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The Eurasian Politician - October 2003
Anne Kuorsalo, Ilmari Susiluoto & Martti Valkonen: "Salaisen poliisin valtakunta", Kleio, Edita, Helsinki, 2003.
Reviewed by Antero Leitzinger, 19 Oct. 2003
In 1700s, Count Mirabeau said that everywhere in the world states have an army, except in Prussia, where the army has a state. The same can be said about the power of the secret police in Russia of the 1900s. In Russia, the mighty secret police has ruled a mighty empire regardless of the shifts in ideology and external symbols. This is the conclusion of Anne Kuorsalo, Ilmari Susiluoto and Martti Valkonen in their critical assessment on contemporary Russia, which has now grown into a trilogy. The latest book of the three [Finnish Russia experts] especially studies the influence of post-war KGB, and its activities in Finland.
It is hard to find lone errors in the book. Malinovski's name has been written in two different ways on pages 22 and 23. In the chart on page 53, a paragraph has changed place. The spy name of Yevgeny Primakov is said to be Maksim on page 38 but Maksimov on page 107. Once, KGB has been written as KBG (p. 272). These kinds of typos should be corrected in the next reprint. Nevertheless, the book's language is more polished than average, yet still intelligible to all, and there are no contradictions between the three basically independent contributions. There are very few unexplained claims and assumptions, and not at all as much as in [the largest Finnish daily] Helsingin Sanomat, which has sunk into political mythology.
[The last sentence is apparently directed against the criticism of the Helsingin Sanomat reviewer against the book, which is also connected with the long-lasting schism between the critical ("post-Finlandization") and pro-Moscow ("Finlandization") authors of Russian affairs in Finland. Valkonen used to work as the Moscow correspondent of the Helsingin Sanomat until he was first censured and later sacked, partly due to criticism against Russia's policies. The so-called "self-censure", branded as "Finlandization", was a standard of the Finnish mainstream media during the Cold War, but elements of it have persisted even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, influenced by personal schism between those who used to be "Moscow yes-men" and the "dissidents" and younger generation experts. Almost every recent Russia book by post-Cold War generation of Russia experts has faced similar attack by the "old generation" former Soviet sympathizers. Editor's note.]
On page 152, Valkonen assumes that after the terror attacks against the World Trade Center, intelligence cooperation between the Russians and Americans has expanded, but there has not been evidence on this in public. Rather, it has been typical pretty rhetorics as well as hopeful or fearful (depending on the point of view) guesswork of the observers. In fact, the Republican administration of the United States has been more doubtful than its predecessor towards Russia's offers and promises. The naïveté towards Russia, highlighted in the persons of Al Gore and Strobe Talbott, was passed in world politics before September 2001 already, although in the European media, it is still hard to notice this climatic shift. Quite correctly, Valkonen makes a remark on the anti-Americanism rooted in the Finnish media (p. 219), which probably explains the recent research result, according to which the Finns are even more emotionally anti-American in their attitudes than the populations of "Old Europe". This is probably late echo of the decades long Soviet disinformation, because the Finns who answer the polls cannot have any special expertise on Middle Eastern affairs.
Valkonen traces the Chechen War to the ethnic disputes that have spread all over Russia (p. 155), although there have not been any ethnic disputes between Chechens and other nationalities. Also otherwise, the conflicts presented as ethnic have mostly extinguished after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. However, in the Russian discourse "ethnic" seems to mean anything where the opposition is non-Russian. According to some, the Chechen War might have been a warning to all separatists, but there was no kind of "ethnic" reason for that in 1994, especially not in Chechnya. On the other hand, Russia lived in the hopes of "a short victorious war" as early as in 1904, 1914 and 1939. Another model could be offered by the Circassian genocide in 1860s, after the Russian humiliation in the Crimean War. Valkonen writes about the apartment bloc bombings, which motivated Russia to the continuation war in Chechnya, but he ignores, among other things, the "bomb simulation" of Ryazan, which alone should point at the guilt of the Russian secret police.
Regarding the book, it is easier to point at neglected issues than at actual errors or speculative assumptions. It is most irritating to read sections where the authors clearly know more than they reveal. The KGB and the FSB receive full attention, while their military counterpart GRU remains in shadows, like it surely hopes to do. Although the Finns have built the headquarters of the military intelligence in Moscow, it has not been possible for Finns no more than any other researchers to enter it. This book does not cast light on the gloomiest secrets of international weapons trade, terrorism and provocations. The pogroms against Jews have been entirely skipped, although they could offer interesting parallels to the treatment of Caucasians 120 years later. During the czarist period, the role of terrorists was given to the Jews, while nowadays it is given to the Chechens. Repeated strange incidents continue to agitate hatred in Moscow, a good example being the theatre hostage drama of the autumn 2002 (pp. 177 and 242), about which Anna Politkovskaya could have told much more. When these issues have been referred to at all in the book, it has been made cautiously and shortly, which is practically same, because Finnish researchers and journalists, with their silence, have kept the great audience ignorant of many odd incidents.
