Broadcast in a shorter form on September 4 in the ''A-Studio''


Mr. President, did you ever meet President Kekkonen?

I have never met President Kekkonen. I have sent him my regards and said that Estonia had not forgotten that he had once been the Chairman of Estonian-Finnish society. He was the Chairman in 1944. I have not heard of the society having been officially closed after the truce.

What kind of man do you think Kekkonen was as a politician?

I can reply first and foremost as an Estonian. Kekkonen did something that is perhaps not so much appreciated in Finland, and perhaps also unknown to the younger generation of our politicians. In 1964, Mao Zedong said that the People's Republic of China would never recognise the subjugation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to Russian hegemony. The other man, whose effect on the Estonian history was much more dramatic, although without so many words, was President Kekkonen. For some reason, the Soviet administration was always extremely worried that the hairy hand of imperialism would reach the blooming garden of Estonian socialism through Finland. There was some pressure on Kekkonen for Finland to break off all relations with the expatriate Estonians. Kekkonen as a politician made a good bargain there. He said that for Finland, the Finno-Ugric studies were self-evident. He could only rupture the relations with expatriate Estonians if he offered, in return, relations with Estonia. And here, the Soviet leaders made a fatal mistake. They consented to the opening of a tourist ferry line. The first ferry reached Helsinki in July 1965. The Kremlin was unable to multiply the voyages with the period of 25 years. The outcome was obvious. Instead of normal tourist traffic, something absolutely unique in the world developed between Estonia and Finland. I would like to describe it statistically. Half of the Finnish tourists visited Tallinn once and never came back. The other half returned to Tallinn next year with their wives and children. Half of them, again, returned every year, and some remained so true to Estonia as to visit us twenty-five years in a row. This was no longer tourism, it was a political duty masquerading as tourism. Between the years 1965 and 1991, more than three million Finns visited Estonia according to statistics. Do you understand what this meant to Estonia? In northern Estonia, but also in Tartu, many Estonian families had at least two or three close Finnish families. Within a quarter of a century, the second and third generations emerged, the children, too, knew each other, and a relationship developed whose political impact can hardly be overestimated. Every family brought with them Paulig coffee, and at least one magazine or newspaper, or even a book. The Soviet customs took pains to confiscate them on the border, but at least half of them still came through. This is the reason why Estonia, when our historic moment came, knew what to do, knew how it was to be done, knew what language to speak in the new world that had changed when compared to the world our older generations had lived in. I am positive that the Russians fell into their own trap: they presumed that the iron curtain would work also when they opened it from one side. They underestimated the importance of free movement of ideas. All in all: we have prepared quite well for our accession to the European Union, and for this, we must thank Finland.

The opening of ferry traffic was important, but was Kekkonen's visit to Tallinn in 1964 important for Estonia?

It was emphasised in all Finnish documents that this was an unofficial visit. It was emphasised where necessary, but it was also emphasised in very unlikely contexts. In 1985, William Hough from New York wrote a book about how different countries have not recognised Estonia's, Latvia's and Lithuania's annexation by the Soviet Union. The chapter dedicated to Finland is interesting. Hough concluded that Finland tried to avoid this matter in everyday politics, but that at the time of Kekkonen's visit, the non-recognition could only be expressed by the Finnish protocol emphasising everywhere that President Kekkonen was on an unofficial visit to Tallinn. I should add that several good friends of President Kekkonen were also my friends. Academician Kustaa Vilkuna, or Minister Lauri Posti, or if you wish, Leo Meller from Mainos-TV, who was not only a good friend of mine, but also the direct superior of Oke Jokinen, and Oke Jokinen in turn was the first Finn to visit Estonia, and he also became my younger son's godfather. There were several channels Kekkonen could use to get a picture of Estonia, and he used them actively to prepare his visit.

I would rather not discuss the nice anecdote saying that Kekkonen used the Estonian language in his sauna to discuss secret matters. Estonians like this anecdote, but let anecdotes be anecdotes. It seems to me that the people who were more connected to Estonia by their activities, who had some duty to Estonia that it would be hard to define, that these men sometimes advised Kekkonen on how to design relations with Estonia. In the Estonian-Finnish relations we can indeed see two levels: we can see the grassroots level that I tried to describe through tourism, and also the official policy, which never raised the question of Estonia's occupation.

In 1985, I had recently acquired the book of William Hough. For the first time in my life, I went to see an official of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and asked him about Finland's official position concerning the non-recognition of Estonia's annexation. He tried to wave the question off, which was of course his duty. Among other things, for all he knew, my purpose could have been to provoke him. Then I took Hough's book out of my briefcase, opened it on Finland's chapter and asked whether Finland's official position corresponded to the description given there. The man read the chapter carefully, looked at the cover illustration, looked at the chapter again, and said, yes, if you put the question like this, I can not possibly contest you.


Then you don't think that breaking off the relations with expatriate Estonian organisations meant recognition of the annexation?

I think that Kekkonen was always much wiser than the men in the Kremlin. The men in the Kremlin, after all, were the prisoners of their own KGB. Their whole picture of the world was distorted and wrong. They lived in constant fear that the outside world would want to undermine the Soviet Union. This is an entire different subject, and I would rather not discuss it here. I would only like to say that the expatriate Estonians, who managed to found an expatriate university already in the German refugee camp in 1945, who founded their own newspapers, theatres, and scientific societies, of course suffered a hard blow by Kekkonen's decision. I do not doubt it, and I consider it natural that the expatriates had a strong prejudice against Kekkonen. Please remember that, before Kekkonen's visit, Finnish universities had sent their students to the summer camps of expatriate Estonians, not to Estonia, to practice the Estonian language. This practice was discontinued. It was no doubt a hard blow for the expatriates. They could interpret this as the Finns attempting to recognise the Soviet annexation of Estonia. But right now, I am not a writer, I am not interested in what one or another individual felt or thought, I am interested in the political outcome. And the political outcome was that today, Estonia is on the way to the European Union.

How did the Finland of Kekkonen's time look to the eyes of an Estonian? In the Western countries, it was said that Finland was under Russia's thumb, but how did it look to the Estonian side?

I can give you three examples. When I was permitted to film ''The Winds of the Milky Way'', I lived at the Aurora hotel. The Aurora hotel is in Helsinkinkatu, near the Railway Bridge. On the big concrete pillars of the bridge, there were several slogans in capitals, saying ''Angola'' or ''Americans, get out of Angola'', and so on. Second, when Matti Kuusi and I were having a walk on the market square in front of the Presidents castle, money was being collected for Chile. The students recognised their professor, approached us with their collection box and asked us to donate for Chile. I asked the students when they would start a collection for Estonia. The students looked at me, looked at Matti Kuusi, in bewilderment. When the students had left, I asked Matti Kuusi what the Finnish students had thought of the situation. With his nice, gentle sense of humour, Matti Kuusi smiled and said that they had been surprised to see Matti Kuusi on a walk with someone so conservative. Ten years passed, and the students all over Finland started to collect money for Estonia. I have a very brief description of Finland's situation: Finland is the only country that did not lose World War II. Territories can be lost, but so can the goals that were struggled for. Every country lost something, but Finland did not.

That was well said, thank you!


The questions were asked by Anti Halinen

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