In the shadow of technology

Finland – a special case?

In Cold War Europe, where most countries had chosen sides, more or less committing (or having been forced to commit) themselves to either the East or the West, Finland suffered from a kind of schizophrenia. At all levels of society, but particularly in politics and business, there were strong currents in both directions, while the publicly announced foreign political goal was neutrality. The majority of Finns sided with the West, but recent history had forced Finland into a peculiar situation.

Finland having been defeated twice by the Soviet Union during the Second World War, first alone and then in alliance with Germany, its geopolitical position had drastically changed. The postwar years saw a balancing act in which Finland managed to preserve a democratic system and remain a Western market economy while simultaneously maintaining a close political relationship with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union tried increasingly to bring Finland more closely into its sphere of influence. Although the 1955 Agreement on Finnish–Soviet Scientific and Technical Cooperation was a Soviet initiative, there were a number of forces in Finland that tried to pull the agreement in different directions. According to Kohvakka (2011), the process leading to the agreement can be seen from the Finnish perspective as a struggle between a western-oriented academia, the state administration that wished to expand its authority over science policy, and business interest groups that wanted either to shield their interests in the West or to seize new business opportunities in the East. In general, few in Finland, outside the communists, embraced the news of the Soviet proposal for scientific and technical cooperation with enthusiasm. Few doubted that the agreement was political and aimed at increasing Soviet influence over Finland. Nevertheless, after some hesitation President Paasikivi and Premier Kekkonen decided to embrace the offer, reasoning that they might thereby avoid agreements that were even more political in character.

The agreement gave birth to a Finnish–Soviet joint committee, usually called the TT Committee, ² which was to administer the cooperative projects provided for in the agreement. This committee was the key player in scholarly connections between the two countries throughout the Soviet era. It became a fairly independent actor with mostly only technical control being asserted over it by the Finnish and Soviet governments. Among the key Soviet objectives had been the formation of close ties between the Finnish–Soviet trade and the TT Committee. In retrospect, at least, this objective materialized. When evaluating the role of the TT Committee in the mid-1980s, Finnish experts found that the committee’s role in Finnish–Soviet trade was bigger than was perhaps healthy. The TT Committee assisted Finnish enterprises and sometimes relayed proposals from the Soviet Union to them. Several projects involving the TT Committee were massive in scale, involving jointly built industrial plants both in the Soviet Union and in Finland (Salminen and Haarala, 1986). Even if technological trade and exchange were only one side of the TT Committee’s work, this was the most visible part, and politicians on both sides took care that it remained to the fore and at the center of public attention. At the same time, such big projects seem to have kept the politicians happy, thus allowing the TT Committee to pursue other affairs with a notable level of autonomy.

Although the official façade of the TT Committee came to emphasize the public grand narrative of Finnish–Soviet relations, in which friendship and cooperation prevailed (Jauho, 1985: 3–7; Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton välinen, 1978: 3), the process leading to the agreement and its implementation reveals things about the multifaceted nature of the agreement that help to explain why the human sciences were eventually allotted such a minor role.

The agreement on scientific and technological exchange

The Soviet initiative for the 1955 agreement followed changes in the Soviet approach vis-à-vis the West after Stalin’s death in 1953. The previous policy of isolating Western influences was overturned, and the Soviet Union started to seek bilateral agreements on cultural and scientific cooperation. Sari Autio-Sarasmo (2010) has studied Finnish–Soviet technological exchange at the macro-level. According to her, scientific and technical agreements were primarily a Soviet attempt to bridge the technology gap between the Soviet Union and the West. Through the agreements, Soviet experts were to gain access to and to learn from their Western counterparts. The Soviet approach to the 1955 agreement points precisely to this. The Soviets, on the lookout for Western patents and technology, sought concrete cooperation in industry and technology preferably with Finnish businesses.

The Finnish reaction to this unwelcome deal was to suggest an expansion of ties in human and social sciences like linguistics, ethnology and archeology. The Soviets wanted to hear none of this. Illustratively, in the negotiations leading to the agreement, the Finnish representatives were professors of ethnology, linguistics and folklore studies. The Soviets, for their part, brought apparatchiks from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and people representing the paper and shipping industries; in other words, a delegation based heavily on industry and trade. The Finns were justifiably afraid of industrial espionage, which would have led to Finnish firms losing patents and crucial access to Western technology. Through arduous negotiations, Finland managed to prevent the direct and potentially disastrous transfer of Western technology through Finland. Although at first the agreement brought few benefits to Finland, it later on benefited Finnish companies that obtained commissions to build dams and power plants, and large vessels for the Soviets (e.g. Sutela, 2014).

The development of cooperation was much slower in the academic world. Scholarly cooperation between the Nordic countries was active, and in this the Soviet Union played no role. Cooperation between Finland and the United States started in 1950, when a special Fulbright program was established. The exchange of students with the Soviet Union remained meagre by comparison until the late 1960s. It would seem that the Soviet Union was not ready to exchange students with the West on a large scale. Although US President Eisenhower was in the late 1950s prepared to exchange thousands of students with the Soviet Union, the Soviets agreed to exchange only 20 students per year (Richmond, 2003: 22).

