Dr György Kádár: …Finnish – Hungarian relations at a low point…

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Dr György Kádár

TRADITIONALLY NON-POLITICAL AND PREVIOUSLY EXCELLENT

FINNISH—HUNGARIAN RELATIONS AT A LOW POINT

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Unfortunately, Finnish-Hungarian relations have become quite disappointing in recent years. All of this is also painful because these are two countries and nations who, although recently on either side of the Iron Curtain, should belong together based on both their linguistic and historical kinship.

Under historical kinship, we refer to how the Hungarian and Finnish people had to fight for survival among the Western (Danish, Swedish) and the Eastern (Russian) great powers. For the Finns and perhaps for the world, all this became clear in 1861 in the words of one of their greats, the philosopher and statesman J. V. Snelmann: “We are not Swedes, we do not want to be Russians, so let’s be Finns.” All this at a time when no one could be certain whether they would still speak Finnish in Finland in a hundred years.

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J. V. Snelman influential Fennoman philosopher and Finnish statesman (1806–1881)

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In principle, Finland should be among the other Central European,

the Visegrád countries

We can say that we are also similar in that both nations demonstrated incredible vigour by being able to survive sandwiched between the East and the West. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that, culturally and politically, Finland (as also Estland) has a place among the other Central European countries, the Visegrád countries. However, the possibility of this cannot even arise in the current political landscape – despite the fact that the current President of the Republic, Sauli Niinistö, even during his term as minister, strongly advocated that the small countries of the EU should stick together. Finnish politics, however, took a different direction.

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Visegrád countries

In order to understand where the hostility of today’s Finnish politics and media against Hungarians, and the Finnish people they turn against us almost every day comes from, we should go back to the past.

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A look back at history

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Relations in the era of the World Wars

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Hungarian soldiers in Helsinki, 20.5.1940

In the era of the World Wars, the two countries and their people still followed each other’s struggles with great sympathy and attention. When the great Eastern power, Soviet Russia, attacked the small country of Finland with 3-4 million inhabitants in November 1939 without a declaration of war, still in November of that year, about 25,000 people volunteered in Hungary which was then bleeding from several wounds and had been divided. 340 had already arrived to the port of Turku by May 1940. Miklós Horthy sent munitions to the Finnish army. The sympathy between the two nations remained even after the Iron Curtain was established. This was evident in the exceptionally high number and extraordinary activity of Hungarian-Finnish and Finnish-Hungarian companies and circles (50) and twin cities (60) both during and after the Cold War.

Today, this activity is beginning to subside. Unfortunately, politics intervened. How did we get here?

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Relationships during socialism and the Kekkonen era

Even during the socialist era, the Hungarian people showed genuine interest in the Finns and Finland, but the communist leadership acted in its own interests, and in all areas of life, it took control of Finnish-Hungarian relations and built its own system of relations; both in universities and in economic and political life. This system of communist-based relations did not disappear with the change of the Hungarian regime after the 1990s, it still lives on today, in fact, a significant part of the relationship builders, ‘Hungarian experts’ and (mainly social) researchers who come to Finland today are delegates of the old regime.

This is almost equally true for the Finnish side. In the period after 1945, not many people noticed, but the background of the Finnish-Hungarian friendships was not free of politics either. There were and still are a significant number of Finnish-Hungarian companies who were more interested in socialist Hungary than in Hungary. The same was true of university life and other areas of intellectual life. Among the Hungarian researchers in Finland, there were a large number of people who primarily wanted to get to know humanist socialism and its attractive qualities in socialist Hungary. If they had to, they would provide information on us. A good example of this was when in 1975 the poet Dénes Kiss was reported to the communist Hungarian authorities by Matti Rossi. At the time, my benevolent teachers also told me to be careful what I said to the Finnish guests when I was called to interpret for the Patriotic People’s Front. For these ‘Hungarian friends’, linguistic and historical kinship was secondary. After 1990, I had the opportunity to meet several of these researchers, who were more like politicians. One of them, for example, in Jyväskylä, at a pizzeria next to a station, and to my greatest surprise, tried to convince me how great the Rákosi regime was. (Fortunately, I didn’t have much time to listen to the reasoning before my train left.)

