...
(chorus)
For now we're really fucked
The whole damned crew
We're really fucked
Nothing we can do
...
Irwin Goodman: Kusessa ollaan (1985)
The interior of a Helsinki public shelter near the National Theatre. FNA archives.
...
A country that has no nuclear weapons has the right to expect that they are not used against it.
General Lauri Sutela, the Commander of the Finnish Defence Forces, speaking at the opening of the National Defence Course in 1981.
V. It Rains Acid and Missiles
In comparison to many other countries, there was a marked absence of clear plans and guidelines for the possibility of a nuclear war in Finland. The default scenario for Finnish post-war civil defense planners seemed to be either a conventional war (usually against the Soviets, thought there were exceptions) and/or a serious disruption in international trade, leading to shortages of food, supplies and crucial materials.
This mentality doesn't seem to be due to lack of information or denial of facts, rather to the contrary. The Finnish defence planners did know of potential nuclear targets in the country, from leaked American documents and through intelligence contacts. But little effort was dedicated to consider the implications of a large-scale attack against those towns and economic and military installations that were included in the lists. It has been suggested that this was due to typical Finnish fatalism and morbid realism. Finnish defence planners had privately admitted that nuclear war was unwinnable as such and an attack would leave very little of a Finland to defend: they rather focused on planning scenarios that would allow actual national survival. As a result, where the possibility of nuclear war was addressed, passive measures to defend both the military and the civilian population were emphasized.
The Defence Forces had since the late 30s been constantly building underground tunnels and shelters. Partly the reasons were economic: it was far easier and cheaper to blast facilities out of the highly stable Finnish bedrock than build even nearly as strong reinforced structures above ground. Even ordinarily, for example, the Air Force's communication and radar centres were operating in underground complexes joined with hardened landlines and most military garrisons included a tunnel network (usually consisting of a depot and maybe a vehicle pool) carved inside a nearby hill. Some of the military's tunnels were also used for various other government agencies such as as the Post and Telecommunications Authority.
As a result of this, by the early 80s even a majority of the military's warehouses and support infrastructure, let apart command-and-control assets, could be moved into safe underground shelters if need be. From December 1983 the military engineers, assisted by several civilian companies had been doing just this. New caves were being built while old underused caves and tunnels, dating as far back as WWI were being brough back to use.
For civilian defence, the law required bomb shelters to be included in residential buildings and public properties. The nation was divided into ”high risk areas” and ”security areas”; the first part included, for example, the biggest towns, military areas and other places considered strategically important. While ”high risk areas” were allocated bigger, better outfitted shelters, in ”security areas” the requirements were also demanding. In bigger towns, a number of large ”cave shelters” had been built for general use, and most public buildings such as sports halls and libraries were outfitted with multi-purpose underground facilities.
The new Readiness Law gave the government the authority to mobilize a big part of the civilian population into civil defence tasks. Rather than creating a new wartime organisation, in practice this meant beefing up ordinary fire and rescue services with new units and formations. These units would work under the direction of the local civilian leadership or the military where this was deemed expedient.
By late 1983 city and municipal authorities nationwide were stepping up building inspections to ensure that as many shelters as possible could be filled to capacity if need be. Quick conversions were taking place. In January 1984 it was decided to temporarily transform the stations of the new Helsinki subway, parts of which opened the previous summer, into a string of large-scale shelters for the residents of the metropolitan area. Public emergency drills were held (unfortunately adding to the general war scare) and the local councils were stocking up on medical supplies and protective gear, directed by the Radiation Safety Authority, which had quickly printed and distributed a new, revised safety guide for municipal authorities and the general public.
Plans for the evacuation of the greater Helsinki area had been made since the 1960s. In the event, the evacuation of capital was begun in mid-January and even then it was based in volunteerism. It has been estimated that by the nuclear exchange, about 40 000 people had been evacuated to the countryside, mainly by rail. In the Eastern part of the country, these evacuations were in fact counterproductive to the general survival of the population.
It was unfortunate that in many places these efforts, laudable as they were, would prove to be both too little and too late. After longish periods of being idle, many shelters were not ready for use when it was needed. There were also problems with the warning systems (as was found out during drills), and in the event many people just did not get the warning in time. One major problem was sheltering people in the countryside: as this had been systematically overlooked, the citizens in the rural areas had to resort to very improvised forms of shelter.
Given the seemingly high level of preparation for war the Finnish state was engaged in, in many ways the nation was still unprepared for the events of late February 1984. While the Defense Forces prepared for war apparently in earnest, the civilian authorities were slower in their own measures to protect and to maintain the well-being of the population. This wasn't due to a lack of trying or the resources committed to civil defence. The system was working as well as one could expect, under the circumstances. However, as the plans and the measures undertaken accordingly were based on what proved to be unrealistic expectations, the preparations fell short of optimal for the circumstances that ultimately were realized.
There is no denying that up to the highest levels of the Finnish government, many people seemed to believe that the world leaders were not so mad as to allow the Third World War to be realized. That there was a global crisis of massive proportions unfolding was accepted, but the Finns seem to have seen it as a sort of a bad dream that would be likely to just evaporate any moment, an overinflated bubble of a war scare. The Finnish political elite had navigated its way through WWII and the Cold War relying on its wits, razor-sharp diplomacy and cold realism. It had survived and so had the nation. Surely even this crisis was a creation of politicians, to be solved with negotiations, investigations, checks and balances, concessions and consensus?
The actions of President Koivisto and the ministers in Sorsa's cabinet speak of this deep-seated inability in accepting what in hindsight is obvious: that the world was slowly but surely slipping into a nuclear abyss and that was not to be stopped by the government of a small neutral, or even two such nations as Sorsa an Palme seemed to believe. What we know of the first government meeting after Warsaw Pact tanks rolled through the Fulda Gap to smash the NATO lines in Western Germany confirms this inability: even then, on the very brink of the abyss Koivisto spoke of sending his Foreign Minister, Paavo Väyrynen, to Moscow to try and reason with the Soviet leadership. It seems that only the actual Soviet attack on Finland woke the political elite from its self-inflicted stupor...
(filler)