Suicide à la finlandaise

My trip from my home base in Brussels to St Petersburg this past Friday-Saturday was done the same way as my last two trips here, i.e., by flying to Helsinki and proceeding the next day by bus to Russia’s Northern Capital.

The flight was comfortable aboard a Finnair A-350 on which every one of the 300+ seats was taken. Looking at the fellow passengers at check-in it was clear that somehow the airline has captured a good share of demand for flights to India, with Helsinki as the link. How they managed to do so is not clear, given that they are barred from using Russian air space, so that their planes have a long way to go compared to more southerly European transit hubs and they burn a lot of fuel getting Southeast Asian passengers to destination. However, whatever success the airline has achieved with Indians cannot begin to compensate their loss of passengers to Far Eastern destinations, i.e., precisely the traffic the Finns sought to capture when they greatly expanded their passenger terminals in Helsinki several years ago.

 The Chinese were a lost cause after the onset of Covid and their country’s lock-down. They have not reappeared. The Japanese and Western tourists, a still more prized passenger flow, are clearly not making Helsinki their European transit point now, as they once did, because closure of the Siberian route to the Finns, Russia’s mirror like response to the closure of their air space to Russian planes, forfeits all the time and expense advantages that the Finns could boast in the status quo ante.

Small loss, you may say. Taken by itself, yes. The whole Finnish economy is experiencing vast losses resulting from its sanctions on Russia in commerce and much else, but a visitor passing through does not see that. My point is that the low utilization of Helsinki Airport today is something you can see and feel even if you know nothing about the big picture. And do remember, this is now the peak travel season, the time when Europe is on holiday and air travel in Europe is booming.

Like the Greek islands just off the coast of Anatolia which do not show Turkey on maps distributed to tourists, so the Finns are refusing to look at their own map. During the Soviet period, Finland was a bridge between East and West in both the physical and metaphorical sense. Helsinki was a modest, unassuming city back then, even if Marimekko fabrics gave the country as a whole an image of creativity and fanciful thinking among Americans. It looked dull when you stopped off on the way to Moscow; it looked glamorous only on the return trip in transit to Europe or North America.

Those were the days when Finland imported Russian logs and oil and gas and other precious commodities at knock-down prices that Kremlin offered to its friends, while it exported in return shoes made of tough leather that would leave you foot sore and other consumer goods of less than prime quality. That was a time when there were large flows of Finns down to the Petersburg area, where they all had a tipple of what looked to them like free vodka, heading home by train or bus in an inebriated state, with baggage that rattled from liquor bottles. That was a time when almost no Russians could go to Finland because of travel restrictions of their own government.

The nineteen nineties opened Russia and its raw material wealth to the depredation of the whole West, and little Finland lost its privileged position. At this time the country changed its orientation and looked to improve its commercial ties with its fellow members of the European Union.  But of course, Finland ceased being a nearly unique bridge to the East now that the world was coming to Russia from all directions. There were a very few Finnish entrepreneurs who still understood what outsized opportunities there were at its doorstep and made an effort to build market share there. I know. In the 1990s for a time I served as a consultant to a Finnish trucking company which had great ambitions in the Russian market and achieved some successes.

During the 1990s, Russians received passports for travel abroad upon simple demand and by the beginning of the new millennium, when the Russian economy revived and the middle classes reconstituted themselves, about 10 million Russians traveled abroad each year.  Here in Northwest Russia tourist cum shopping trips across the border to Finland became very common place. We had friends in Petersburg who drove up to Lappenranta every other week to stock up on delicacies that they had come to know and enjoy when shopping in the two food stores that the large Finnish retailer Stockmann maintained in “Pietari” as we are known in Finland. Small Finnish merchants sold smoked river and lake fish to the Russian cross-border crowd at fancy prices and all sides were pleased with themselves.  Some middle class Russians were so delighted by the wonderful secondary roads in the Finnish countryside and with the general infrastructure that they bought properties to spend their summers.

In the second decade of the new millennium, Finland joined other EU member states in cutting commercial ties with Russia. After the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Finland introduced the EU wide sanctions and relations with Russia became much cooler.  Finally, following the start of the Special Military Operation, Finland became a determined and spiteful enemy of Russia. It closed the door to gas and electricity imports from Russia and it cancelled a multibillion dollar contract to buy a nuclear power plant from Russia’s Rosatom.

In parallel, last year Finland refused to admit Russians with Schengen passports to transit their country on their way to other European destinations, something which they had cultivated with care in the past using the services of their consulate in Petersburg. The reason had been purely commercial: to rake in tourist euros and dollars from the transiting Russians by imposing requirements that several days be spent in Finland on the way. Then the Finns choked off issuance of tourist visas to Russians who were intent on spending vacation time in Finland itself. Finally, they refused to renew visas to Russians who owned property in Finland. This, together with the cut-off of all cross border banking ties, means that these property owners can easily fall behind in paying taxes and utility bills. The stage is set for foreclosures and confiscation.

As I said, the Russian owners of cottages in Finland are just middle class folks, not oligarchs, who have far better places to flaunt their wealth than in the pokey neighbor to the northwest. What we are witnessing is behavior typical of a nation at war, when in fact there is no declared war between Russia and Finland. 