Scholarly connections, too, lagged for several decades behind other forms of interaction, like tourism and the exchange of artists. The majority of Finnish academics did not come to support the 1955 agreement. Even if the Finnish negotiators were leading Finnish humanists, they were able to push their agenda only so far. At the time, the inclusion of the humanities and social sciences in the agreement merely aimed at decreasing the emphasis on technology, but this action had some long-term consequences. It allowed scope for the scholarly cooperation that started to blossom in earnest toward the 1970s.

Along with the exchange of technical information the agreement also mentioned the exchange of lecturers, students and scientists. Students and scholars were to be offered chances to work in universities, institutes, museums and archives and to arrange joint field trips (Soviet–Finnish Agreement, 1985: 17–19). This last point of the 1955 agreement was obviously tailored by the Finnish participants, one of whom was a professor of ethnology, a field in which access to other Finnic ethnic groups living in the Soviet Union was important. The agreement twice referred to an exchange of lecturers, and the tail end of the agreement also mentioned an exchange of scholarly and bibliographic publications (ibid.). Thus the contents of the agreement were not all about technical development, even if this is what public reports and speeches seem to suggest.

The context of working with the Soviets

For the Soviets, the agreement with Finland was the first of its kind with the West. It had its uses for propaganda purposes as well, demonstrating how cooperation between the Soviet Union and a Western market economy was possible. Thus, in retrospect, the Soviets later stressed that the agreement was a result of the willingness of both countries to increase cooperation in the timber, shipbuilding and construction industries. The Soviet chairman of the TT Committee, A. K. Romanov (1985), emphasized the fact that the 1955 agreement was born out of the need for states to collaborate in the modern world.

The Soviet orientation toward acquiring technology dominated its attitude to the TT Committee for many years. This is reflected in the fact that the TT Committee’s Soviet chairman was at the same time the head of GKNT (the State Committee for Science and Technology). GKNT initially seriously rivaled the Academy of Sciences, but by the 1970s, lines separating the two were drawn: the academy concentrated on basic research and fundamental science, while GKNT took care of technology policy and transfers (Graham, 1993: 181–2). By the 1970s, the Soviet Academy of Sciences was becoming increasingly involved in the TT Committee’s work, signaling that exchanges in the human sciences were becoming more important.

However, even with increasing connections, official reports contained only vague mentions of the humanities, while references to the natural sciences and technology were ubiquitous (Jauho, 1985: 3–7). Projects such as the manufacture of forestry machines combining Finnish and Soviet parts and two nuclear plants built jointly in Finland were among the items most often mentioned (Romanov, 1985: 8–16). Cooperation in the human sciences was less glamorous. Even if the agreement was essentially broader, according to Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton välinen (1978: 5) in speeches the TT Committee’s primary objectives were often reduced to:

the quicker application of scientific and technical achievements;

The participating academics, however, did not let this hinder their work. Looking back on it, Finnish scholars in the humanities and social sciences rarely mention that their work was overlooked in the committee, quite the contrary: for them, the TT Committee was a helpful organization that supported their research goals and very rarely interfered with anything.

The human sciences in the shadows

Despite the fact that the human sciences were sidelined in 1955, a handful of scholars got the opportunity to be pioneers in Finnish–Soviet connections in their fields. To some extent, it was their work that made it possible for connections to blossom in the 1970s, when the next generation of scholars rose to prominence. A Finnish history professor described this work in his report dating from the early 1970s by cataloging connections in the humanities between the University of Turku, one of the foremost Finnish universities, and the Soviet Union.

This professor made his first visit to the Soviet Union in 1956. It followed a similar visit by the Soviet Academy of Sciences to Turku earlier in the same year. As a result, exchange of archival materials took place later that year. History was not alone in benefiting from the re-establishment of connections. Finno-Ugric began to establish connections in 1955, and theology followed in 1958, ethnography in 1960 and Finnish history in the 1960s. This professor reasoned that these fields benefited most from connections with the Soviet Union as they needed research materials that were available there. The majority of Finno-Ugric ethnic groups – an essential element in many core areas of Finnish linguistics, ethnography and folklore studies – lived in the Soviet Union. But at the same time, the relatively limited nature of the connections is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that this professor was able to list and describe practically all exchanges in the humanities over two decades (Niitemaa, 1974). Even if the majority of departments reported some kind of connections with the Soviet Union, most branches of the social sciences, for instance, had no connections at all and the majority of connections mentioned consisted merely in the exchange of letters and publications (Memorandum, 1974).

