I visited there a while ago and there was a feel of Russian friendliness at the least with significant independence on the streets. But that's just my feelings and I wasn't paying attention back then.
Most finns, especially the young generations, feel most affinity towards west in every sense.
The Finnish language is Finno-Ugric and unrelated to slavic tongues hence there is a huge language gap. Finns don't as a rule undertand russian.
The political and judicial system is based on western principles.
So Russia in general is a very alien entity not only linguistically but culturally as well.
The signal that drove to this was two-fold - first Russia at the end of last year forbade Sweden and Finland joining NATO, clearly signaling it considers these states as "it's property".
Then the war in Ukraine - Bucha and Mariupol - turned the perception of Russia into complete Mordor in a single stroke. It was very easy to replace Bucha and Mariupol with Finnish cities in ones imagination - and we still have people who remember the sound of Russian bombers striking our cities from '40s.
Finns in general do not exacerbate political tensions one way or another and are used to a mostly consensus-seeking political process. So not sure what signals you interpreted as "friendly" and what was just "common politeness".
The relationship with Russia is a bit conflicted - Finland rose from a dirt poor agrarian state to a fledling industrial state when it was a grand dutchy under a personal union with the Russian czar (so "part of Russia" but also "not part of Russia"). Most of the historical goodwill - if any - was destroyed by the russification attempts starting in late 19th century and were more or less eradicated during the second world war as Stalin tried to conquer Finland.
The war in Ukraine has made the Russian state appear twisted, dark, deranged and unpredictable for decades to come.
It's true that most finns feel affinity towards the west, but same can't be said about the USA. Especially the younger generation sees both Russia and US with somewhat strong dislike.
It's not like American TV shows aren't playing on Finish TV, or cinema hardly plays Hollywood movies.
If there was a true dislike, it should affect media consumption.
Nobody in the west can catch up to the US in media production because the US is the biggest producer of English language media. English language media has the largest market in the west because English is spoken by nearly everyone as a second language, and US media reinforces this English language status, since people pick up the language due to its availability.
tldr: despite watching Friends on Netflix, many people still think the US is a rotten dirty capitalist hellhole.
As for music, Finland is known for their unusual and thriving Tango, Polka, and Heavy Metal scenes but most consumed music is nevertheless produced in the US and the UK. This doesn't have much to do with what is offered, it's just more popular. Generally speaking, popular culture is global in all Western countries, with English as the lingua franca.
I mean, it's possible to think that your local cops are kind of jerks and bullies, while still infinitely preferring them to the Mafia.
As for Russia and its empire-serving culture, there's nothing to like and share at all.
I just read the whole [0] reference, and I could not find anything related to your claim. Can you give specific examples ? Or can you explain how the article supports your claim ?
Briefly put, insidious interactions over decades groomed certain individuals in power to promote agendas pleasing to Moscow and to stop from forwarding agendas that would have been displeasing. Who, exactly? Well, that's the thing - we don't know but can only guess - but this effect was quite visible in Finland for decades. I know this sounds a bit nutty without more context so let me try to provide it.
I am using the term "asset" in the widest possible interpretations - people acting to benefit the agenda of Moscow.
Finlandization included the necessity to get stamp of approval on all foreign policy from Moscow. The journalistic system basically recycled what USSR broadcasted on foreign events up to late 1980's.
Politicians had to get approval from the USSR embassy. How this undermines democracy should be obvious - you can have votes, but it does not matter if big brother vetoes you.
Hence you don't need to explicitly enact nefarious schemes given to you by Kremlin - you simply do not put forward agendas you guess would be displeasing to the Moscow masters. And you things you guess would please them. In this atmosphere the subtlest of hints suffice to direct policy.
Over decades, this creates a psychology of implicit submission - similar to what happens in totalitarian countries in press self-censoring and so fort. You start to guess from weak signals what the dominating party wants and impose this control. You promote those that forward your pro Moscow agenda. You chastise those too pro-western. Sometimes you promote your protege to Moscow as a steady hand and so on.
There are visible signals of this and I can enumerate few:
0)
Finland had one person as president, Urho Kekkonen for 26 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urho_Kekkonen
His reign was linked to very good relations with Moscow. He probably played both sides, but was in fact many ways enacting policies that were pleasing to Moscow. In the 50's this probably helped to stop explicit invasion.
1)
For example, ex. prime minister Esko Aho was in the board of Sperbank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esko_Aho#Banks
2)
The president of Finland Tarja Halonen supported the ratification of the Ottawa treaty banning all use of landmines in Finland in 2011. This was promoted as a benevolent act by many parties. Given that Russia had invaded Geoergia 2008 this can be in retrospect considered suicidally deluded or treasonous position.
The latter one is perhaps the most egregious example of the actions of parties one would at bare minimum describe as "usefull fools". The only party that would ever benefit from Finland banning landmines is Moscow.
3)
Finland was planning a new nuclear plant starting from 2010. The tendering was won by Rosatom in circumstances that implied high favoritism toward the Russian state actor.
In 2014 after Russia invaded Crimea several municipalities pooled in extra capital to the process.
Luckily this plant project has been stopped and will never be built.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Things like this could go on and on. But the whole point of clandestine subversion is that it's clandestine and KGB archives are probably sadly not available for academic study for decades if ever.
Very happy to see you guys joining NATO.
