Finland signed the UNESCO charter on 10 October 1956. Jaakko Numminen starts the part of his memoirs dedicated to international cultural relations by insisting on the importance of UNESCO and multilateral organizations for the Ministry of Education’s work after the late 1950s. September delegation work in Paris during the organization’s assembly was an important event for the Ministry’s civil servants involved in international relations, a moment of reflection with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs about Finland’s position in international cultural cooperation with Nordic committees on positions, programmes, declarations and so on.Footnote 1 It was both a proud moment, when Finnish representatives could feel concretely their country’s re-integration in international circles, and a difficult moment, when the Finns could vituperate about UNESCO’s bureaucracy and disorganization.

The focus of Finland’s multilateral cultural activities evolved in time. The first forum after the war was Finland’s participation in Nordic cultural cooperation, before the country got the possibility to participate in UNESCO and other international organizations. In the early 1970s, Finland’s participation in discussions concerning the third basket of the CSCE brought also new dimensions to multilateral cultural matters, making them a part of the collective security organization in which Finland had put hopes and hard work. These relations were based on Finland’s interest in participating in international organizations and programmes, but Finland’s administration for international cultural contacts also insisted on UNESCO’s peace project and in the promotion of UNESCO’s values inside Finland. Some forms of Finland’s multilateral cultural cooperation were more bureaucratic than others, and by the mid-1970s these forms went from participation in UNESCO’s multilateral bureaucracy of programmes and reports, to more concrete exchanges in Nordic forums. 

5.1 Enlarging Finland’s Multilateral Horizons, from the “Nordic Fellowship” to UNESCO

5.1.1 Nordic Cultural Relations as a Natural Postwar Channel for Finland’s Multilateral Contacts

In a report written for the Council of Europe in 1974, its former Director of Education, Cultural and Scientific Affairs (1962–1968) Anthony Haigh reflected on the collective experience of cultural diplomacy in the Nordic countries, highlighting especially their role as avenues of international cooperation for Finland and Iceland.Footnote 2 After the war, the Finns indeed tried their best to participate in the Nordic organizations created at this time, as a way to get out of their wartime isolation. This happened first through direct contacts in regular meetings of Nordic Ministers of Education started in 1947, and the same year in a Nordic Cultural Commission created in Oslo. This intergovernmental organization of cultural cooperation gathered mostly university professors and had the reputation of a sleepy, conservative affair. But in 1951, all Nordic governments had appointed civil servants to the commission, which lasted until 1971 and became the main driver of concrete Nordic cultural cooperation, aiming at improving exchanges and organizing common activities: university courses using joint educational material and curricula, Nordic Summer Schools for post-graduate students, fellowships, exchange schemes, adult education, the organization of common libraries and cultural centres, cooperation with publishers for translations and so on.Footnote 3

In the 1950s, Finland’s participation in the Nordic Council also had cultural aspects. The Council was created in 1952, and while Finland was not a member before 1955, it had the right to participate in the Council’s meetings. The Council was a demonstratively non-political organization, which made Finland’s relations with it less tensed than, for example, with the UN: when presenting Finland’s accession to the Council to the Finnish parliament, the government precised that if questions linked to the conflicts of great powers were mentioned in the Council, the Finnish representative would have to leave the room.Footnote 4

A characteristic of Nordic cooperation was its origin in grassroots contacts between Nordic societies, organized around a number of institutions, part public agencies and part private organizations. While the bilateral Finnish-Swedish cultural fund created in 1958 was a public agency, there existed already after the war a galaxy of private societies acting at the level of the Nordic region: foundations, like the Nordic network for scientific research Nordforsk created in 1947, friendship societies, municipal cooperations, etc. Renamed Pohjola-Norden in 1945, the Finnish branch of the Nordic network of friendship societies had 150 local sections in 1974 and was supported after 1963 by the state—although less than the powerful Finland-Soviet Union Society.

