Memories of autumn 1989 in Ministry for Foreign Affairs
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs needed to take a stand on the historical change emerging in Europe in the autumn of 1989. In his column, Ambassador Alpo Rusi talks about the months when Finland was preparing its place in the new Europe.
Finland did not readily use the term "Cold War" before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead, we spoke of "confrontation of superpowers". This was because the concept of "Cold War" did not fit in the core vocabulary of the Finnish foreign policy.
In the Anglo-American literature on international relations, however, the content was clear: The Cold War started in 1946-48 as a result of the Soviet Union contriving communist assumption of power in its occupation zone in East Germany and other Eastern European countries. “The Iron Curtain” fell across Europe causing a political and ideological division of the continent. The Berlin Wall became the symbol of the division.
Therefore the Cold War had a culprit; the Soviet Union. Such a statement did not, however, agree with the Paasikivi line adopted in Finland. In practice, any criticism of the Soviet Union was suppressed in official comments on international relations.
“An impossible idea”
Nevertheless, the foreign policy workshop – the Ministry for Foreign Affairs – needed to take a stand on the historical change emerging in Europe. Our diplomatic missions reported signs of change, yet the reports hardly anticipated that the division of Germany could soon be history.
The Finnish mission in the German Democratic Republic, the DDR, had to, quite naturally, be exceptionally noncommittal, a manifestation of which was perhaps that the Ministry for Foreign Affairs granted the Ambassador a holiday for the very November of 1989.
This was, of course, also because – even though the change in the DDR had been palpable since August 1989 – the fall of the artificial state that had ended up in financial liquidation was still “an impossible idea” for the majority of people in the first weeks of autumn 1989.
What if...
The Head of Research and Planning Unit of the MFA Political Department was sent to a seminar for researchers and diplomats in the West Berlin in September. The question of European security was on the agenda. Traditional views were reiterated “across the division line”, even though it was evident to everybody that the “old order” was shaking.
As if in passing, I may have thrown in a viewpoint as to what would happen, if the two Germanies were in fact on the road to unification. I assumed we could exchange some reasonable views on the matter.
Nonetheless, the discussion ended before it had the chance to begin, when a representative of a midsized Nato member state called bringing out the German unification a provocation, because – if I remember correctly – “unification would take us back to the 1930's”, which was not suitable for “the circumstances of an integrating Europe”.
“Unification would be a step backward”
After returning to Helsinki the Berlin seminar still bothered me. Did German unification in fact constitute an obstacle for European integration? My views or the willingness to pose these questions had been influenced by the time I spent in New York as a Resident Fellow in the Institute for East-West Studies in 1988-89.
Over the year we had many research seminars, which specifically assessed the possible unification of Europe, if the Cold War ended or at least, thawed. The Soviet Union had, in fact, already shown signs of not being eager to use brutal power to inhibit any citizens' movements.
In any case, Gorbachev's rhetoric was convincing in this respect. In a speech he held in the UN in December 1988, he had highlighted the Soviet Union's unilateral cuts of armed forces. Soviet Union was also in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan.
Later it has become clear that the diplomat polemizing the German unification back in Berlin did, perhaps, genuinely represent the thoughts of the majority of Western European statesmen. Even the former Chancellor Willy Brandt had said in Moscow, as late as in September 1989, that “German unification would be a step backward”.
I wonder what Mikhail Gorbachev, who was preparing an official visit to Finland, thought about Brandt's assessment.
Gorbachev: History punishes those who act too late
However, Gorbachev was to visit the DDR first to attend the country's 40th anniversary, where “Gorby” was welcomed like a liberator. Still, the Soviet Union was not ready to save the politically and financially bankrupt East Germany. The Kremlin let, figuratively speaking, the winds of freedom solve the fate of the DDR.
Gorbachev did, in fact, refer in his speech to history punishing those who act too late. He could not have been any clearer.
Preparing a place for Finland in the new Europe
Which approach did Finland choose to adapt to the 1989 change in Europe? The MFA Planning Unit had been an observation centre of a kind for political change since 1987, thanks to its Head, Matti Kahiluoto.
The Unit had the freedom to make proposals, and the most important ones made it all the way to government speeches and, finally, defining foreign policies. The unit most likely took part in preparing the proposal for a membership in the Council of Europe.
Foreign Minister Kalevi Sorsa's speech, “Finland in Europe”, in the Paasikivi Society in November 1987 had been the Unit's first demonstration of skill. The definition of policy to prepare a place for Finland in the “new Europe” was continued in President Mauno Koivisto's speech titled “The Change in Europe” for the Hungarian government in June 1988.
Definition of neutrality?
October 1989 brought the real litmus test for the Unit, when the President and the party leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev made the long-awaited official visit to Finland. The Political Department's top management had been made responsible for the speeches related to the visit.
Some bits and pieces of the preparations were also left to the Planning Unit. A week before the visit the Unit suddenly received a pile of papers comprising the Soviet Union's proposal for a Finnish-Soviet declaration to be adopted during the Gorbachev visit.
The Unit had already started to revise the Soviet Union's proposal here and there, but the first part became the most problematic in the Unit's point of view. The Soviet Union proposed the old formulation for the definition of neutrality.
Moscow's proposal did not pay any attention to the proposal that Finland had been presented for years, even though Moscow was now considered more liberal than in, for example, Yuri Andropov's times.
“Finland, a neutral Nordic country”
Moscow had not, therefore, approved neutrality in so many words, but we were forced to define it in a way Moscow would approve. As a result, neutrality was, de facto, left out of the Finnish foreign policy leaders' definitions in the 1980's and replaced with an aspiration of maintaining good relations with all countries.
Many did not appreciate this, because neutrality was considered as the Finnish means of saying “no” to Moscow's most blatant influence attempts.
In any case, I reformulated the beginning of the Soviet draft bearing in mind the European change: “Finland, a neutral Nordic country”. I still have the document in my personal archive. My formulation remained in the final text.
The recognition came, of course, only a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was followed by rapid demolishing of the geopolitical division that used to be the basis of the neutrality policy.
Within the next couple of years, the definition was further refined so that Finland could join the European Union as an unallied country.
The Finnish foreign policy workshop responded to the European change in autumn 1989 in a way that, if nothing else, did not become harmful in the course of time.
The author, Ambassador Alpo Rusi, was the head of Research and Planning Unit of the MFA Political Department between 1987-90.