Witness to History: The Memoirs of Mauno Koivisto, President of Finland 1982 - 1994

by Mauno Koivisto

When Mauno Koivisto was elected president of Finland in 1982, Leonid Brezhnev was still in the Kremlin and Ronald Reagan had been the U.S. president for a year. Relations between the superpowers were at low ebb, and there seemed little prospect of improvement. A "Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance" with the USSR had been signed by a weakened Finland in 1948, and its military provisions led to talk of "Finlandization." The Soviets would not accept the concept of Finnish neutrality, to which the Finns adhered strongly. When Koivisto left office in 1994, the Soviet Union no longer existed, the 1948 treaty had been replaced, and Finland was about to become a member of the European Union, something unthinkable a few years earlier. In his last years as president, Koivisto played a major role in three important developments. First, there was the urgent need of the Soviet Union, and subsequently of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, for external economic support—a fact appreciated by Koivisto, a former central banker, but less so by the U.S. administration and the International Monetary Fund, both of which he sought to persuade. Secondly, when the three Baltic republics were emerging as independent states, they looked to nearby Finland as a role model and as a supportive ally, a circumstance that caused Koivisto considerable trouble in light of his own delicate balance with Russia. In the third instance, the question of whether Finland should seek EU membership involved national self-examination as well as delicate external negotiations. Koivisto’s account is partly a historical record. As events unfold, we follow his thinking as we become privy to his conversations and correspondence with his own ministers as well as with his foreign counterparts. As such, this book is a case history of statecraft in a small country involved in great events, but it is much more than that, for Koivisto does not miss the human element or overlook the ironies of power politics among nations.

316 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

Finnish politician who served as the ninth President of Finland from 1982 to 1994.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains the memoirs of Mauno Koivisto, the ninth president of Finland. As a political record, it’s not a biography, so it does not cover his early years or prior political career, or anything about his private life. What it does relate is his exemplary skill as a statesman and diplomat in the role of president, revealing the complexities of international relations. It describes Finland’s role in the later years of the Cold War, the regional effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and application to membership in the EU.

Although he manages to show a keen sensitivity to domestic politics, concern for other leaders in trouble, and even a sense of humour, a lot of the prose has a rather dull, matter-of-fact style, which makes parts of it somewhat tedious. Yet this is a relatively minor quibble – readers don’t come to this kind of text for language games or sparkling turns of phrase. At only 280 pages, it’s also surprisingly short, possibly abbreviated for the English translation. But overall, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of high-level diplomacy at a global level.

This is the third book in a personal project in which I attempt to understand Finnish history more deeply.