In March 1962, the Helsinki Accords brought one more thread in Finland’s fabric of official cultural relations with the Nordic Countries. The Accords were meant to clarify relations inside the Nordic Council, and it incited the Nordic countries specially to strengthen their cultural relations: teach each other’s languages and civilizations, multiply exchanges of students and researchers and so on. A Nordic Cultural Fund was created in 1966 as a consequence of the Helsinki Accords, on a proposal of the Nordic Council.Footnote 5 It went into full operation in 1967 with an annual grant of 3 million Danish crowns to be devoted to Nordic cultural cooperation in all areas. The relations in these organizations were centred on concrete common projects such as the exchange of information, education projects, joint Nordic representation at prominent art fairs, a Nordic prize for literature created in 1962, and for music in 1965. The fund was one of the most efficient ways to organize Nordic cultural cooperation, able to provide funding to projects and to coordinate them. The fund’s headquarters were first located in Helsinki, due to the signing of the Accords there, but were moved to Copenhagen in 1968. The fund’s board had two members from each Nordic countries, one a civil servant of the Ministry of Education and the other a legislator. Finland also had bilateral cultural funds with Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, managed directly by the Ministry of Education.

At this level, the goals of Finnish foreign policy became intertwined with the multilateral goals pursued by the organizations Finland participated in. The Nordic committees shared values, and a stated aim of their cooperation was to build a Nordic cultural community. Such cooperation would lead to synergy gains achieved through resource pooling and increased influence. In UNESCO, the Nordic countries became known as proponents of cultural cooperation based on practical expert work and international solidarity. For Finland, Nordic cooperation was also a source of models, especially in the field of education: a Nordic model of education, coming from Sweden, circulated towards Finland and influenced Finnish discussions on the matter.Footnote 6

An important part of concrete Nordic cooperations from the point of view of Finland was cultural support for the Finnish diaspora present in Sweden: in the harsh years of the postwar reconstruction and up until the 1970s, more than 300 000 Finns had moved as migrant workers to the industrial and agricultural centres of Sweden. The question of their cultural links with Finland and especially the education of children born of these families was considered all through the 1960s–1970s as a critical matter for the Finnish cultural authorities. On both sides, there were strong concerns for these populations, for various reasons: social reasons linked to their social integration and wellbeing, and national or cultural reasons linked to the perceived necessity to maintain a linguistic and cultural link between Finland and populations that, while often left without thoughts of permanent settling, did remain for considerable amounts of time in Sweden. In 1973, a report written by the Ministry of Education calculated that by 1982, there should be 26,000 Finnish children of pre-school age, 70,000 of comprehensive school age, and 18,000 of upper secondary school age in Sweden.Footnote 7 The goal was to develop in them an “active bilingual ability” between Finnish and Swedish, to ensure the possible return of these migrants to Finland at some point. This active bilingualism, however, was difficult to reach in Sweden, especially when it came to teach Finnish: the main problems were the social conditions in which these children lived and the complicated recruitment of Finnish teachers. The report emphasized cooperation with Sweden on these matters: a Finnish-Swedish Educational council had been set up in the summer of 1967, which had taken care of the transfer of teachers to Sweden from Finland. About 40–50 teachers per year were paid to work as bilingual teachers: in 1973, 230 teachers were in Sweden placed by the council, and 100 teachers through unofficial channels.

But in 1975, the Ministry of Labour underlined the same issues, emphasizing that children of Finnish origin in Sweden did not learn either Finnish or Swedish correctly. They demanded solutions especially for the teaching of language and to improve the social-economic conditions of these children as a whole.Footnote 8 In the 1970s, when Finland was still mostly a country of emigration, this question of diaspora children in Sweden took a lot of space in Finland’s participation to Nordic cultural cooperation.

Nordic cooperation had thus concrete aspects, especially for Finland which was maybe the country most in demand for contacts, shared funding, exposure to foreign trends, and the promotion of its national image in international settings. But Nordic cooperation worked mostly as a setting that facilitated bilateral relations on specific problems, in the case of Finland mostly with Sweden.

5.1.2 Finland’s Accession to UNESCO as a Connexion to Multilateral Cultural Cooperation

Most of the multilateral activities in terms of culture led by the Finnish government were before 1956 linked to participation in Nordic cultural cooperation. In 1956, UNESCO came to bring new directions and a new essence to the Finnish state’s international cultural relations, connecting it to the bureaucracy of international cultural cooperation. Marjatta Oksanen writes that UNESCO meant an opening to wider channels of intellectual cooperation: “it gave the possibility to participate in dialogue with the whole world in education, science, culture and mass media”.Footnote 9

The creation of the Finnish UNESCO committee and the development of its activities meant that a significant portion of Finland’s state-led international cultural activities became channelled through UNESCO. Autio and Heikkilä judge in their study that “after the Second World war a dominant trait of Finland’s foreign cultural relations was the country’s tendency to become strongly associated with larger forms of cooperation and forms of integration”.Footnote 10 Siikala also emphasized the way connection to UNESCO contributed massively to the development of Finland’s global cultural contacts,Footnote 11 connecting Finland’s domestic cultural policy to the country’s UN policy and international contacts. UNESCO gave the Finnish state a tool to develop Finland’s international cultural relations in certain directions, mixing technical, cultural, educational and scientific aspects with geopolitics. UNESCO was also the seat of a certain ideology linked to human rights, the fight against discrimination and racism, equality of gender and races, and peaceful cohabitation between nations—all elements that could fit easily within Finland’s rhetorical relations with the Soviet Union.

