Olli Rehn Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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What are the problems for Finnish politics in making this rather amazing leap as a small state adjacent to one of the superpowers during the Cold War -- and this has all happened in the last decade -- to a present situation, where your major reference point is the European Union? What difficulties has that created for a democracy like Finland?
I would say that one question is that the Finns were rather satisfied with the outcome of their neutrality policy of the 1960s and '70s and '80s. And partly, understandably, because Finland was not a member of NATO and there was no security shield from the U.S. or from Western Europe for Finland, which means that at the end of the day Finland was alone with the Soviet Union. We had to deal with the Soviet Union somehow. I think, by and large, Finland succeeded rather well in that regard; but at the same time, it led many to believe that the sort of mutilated policies of staying out of difficulties of the outer world is a viable policy position in the longer term. I don't think it is. I think Finland is part of the globalizing community, international community, and we have to participate actively in its decision-making and give our own contribution.
Recently in Finland you've had something of a "spy scandal" in the reconstruction of memories or partial truths with regard to who did what during an earlier period. My superficial reading of newspaper articles on that suggest that old history can become a factor in the manipulation of democratic politics. Is that a fair assessment? Would you agree with that?
I think, unfortunately, it is a fair assessment. The main question is how should a country like Finland deal with its past, its history, during the Cold War? I think, in many ways, the Finnish policy of neutrality was a success, but at the same time, many politicians went too far in appeasement towards the Soviet Union, mainly because they wanted to enhance their position in domestic politics. They used it for mere power purposes, and that's, of course, not acceptable. In my view, we should rather deal with these matters by methods of critical history writing, historical research, rather than policy investigations, especially if these investigations only take one case, which is not even a correctly assessed case, while leaving several other cases untouched, seemingly for political reasons. Because the chief of the security police has a certain political background that causes significant suspicion of his ability to behave neutrally in this kind of a case.
So what you're saying is that members of the state apparatus, wherever they're located, can selectively leak files or dossiers which can conjure up images of all sorts of treachery, and in so doing affect the current politics, but at the same time distort the actual historical record?
Very much so. This has been the case in the case of Professor Alpo Rusi. There was a suspicion that he had spied for the East German intelligence services that was leaked out last September, and he was standing for candidacy in the Parliamentary elections at the same time. I did some investigative journalism in that particular case, and after a few weeks of this leak, I was able to reconstruct the situation in the 1970s. I went to meet and interview the elder brother of this Professor Rusi in Middle Finland. He confessed to me that he had been providing material to an East German and Russian diplomat who were working for the intelligence services all through the 1970s.
The material on which this case was based was received in Finland from West Germany, via the CIA to the Finnish security police. Apparently, [it included] the last name of this particular professor, Alpo Rusi, but there had been, clearly, some sort of a mistake or falsification in this particular case. Now the security police are trying to finish their investigation and conclude the case. I hope it will happen very soon because there is not a worse accusation than a claim that somebody would have spied for the East German intelligence services. At least in the case of my country, that is the worst accusation you can imagine.
And this actually led you to resign from being a candidate for office, as a matter of principle, to get to the bottom of this?
I had to choose between running for the Parliament -- we had Parliamentary elections in mid March -- or actively start to defend my friend and explore the case. I couldn't have looked at myself in the mirror if I hadn't chosen to create equal conditions of serious self defense for Professor Alpo Rusi after the public lynching which he faced in the first few days, the first few weeks, after the leaks were revealed. The reason I resigned from candidacy was that I didn't want to harm the chances of my party, because this accusation would have been linked to the Center Party if I had continued as a Parliamentary candidate.
So I guess we should add courage to what it takes to do politics, both in Finland and elsewhere?
Well, I don't know if it's politics or investigative journalism. But, nonetheless ...
You paid political cost, though.
Yes, certain political costs. Yes; but I'm quite satisfied with my current job as a university researcher. I enjoy, very much, analyzing the economic transformation that is going on in the Western and other economies, for the moment. So let's not exaggerate the cost, but I must say that it's not the easiest thing to do to have a certain tension with the security police of your own country.
This controversy suggests that even countries like Finland that have had to respond to these great changes might need something in the way of a fact-finding commission, a truth and reconciliation commission, to put everything on the table, so that whatever is being investigated is in the broader historical context, and not [subject to] one party or the other using it to its advantage in an election where, presumably, one should be talking about policy issues.
Precisely. I think we have two levels. First of all, in overall terms, we should do some kind of a national investigation by using the methods of historical research, so as to discuss openly how far some things went in the 1970s. Not the whole elite; certainly not [all] the people, but some people might have done that. The second level is, then, the actual espionage, because we have the East German archives available and we have other information which has shown that roughly fifteen to twenty Finns seem to have worked in a close relationship with the East German intelligence services. I think that should be investigated. But it should be done so that every potential case is dealt with on the principles of the rule of law and the protection of the privacy of these people, as long as they have not been found guilty. Otherwise, we are in a situation which George Orwell described in his classic, Animal Farm, where some animals are "more equal" than others. I wouldn't like to live in that kind of a country.
Next page: Challenges Confronting Finland
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