Before the 1970s, it was not obvious what the TT Committee’s role in the exchanges was with regard to basic research. In several universities, there had been plans for direct agreements with their Soviet counterparts. For example, Turku and Leningrad State Universities had reached an agreement on scientific exchanges in 1967. However, these agreements often worked poorly. Between 1968 and 1973 only three professorial-level visits in both directions had taken place (Memorandum, 1974). ³ Apart from the rectors of the University of Turku, only two professors – who were both vice-rectors – had been to Leningrad (ibid.). Ideas about expanding this modest agreement had been voiced several times, but the original agreement of 1966 remained in place at least until 1981 (Perheentupa, 1981). It should be mentioned that the University of Turku was active internationally, with lively connections with countries in the West (Memorandum, 1974). By contrast, up to the early 1970s, bilateral agreements with Soviet universities produced little other than academic tourism.

Increasing Finnish interest in the Soviet Union

By the end of the 1970s, the low level of connections in the human sciences had changed drastically. There were several indications of a broader change of heart among traditionally western-oriented Finnish academics. Two major explanatory factors emerge: a generational change inside the universities; and a broader societal change cumulating in a shift in attitudes toward the Soviet Union.

Indicative of the latter were the numerous different organizations that became interested in scholarly exchanges with the Soviet Union in the course of the 1970s. Scholarly connections were no longer considered to be the sole prerogative of universities. For example, the Union of Finnish University Students (SYL) started to impose its influence on the universities. This organization had been averse to the Soviet Union after it was inaugurated in 1921. One of SYL’s original aims, however, was to maintain contacts with students abroad. In the 1960s and 1970s, the rapid expansion of universities and the number of students led to changes in SYL, at the same time as leftist groups took hold of numerous student bodies in Finnish universities. SYL reflected this change and in the course of the 1970s started to support closer ties with the Soviet Union. A broader generational change within Finnish academia also played a role. Younger scholars, who had studied in the late 1960s and early 1970s, were generally more favorable toward the Soviet Union.

Illustrative of the transformed attitude was a memorandum produced by SYL in 1978 with the title ‘Cooperation in Higher Education and Science between Finland and the Soviet Union’, which was distributed to student bodies in Finland. Its purpose was to make Finnish students more aware and supportive of scholarly cooperation. Noteworthy is the fact that the memorandum’s text reiterated the official ‘jargon of friendship’, acknowledging the 30th anniversary of the YYA agreement ⁴ (1948) and referring to ‘fruitful friendship and cooperation between the countries’ (Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton korkeakoulu- ja tiedeyhteistyö, 1978: 2).

The changes within academia and the student body to some extent reflected the strong winds of Finlandization that were blowing in the 1970s. An uncritical approach to the Soviet Union crept not only into publications in both languages but also into memoranda and reports aimed at Finnish audiences. One Finnish official even stated that the Soviet Union sought scientific exchanges because of ‘Lenin’s farsighted attitude on scientific development’. Furthermore, he claimed, it had been due to the ‘narrow-mindedness and hostility’ of Finnish university circles and the government that Finnish–Soviet cooperation had not begun until 1955 (Koivumäki, 1978: 1–5).

Indicative of the growing Soviet influence and change in Finnish attitudes was the fact that organizations with little connections to academia, such as the Finnish–Soviet Friendship Society, started to advocate increased scholarly connections in the course of the 1970s. This society, which was formed in 1944 to unite people who were interested in the Soviet Union, had been controlled by communists ever since its establishment (Mikkonen, 2015). It had become a very active player in Finnish–Soviet relations, mostly by nurturing cultural connections and participating in tourism and twin-city activities. In the course of the 1970s, the society expanded its influence within the Finnish academic world. A chapter of the Finnish–Soviet Society that adopted as its aim the dissemination of Soviet scientific information and the support of cooperation with Soviet colleagues was established in practically every Finnish university. From the society’s point of view, science and politics were inseparable. The situation with scientific exchanges was described as unsatisfactory because ‘less than 2% of all textbooks used in Finnish universities were from the Soviet Union’ and because ‘the textbooks used were still sometimes openly reactionary and contained anti-Soviet attitudes that were not founded on scientific arguments’ (Koivumäki, 1978: 1–5).

One of the Finnish–Soviet society’s core aims was to expand the supply of Soviet information in Finland. For this purpose, it aimed at using its university chapters to extend the use of Soviet textbooks in Finnish universities. The society had been involved in increasing the translation of books from Russian into Finnish ever since 1944 (Mikkonen, 2015). In the 1970s, the society sought to expand this work to the universities and published a list of books that could be used as textbooks. In the field of history, for example, such books included The Communist Party Manifesto, Lenin on the Great October Revolution (Memorandum, 1978: 7–15). While excessive Soviet accommodation and self-criticism did not become as widespread within academia as, for example, in the Finnish mass media, universities were not completely free of this trend. The student union SYL saw the influence of the Finnish–Soviet Society’s chapters in universities only in a positive light. The chapters were, according to SYL, of importance in the development of Finnish–Soviet scientific exchanges. SYL wanted to be intensively engaged in pushing Finnish universities into closer collaboration with the Soviet Union.