The authors have clearly aimed at not saying too much, and they have compressed their sayings into extremely compact form. Self-evidences, trivialities and unnecessary repetitions have been cut away for good. In spite of the lack of reference notes, the book is rather a small information package than a pamphlet. The issue is so enormous that there is no place for details let alone references on the about 300 pages. For example on page 266, the weapons merchant of Al Qaida, Viktor But, has been passed with four sentences, although there would have been interesting materiel for at least four pages. Russia's obnoxious behavior with the Interpol is described with one paragraph, although the issue would have deserved a whole chapter. On page 83, it is mentioned by the way that the Soviet army was caught in summer 1941 preparing for invasion. Although there has been debate on this in Russia and Germany, it is still novel in Finland, revisionist history, which most readers still cannot take seriously.
When the text in its entirety is compact, it would be easy to enlarge the book into a library. Instead of three books, there would be materiel for three hundred books. Thus, criticism should not target details but the relevant whole impression: How well the book manages to present a solid and logical view on Russia? Each author of the book is responsible for his or her own contribution, but they form an integrated entity. Susiluoto studies the history of the Russian secret police in 1900s. Valkonen starts from August 1991, when the revolution in Russia was interrupted. The reader's thoughts move, instead of the year 1917, to the year 1905, when it was equally thought that the empire had changed, although changes remained temporary. When we think about the recovering of the Finnish society from the shames of "Finlandization", it is worth of remembering that also the Periods of Oppression [in the czarist period] had their collaborators [in Finland], who people could forgive. Among them, the most talented "turn-coats" could even rise to the crowd of great statesmen in times to come. Kuorsalo describes the moving of former KGB officials to business, to form the new elite of Russia. This career development was launched in the Soviet times already. One remaining legacy of the bloodiest century of Russia is the class rotation that eliminated millions of innocent people and favored those who were most unscrupulous.
All the three authors end up wondering, what an opening of the KGB archives could reveal and cause to the Finns. It seems, however, a teaching of history, that politicians and intellectuals can survive even the most shameful situations. Besides, the use of information will remain strictly regulated until a new revolution, but there are as few signs of such a thing in contemporary Russia as in the beginning of 1917. Kuorsalo's warning (p. 279) about the forthcoming opening of the archives of the Finnish Security Police [Suojelupoliisi, Supo] will inevitably face the laws concerning the protection of information and its becoming obsolete. It is not expectable that such evidence would be found in the Finnish archives that would be strong enough to lead to trials on treason but remained unnoticed so far. The archives of the predecessors of the Security Police, the Investigating Central Police [Etsivä keskuspoliisi, EK] and the State Police [Valtiollinen poliisi, Valpo] did not contain "news bombs", because part of the materiel had disappeared for one reason or another, and what remained was often quite harmless reports. At the end, concealing the archives may cause more stress to spies than their opening. Everyone has to live with his or her actions, but human conscience is very adaptive.
When assessing the Soviet relations of Urho Kekkonen, it is worth of remembering that his background was in the Investigating Central Police, where he was planning a doctoral thesis on the use of provocations in intelligence activity. Kekkonen's contemporaries still had in their memory the activities of the activists of the Periods of Oppression, which included many kinds of tactics, cunning and deception. Understanding Kekkonen's motives calls for better insight into the thinking of early 1920s, which was very different from the experience of the "large generations" that rose to power positions in the 1970s. Pre-war Finnish politicians knew the Russian style, where excessive legalism did not hinder the activities of the secret police, but where it was also possible to entangle the secret police in the web of its own intrigues. Therefore assessing Kekkonen's activity by formally correct criteria might turn out to be as confusing as the attempts to study Russia as it was a Western country.
It is an important remark that although Russia increasingly resembles the former Soviet Union in many senses, and even more, the czarist Russian Empire, the freedom of emigration offers Russians a hope of better future, and gives the society a safety valve that prevents revolutionary frustration (p. 179). Also the development of electronic media prevents the old kind of totalitarianism. When the citizens get more information from abroad through internet and satellite channels, the secret police has to forget the dream of total media control as well as manipulation of the media outside of the empire's borders. The opening of the world includes both the chance of liberation of Russia and the greatest risks to the rest of the world.
Antero Leitzinger
Translation from Finnish: AKK