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The following text is an appeal to Martti Ahtisaari, the President of the Republic of Finland. It concerns the official Finland's reason and duty to represent the most vital interest and right of our country to become territorially whole again, i.e. to get our legal borders from the Tartu peace agreement 1920 restored. Oddly enough, our foreign political leadership has neglected to propose negotiations wih the Russian Federation about correcting the wrong - admitted a such by president Yeltsin 1994, done to us as the consequence of the Stalin Soviet's aggression Nov.30, 1939. He meant explicitly the annexation of the Finnish Karelia (and other Finnish territories amounting to 12.5 % of Finland).
The text, one of a few preceding appeals to him in different actual connections, this time has to do with our president's speech in Berlin, April 26., invited by the German State Chancellor Roman Herzog. (The text is free to become published from April 16th, it having been conveyed to our president from April 13th onwards, starting by E-mail that date):
Honourable Mr. President of the Finnish Republic, Martti Ahtisaari:
The invitation to give the "Berlin speech" is a significant mark of honour both to you personally and to Finland. For both it means an opportunity to have effect. The fact that it is not an official state political occurence, only adds to the hances.Those opporunities also mean obligation.
Precisely to you we (the Finnish citizens) have given among us the biggest authorization to represent us within the community of nations. You have always been free to choose, what and how you would be keeping to the fore in each connection.
Beyond any doubt, you realize that such a power means deep and extensive responsibility. That, again, presupposes sensitive and unbribable conscience. (In Finnish the word for conscience = omatunto = one's very own feeling!)
To the sensitivity required from it belongs a real contact with the most essential needs of our people as well as with the fundamental feelings concerning them that prevail among us.
At least one third of our population (according to a recent Gallup) feels that we should strive to reach negotiations about correcting the wrongs done to us, i.e. about returning to us the territories robbed from us , the Finnish Karelia and the other ones we forcefully had to abdicate as dictated 1944 by Moscow to us as its peace conditions to us and confirmed unchanged 1947 by the Paris Peace conference.
Hitherto you have neglected to represent this most profound and essential need of ours within th community of nations - as your predecessor also did. This happened even in such a connection, within which you were confronted by a maximal possible opportunity and challenge to represent our most selfevident Finnish interest and cause. We mean the constellation of your first state visite to the Russian Federation in May 1994. As response to a Finnish
journalist's question president Yeltsin unequivocably stated that the annexa- tion of the Finnish Karelia (more than thousand years solely inhabited by Finns) to the Soviet Union had been a consequence of stalinist imperialist aggression - something that neither he himself nor our president together never could approve.
When interviewed immediately after that statement, you just stated, that if the situation would change in a way that on the Russian side would appear willingness to discuss this question (the very something that had just taken place!), we on our side should weigh, whether we are prepared to do this... it would presuppose a wide national discussion... and that you don' see the situation as such... Yet, more than during five years there had gon on such a national discussion... You were stifled by the absurd Finnish historical fear!
Sure, the meetings wih the Russian chief of state do not represent the sole opprtunities to keep the matter internationally to the fore. In every case, in the four of them which hitherto have taken place, you have neglected to make use of he opportunity. This applies also to the Helsinki Summit 1996 when the pesident of the US was present and when the opportunity was open to make our Finnish predicament and its need for correction especially widely known in the world.
You are the very person among all us in Finland who carries the weightiest responsibility of caring for our need and righto return to our territorial and spiritual whole - one of elementary selfrespect. There you stand, having the opportunity and obliged to represent us as the present, past and coming generations - confronted with the face of our history.
Sure, you understand that the decline of he Gallup percentages from 75 to 33 during a few years has to do with the neglect by the official Finland to care for our grossly violated right. We Finns are so deeply obedient to state authority - an obedience deeply rooted in our history. Yet, even more deeply the silently accepting Finnish attitude to the wrong continuousy kept in power is determined by the trauma embodied in the dictates by the Paris Peace Conference. That the community of nations just pushed us to he mercy of the aggressor Soviet Union, led to a fateful traumatization.
Not only all hope to attain any justice as a nation was lost. The consequences among us reached the form of the syndrome appearing sometimes among the kidnapped: identification with the aggressor. Sure, this has applied to different degrees to all of us. Only, the higher the political position, the greater the pressure in the direction of embodying that model.
Acknowledging this we here are n o t accusing you - only appealing to you to awaken to become liberated from this fateful national bondage and to adopt the function of representing Finland in its most selfevident right and interest within the family of nations.
Citizen Martti Ahtisaari! We expect you not to deceive your fundamental task and the very interest of your country, be it then in ever so good faith!
We represent the living, still unsilenced Finnish voice of heart, the one of national and cultural conscience. From its depths we appeal to you around ten days before your speech trip to Berlin.
Helsinki, April 14, 1998
respectfully
Martti Siirala
Chairman, Tartu Peace Association
Suomi (Finland)
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The following text stems from a letter of Martti Siirala (chairman of the Tartu Peace Associarion) to one of his friends in Great Britain: I am writing now after the Finnish parliament elections and the construction of the new government. A few words about the attitude to the forcefully ceded parts (1/8 of ouur legal territory since 1920) shown by the new minister of ecological matters, the chairwoman of the greens, Satu Hassi.