The growing interest of different Finnish organizations reflects the topicality of Finnish–Soviet exchanges. In 1978, the Finnish–Soviet Society and the Union of Finnish University Students (SYL) together with the Finnish Ministry of Education and the Soviet Center of Culture and Science in Helsinki arranged a major seminar on scientific exchange attended by representatives of Finnish and Soviet scholarly circles. It was claimed that every Finnish university was represented in this seminar, and, for instance, the rector of Helsinki University participated in it. The purpose of the seminar was to find new ideas and possibilities for broadening cooperation (Draft Memorandum, 1978: 18–20). Even though previously Finnish universities had apparently displayed only limited interest in broadening contacts with the Soviet Union, the agreements concluded in the 1970s seem to have been more extensive than the previous ones. Moscow State University and Helsinki University, for instance, were already engaging in 10-month exchanges of professors, lecturers and also doctoral students (Agreement, 1978: 21–6). By comparison with the agreement made by the University of Turku 10 years previously, this one actually made genuine scholarly collaboration possible.

The effort to bring about a change, then, was not only being manifested outside the academic world. A new generation of scholars was urging the Finnish academic establishment to be more active with regard to the Soviet Union. A petition signed by 42 Finnish professors, all major experts in their fields, which ranged from physics to sociology, called for increased Finnish–Soviet scientific cooperation. The petition voiced a concern about the poor visibility of Soviet science in teaching and research in Finland. The language of the petition reflected the ‘jargon of friendship’, emphasizing the role of the 1948 agreement and speaking about ‘securing the dissemination of truthful information about the Soviet Union’ by developing teaching in Finnish universities. The need for an increase in Russian-language teaching and the number of Soviet textbooks used and their translation into Finnish were also mentioned (Petition, 1978: 16–17).

A generational change in the Finnish academic community was perhaps the biggest single explanatory factor for the increased interest in the Soviet Union. Like the rest of the Western world, Finland had had a leftist student movement in the 1960s, and by the 1970s members of that movement had entered the academic workforce, causing a rift between a leftist younger generation of scholars and the conservative scholarly establishment. The boom in scholarly connections with the Soviet Union in the late 1970s seems to have been led by these younger scholars whose political orientation was more toward the left than that of the preceding academic generation. This group of academics included scholars who were active in the Finnish–Soviet Society, and there were even representatives of the radical minority within the Finnish Communist Party, which before the 1970s had barely obtained any foothold in the academic sphere. For many younger scholars, the existing academic organizations in Finland were controlled by rightist forces, and they therefore established a new communist-leaning association called the Union of Researchers. ⁵ The union’s aim was to change the fixed orientation of the Finnish scholarly community toward the West. Even though no major rupture followed, the challenge from the left illustrates the willingness of the younger generation to disturb the balance.

New structures of cooperation

Pekka Jauho, one-time head of the TT Committee, stressed the fact that the most important prerequisite for the success of its work was the benevolent attitude of the political leadership in both countries (Jauho, 1985: 3–7). While it is true that high-level politics gave birth to the agreement, it is also important to note that politicians paid very little attention to it thereafter, apart from emphasizing its role in Finnish–Soviet relations. Instead, the key role was to be played by the TT Committee and especially by its lower levels as connections in the human sciences increased in the 1970s.

Jauho (1985: 3–7) divided the chronology of the committee into three distinct periods: 1956–68 was the developmental phase, when different forms were created and the focus was on changing information; strong growth was the phase of 1969–77, when mutual understanding had reached a point where genuine collaboration could quickly increase; and internal development the phase in the years 1978–84, by which Jauho meant that the committee’s work became more goal-oriented and concrete. Jauho’s chronology seems appropriate in many respects. Indeed, in 1969, a major structural overhaul took place in the TT Committee, resulting in the establishment of subject-centered working groups (ibid.). These working groups brought together scholars working in the same fields. Cooperation took place on a voluntary basis, and new working groups were added if there was demand for them and both parties agreed.

By 1985 the number of working groups operating in a particular field of industry or technical field was 24. The number of academic working groups in 1985 was 13, of which 8 were in the human sciences. The first groups were established in 1969 for linguistics, anthropology and ethnology, archeology, history, literature and folklore. Psychology and economics followed in 1977, and sociology in 1978. Intense cooperation took place in special groups created for international relations and philosophy in 1974 and 1976 respectively (detailed list in Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton, 1985: 22–49).

Increased cooperation in the basic sciences was made possible in part by changes on the Soviet side. While GKNT retained control over the TT Committee’s Soviet side, the authority of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was also increasing. The Academy of Finland – which distributes the majority of competitive Finnish research funding – established its own ties with the Soviet Academy of Sciences. As a result, cooperation in the basic sciences formally depended on the TT Committee, but was essentially autonomous (according to a personal interview with a former male senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013). When connections between Finnish and Soviet scholars were approved and established, the Soviet Academy of Sciences transferred much of its control to its local research institutes, thus further easing cooperation (Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton 1 [1978]: 5, 9). Central authority and control over the TT Committee’s work even in the Soviet Union were relatively modest.