The President of the Republic of Finland (1956-1982), U. K. Kekkonen, who had a very positive attitude towards Finnish-Hungarian relations, added to this by letting Finnish universities ‘redden’. (“The Soviets should not be upset.”) When I was preparing for my doctoral dissertation on the musical thinking of the Finno-Ugric people at the University of Tampere in 1998, the senior professors made me read the works of the Frankfurt School on this topic. Today’s Finnish politicians, journalists and social scientists that we Hungarians now face is the ‘product’ of this Kekkonen era and the excellent communist relations based on personal acquaintances. This is also the explanation for the fact that today’s Finnish media and politics still try to sympathise with the Hungarian left, or with parties that pretend to be left-wing, liberal or green, and believe their lies, repeating them without the slightest criticism. By 2006, we had come to the point where there did not appear to be any police terror (Budapest, under the government of the left-wing Ferenc Gyurcsány in 2006) or other negative news to deter them.

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The Finnish school will fall victim to politics

– today’s mental state of the elite

But there is something else here. The ideas circulated in the universities of the Kekkonen era did not remain hidden. In less than ten years Finnish education and schoolchildren were internationalised, rendering institutions from kindergartens to higher education uncultured. As a Hungarian it is incomprehensible, but Finnish (and other) classics were completely removed from Finnish textbooks. Finnish students and today’s generations know nothing about either the Kalevala or other classics. Not only do they not read these works, they do not even know about them. Officially, literature has not even been taught recently. Instead, there are Donald Duck type comics and press reviews based on empty knowledge. You can’t find Finnish classics in music textbooks either. Sibelius’ name does not necessarily appear in textbooks. In fact, there is no music textbook or booklet anymore. There a drums and synthesisers with ladybug and butterfly markings for the student in year seven to know which key to press. Respect for the cultural values that give direction in life has not been seen in Finnish school for about 10-15 years. It is probably clear that it is difficult to expect a spiritual and moral stance and a readiness for life from such a generation. Don’t get me wrong, there are some very educated and smart people in Finland, but their numbers are decreasing, and they too are often pushed out of public life.

The sad consequence of all this, however, is that while a good portion of the now grown-up young generation is unwavering when it comes to claiming their rights, and if need be, considering themselves capable of anything, their semi-literateness makes them very unsure of themselves on the inside. A good example of this was when one of the members of the current young government paid EUR 50,000 of taxpayers’ money to an IT company to teach him how to be confident in public, while another member of the government, the Prime Minister, felt insulted, in front of TV cameras, that Sauli Niinistö wanted to talk to him and his government about the coronavirus pandemic. The President of the Republic should not interfere in his business. A young politician without a GCSE is preparing to serve as Minister of Education at the same time as writing these lines. Answering questions from journalists, he confidently states that he does not need a university degree to serve in that position.

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Current political leadership

Unfortunately, it does not seem that the current political leadership has its own set of values based on deep historical experience and thus an independent opinion that it would dare to take a stand in the European Union, for example, in the interests of its country. If they want to initiate a rule of law procedure against Hungary there, even without any reason, Finnish politicians will feel the compulsion to be accepted and to prove that they are good students, and they will be the loudest in demanding the procedure. We saw this recently during the Finnish presidency, when thousands of problems in the EU were waiting to be solved, but it didn’t matter as the Finnish Minister of European Affairs, Tytti Tuppurainen, along with other Social Democrat and green politicians, made punishing Hungary the most important task of the Finnish presidency.

It is icing on the cake that neither she nor the Minister of Education lifted a finger in the meantime, when the Hungarian schoolchildren in the western Finnish city of Vaasa were the only linguistic group that did not receive mother tongue education – for the third year in a row – in their city due to – most likely – racist motivation. Neither these ministers nor the media care about the fact that Päivi Räisänen, a representative of the Finnish Christian Democratic Party, a former minister, has been pestered by the Finnish police for years because of a Bible quote she quoted on a TV talk show.

To quote the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó: Tytti Tuppurainen and the other left-wing politicians should have put their own house in order first.

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Minister for European Affairs and Ownership Steering Tytti Tuppurainen

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The Finnish media

The world of the Finnish media is similar to the above. Sometime before 2010, a 1956 remembrance ceremony was held in the Finnish Parliament. The fact that the invited performer was Ignác Romsics reveals a lot about the Hungarian friendship of the organisers and the abovementioned system of left-wing relations. These ‘researchers’ and ‘scholars’ discussed, among other things, such important and outrageous topics in front of the large Finnish audience, who certainly had positive feelings towards us Hungarians, as seeing Greater Hungary coats of arms more and more often on Hungarian cars. So Hungarians are nationalists. (Hungary is the only Central European country whose borders were not finalised after the Second World War, therefore millions of Hungarians were stranded outside the country’s borders. The current government builds on co-operation with neighbouring countries instead of border changes. See the policy of the Visegrád countries. – Translator’s note)

Here I met a former editor of YLE (State Finnish Radio), who I asked why the Finnish press failed to report on the 2006 bloody police terror and demonstrations in any form. He was outraged, and with a red face challenged me for even asking such a thing (word for word): “He has friends in Hungary and he knows that there were no demonstrations.” “So, he has friends” – I noted to myself, and since I saw myself facing a left-wing man blinded to the point where he was unable to have a discussion, I politely said goodbye to him.

