Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change

by Jared Diamond

This book’s style of presentation is narrative: that is, the traditional style of historians, going all the way back to the foundation of history as a discipline developed by the Greek authors Herodotus and Thucydides over 2,400 years ago. “Narrative style” means that arguments are developed by prose reasoning, without equations, tables of numbers, graphs, or statistical tests of significance, and with only a small number of cases studied. That style may be contrasted with a powerful new quantitative approach in modern social science research, making heavy use of equations, explicit testable hypotheses, tables of data, graphs, and large sample sizes (i.e., many cases studied) that permit statistical tests of significance. I’ve learned to appreciate the power of modern quantitative methods. I used them in a statistical study of deforestation on 73 Polynesian islands,fn1 in order to reach conclusions that could never have been extracted convincingly from a narrative account of deforestation on a few islands.

Finland’s crisis (Chapter 2) exploded with the Soviet Union’s massive attack upon Finland on November 30, 1939. In the resulting Winter War, Finland was virtually abandoned by all of its potential allies and sustained heavy losses, but nevertheless succeeded in preserving its independence against the Soviet Union, whose population outnumbered Finland’s by 40 to 1. I spent a summer in Finland 20 years later, hosted by veterans and widows and orphans of the Winter War. The war’s legacy was conspicuous selective change that made Finland an unprecedented mosaic, a mixture of contrasting elements: an affluent small liberal democracy, pursuing a foreign policy of doing everything possible to earn the trust of the impoverished giant reactionary Soviet dictatorship. That policy was considered shameful and denounced as “Finlandization” by many non-Finns who failed to understand the historical reasons for its adoption. One of the most intense moments of my summer in Finland unfolded when I ignorantly expressed similar views to a Winter War veteran, who replied by politely explaining to me the bitter lessons that Finns had learned from being denied help by other nations.

Jared Diamond discusses Finland as one of 7 examples in his new book on Nations in crisis. Refinlandization seems a plausible risk to me but Diamond points out another view which also has value

Some authors concluded that the harsh March 1940 peace terms demonstrate that the Finns should indeed have accepted the milder terms demanded by Stalin in October 1939. But Russian archives opened in the 1990’s confirmed Finns’ wartime suspicion: the Soviet Union would have taken advantage of those milder territorial gains and the resulting breaching of the Finnish defense line in October 1939 in order to achieve its intent of taking over all of Finland, just as it did to the three Baltic Republics in 1940. It took the Finns’ fierce resistance and willingness to die, and the slowness and cost of the war against Finland, to convince the Soviet Union not to try to conquer all of Finland in March 1940.

Finland’s bitter experience of having to fight the Soviet Union alone in the Winter War made the prospect of repeating that experience worse than the alternative of an alliance of expedience with Nazi Germany — “the least awful of several very bad options,” to quote from Steven Zaloga’s biography of Mannerheim. The poor performance of the Soviet army in the Winter War had convinced all observers — not only in Finland but also in Germany, Britain, and the U.S. — that a war between Germany and the Soviet Union would end with a German victory.

80,000 Finnish children were evacuated (mainly to Sweden), with long-lasting traumatic consequences extending to the next generation (Plate 2.7). Today, daughters of those Finnish mothers evacuated as children are twice as likely to be hospitalized for a psychiatric illness as are their female cousins born to non-evacuated mothers.

If Finland hadn’t prosecuted its own government leaders, the Soviets would have done so and imposed harsh sentences, probably death sentences. Hence Finland felt compelled to do something that in any other circumstance would have been considered disgraceful: it passed a retroactive law, declaring it illegal for its government leaders to have defended Finland by adopting policies that were legal and widely supported under Finnish law at the time that those policies were adopted.

The peace treaty required Finland to pay heavy reparations to the Soviet Union: $300,000,000, to be paid within six years. Even after the Soviet Union extended the term to eight years and reduced the amount to $226,000,000, that was still a huge burden for the small and un-industrialized Finnish economy. Paradoxically, though, those reparations proved to be an economic stimulus, by forcing Finland to develop heavy industries such as building ships and factories-for-export. (The reparations thereby exemplify the etymology of the Chinese word “wei-ji,” meaning “crisis,” which consists of the two characters “wei,” meaning “danger,” and “ji,” meaning “opportunity.”) That industrialization contributed to the economic growth of Finland after the war, to the point where Finland became a modern industrial country (and now a high-tech country) rather than (as formerly) a poor agricultural country.

In addition to paying those reparations, Finland had to agree to carry out much trade with the Soviet Union, amounting to 20% of total Finnish trade. From the Soviet Union, Finland imported especially oil. That proved to be a big advantage for Finland, because it didn’t share the dependence of the rest of the West on Middle Eastern oil supplies. But, as part of its trade agreement, Finland also had to import inferior Soviet manufactured goods, such as locomotives, nuclear power plants, and automobiles, which could otherwise have been obtained more cheaply and with much higher quality from the West.