And yes - I write russia with small letter because I don't see their _state_ representing the country anymore, but it is more like criminal organization now.
Not a lot of material about him written in English though. But he is a member of parliament and has been openly pro Russia recently. He was expelled from his party already earlier and now runs his own party. I don't think people take him seriously.
That's not implying they are pro- current Russian government.
Anyway, it is about definition. For you communism appears to be about heritage. For me, it is about observed behavior. Communism means advocating for communistic world order.
Left Alliance is consistently voting pro-market, pro-EU, pro-globalization, anti-government etc., all of which are goals of the economic right, i.e. the opposite of communism.
Their former chair-woman (Suvi-Anne Siimes) even moved directly to become Director General of Pharma Industry Finland, and was promoting right-wing coalition party member in 2009 EU elections.
Sure, there still exists hard core left wing, even communist members within that party (taistolaiset).
As a person with US-oriented political definitions, I find that phrase almost impossible to parse. I can put "left-wing" and "traditionally voted communist" together, but in what sense are they "conservatives"?
I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm just saying that I don't understand how the terms are used over there.
Nowadays, only Erkki Tuomioja...
[Edit: Fortunately he's old enough to soon be significant only historically.]
Most Russians that a typical HN user would encounter — English-speaking, educated, probably with skills in demand inside and outside Russia — don't.
Typical Russians, on the other hand, are quite openly fascist at this point.
What are you basing this on?
https://www.levada.ru/en/ratings/
This seems to show strong support for the Russian government and this analysis seems to suggest that few Russians are concerned about Russians crimes and as many as half are very supportive of horrific violence against people they see as nonhuman.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2022.2...
But you're not wrong, lots of people just went full nazi
Putin nor his supporters haven't gone full nazi. Full fascist, perhaps. Nationalist, definitely.
He used the "denazify Ukraine" slogan when Zelenskyy is actually Jewish not because of deep seated racial or religious motivations, but just to get more of the populace to buy his belligerent cause. Putin just cares about Crimea, Sevastopol, and the strategic importance of the Black Sea (oil and military).
He's just using Ukrainians instead of Jewish folks seems more like an implimentation detail. Even hating them is completely optional.
People aren't just using Nazi as a purjorative the regime literally fits a template.
They also believed in "survival of fittest" and competition. That influenced the way they build institutions and how they treated sick etc. They liked to have two institutions with same goal and have them compete. Russia is different in all three points. It does not care much about own disabled, but they are not seen as threat the way Germans seen disabled. Russian parents with sick kid dont have to be afraid to go to see doctor for example.
> He's just using Ukrainians instead of Jewish folks seems more like an implementation detail. Even hating them is completely optional.
Both ideologies are very very different in how they treat subjects, actually. For instance, Ukrainians became subject of genocide after they refused Russia domination - Jews had no such option. Russians claim Ukrainians are Russia by blood and deserve punishment for considering themselves apart. Meanwhile, many many German Jews considered themselves Germans. That is underappreciated point - but a lot of them were German patriots, veterans of WWI, married ethnical Germans and were atheists.
Edited to add: Russia is also significantly less totalitarian them Germany was back then. It is autocracy/dictatorship, but it is not nearly as oppressive internally as Nazi Germany was. Timing is different too, its move toward complete lock of press happened only after invasion of Ukraine - contrast with German who did that long before military moves.
Russians now feel as though they're under attack by the West with an ends of destroying them not only economically and politically but also culturally. That is going to send support soaring with the perceived threat there is orders of magnitude greater than something like Bin Laden. So you're not going to be able to get level-headed responses until [likely many] years after this ends - similar to how if you polled the average American circa 2001 you'd get dramatically different views on the actions we took than you would if you asked them a decade later, even beyond the countless discoveries outside the "fog of war".
This is one reason I also think our ongoing response is not the right path forward for any outcome other than escalation. The more we arbitrarily attack anything "Russian", the more we frame ourselves not as an enemy of the war but as an enemy of the Russian people and even the Russian culture. And far from achieving a de-escalation, this just seems it will inevitably march us that much closer to WW3.
This is true for basically every people every time in history. People care about food, family, a house, medical care. All is well until some government starts pushing them into a warring state of mind.
Examples from the previous generation of European wars, when Italy invented fascism, Germany followed suit ten years later and both countries started to think about land grabs in Europe and Africa. We got WW2 first but only 12 years after the end of it France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux started the process [1] that led to the current EU. All friends again.
My bet: without the current leadership and their propaganda very few Russians would think about invading other countries so be ready to reach out to them when it will be all over. What we don't have to do is to start a process like the one that led Germany from the defeat in WW1 to desires of revenge and WW2, or Russia from the defeat in the Cold War to the current attempt to create its empire again.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Community
Russian fascism runs for multiple generations. Russia never was democratic. Russian mentality is to have an aggressive leader ("бьёт - значит любит").
Navalny is perceived as an alternative to Putin, but he supported Crimean annexation and Georgian war. There is no evidence the remedies that worked for Nazi Germany will work for Russia.
I note, grimly, that your positive example (Germany and Italy post-WW2) was precipitated by the total defeat, occupation and renovation of those two states by the victors of the war. That is not possible in the current situation, where the best case outcome is that Russia retreats to pre-2014 borders with Ukraine.
Actually I wonder if the Kremlin really fears an invasion. We were happy to pay for anything we wanted from Russia.