For Finland, UNESCO worked as an aggregator of information and contacts in cultural matters, as well as a forum to promote a certain image of Finland, Finland’s international involvement, Finnish culture. It was also a source of funding and a channel for exchange programmes. There is an insistence amongst people managing these contacts on the way UNESCO opened up Finland’s narrowly confined culture towards other areas than Europe such as Asia, Africa and Latin America. It meant new concrete incentives and information for Finland’s education, the arts, scientific research and language teaching. It opened new horizons for exchange activities, gave a frame for the protection of cultural sites, supported nature preservation and emphasized the fight against discriminations. UNESCO also opened new ways in which the Finnish state could intervene in the management of Finland’s international cultural relations and promote Finland’s image abroad: the delegations regularly noted the genuine interest for Finland amongst UNESCO members but also the lack of up-to-date knowledge about the country.Footnote 12

In the first years of Finland’s UNESCO membership, the main preoccupation of Finland’s cultural diplomats was to find their bearings and create links within the organization.Footnote 13 The Finns tried to get Finnish nationals recruited by the organization, and they proposed several names in the first year, although unsuccessfully. Finland also worked to attract UNESCO’s personnel to Finland for fact finding visits, organizing a trip by Luther Evans in 1958. The committee also translated material destined to UNESCO and regarding Finland’s cultural, artistic, scientific and education systems. Contacts happened through the Finnish embassy in Paris, where the Press and Culture Attaché Nils Lund became Finland’s permanent representative with UNESCO.Footnote 14 The first report emphasized the education sector, showing Oittinen’s inclinations and desire to use UNESCO to emphasize the internationalization of education organizations in Finland.Footnote 15 In the early 1960s, the Finnish authorities celebrated the fact that Lund had become the head of UNESCO’s press section, and Kalevi Sorsa a secretary in the department of human resources. In 1960, CE Granberg entered the statistical bureau of UNESCO as the third Finnish UNESCO civil servant.Footnote 16

Cultural cooperation with UNESCO also exhibited the interests of personalities managing these relations: Ilmo Hela emphasized sea ecology and maritime studies, Arvi Kivimaa was active in the theatre policy developed by UNESCO, Reino Oittinen emphasized youth and workers exchanges and education.Footnote 17 Finally, there was a notion that Finland could contribute to the work of UNESCO, as highlighted in a report from the 11th general conference in 1959:Footnote 18 Finland had been tasked with the organization of a conference on sport education, and the report listed other major projects Finland contributed to: the East-West project, the obtention of grants for the establishment of an education clearing house and restoration of historical monuments, and so forth.

Various documents and reports throughout the late 1950s and 1960s highlighted Finland’s early commitment to active participation in UNESCO.Footnote 19 Some UNESCO programmes were more interesting than others, especially in these fields where Finland felt it had possibilities to contribute, or that were especially important for the country. In 1963, following a trip to Paris, Kalervo Siikala presented the main elements of Finland’s interest in UNESCO, emphasizing stipends (which he wanted to see more for Finland and the Nordic Countries), Finnish experts’ participation in UNESCO programmes, publications, organization of conferences, organization of translations, development contacts with Africa, exchange programmes for workers, and positions for Finns in UNESCO.Footnote 20 In 1967, a report listed these main interests of Finland in UNESCO: environmental affairs, UNESCO’s East-West programme, strengthening Finnish representation in the organization’s secretariat and developing the position of Finnish specialists in UNESCO’s field programmes (especially in school architecture, educational policy, science policy, engineering and meteorology).

