The History of Finland -- Suomen Historia
New Book by Historian Jason Lavery, Ph.D.

This section of the website is an addendum to my book, The History of Finland, published in 2006. As soon as a book on history is published, it immediately starts to become dated. Current events quickly enter the past. New information and perspectives shape previous understandings of the past. This section seeks to address these changes in perspective and knowledge. This is not an exhaustive chronicle of Finland since 2006 but rather an extension of some of the themes covered in the book to more recent times. Topics are not necessarily presented in chronological order.

Education Highs and Lows

Chapters one and nine of The History of Finland discuss the significance of education in Finland’s development. Finland’s leading position in primary and secondary education has been reaffirmed by recent international surveys. In the authoritative PISA survey of 2006, Finland ranked first in the world in respect to students’ mastery of the natural sciences, second in both reading and mathematics. In a report published in 2007 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Finland ranked at the top of industrialized democracies in respect to 15 year-olds’ mastery of the natural sciences. In a separate survey, the OECD found that, of the countries surveyed, Finland required the fewest amount of hours in school from its children (1).

School systems do not exist outside of the larger society. On 8 November 2007, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, entered his school in the southern Finnish town of Tuusula. Legally possessing a handgun, he shot eight people, including the school’s director, before shooting himself. Auvinen had told of his plans days before in You Tube video. The original reaction focused on possible inspiration that Auvinen might have received from American school shootings. Investigations into the event have not yet yielded resolutions or suggestions for future policy action. Public discussion has avoided the fact that Finland has historically been a leader in violent crime in Europe. Guns are widespread, although most are firearms for hunting.

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Parliamentary Elections of 2007

In March 2007, parliamentary elections again changed the makeup of the ruling coalition. The Center Party maintained its position as the country’s largest party. The biggest winner, the conservative National Coalition Party, gained ten seats and became the country’s second-largest party. The smaller non-socialist parties either gained seats and or voters. The Social Democratic Party suffered the biggest loss with eight seats. The other left-wing party, the Left-Wing Alliance, lost two seats. The resulting coalition reflected the election results. The National Coalition Party and the Center Party formed a non-socialist coalition with the smaller Greens and the Swedish People’s Party. A government of this particular makeup was a first in Finland’s history. The Center’s Matti Vanhanen returned as prime minister—a position he held during the previous center-left “red soil” cabinet 2003-07.

Several factors contributed to the victory of the center-right. Supporters of the conservative National Coalition Party were still mobilized as a result of the 2006 presidential election. In this election, the Conservatives’ candidate, Sauli Niinistö, narrowly lost to Tarja Halonen. Niinistö’s presidential campaign motto of “the time of partisanship is over” was successfully used by the Conservatives in the parliamentary election campaign. Niinistö won a seat in Parliament with 60,000 votes—a record. The Center Party and its leader, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, benefited from governing the country during a time of prosperity since 2003. For their part, the Social Democrats failed to give the voters a clear and convincing message. For example, the SDP condemned free-market capitalism in its election advertisements while having presided over much of the privatization of the economy since the 1980s (2).

The election and the creation of the new government were also significant for the cause of gender equality. There are now a record 84 women in Finland’s parliament. In the Government twelve of the twenty ministers are women, also a record for Finland. The first serious crisis that the government faced consisted of election promises made by the National Coalition Party to improve the salaries in high-skill fields in which women predominate. The major nurses’ union remembered this promise when negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement in the fall of 2007. The nurses’ high demands and the Conservatives’ backtracking on their promise almost provoked a nationwide strike in November 2007. The Social Democrats made their own contribution to gender equality by selecting their first woman as party chair, Jutta Urpilainen, in June 2008.