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Hostility of today’s (left-wing?) Finnish media against Hungarians

If we type the name of Viktor Orbán into the Finnish google search engine, we can see that the article writers of various magazines are one upping each other to sully the reputation of Hungary. Here are just a few headlines and only from the largest independent newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat: “Hungary’s Prime Minister, Orbán, has returned to his former habit of (again) slamming the EU”, “Politicians worried about Orbán’s unlimited power – Tuppurainen: Will the EU realize the authoritarian reality after the current crisis?”, “Orbán, the mischievous child of Europe, has arrived in Finland ”, “Orbán approves a law that guarantees him almost unlimited power – And here it is, we have the EU’s first dictatorship”, “Orbán is pushing Hungary’s cart further and further away from democracy”, “EU principles have become a coercive tool: Hungary wipes the table with the principles desirable to Finland”, “Orbán does not deserve his authority”.

But we can also quote a recent article by Helsingin Sanomat (22 August 2020), entitled: “Thus, circles close to Orbán destroy the free press.” And it continues on: Although Hungary is an EU Member State, this did not prevent the groups close to Viktor Orbán from strongly intervening in the freedom of communication, as well as in other principles related to the rule of law.” The author of the article, Hanna Mahlamäki, does not feel obliged to substantiate what principles of the rule of law she is thinking of. It is enough for her to state this in Helsingin Sanomat, and it is so. In her writing, she speaks to two people openly outspoken against Orbán: Veronika Munk, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Index and film director Peter Kaló-B, who is also a critic of Orbán (correctly Péter B. Kaló, Gy. K.). Mahlamäki is not interested in the other party’s opinion. And in connection with the events surrounding Index.hu, Munk tells Finnish readers that “this is not a period of freedom”. The message of the article is perhaps best and most concisely communicated by the subtitle quote taken from Péter B. Kaló: “Orbán raped the media industry.” From Kaló, the Finnish reader, who had previously felt sympathy for Hungarians and blindly believed in the written word, can also learn that “We cannot know the truth about the number of infections. Our government is not telling the truth to its citizens”. Helsingin Sanomat will therefore uncritically contribute to the scaremongering if the non-left-wing Hungarian government can be slandered.

Hanna Mahlamäki (Berlin, correspondent of Helsingin Sanomat 2020-)

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Standard of left-wing media – even the accusation of cannibalism

does not deter them

Mahlamäki explains that B. Kaló also filmed one of Zsigmond Móricz’s short stories. The author of the article presents the short story as follows (in strict literal translation): “In the Tragedy based on a short story by Hungarian writer Zsigmond Móricz, a poor man is invited to a dazzling evening of a rich man, drowns there and in the end the rich man eats him.” This probably tells the Hungarian reader everything about Helsingin Sanomat, who sympathises with the Hungarian left-wing press, and the quality of the recent generation of Finnish journalists, as well as their compulsion to be accepted: “the rich (Hungarian takes his knife and) eats the poor”, i.e. Hungarians also have cannibal tendencies. (In the work in question, no one consumes anyone, the poor man dies suddenly on the side of the road from eating a lot on the side of the road without the rich man knowing about it. Translator’s note)

In light of all this, we Hungarians and Finnish friends alike can hardly be angry with ordinary Finnish people when we see that they are turning away from us. The key word in their culture is ‘rehellisyys’. This word for them simultaneously means good, trustworthy and honest. They had no socialism where they could learn to doubt the written or spoken word, the honesty of their politicians and journalists. They do not look for the loophole in a new law either. They lived in a happy, rapidly developing welfare state, where they could believe unconditionally in Helsingin Sanomat. And this is what is leading to our demise.