She had said before the election something in favour for proposing negotiations about the Finnish forcefully abdicated territories. After the elections we had a brief discussion in which her stand was clear: this issue must not be taken to the for. It would narrow down the political space needed by the care for the nonpolluted air - something in which she is engaged as a leading figure in the Scandina-vian ecological politics.
Around both the elections and the negotiations about the new government and its program there has been not even any mention of the "Karelian problem". Lipponen, again prime minister, who some two years ago stated that to ask for getting the Finnish Karelia retuned, would imply throwing all our financial resources into a black hole. Another leading figure amongt the social democrats, now also a mem-ber of the new government, Erkki Tuomioja, some years ago stated on the readers' corner in Helsingin Sanomat (the biggest Finnish newspaper),that my mental health must be put under professional examination if I continue to speak of a "Finnish disease".
In fact, the Finnish disease reaches its very heights of power in even the most absurd ways. One of the former chairmen of our parliament, Ilkka Suominen invited Juri Derjabin, the former Soviet-"Komissarov" - to his EU-elections campaign thus taking "Finland must refrain fom any mention within the European Union of correction of wrongs done to Finland" as his main election trump.
Since 1987 I have taken stand in many Finnish newspapers and periodicals in the Tartu Peace border-issue. The biggest, Helsingin Sanomat very rarely accepts to publish anything from the readers about this issue. And � the Finnish TV-channels never mention me or the Tartu Peace Association. Yet, there is something going on in the direction of improvement in the quality of the overall discussion wher-ever it is allowed space in the media.
My angle of vision continues to be that of the "Finnish disease", its present state of manifestations, signs of improvement as well as of worsening. I have develo-ped this concept that pertains to the traumatically developed sick Finnish condi-tion of our national awareness reflecting the relation to our national-cultural identity and to our basic rights. Pity, that my book from 1991 on the subject has not been translated into Swedish, English, German, Russian or any other languages.
One thing I want to make sure here - namely, that for me speaking of a "disease" here implies no stigmatization of any single person or group. No, it forms part of an overall sociopathological perspective - applied to all nations, states, cultures and the mankind as a whole in the history and at the present time.
The idea ist that also this perspective, among others, has its undeniable relevance.
For instance, identification with the aggressor, the phenomenon encountered in some instances of kidnapping (a famous one was the case of Patricia Hearst, daughter of a leading press figure in the USA) has played a most obvious role in the Finnish attitudes to the Soviet Union and later also to the Russian Federation. In the leading Finnish politicians' actions and above all the neglects as far the Finnish basic interests and rights are concerned, ways of speaking, alongside with the basic conceptualizations, this has amounted to plain absurdities. As much as the censorship by the media has allowed, I have demonstrated many of the easily discernible pathological turns in question.
Our that time president Paasikivi started to speak in 1944, after the Moscow peace treaty, the Soviet-British controlcommission being in Helsinki, of the "legitimate security interests of Leningrad" as justifying the Soviet annexation 12.5 % of Finland, all the way from the Gulf of Finland in the south to the Petch-enga (Finnish: Petsamo) peninsula in Lappland, more than 1000 kilometers north from Leningrad,
today St. Petersburg. That time no newspaper was prepared to publish my critical comments, in which I stated that given the support of the whole western orld to the Soviet demands, Finland had no other choice than to accept to meet the demands. However, I maintained, a nation is not allowed to extend its compliance into calling "justice" the treatment it is subjected to, should it not be prepared to give up its identity both in the others' and in its own eyes and once, even in its heart. To give it false names is a message not only to the by armed force dictating mighty states but also to the consiousness and conscience of oneself at present as well as to the coming generations. How much this way of Finnish compliance practice even was conceived as a strategic necessity and afterwards explicitly defended on that ground, it has proved to have had fatal consequences. It has prevented the young Finnish state-identity (the Finnish senate declared 6.12.1917 Finland independent) from developing further towards equality with others within the overall community of nations.
The most central and worst neglected element here for Finland and Finns has been the sense for one's elementary rights as a nation and state. It is true Finland did show this sense in the most profound thinkable sense by being prepared to defend its legal territory (peace treaty 1920 in Tartu, Estonia, between Finland and the Soviet Russia) at every cost. It set an example to the world by its Termopylai, the s.c. winterwar, starting by the Soviet attack on November 30., 1939 how irresistible even for the most mighty armed force proves to be a culture's faithfulness to its basic human values proves to be.
The treatment this Termopylai-Finland then became subjected to by the western part of the community of nations then led to a fateful traumatization on the days of reckoning after the second world war - in the Paris peace congress 1947. That community, namely, then acted only in the terms of powerstrategy, putting aside all the other human values. Finland thus became thrown at the mercy of the Soviet Union, as its to Finland utterly unjust peace conditions (implying not only robbery of 1/8 of its territory and huge war reparations) without that the western countries would have uttered a single comment, not to speak of demanding any restrictions to such violence.
The Finnish cause represents paradigmatically a survival issue for mankind - like the ecological one also does. I mean the new opening that absolutely is needed in the future treament of the issues between the small and the big, states, nations and cultures.
Keeping to the fore the right of this particular nation, state and culture, Suomi, Finland, thus has nothing to do with "nationalism" or anything fanatic. Just a basic human value, caring for which lies in a fatal state of our common neglect.
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