XVI. The Powers That Will Be
Fragment 81.
Logged 20.06.2008
JAG
[This fragment is a part of an interview with a FNA bureaucrat (M177).]
[Do you know that at the time the Swedish authorities thought that Finland was gone, pretty much entirely?]
We didn't know that, exactly, though I think we were afraid of it. Getting a word out that somebody was still alive here became one of our priorities in late March and April, though I can't say it was the first thing on people's minds. There was just too much to do.
[I see it has been said that it was about two weeks after the attacks that people started to come out of the shelters...]
By and large, you could say that, though that applies more to the west. In the east, there was more radiation and where ever there was someone with means to measure it, it took up to a month, in some cases more. But never mind the radiation, it was more of a question of necessity. Two weeks' rations for nuclear shelters was the official pre-war recommendation, and people weren't very good in rationing food themselves. Simply put, people were driven out of shelter by hunger, or raw fear, and that often applied also to municipal authorities and such, people that should have known better. Had been trained, in fact, to know better.
And of course there were those who had hardly seen the inside of a shelter at all. Emergency personnel, soldiers, electricians and such. A lot of these people died of exposure, sometimes it was as much the cold as the radiation. And the refugees.... There were the field hospitals, of my God yes, very makeshift ones where the walking wounded and the stragglers gathered in the early days. Some of them had a few doctors and medics and very rudimentary facilities. Others were just open-air morgues-in-waiting. Some of the latter were only seen again when the snow melted.
The Defence Forces' Signals units were another tragic case: time and time again local commanders would sent them out to fix antennas, landlines and such, to run new cables to make contact with units and places that didn't exist anymore. You can imagine what that meant for the life expectancy of these young conscripted men. With them, we lost a lot of skill that would have been sorely needed later.
[What were you doing at that time? I mean your organisation?]
”My organisation”? My organisation was a handful of confused men stranded in a strange place. It was the local governor's organisation that was working, and under the circumstances it was working admirably. At the end of the second week March, they begun to have a measure of control over the civilian and military authorities in the province. And even beyond, as the leadership of the provinces north and south of us had been rendered unable to function. Uki Voutilainen is the unsung hero of the reconstruction – a terrific administrator, he was capable of functioning and making decisions when many of the people around him were reduced to sobbing wrecks.
[But what about the National Authority?]
Well, yes, I gather you have seen the ”Face of Continuity” posters and the official accounts of the FNA's beginnings. It wasn't at all as smooth as that. My boss... he was quite reluctant to assume control. I don't know if it was fear, modesty or indecision, maybe all of that or something very different. I think he didn't want to believe that Sorsa and really, all of them were gone. Well all of them weren't, as we later found out. But could as well have been, for all intents and purposes.
When we put out the first proclamations and started the broadcasts, my boss signed the papers ”for the Government of the Republic”, and using his original title. Check the archives, I'll sign the waiver. My name still carries some weight hereabouts, despite the generals' reign of terror [flashes a brief smile]. You'll find out that it was May or June already when the first ”Acting Prime Minister” appears. Voutilainen was instrumental in nudging him into the right direction, and he'd be one of the few people my boss trusted unequivocally to support him during the next few years.
Acting Prime Minister. He never wanted to be called President, and was wary of using any titles. That is why you'll see just his name everywhere and that is why people call him ”the Acting”[1].
Ask anyone who really knew him, though there aren't many alive now, they're all say he was very bad at starting anything new. But when he got around to a project, he'd work like a man possessed to see it through. He made the FNA his project, and that decision would follow him to the grave.
[What were the biggest challenges facing you in the winter of 1984?]
Well... Have you ever tried building up a government apparatus from scratch? No? The basic problem was that we had (what we initially thought was) over hundred thousand people to keep alive, to feed, to keep warm, to treat and too little, absolutely too little of anything to do it with. And we had too much men with guns and too little people who had the experience and authority to lead them. We would have to rebuild communications, reassert control, fix the infrastructure. And restart the rationing to feed the people.
The roads and railways were nearly unusable. The railway network had been cut in several places, it was probably only by mistake or sheer luck the rail hub closest to us, at Pieksämäki, had been left untouched. The roads... where they weren't destroyed by the atomic bombs or conventional bombing, they were blocked by abandoned vehicles and snowed in. All that bloody snow... That winter, every night I prayed God that the next day wouldn't bring more snow. As a rule, He wasn't listening.
Electricity was another thing. The grid was in tatters, and most major power stations had been lost. Morbidly, in this situation it was good the bigger towns were gone. They would have needed the electricity to live on, despite the district heating schemes that had started becoming a vogue before the war. In the countryside and smaller towns most houses were wood-fired. People could make do without electric heaters, and given how long it was before we had the electricity supply up again, such as it was, this was absolutely vital.
[What was it like in the winter?]
It was like a bad war movie. And I am not kidding. Soldiers everywhere and in implausible uniforms. In the town, all available space was taken up to quarter them, and that meant the refugees coming, mostly, from the south and the west would be had to be housed in even more sorry dwellings. Temporary camps sprouted up around the town centre. The conditions were horrid, sure, but they trumped most other settlements in the areas we were now running. This was where the orders were given and the food rationed and distributed, after all. We gave the military police a free hand in keeping order, it seemed necessary under those conditions. Pretty it was not, and I still have dreams about some of the things I saw that winter right there in our own sorry capital.
The decisions that were made then... I am not proud of all the things we did, not by a longshot. It was survival. By and by, it was those decisions that made this domain of ours what they used to call, pre-war, a garrison state. I guess that applies to many places in the world where civilization still clings to existence these days. But ours is a very Finnish version. In the early years, it was like something Väinö Linna could have imagined in a drunken nightmare after a week of substance-abuse and an overdose of war stories in the company of Paavo Haavikko and Timo K. Mukka. If you have any idea what I am talking about. But as you can see, we got better... [Smiles ironically].
Notes:
[1] Virkaatekevä or tjänstgörande.