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There are also encouraging signs

There are also encouraging signs. On the Finnish right, in the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), but especially in the recently formed Finns Party (PS), a lot of people clearly see what this is all about. Thus, the EU representative of the PS party Laura Huhtasaari, MEP Riitta Puura or party president Jussi Halla-aho also very often take a stand and back the national and family-minded policy of FIDESZ-KDNP (e.g.: Magyar Hírlap, 6 April 2020). Listening to their thoughts, the words of Viktor Orbán, Judit Varga (Minister of Justice) and Péter Szijjártó (Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade) very often ring in the ears of Hungarians.

And most reassuringly, in the last 2019 parliamentary elections, 538,805 people voted for the Finns Party in a country with a population of 5.5 million. With just 76,606 votes behind the winning Social Democratic Party (546,741 votes), PS became the second largest party. Moreover, according to recent opinion polls, in the long period before the coronavirus, the party emerged as the leading party by 24.3%. Meanwhile, the Centre Party (formerly the Agrarian League), which could be a natural ally of PS along with Kokoomus in terms of its constituency, seems to have lost the confidence of its voters after it was willing to form a government with the Social Democrats: falling from 15% to 10%.

These could already be a precursor to a future change. We shall see. It is however certain that the love and sympathy of our Finnish brothers could now be easily regained, but this requires the renewal of Finnish-Hungarian relations, an appropriate foreign and cultural strategy, and changes in Finnish politics and the media, as soon as possible.

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Dr György Kádár, Finland

journalist

secondary school Hungarian and music teacher,

doctor of musicology,

Finno-Ugric linguist

an Unwavering Friend of Finland

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Epilogue:

I could not even finalise my dissertation when Helsingin Sanomat published another article on 1 September 2020, entitled “Many leaders become entangled in power”. The article seems to justify our above statements.

Freedom House issued a report in the spring – writes Helsingin Sanomat – according to which Hungary, like Serbia and Montenegro, are no longer democracies but authoritarian regimes. The paper and its authors, instead of being able to think for themselves, instead of listening to the convicted party, or wondering how it is possible to say something about a country whose family policy is unique in the EU and whose government was re-elected for the third time, democratically and with a two-thirds majority, they one up Freedom House and judge us even more severely (also). Among the authoritarian regimes, Lebanon is cited as an example of how the governments of such countries are “willing to use deadly violence to preserve their power”. According to the psychologists addressed, for dictators (like Orbán) “areas of aggressive impulses are activated in their frontal lobe when they have to weigh morally difficult issues, which then work in conjunction with other parts of the cerebral cortex. For psychopathic dictators, this (brain) area may be damaged or developed differently than for others.” The subtitle approx. 5-8 centimetres to the right of Orbán’s photo reads: “Self-governing leaders are united by, among other things, a lack of impulsivity and empathy skills”. Then we learn from Emilia Palonen, a lecturer in the Department of Political and Economic Studies at the University of Helsinki, that the main goal of Obán’s party is to avoid the 2002 situation, when they lost the election. To that end, they are now changing the laws and trying to keep the media and other critical institutions on a short leash. A similar fear drives the leadership of Belarus. Then comes China. Orbán is thus in the company of Belarus and China.

Thus the question is: how can the Finns, after so many vicious lies, be expected to continue to treat their kindred nation, the Hungarians, with love.

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Sources used:

https://www.taloustutkimus.fi/tuotteet-ja-palvelut/puolueiden-kannatusarviot.html

https://tulospalvelu.vaalit.fi/EKV-2019/fi/ladattavat_tiedostot.html

https://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000006610067.html

http://www.helsinki.balassiintezet.hu/attachments/article/1140/hungarianvolunteersbook.pdf

https://www.libri.hu/konyv/eino_jutikkala.finnorszag-tortenelme.html

http://www.magyarfinntarsasag.hu/index.php?ugras=statikus&statoldal=49&nyelv=0

Letter from Päivi Räisänen to the Hungarian media 21 August 2020

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1942 – 2017 – ?

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Kodolányi János: A csend országa. Nemzeti Könyvtár 83-84. szám: 3–116. oldal. Stádium Sajtóvállalat Rt., Budapest, 1942

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János Kodolányi: Suomi, hiljaisuuden maa. Suomen salaisuus. Kodolányi János: Suomi, a csend országa. Suomi titka. Fordítók: Sinikka Pohjola, Kádár György. Anyanyelvi szöveggondozók: Veikko Saksi, Albert Zsuzsanna. Nap Kiadó, 1917 [A Finn Köztársaság létrejöttének 100. évfordulója alkalmából kiadott kötet]

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Forrás: Dr. Kádár György (Finnország)

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Szerkesztette: M. A.

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