Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

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The Finnish political system was infiltrated by Russian assets (willing or just useful fools) for decades [0]. Luckily this has abated in the last decades. The people have deep suspicion of the Russian state but no particular animosity towards russian people in general.

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization

I hope my country, Poland, could find a way to abate russian fools, that seemingly have their prime time now here. I see similar to russian type of rhetoric in TV and social media and some people support them because they seem to provide easy solutions to big problems. I wished it was more plain to see that it's all russia-driven.

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.

Trusting social media as a measure of general opinion is not a good idea. They could be a tiny minority making a lot of noise.

I know, and I get it that loudest people are a minute fraction of all users. But it seems that people are under their influence as the ruling party keeps acting against the state but they still have majority in the polls.

>Most finns, especially the young generations, feel most affinity towards west in every sense.

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 a completely different league of 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.

People consume what's available, and what's available is US media.

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.

I can't comment about the specific situation in Finland but generally this does not seem to be true. Due to a EU directive, streaming Providers like Netflix have to offer at least 30% of local content but these are not watched proportionally. The most popular content remains English/international. For example, according to a 2020 Netflix survey 25% of most viewed titles in Spain were local, with the UK (10%), Germany (8%), France (8%) and Italy (8%) following.

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.

As a European I also view the US as increasingly corrupt and short sighted. There is a difference though, as GP pointed out. It's not true/false.

> Especially the younger generation sees both Russia and US with somewhat strong dislike.

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.

It's possible to respect and share the principles the US is built on and disagree with details and ugly tendencies of the implementation. The West is not just the US.

As for Russia and its empire-serving culture, there's nothing to like and share at all.

> The Finnish political system was infiltrated by Russian assets (willing or just useful fools) for decades [0]

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 ?

It's complex and what I write here is open for argumentations.

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.

You’ve contributed loads of great comments to this thread. Thanks for taking the time.

Very happy to see you guys joining NATO.

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