Helsinki’s Turn Towards Confrontation With Moscow
Helsinki’s entry into the Alliance broke the entire system of Russian-Finnish relations that had been built up for decades.
For many years, in Soviet and then in Russian society, Finland was considered exclusively as a small friendly, neutral country – our closest northern neighbor, which, on the rights of broad autonomy, was part of the Russian Empire for 108 years and had broad powers granted by Emperor Alexander I (had its own authorities, monetary unit, post office, customs, and police).
During the Cold War, following the Western model of development, the Finnish leadership managed to maintain a neutral middle ground in the global confrontation in its policy of limited sovereignty, following the Second World War, maintaining even relations with all sides of the geopolitical conflict in the interests of developing the Finnish economy and improving the well-being of the population.
At that time, this concept of “subordinating” a weaker state to a stronger one in order to ensure security received the term “Finlandization” in Western political circles, in which, even in the context of an ideological struggle against capitalism, Moscow did not exclude the possibility of establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relations with countries with a Western model of a market-oriented economy. During the years of “Finlandization”, the Finnish side adapted to a certain profile of cooperation with the USSR, which exported cheap raw materials (wood, oil, cement), and in return received products with high added value (paper, lumber, petrochemicals).