The Paasikivi-Kekkonen line reversed Finland’s disastrous 1930’s policy of ignoring Russia. Paasikivi and Kekkonen learned from those mistakes. To them, the essential painful realities were that Finland was a small and weak country; it could expect no help from Western allies; it had to understand and constantly keep in mind the Soviet Union’s point of view; it had to talk frequently with Russian government officials at every level, from the top down; and it had to win and maintain the Soviet Union’s trust, by proving to the Soviet Union that Finland would keep its word and fulfill its agreements. Maintaining the Soviet Union’s trust would require bending over backwards by sacrificing some of the economic independence, and some of the freedom to speak out, that strong unthreatened democracies consider inalienable national rights.

Paasikivi concluded that Stalin’s driving motivation in his relationship with Finland was not ideological but strategic and geopolitical: i.e., the Soviet Union’s military problem of defending its second-largest city (Leningrad / St. Petersburg) against further possible attacks via Finland or via the Gulf of Finland, as had already happened in the past. If the Soviet Union felt secure on that front, Finland would be secure. But Finland could never be secure as long as the Soviet Union felt insecure. More generally, conflict anywhere in the world could make the Soviet Union uneasy and prone to place demands on Finland, so Finland had to become active in world peace-keeping. Paasikivi, and then Kekkonen, were so successful in developing a trusting relationship with Stalin, and then with Khrushchev and with Brezhnev, that, when Stalin was once asked why he had not tried to maneuver the Communist Party into power in Finland as he had in every other Eastern European country, he answered, “When I have Paasikivi, why would I need the Finnish Communist Party?”

Here is President Kekkonen’s explanation of his own and Paasikivi’s policy, from his political autobiography: “The basic task of Finnish foreign policy is to reconcile the existence of our nation with the interests which dominate Finland’s geopolitical environment …. [Finnish foreign policy is] preventive diplomacy. The task of this diplomacy is to sense approaching danger before it is too close and take measures which help to avoid this danger — preferably in such a way that as few as possible notice that it has been done …. Particularly for a small state which harbors no illusions that the stances it takes can swing the scales one way or another, it is vitally important to be able in good time to form a correct conception of the strength of those factors on which future development in the military and political sector will depend …. A nation should rely only on itself. The war years taught us an expensive lesson in this respect …. Experience also taught us that a small country purely and simply cannot afford to mix emotions — be they feelings of sympathy or antipathy — into its foreign policy solutions. A realistic foreign policy should be based on awareness of the essential factors in international politics, namely national interests and the power of relationships between states.”

The concrete pay-offs from Finland’s adherence to the Paasikivi-Kekkonen line have consisted of what the Soviet Union (and, today, Russia) has and hasn’t done to Finland during the past 70 years. It hasn’t invaded Finland. It didn’t engineer a take-over of Finland by the Finnish Communist Party when that party existed. It did reduce the amount and extend the period of the war reparations that Finland owed and paid off to the Soviet Union. In 1955 it did evacuate its naval base and did withdraw its artillery on the Finnish coast at Porkkala, just 10 miles from Helsinki. It did tolerate Finland’s increasing its trade with the West and decreasing its trade with the Soviet Union, Finland’s association with the EEC (European Economic Community), and Finland’s joining EFTA (the European Free Trade Association). It was fully wit...

The result was that the Soviets no longer had any motivation to take over Finland, because Finland was so much more valuable to the Soviet Union independent and allied with the West than it would have been if conquered or reduced to a communist satellite.

Because Soviet leaders trusted Presidents Paasikivi and Kekkonen, Finland chose not to turn over its presidents as in a normal democracy but maintained those two in office for a total of 35 years. Paasikivi served as president for 10 years until just before his death at age 86, while his successor Kekkonen served for 25 years until failing health compelled him to resign at age 81. When Kekkonen visited Brezhnev in 1973 at the time of Finland’s negotiations with the EEC, Kekkonen defused Brezhnev’s concerns by giving Brezhnev his personal word that Finland’s EEC relationship wouldn’t affect Finland’s relationship with Russia. Finland’s parliament then enabled Kekkonen to fulfill that promise, by adopting an emergency law to extend his term for another four years, thereby postponing the presidential election scheduled for 1974.

Finland’s government and press avoided criticizing the Soviet Union and practiced voluntary self-censorship not normally associated with democracies. For example, when other countries condemned the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the Soviet war ...

When I visited Finland in 1959, knowing almost nothing about the history of Finland’s two wars with the Soviet Union, I asked my Finnish hosts why Finland deferred to the Soviet Union in so many ways, imported those inferior Moskvich cars, and was so afraid about the possibility of a Soviet attack on Finland. I told my Finnish hosts that the United States would surely defend Finland if the Soviet Union attacked. In retrospect, there was nothing more cruel, ignorant, and tactless that I could have said to a Finn. Finland had bitter memories that, when it actually was attacked by the Soviet Union in 1939, it had not been helped by the U.S., Sweden, Germany, Britain, or France. Finland had to learn from its history that its survival and independence depended on itself, and that Finland would be safe only if the Soviet Union felt safe and trusting towards Finland.

