resident son in Vaarala, with biweekly phone calls as well as a steady stream of letters by mail, and even if he kept up a similar dialogue with his North Savonian political allies as well, and his business contacts, these days he sorely thought that his need to remain in the capital badly cut him off from his ordinary life and work in Kuopio. He had needed to give up his seat in the municipal board back home, temporarily, with another Agrarian Party man taking his spot, and he still was not quite sure his son Veli could handle the matters of the Vaara farm as well as he should have. And then there were all his banking interests, and a myriad other issues besides...
In short, Salomo Vaara wished that now that the most acute threat of war with the Soviet Union had passed, it seemed, the situation would also normalize in other ways, and he could finally say that his promise to work in the Ministry of Supply ”for the duration of the emergency” was fulfilled. Then, then he could with good conscience resign his post and return to his normal life in the Savonian countryside.
Later, when Vaara was having lunch in the Metsätalo cafeteria, he saw minister Tanner sitting there, too, with one of his top aides. Seeing the look on the minister's face, and the obvious tiredness and weariness emanating from his entire being, Salomo Vaara wondered if his hopes of returning to home and a measure of normalcy were much too optimistic after all.
...
View attachment 619112
"The position of the neutral states is under serious threat.
Pressure growing from both the Western powers and Germany."
Helsingin Sanomat, March 28th, 1940.
"The position of the neutral states is under serious threat.
Pressure growing from both the Western powers and Germany."
Helsingin Sanomat, March 28th, 1940.
...
The shadow thrush laughs on the gate to the north
A wrong morning serves porridge made out of the wrong grain
There's four around the table, and one of them grows silent
Under the birch on the shore, they curtsey to the Creator
The priest smiles, even if he mangles his sermon
The amen and the waves wash out the blood on his collar
The land of low currents
Dams ignoble deeds
On the shore the snakes are dancing
For our wedding again
The land of low currents
Forces to ignoble deeds
On the shore the snakes are dancing
For our wedding, yet again
Viikate: Alhaisen virran maa (2020)
...
Notes:
[1] ”The Forest House”
[2] Untamo Utrio, a prominent journalist, writer and publisher, hired as the head of propaganda by the Ministry of Supply in January 1940.
[3] Henrik Ramsay, the influential businessman and politician of the Swedish People's Party, was recently made Second Minister of Supply. Ramsay was practically in charge of foreign food purchases at this time, due to his wide-ranging connections with foreign trade interests.
....
To Be Continued...
- DrakonFin
- Word Count: 2.3k