While Finnish cultural diplomats worked to appear as active as possible inside UNESCO, they also tried to convince Finland’s civil society to participate, and to adopt UNESCO’s vision of international relations. The UNESCO committee saw as part of its role the promotion in Finland of knowledge about UNESCO’s work and ethos, for example by translating publications in Finnish about UNESCO. The logic was a pedagogy of international cooperation and Finland’s participation in it, mostly destined to Finnish audiences. In its 1962 yearly report, the UNESCO committee described its activities to promote UNESCO’s work in the world: discussions with journalists, columns in the press, radio and TV programmes, publications of books on UNESCO in Finnish and Swedish, support for civil society organizations and so forth.Footnote 21 The yearly reports of the committee all strongly emphasized these aspects: the goal was from the start to both “strengthen our contacts with UNESCO’s headquarters and strengthen our country’s position in the organisation” and “attract attention to UNESCO and promote a better knowledge in our country of the possibilities it opens for us”.Footnote 22 In October 1966, Ilmo Hela expressed the same idea in his speech for the 20 years of UNESCO.Footnote 23 The speech had the accents of the recently converted to the necessities of multilateral cooperation as the ferment for world peace. After the late 1960s, the ministries also facilitated the emergence in Finland of an active field of UNESCO associations that overlapped with the strong development of youth activism and the peace movement in Finland.

Finland’s approach to UNESCO was marked by the same aspects as Finland’s general approach to the UN. There was a perceived need to participate in international organizations, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs working to keep the activity in line with the official foreign policy line and the Ministry of Education managing routine technical relations. The Finns showed, however, strong hesitations regarding financial commitments to the organization: the question of costs came back regularly in the reports, with a strong control on activities by the Finnish Ministry of Finances. Finnish representatives have several significant speeches on the necessity to make UNESCO into a cost-effective organization, by reducing the number of programmes and looking for cost-saving measures.Footnote 24

In 1973, after the devaluation of the dollar, UNESCO found itself in a difficult financial situation, with the Board trying to find solutions to end a plunging deficit. The Finnish Ministry of Education organized a meeting to discuss the matter in July 1973, gathering the main characters of Finland’s UNESCO policy.Footnote 25 The general spirit of the meeting was positive towards a possible growth of Finnish contribution in order to preserve UNESCO’s capacity to act, and the Ministry of Education stated that this might be a good occasion to rationalize UNESCO’s programmes. The conclusion was that Finland’s reaction to the proposal of a growth in the budget should be “qualifiedly” positive: “Finland’s goal is to realize an overhaul of the organization without being cast in a negative light by the organization”. Finally, Finland voted for the augmentation of the budget, but in its explanation for its vote emphasized that it should be an extraordinary measure for extraordinary times, and demanded cost-cutting measures.

In the early 1970s, Nordic delegates criticized the uncontrolled growth of UNESCO’s budget despite the economic crisis. In 1974, the Swedish delegate Ernest Michanek reminded during the general conference the words of the Finnish delegate some years before:

We are convinced –and we are still convinced –that UNESCO in the same spirit as our national governments, will have to, and is able to cut costs in times of austerity. In view of our own experience, it seems logical that the programs of UNESCO be devised with greater selectivity and carried through with greater efficiency and at less expense. UNESCO, which advocates rational methods of action to its members, ought to be able to set an example in its own ways of acting.Footnote 26

The Finns were particularly active in this research for more efficiency and less bloat in UNESCO’s work: in September 1974, Finland organized a seminar of Nordic committees on programming, decision-making and execution within UNESCO. A certain sense of crisis was looming, and the preparatory documents ponder different solutions to improve the realization of the UNESCO programmes.Footnote 27 The transformation of UNESCO into an organization dealing with huge societal problems, from peace to environment, and helping the economic development of member states was seen with worries by Finnish representatives. If they did not see these new directions as problematic per se, they were worried about the ways in which this could be realized and feared bureaucratic inefficiency and rising costs, as well as a deviation from UNESCO’s role in buttressing European peaceful cohabitation.

5.1.3 Finland and UNESCO During Détente

In studying Norway’s relations with UNESCO in the late 1940s, Christian Saele emphasized the role in Norwegian UNESCO policy of private characters with a sense of obligation, duty to participate in multilateral cultural cooperation.Footnote 28 In Finland, involvment in UNESCO mixed in the same way a national inferiority complex, a desire for involvement in all aspects of international integration, the perceived necessity to tap into international cooperation for the country’s internal development, worries about Finland’s international image, and a genuine interest in the values exposed in UNESCO’s charter. The Finnish example reminds one of Norway also in the sense that strong private individuals worked in cooperation with the Ministry of Education to shape Finland’s UNESCO policy. Especially in education, the UNESCO committee was interested in getting new information and practices from abroad and spreading information about Finland and its education system. The point was to make Finland a part of UNESCO’s normal activities, and to add Finland to the information gathering organized by UNESCO. UNESCO thus mixed, from Finland’s point of view, technical, administrative and political aspects, an existential urge linked to the perceived necessity to participate in international integration and defend the values of multilateral cooperation. While the first postwar generation was mostly interested in bringing Finland back to the international scene, the 1960s and détente brought a more active vision of Finland’s role as a neutral pacifier of international relations.

