In Europe

Whites won, and countless Reds died. The Finns were reunified only by the Soviet invasion of November 1939. The Russians, who felt that the Finnish border was much too close (thirty kilometres) to the city that was now Leningrad, had demanded an exchange of territories. Although the Russian Army was many times greater, the invasion at first made little progress. In the vast woods and on the frozen lakes, no less than three Russian division were eliminated. The Finns, being expert skiers, were at home in the snow and the woods, but ultimately they lacked the force needed to repel the invaders. Reinforcement from the international community arrived too late, and the country capitulated in March 1940. Huge parts of Finland's territory had to be ceded, one in every eight Finns fell under Soviet rule. ‘Despite all the promises, we were left to our own devices again and again,’ Andersson says. ‘For a long time after that, this country was very bitter.’
    For years the Finns lived on the margin between the Soviet Union and the West. Today they embrace the euro, although that has yet to arrive inHelsinki. ‘We consciously dragged Finland into the European Union,’ Andersson tells me. ‘We had suffered for too long under the status of a small country, with a minor, defenceless currency, dependent on the whims of the superpowers.’ Andersson had opposed EU membership at first. ‘As a minister, I was personally involved in all those negotiations. They were even more boring and bureaucratic than I'd expected. But still, at one point I started to realise how useful it could be. If this is the price one pays to arrive at a compromise, and to avoid international conflicts in the future, then so be it, I reckoned. For me, Europe became more and more of a project for peace.’
    But don't the introverted Finns have the same misgivings about Europe as the Swedes? ‘The Swedes see themselves as a wealthy, healthy, independent state. They were always at the head of the class. We survived two violent wars, we know what it is to suffer, we were completely dependent on the Russians. We know that we have to act, that we have to make sacrifices. Nothing has ever happened to the Swedes. They've always had the feeling that they can do whatever they want. That feeling makes all the difference.’
    Meanwhile, in these March days of 1999, the Finns are calmly and composedly manoeuvring their way towards their national elections; all is well, and everyone wants to keep it that way. Everywhere one sees posters showing serious-looking men and women, the same fresh faces you see on the city councils of provincial Dutch towns. The candidates are worried about day-care centres, health care, about Finland's young people and two per cent of the population that is not Finnish. ‘Finland for the Finns’, one sees that here as well. On 1 January, 1999, Finland had precisely 1,272 asylum seekers and almost no illegal immigrants – yet still the country is home to at least 80,000 non-Finns. That is a source of great concern for many political parties.
    That evening I attend the jubilee concert of the Helsingen Sotainvalidirpurin Vejeskuro, the Helsinki Veterans’ Chorus, directed by Tapio Tutu, Arvo Kuikka and Erik Ahonius. The auditorium is full of wives and widows, the members of the chorus wear an average of three medals, the members of the executive committee walk around in big sashes. For the rest, it could just as easily be a musical evening in thenorthern Dutch town of Dokkum … except for the language. Finnish is not just incomprehensible, it is a heavily encrypted version of at least three incomprehensible languages rolled into one: Swedish, Hungarian, Estonian, etc., incomprehensibility to the umpteenth degree. And, at the same time, it is a joy to listen to. Clearly, this must be a very lovely language.
    The members of the chorus look to be retired teachers and attorneys, and probably are just that. But these are also the same men in white who courageously defied the Soviet Union in winter 1939–40. They provided a merciless demonstration of how ineffective the Red Army was: with their millions, the Soviets only barely succeeded in defeating 200,000 Finns. The Russian debacle in Finland made Hitler highly optimistic when he sent his troops to the East. That was a fatal mistake.
    Now the veterans have started singing in dark, melancholy voices. The first song sounds like ‘My Country ‘tis of Thee’. The second one sounds like