When the main forms of cooperation within the TT Committee’s system are examined, many of them seem to have applied more to the human sciences than to the natural or technical sciences. A survey listed the main forms of interaction that took place. Most typically they took the form of exchanges of information, experts and scholars, and the arranging of symposia, seminars and colloquia, and exhibitions (Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton 1 [1978]: 3–5).

Quantitatively speaking, the establishment of working groups after 1969 and the increased role of the Academy of Sciences were catalytic factors. Until 1969, the number of scholars traveling between Finland and the Soviet Union under the TT Committee’s system rarely exceeded 100 per year. From 1969 to 1977, the number of Soviet experts traveling to Finland doubled, reaching an annual average of 200. The number of Finns traveling to the Soviet Union experienced an even more drastic increase, exceeding 800 in 1977, 2.5 times the Soviet average in the period 1969–77 (Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton 1: 31). According to statistics from the first half of the 1980s, the number of both Soviet and Finnish experts in all areas participating in exchanges through the TT Committee exceeded 1,000 annually. The visits lasted 7 days on average, but the length of some individual visits could be very different (Statistics, 1985: 50–1). While the number of Soviet travelers increased somewhat, it was Finnish scholars’ travels to the Soviet Union that experienced a major rise. And the biggest increase took place in the human sciences.

One Finnish official stated that, before the 1970s, cooperation had occurred only at the highest levels and there had been little information disseminated about what was taking place. In his opinion, the emergence of genuine cooperation in the 1970s was a result of several factors, including ‘the ascendance of the Soviet Union into a leading scientific power’ and ‘the general easing of tensions and the CSCE process’ (Koivumäki, 1978: 1–5). Even though he stopped short of actually mentioning it, he also hinted at the change of heart in the Finnish academic community’s attitude toward the Soviet Union.

As cooperation increased and Finnish academia seemed to have become more receptive toward cooperation with the Soviet Union, two agreements between the Soviet Union and Finland to supplement the original agreement of 1955 were eventually signed in 1975. The original agreement was divided into two separate agreements: one for scientific and technical exchanges and another for the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. Nominally, the latter agreement was supposed to support the former one, as it was stated that it should strengthen those areas that ‘best increased the chances of success in the scientific and technical fields’. In reality, this was very rarely the case. Basic research in many of the fields mentioned in the agreement – like Finno-Ugric studies, comparative research in the national histories of Finland and the Soviet peoples, sociological studies of the family – could not have been further removed from scientific and technological development (Long-term agreement, 1976). However, these were areas in which a lot of the cooperation had taken place. It seems that emphasizing scientific and technical development was still considered important for political purposes. The agreement did not define the fields in which exchange should take place but rather gave authority over the forging and implementation of concrete measures to the TT Committee, which in turn relied on its working groups, in which scholars were allowed to operate autonomously.

The agreement of 1975 simply reflected the growth of connections that was taking place at lower levels. Whereas the previous agreement of 1955 had been followed by only a trickle of exchanges in the humanities and social sciences, the increase of connections after 1969 was eventually followed by a new agreement in 1975, which in turn contributed to an upward spiral of subsequent cooperation.

Signs of increased connections

The primary forms of cooperation mentioned in the 1975 agreement were joint seminars and symposia, the exchange of scholars, prolonged field trips, short-term lecture visits, joint research projects, joint publications and scientific consultations. The agreement allowed for an exchange of scholars amounting to a total of 45 months in 1975, increasing by 5 months every year to reach 70 months a year in 1980. In 1979 and 1980, these quotas were reportedly even exceeded (Kivistö, 1980). This was coupled with an agreement between the Finnish and Soviet Academies of Sciences, for which the yearly quota of exchanges was 40 months (Perheentupa, 1981). Altogether, by 1980 the number of exchanges taking place per year under the auspices of the TT Committee amounted to 1,000 persons and 4,000 days in total (Blomstedt, 1980). In the TT Committee, these months were distributed between subject-specific working groups according to their needs (Long-term agreement, 1976). Thus the TT Committee’s approach was quite flexible. On the Finnish side, the TT Committee had a 10-member secretariat operating under the political department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Blomstedt, 1980). Its primary function was to help the working groups and the work of individual scholars by taking care of administrative matters.

Although joint publications were mentioned as a form of cooperation, there were only about 40 publications per year resulting from work carried out under the auspices of the TT Committee. Thus joint publications were fairly few in number compared with the amount of exchange visits (Statistics, 1985: 52). The factors that attracted scholars to engage in cooperation lay elsewhere. For Finns, one of the main advantages of cooperation with the Soviet Union was that it was free of risks. The agreements ensured that little money changed hands. Each side was required to cover the expenses incurred in its own country. Trains from Finland to Leningrad and Moscow, and boats to Tallinn, ensured that travel costs remained very low. If one researcher travelled to the United States for a conference, the cost was easily the equivalent of 10 longer visits to Moscow (personal interview with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013).

