Suchergebnisse

Abstract: The image of the Soviet Union and Russia has changed dramatically in the press in Finland after the World War II. This article is based on a frequency analysis in which mentions of certain countries, groups of states and international organizations were coded (like the Soviet Union/Russia, United States, NATO, UN etc.). To make the analysis more revealing and interesting, a distinction was made whether the mention was made in the context of (1) alliance, friendship and cooperation, or in the context of (2) distance, restriction and enemy image, or (3) both in a positive and in a negative context. The time frame was from 1945 till the end of the century, and the newspapers chosen for the study represented the whole political spectrum of the Finnish media. The selection criteria of the material emphasized national celebration days. The study proves clearly what has been the main object of Finnish foreign policy after the WW II: in all coded press material, the Soviet Union/Russia was mentioned 222 times which makes 37.5% of all mentions. Other important states or groups have been the United States (5.3 %), EC/EU/WEU/West-Europe (12.6 %), United Nations (9.0 %) and Nordic council/Nordic co-operation (11.2 %). With very few exceptions, all mentions concerning the UN and Nordic co-operation are positive. The Soviet Union has also been described rather positively (77.5 %). The share of negative mentions is 8.1% and mixture of negative and positive mentions 14.4%. Images of the United States and the European alliances are most contradictory. In the case of USA, 54.8 % of the mentions are positive and 45.2% negative. Concerning EC/EU etc. 54.1 % of mentions are positive, 28.4 % negative and 17.6 % mixtures of positive and negative references. Changes in attitudes towards the Soviet Union in different time spots are remarkable. The share of negative mentions of the Soviet Union was very low, except in 1995 (30 %) when Finland already was a member of the EU. However, the number of cases in which the Soviet Union was referred to both in a positive and in a negative way, was rather high in 1945 and 1948 (27 % and 22 %). The visibility of the Soviet Union/Russia was on its highest level in 1945, in 1948 and in 1989. Decrease on mentions from 1989 (when the Soviet Union was near the brink) to 1993 is very clear. It is interesting that the prominence of the Soviet Union was on a very low level in 1968 (occupation of Czechoslovakia); one could guess that there was nothing positive to say but no courage to write negatively either. As long as the Soviet Union existed and Finland had to live in its shadow, the press did not rock the boat. In the contemporary press discourse the grim heritage of the Cold War can be seen in cynical attitude towards rhetoric of friendship and cooperation. ; peerReviewed

In the early 1930s, approximately 6,500 Finns from Canada and the United States moved to Soviet Karelia, on the border of Finland, to build a Finnish workers' society. They were recruited by the Soviet leadership for their North American mechanical and lumber expertise, their familiarity with the socialist cause, and their Finnish language and ethnicity. By 1936, however, Finnish culture and language came under attack and ethnic Finns became the region's primary targets in the Stalinist Great Terror. Building that Bright Future relies on the personal letters and memoirs of these Finnish migrants to build a history of everyday life during a transitional period for both North American socialism and Soviet policy. Highlighting the voices of men, women, and children, the book follows the migrants from North America to the Soviet Union, providing vivid descriptions of daily life. Samira Saramo brings readers into personal contact with Finnish North Americans and their complex and intimate negotiations of self and belonging. Through letters and memoirs, Building that Bright Future explores the multiple strategies these migrants used to make sense of their rapidly shifting positions in the Soviet hierarchy and the relationships that rooted them to multiple places and times

The article offers a practice-based analysis of Finland's relationships with Russia. It works on the basis of ideas that have been presented in conjunction with the so-called practice and pragmatist turns in international relations. After identifying three key schools of thought in previous research on Finnish–Russian relations – primordialist, instrumentalist and identity-based – the article moves on to give a practice turn inspired account of the ways in which the proximity of Russia was dealt with in Finland during the inter-war period. Combining insights from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Charles S. Peirce, it introduces a research design built with the help of such analytical tools as the doubt-belief model of social action, relational properties and fields. These tools are then applied on research materials that comprise Finnish parliamentary documents and political cartoons. The materials are argued to be particularly well suited for attempts to apply practice insights in actual research, as they simultaneously function as embodiments of meaningful patterns of social and political activity and actively correlate with the urgencies of the contexts in which they appear.