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The Constitution

On page 162 of The History of Finland, I write about Finland’s new constitution introduced in 2000. The ink barely dried on the constitution before political parties sought to change it. The major focus has been on the powers of the presidency. The large non-socialist parties, the National Coalition Party and the Center Party, have signaled a desire to reduce the president’s powers, especially in the field of foreign policy. All foreign affairs would be left to the Government. The parties on the Left, the Social Democrats and the Left-Wing Alliance, have shown a greater reluctance to reduce the president’s power. This discussion has not been sparked by any constitutional crisis. In fact, the constitution of the year 2000 has worked as envisioned. In the current Government, the prime minister, foreign minister, and president are each from different parties and have cooperated well.

Part of the discussion is fueled by domestic party politics. The presidency has been for a quarter-century held by the Left while the Left’s success in parliamentary politics has declined. Before the 1980s the presidency and its office holders were seen by non-socialist parties as bulwarks against the Left. Now the situation is just the opposite. Opponents of NATO membership believe that Finland will remain outside of the military alliance as long as the president has powers in foreign policy and is elected by the people, the majority of which oppose NATO membership. Part of the discussion is spurred by a latent support for parliamentary power. The year 2000 constitution is essentially a product of the 1980s, when the prevailing view was that the president’s power should be reduced but not to the point where the president is just a ceremonial figure. Over the course of the 1990s parliamentary democracy strengthened in Finland with many people ready for a ceremonial president and a stronger cabinet.

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The Question of the Ceded Territories

On page 135 of The History of Finland I discuss the persistence in the Finnish-Soviet dialogue of the territories ceded by Finland to the USSR in 1944, despite official renunciations by both sides of any interest in returning the territories.

The question of the ceded territories has been an issue in Finnish-Russian relations since the collapse of the USSR. In August 2007, the newspaper Kainuun sanomat reported that in 1991, Russia, then in great economic difficulty, considered selling off territory to neighboring countries including Finland. Russia made an unofficial offer of selling the Karelian Isthmus back to Finland. According to the article, President Mauno Koivisto set up a secret committee to investigate the costs. The cost of purchasing and rebuilding the territories proved prohibitive. There was also the question of Finland possibly becoming involved in Russia’s internal problems with such a transaction. President Koivisto has refused comment on the matter. Others, such as then foreign minister Paavo Väyrynen, deny knowledge of any offer (3).

In late 2007 a Finnish pensioner who left Viipuri as a small boy in 1944 filed suit in court in Viipuri for the return of the property his parents had to leave behind in the evacuation. The land in question today is the location of a daycare center. The court decided against the plaintiff. Meanwhile, many individual Finns have entered the local real estate market in Viipuri.

Over the last sixty years or so, those in Finland who seek the return of the ceded territories have failed to discuss one central question: what would be the status of those currently living in the territories should they be returned to Finland?

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Errata

Not only are works of history are products of their own time, they are the products of fallible scholars. Overview books such as The History of Finland are prone to have some small erroneous information in them. My book has been heavily reviewed by scholars with expertise in various fields of Finland’s history. So far, one error bears mentioning:

p. 161-62: I wrote that Tarja Halonen is an atheist. More correctly, President Halonen is not a member of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland and has participated in organizations strongly informed by Christian teaching, such as the settlement movement.

Footnotes:

(1)”Suomi rikkoi Pisa-tutkimusten piste-ennätyksen,” Helsingin sanomat, 5 Dec. 2007; ”Suomi taas kärkimaa OECD:n oppimistulosten vertailussa,” Helsingin sanomat, 30 Nov. 2007; ”OECD: Suomess vähiten pakollisia oppitunteja peruskoulussa,” Helsingin sanomat, 19 Sept. 2007.

(2) “Parempi olla provari,” Helsingin sanomat, 25 March 2007.

(3) ”Tutkija: Hinta ei ollut ainoa este Karjalan palautukselle 1991,” Helsingin sanomat, 16 August 2007; “Jeltsinin Venäjä laski salaa hinnan Karjalalle ja Kuriileiile vuonna 1992, Helsingin sanomat, 5 Sept. 2007.

Details about The History of Finland

Chat with the author at The History of Finland, Germany's Northern Challenge, etc. at jason.lavery@okstate.edu
Website created December 2006; last revision July 2008