For many Finnish scholars in the human sciences, the main motive for engaging in cooperation with their Soviet colleagues does not seem to have been the high standards of research in their field in the Soviet Union. Looking at the subjects discussed in common symposia and meetings, one can deduce that for many historians, archeologists and sociologists a more important objective in the cooperation was access to materials that otherwise would have remained beyond their reach. Cooperation opened doors in the Soviet Union that would otherwise have stayed closed. Numerous Finnish scholars managed to get research materials that were unobtainable in the West (personal interviews with former male senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013; female professor of sociology (no. 1), Helsinki, November 2014; and male professor of sociology (no. 2), Helsinki, November 2014). But curiosity, too, played a role. A distinguished Finnish professor described his experiences of cooperation in the field of history, one of the oldest areas of cooperation, as productive and healthy. He indicated that, prior to cooperation with the Soviets, many Finns believed that Soviet historiography was fully controlled by ideology, but he considered that this perception had changed as a result of the exchanges (Jussila, 1980). The exchanges, then, had the effect of making certain fields of Soviet science more interesting to Finnish scholars.

Problems in cooperation

Cooperation with the Soviet Union also had certain negative features that alienated some scholars. One established Finnish professor was quite outspoken when he listed problems in cooperation between the two countries. This was a rare feature in speeches and documents, which typically praised cooperation and avoided publicly pointing to any problems. He began his list with language issues. The need for interpreters was dire, especially in seminars, and the interpreters that were used rarely had field-specific competence. The long-term solution, in his opinion, was to train scholars who were fluent in Russian. He also referred to complaints by some Finnish researchers about bureaucracy, which, in his experience, were unfounded (Markkula, 1980). The TT Committee’s working groups were fairly free of bureaucracy.

If not in the TT Committee, bureaucracy was certainly manifested elsewhere. The professor mentioned slowness as a major problem in Finnish–Soviet cooperation. To start with, getting in touch with Soviet counterparts involved a sluggishness not encountered with other countries. Often information about the fate of cooperation proposals lay in limbo for months, sometimes for years, before anything concrete took place. This was also true of inviting Soviet lecturers to Finland. These invitations often had to be made more than a year in advance and, even then, travel permits were not issued until the last minute, if at all. Similar problems existed with Soviet scholars’ participation in conferences in Finland (Markkula, 1980). It seems that the scholars’ own motivation was crucial for successful cooperation.

Even though the TT Committee did not usually involve itself in anything other than facilitating research, it did order a major study that was completed in 1980. This joint project examined the management of scientific connections between Finland and the Soviet Union from a comparative perspective. Afterwards, the project was considered to have been costly. The results were dull organizational charts and vague terms that remained next to incomprehensible to anyone unfamiliar with the TT Committee’s work. The third volume of the study, however, was a glossary defining concepts and words considered important in scientific exchange in Finnish, Russian and English (personal interview with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013; Suomi-SNTL, 1980). This third volume pointed out that the language problems in the TT Committee’s work were not limited to Finnish–Russian translation, but reached the deeper levels of language. Soviet–Russian terminology was difficult to translate and often contained ideologically charged expressions. The situation was particularly dire in the human sciences such as history, and it was exacerbated when the focus of the research was on modern times, especially the Soviet era, on which critical research was hardly possible.

At times, language problems vitiated the TT Committee’s publications, which teemed with expressions that were typical of Soviet–Russian terminology, and alien to Finns other than communists even in translation. For many scholars, especially those established scholars who were unaccustomed to the expressions used by communists, the language was an alienating feature. This, however, was mainly a problem for the public façade of the TT Committee. Cooperation in the human sciences rarely suffered from actions that were downright political in nature or from ideologically charged language (Jussila, 1980; personal interview with male professor of history, Helsinki, November 2014). Nevertheless, the TT Committee at least planned to publish an instruction manual that would be sufficiently detailed to enable any company or researcher who wanted to initiate cooperation to do so. ⁶ The point was that cooperation with the Soviet Union was different.

As one Finnish scholar put it, the TT Committee was a bilateral organization that aimed at easing cooperation between two very different societies and administrative systems. Even more importantly, it committed itself almost purely to facilitating cooperation, not controlling or directing it, which it left to field-specific working groups. If scholars themselves were willing and given a chance, they would find ways to communicate with each other, despite the differences in political systems. As long as both parties sought cooperation, the vacuity of the ‘jargon of friendship’ was not a problem. On the other hand, when the participants’ interests did not meet, cooperation rarely produced anything constructive. In retrospect, several Finnish scholars who had otherwise developed lasting relationships with their Soviet colleagues felt that the majority of Soviet papers in the social sciences presented in joint seminars were bureaucratic, empirically empty and inevitably emphasized the positive features of Soviet life (personal interview with professor of sociology (no. 3), Helsinki, November 2014).