Meanwhile, a week ago the Russian Foreign Ministry ordered the Finns to shut their consulate in Petersburg and evacuate staff. This was in response to similar orders by Finnish authorities cutting Russian diplomatic services in Finland. The trajectory of relations suggests it will not be long before both countries shut their respective embassies.

It must be said that not only Finnish economic interests are being sacrificed in the country’s vengeful turn against Russia. The country’s security is being put in jeopardy.

The decades-long neutrality of Finland was abandoned for the sake of joining NATO in what is supposed to enhance the country’s security by gaining Article 5 protection should Russia ever attack.  However, the downside is apparent to anyone bothering to look at a map.  The 1340 km border of Finland with Russia is comparable to the Ukrainian Russian line of confrontation today.  And if the 30 million or so Ukrainians who remain in their country today, (down from 40 million before the present war due to outward flow of refugees) cannot hold the line against the Russian armed forces, how can a Finnish population of 5.5 million succeed in that mission? The simple answer is that it cannot. Those Finnish politicians who are hoping for a NATO war with Russia which would win back for them the territories they ceded to Russia after fighting on the Axis side in WWII, and paying the price for their treachery, are simply madmen.

These are the thoughts which pass through my mind on the final 3 hour leg of the Helsinki-Petersburg bus trip after crossing over into Russia and watching the still incomplete vast highway project on the Russian side. When about five years ago the Russian government began this extension of the so-called Scandinavian Highway that was built at the end of the 1990s and ended in Vyborg, you could imagine that it was to facilitate the growing passenger vehicle and truck traffic between Russia and Finland. But it was stunning to see that the work continued at full force even after February 2022, when truck traffic was choked off by broken commercial ties and when passenger traffic dwindled to almost nothing due to visa restrictions.

To my thinking the superhighway that is  now in its final days of construction and reaches to the Finnish frontier, together with all the lateral roads into the forest that you see on the way, have a new mission: to facilitate the movement of heavy military equipment and troops to the border region on a moment’s notice.  It will be a very long time before the Finnish side has anything comparable.

Is Finland committing suicide?  It certainly looks that way.

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I close today’s essay with remarks on a couple of other unrelated subjects that nonetheless provide a feel for what changes there are in Russian daily life in this second year of war.

The first relates to military recruitment.  The second pertains to foreign tourists as evidenced by a visit to the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo, the summer residence of the tsars, that is a 10 minute walk from my apartment.

On my last stay in Russia just six weeks ago, I had seen no advertisements on the streets for the recruitment of “contract soldiers” to fight in the Special Military Operation in Ukraine.  There were already back then spot ads on state television which were sophisticated visually and in the concept being promoted:  that young men join their peers and go to serve the country. These ads have become more and more frequent on television with the passage of time.

Now there is a new dimension.  At a bus stop just near my house, a broadsheet was pasted onto the glass wall of the shelter showing in very big script the offer of a 695,000 ruble (approximately 6,600 euros) sign-up premium to anyone who is accepted as a contract fighter by the Ministry of Defense. Of this amount, 195,000 rubles is provided by the federal government and 500,000 is offered by the region of St Petersburg. Each Russian region decides independently and voluntarily how much to offer to top up the federal premium.  Then, following a training period which probably lasts two or three months, the new contract fighters are paid at least 200,000 rubles per month salary during their time in the zone of the Special Military Operation. 

Then, when I went shopping at our nearby Pyatyorochka supermarket, I found that a similar recruitment poster had been glued to the entrance door.

If I may put these sums in the context of present-day Russian salaries and pensions, they are highly attractive. The average pensioner living in cities across Russia may receive 20,000 rubles per month from the government, while average workers’ salaries In Petersburg begin at perhaps 50,000 – 70,000 rubles, depending on the industry.

Although it goes unmentioned in these advertisements, news programs have explained that the contract fighters receive generous benefits packages for their families. As a matter of course, they have substantial life insurance payouts in case of death while in service. Otherwise there is funding available to ensure that their children will all get proper schooling. And in their eventual status as veterans, they will be eligible for preferential mortgage loans and for educational advancement.

The last named point is still the subject of public controversy. A recently issued directive from the Ministry of Education has specified the addition to veterans’ qualification ratings for admission to institutions of higher learning in rather niggardly terms. But Russian patriots, including Vladimir Solovyov on his evening talk show, are demanding that veterans who have been given awards for valor on the field of battle should be admitted to the best Russian universities without passing any other test. Their objective is to secure 50% of the places in these and related institutions for the outstanding veterans, so that, in their words, within 5 years a wholly new elite will be created in Russia.   So far this is just talk, but we may expect enacting legislation to be placed before the Duma before long.

 Considering all of the foregoing, it is no wonder that the flow of recruits to the Russian army has swelled since the start of the year, numbering well over 150,000.  And this explains how and why Minister of Defense Shoigu can confidently say that the armed forces see no need for further call-up of reserves or enlargement of the annual intake of drafted civilians as the forces grow to two million men at arms..

As regards who makes up foreign tourist contingents today, I offer the information I received from one of the tour guides employed by the nearby palace museum of Tsarskoye Selo, which is a must-see tourist site of all overseas visitors.  The Chinese have not yet come back, though their arrival is expected. Note that before Covid all museums and tourist sites of this city were overrun with Chinese groups.  Now the groups are coming from Iran, and as we saw yesterday at the Catherine palace, they have their own Farsi-speaking guides and so feel very much at home.  Times are a-changing!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023