Many Finnish actions do indeed horrify Western European and American observers. It could never happen in the U.S. or Germany that a presidential election would be postponed, a presidential candidate would withdraw his or her candidacy, a publisher would cancel a book, or the press would censor itself, just to avoid inflaming Soviet sensitivities. Such actions seem to violate a democracy’s right to freedom of action. But the sensitivities of other countries are a problem for every country. To quote President Kekkonen again, “A country’s independence is not usually absolute … there was not a single state in existence that did not have to bow to historical inevitabilities.” There are obvious reasons why Finland has to bow much more to historical inevitabilities than does the U.S. or Germany: Finland is small and borders on Russia, while the U.S. and Germany do not. What do the critics who decry Finlandization think that Finland should instead have been doing? — risk still another Soviet invasion, by not considering Soviet reactions?

Finland is the outstanding example of acceptance of responsibility and honest ultra-realistic self-appraisal. Its re-appraisal was especially painful because Soviet armies had killed, widowed, orphaned, or made homeless a large fraction of Finland’s population. Finns had to avoid falling into the trap of letting self-pity and resentment paralyze their relations with the Soviet Union. But they finally recognized realities: that Finland is small; that it shares a long border with the Soviet Union; that it could not count on its allies for effective support; that the responsibility for its survival lay entirely with itself; and that it was strong enough to resist the Soviet Union for a while, and to make a Soviet invasion slow and costly and painful for the Soviets, but that it could not resist the Soviets forever. Finns learned from the mistakes of their pre-war foreign policy. They finally faced the fact that the only way that they could retain their political independence was by earning Soviet trust, and by sacrificing some economic independence and freedom to speak out.

from 1944 onwards, when Finland recognized the failure of its pre-war policy of ignoring the Soviet Union and of its wartime policy of seeking a military solution, Finland went through a long and almost uninterrupted period of experimentation in order to discover how much economic and political independence it could retain, and what it had to do to satisfy the Soviet Union in return.

Finland illustrates flexibility born of necessity (factor #10). In response to Soviet fears and sensitivities, Finland did things unthinkable in any other democracy: it put on trial and imprisoned its own wartime leaders according to a retroactive law; its parliament adopted an emergency decree to postpone a scheduled presidential election; a leading presidential candidate was induced to withdraw his candidacy; and its press self-censored statements likely to offend the Soviet Union. Other democracies would consider those actions as disgraceful. In Finland those actions instead reflected flexibility: sacrificing sacred democratic principles to the extent required to retain political independence, the principle held most sacred.

Finland’s history illustrates belief in a non-negotiable core value (factor #11): independence, and not being occupied by another power. Finns were prepared to fight for that core value, even though they thereby risked mass death.

Throughout the 1930’s Finland largely ignored the impending crisis with the Soviet Union,

Disagree - in 30ies we already solved problem of polarization.

The three factors favorable to crisis solution that Finland conspicuously lacked, and for whose lack Finland had to compensate in other ways, were support from allies (factor #4), available models (factor #5), and freedom from geopolitical constraints (factor #12). Of the nations discussed in this book, none received less support from allies than did Finland: all of Finland’s traditional and potential friends refused to provide the substantive help for which Finland had been hoping during the Winter War.

what are the risks of nuclear power, and what are the risks of the alternatives? France has generated most of its national electricity requirements from nuclear reactors for many decades without an accident. It seems implausible to object that the French may really have had accidents and not admitted them: the experience of Chernobyl demonstrates that the release of any radioactivity into the atmosphere from a damaged reactor is easily detected by other countries. South Korea, Taiwan, Finland, and many other countries have also generated much electricity from nuclear reactors without any significant accidents. Hence we should weigh our fear of the possibility of a nuclear reactor accident against the certainty of the millions of deaths caused every year by air pollution resulting from burning fossil fuels, and the enormous and possibly ruinous consequences of global climate change caused by fossil fuels.

A mere two nations (China and India) account for one-third of the world’s population; another pair of nations (the U.S. and China) account for 41% of the world’s CO2 emissions and economic output; and five nations or entities (China, India, the U.S., Japan, and the European Union) account for 60% of emissions and outputs. China and the U.S. already reached an agreement in principle on CO2 emissions. That bilateral agreement was then joined by India, Japan, and the European Union in the Paris agreement that came into force in 2016. Of course the Paris agreement wasn’t enough, because it lacked a serious enforcement mechanism, and because the U.S. government in the following year announced its intention to pull out. But the Paris agreement is nevertheless likely to serve as a model or starting point for reaching an improved future agreement. Even if the world’s 200 other nations with smaller outputs don’t join such a future agreement, just a five-way agreement among the five biggest players could go a long way towards solving the emissions problem. That’s because the five biggest players can then put pressure on the other 200, e.g., by imposing trade tariffs and carbon taxes on countries that don’t adhere.