A grass-roots perspective on cooperation

Finnish scholars involved in cooperation with the Soviet Union through the TT Committee generally felt that the cooperation was free of political pressures. There is no indication that either Finnish officials or their Soviet colleagues might have tried to pressurize the Finnish participants in any way. Mutual projects were typically negotiated, and either party could turn down a proposal or amend it (personal interviews with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013; and with professor of history, Helsinki, November 2014). In the human sciences, the Finnish side was even more active, at least when it came to proposals for cooperation, which could be initiated either through the TT Committee, or sometimes as a result of Finns meeting Soviet colleagues in a third country, through some previous joint project, or on an unofficial tourist trip that had included a professional agenda (personal interview with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013).

Scholars who were involved in the TT Committee’s working groups describe the work as having been conducted between equals. If either the Finnish or the Soviet party suggested something the other side felt to be inappropriate, the latter could just skip it and discuss something else. And there were instances when the Finns tested the limits of what was appropriate (personal interview with male professor of history, Helsinki, November 2013). ⁷ Otherwise there was no indication of any kind of political pressure or the dominance of either side in the working groups (personal interview with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013).

On the other hand, there were several areas of the human sciences in which mainstream research in the two countries seems to have been too far apart for cooperation. One such area in which cooperation was difficult was economics. The theoretical differences were enormous owing to the fact that Finland was a market economy and the Soviet Union a planned one. Even so, economics did get a working group of its own in 1977 as a result of the existence in Finland of a group of scholars who were interested in the planned economy and Soviet economic theory (personal interview with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013). This, too, reflected the generational change in the Finnish academic community. The number of scholars who were interested in Marxism was increasing. Their interest in the Soviet ideology seems to have been a factor that led to their engagement in cooperation with Soviet colleagues, it was not something that kept them involved in the long term.

One young Finnish professor from Tampere described how the close collaboration he initiated with his Soviet colleagues was the result of a combination of different motives. He had originally traveled to Tallinn in Estonia in 1972 as a tourist. He decided to go to Tartu, where he informally approached the local university department. This led to a deepening cooperation between Tartu and Tampere that has continued up to the present day (personal interviews with female professor of communications, Tartu, June 2012, and male professor of communications (no. 1), Tampere, June 2012). However, he also described how some of his Finnish colleagues who were neo-Marxists were at times uneasy about the way Estonian colleagues criticized the Soviet system in private (personal interview with male professor of communications (no. 3), Tampere, June 2012 (see fn. !)).

In general, the rationale behind Finnish scholars getting involved in the TT Committee’s work was quite often a combination of professional interests, ideological and political orientation and sheer curiosity, the proportion of each depending on the individual case. Sustained cooperation was typically kept alive by a combination of professional and personal interests, and to a lesser extent by political and ideological orientation. Mere ideological interest in the Soviet Union rarely led to very long-lasting results. In general, contacts at a personal level and access to materials and samples constituted the greatest benefits for Finnish scholars. Involvement in seminars and joint activities arranged by the TT Committee, even if they produced little in the way of results, at times helped to remove hurdles that were otherwise impassable, whether it involved gaining access to certain persons or obtaining hard-to-come-by research materials (personal interviews with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013, and male professor of sociology (no. 1), Helsinki, November 2014).

Finnish participants have stressed in retrospect that scholarly interests were the most important factor in their willingness to work with the TT Committee. Even if political or ideological reasons were for some Finns the initial reason for becoming involved in the work, these motives quickly waned. There were several reasons for this, one of which was the Soviet participants’ desire to stay well outside ideology and politics. On the Soviet side, scholars who already had international networks welcomed trips to Finland as a chance to escape from Moscow, Leningrad or other Soviet cities and their busy lives there. There were also those that came to Finland primarily as tourists, engaging in all kinds of activities that were unrelated to scholarly work, like selling goods and sightseeing, but they were not usually allowed to return and were generally in the minority (personal interviews with a former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013 and male professor of sociology (no. 1), Helsinki, November 2014).

One very interesting feature of the work was the language used. Certainly, the majority of Finns involved in the work could not speak Russian, and even fewer Russians had a command of Finnish. Russian was most commonly needed at the higher levels of administration, where politicians and apparatchiks were involved. All official documents and reports were produced both in Russian and in Finnish, and many of the Finnish administrators in the TT Committee were chosen for their Russian skills. The TT Committee’s staff often helped Finns in their dealings with Russian-language bureaucracy and officials. But it seems that English was the language most commonly used in the working groups, followed to a lesser extent by Finnish (personal interviews with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013, female professor of sociology (no. 2), Helsinki, November 2014 and male professor of communication, Tampere, June 2012). Since the great majority of Russians did not understand any Finnish, the explanation for its use can be found in Soviet Estonia: the Estonian language is closely related to Finnish, which many Estonians can speak and understand.

Reports about exchanges in the human sciences provide figures only for the total numbers of Finnish and Soviet visitors. Soviet officials insisted that no national breakdown of Soviet visitors should be presented. This was probably due to the somewhat embarrassing fact that Estonians were over-represented in Soviet delegations. According to a highly placed Finnish official in the TT Committee, in certain years the proportion of Estonians in the human sciences exceeded 50% of the Soviet delegates (personal interview with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013). This is all the more striking in view of the fact that Estonians accounted for only about 0.5% of the Soviet population. The Soviet approach to this was ambivalent. On the one hand, no nationality should have predominated in international activities in such a way. On the other hand, the Soviet reasoned that the Estonians, being ethnically related to the Finns, would be able to transmit Soviet propaganda better than other nationalities. Furthermore, even though the KGB and other security officials were always wary of foreign influences and Finland had connections with the West that made it suspect, it was considered to be a much less threatening country than other states in Western Europe, partly because Finland repatriated would-be Soviet defectors who came there. Consequently, in the course of the 1970s, Estonians managed to get permits to travel and cooperate with their Finnish colleagues. In some cases, connections with Finland turned out to be a lifeline for Soviet academics outside Moscow and Leningrad, whose access to Western intellectual currents was generally poorer.

Although Soviet connections were highly beneficial for some individual Finnish scholars, and even for some whole areas of research, the activities of the TT Committee did not generally have a great impact on the Finnish academic institution, Finnish scientific practices, or the scholarly system in general. Its impact was at lower levels (personal interview with former senior officer of the Finnish TT Committee, Helsinki, November 2013). Although it is not the focus of this article, it seems that for some Soviet scholars and research fields, the connections with Finland were of a crucial nature (personal interview with male professor of sociology, Helsinki, November 2014). For them Finland provided an invaluable window into the West. The same has been noted by other scholars investigating East–West scholarly connections (e.g. Kassof, 1995; Richmond, 2003: 21–64).

Conclusion

The human sciences constituted an oddity in the realm of exchanges between Finland and the Soviet Union. The agreement that made exchanges between the countries possible in the first place was pushed through with political force by the Soviet Union, but the Soviet authorities had little interest in the human sciences. Instead, they sought viable technological solutions and cooperation with Finnish businesses. Even the TT Committee, which controlled exchanges between the countries throughout the existence of the Soviet Union, carried the label ‘scientific and technical’. Nevertheless, the human sciences managed to carve a niche for themselves, and this served as the springboard for the expansion of ties in the 1970s.

Politics played a major role in the birth of these connections, but this changed, at least when we consider the human sciences. The expansion of cooperation in the humanities took place along with a generational change within the Finnish academic community, which had formerly been averse to the Soviet Union. Changes in the Finnish political and ideological landscape drew many scholars to seek cooperation with Soviet scholars. Increased interaction created more chances for scholarly cooperation, and scholars without any kind of ideological inclination toward the Soviet Union also joined the TT Committee’s work. For them (no. 1), the Soviet Union catered to their professional interests: for some these interests involved research materials, for others interesting research projects. Even if ideology and politics had only a small role in the ensuing cooperation, they did have a part to play in that cooperation. In the atmosphere of the 1970s, there were several Finnish organizations that were ready to support the expansion of ties with the Soviet Union and to provide resources for this work. Sometimes ideological motives were involved. The ideological language and Soviet bureaucracy that had to be dealt with in connection with the exchanges were factors that were off-putting for many scholars. For those who learned how to deal with Soviet bureaucracy, the connections created through the TT Committee turned out to be fruitful and beneficial.

The Soviet Union regarded exchanges in the human sciences as being of little official use. Even with the expansion of connections in the 1970s, the Finns seem to have been the more active party. The exchanges were of political use, but for the Soviet Union it was scientific and technical cooperation that was considered to be of most benefit. On the other hand, the exchanges with Finland may have been of enormous value for some Soviet scholars, especially those from outside Moscow and Leningrad, at least according to the views of the Finnish scholars involved. For Estonian colleagues Finnish–Soviet cooperation seems to have been particularly valuable. Many Estonians could speak and understand Finnish, making cooperation with Finnish scholars, few of whom spoke any Russian, easy. Furthermore, their proficiency in Finnish gave them access to Western scholarly trends. Finnish scholars provided them with research papers and publications that were often very difficult to come by in provincial Soviet cities.

Finnish–Soviet scholarly connections unfolded on multiple levels. On the more official level, the exchanges were about politics and regulating intellectual and scholarly currents. For the politicians, the exchanges were about achieving certain goals, whether quantitative or qualitative. The human sciences were of little interest, although they did provide desirable quantitative proof of the extensive nature of the exchanges. For organizations and individuals, on the other hand, the significance of scholarly exchanges manifests itself very differently. Scholars had their own professional aims that needed to be negotiated within the framework created by ideology and politics. It turned out, however, that this framework left a surprising amount of room for maneuver. In the end, ideology and politics played only a small role at the lower levels of interaction, where the real exchange of ideas took place. And it was here, perhaps, that the exchanges had their most profound impact. The resulting connections shattered stereotypic images and prejudices and in some cases led to cooperation that continued for decades even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.