Technical aspects discussed by the Finns in UNESCO were mostly linked to the organization’s budget, the management of its programmes, and the dilemma between its increased commitment to the Global South and what Finland perceived as its role as a source of intellectual exchange, funding and dialogue in Europe. Finland’s ambition to keep UNESCO’s budget at reasonable levels and to make the programmes more pragmatic and realistic was also linked to a desire to keep UNESCO interested in Europe after decolonization and UNESCO’s turn towards assistance to developing countries. After the mid-1960s, members of the Finnish committee insisted on several occasions, both in internal documents and in public speeches, on the fact that UNESCO’s activities should not forget Europe: in 1972, the Finnish delegation gave a speech in that sense on behalf of all Nordic committees.Footnote 29 The same thing was expressed throughout Finland’s tenure in UNESCO up until the late 1970s, in terms that changed with time. In 1958, in a planning document destined to the Ministry of Education, the UNESCO committee wrote that “the part of UNESCO programs dedicated to so-called backward countries is, from a Finnish point of view, way too high”.Footnote 30 Finnish comments on the 1961–1962 programme and budget highlighted the same thing, emphasizing the need for concrete activities realized with the money spent, not only in Africa and Asia but also in Europe. In the 1970s, the focus had changed: the Finns wanted UNESCO to take its role in supporting collective security in Europe. 

The main thrust of Finnish reflections in these matters points to a strong interest for UNESCO’s values and for its role as a softener of Cold War international relations particularly in Europe. A role the Finns were not ready to see UNESCO abandon, as expressed in this document from 1960:Footnote 31

While fully appreciating the needs of the under developed regions, the National commission wants to stress the importance of the other principal field of activity of UNESCO, namely the role of coordinator and promotor of intellectual cooperation between nations. In this field, it is felt, UNESCO cannot without risks neglect the needs and interests of the better developed countries in order to become only an international relief agency. A sound balance between the two main fields, aid to under-developed nations and efforts to strengthen peace and international understanding through intellectual cooperation, is essential for the success of UNESCO.Footnote 32

In 1964, the Finnish minister of Education Jussi Saukkonen said the same thing, insisting that détente “offered new possibilities for UNESCO in its endeavours to promote international understanding and peaceful cooperation between countries, thus strengthening the foundations of permanent peace in the world”.Footnote 33 This was more than rhetoric from a foreign political perspective: UNESCO was an important part of détente and peaceful cooperation, in which Finland could truly realize the potential of its neutrality policy. One could, however, see a discrepancy between Finland’s essentially technical, pragmatic contribution to UNESCO and the very strong rhetoric of peaceful coexistence between nations the commission emphasized in its discourses destined to Finnish domestic audiences.Footnote 34

As a country in a delicate geopolitical position, Finland had also to be careful, in UNESCO as in other settings, with matters linked to global geopolitical disputes. The main tensions in UNESCO after 1956 were linguistic tensions around the use of French, tensions between different conceptions of culture, the East-West divide and, after the first decolonizations, divisions between North and South.Footnote 35 Finland did not take sides in the feud between French- and English-speakers, but it had critical positions regarding the compulsory translation of all UNESCO documents, which it saw as a waste of time and money. The main questions for Finland were linked to the bipolar divide and to disputes between North and South. While it could sometimes emphasize some matters with the Nordic group, Finland tried to keep to technical and formal matters, often opting out of the most politically charged matters.

Due to its specific geopolitical situation, Finland most of the time stayed outside of debates but sometimes also took sides with the East or used its contacts with the Soviet Union. In 1966, for example, Ilmo Hela asked for Soviet support to his candidacy to become the Nordic member in UNESCO’s Executive Board.Footnote 36 The Nordics had given him their support, but a Danish note from July 1966 described a meeting of West European commissions in which the Spanish representative had declared that a Finnish representative would damage the atmosphere of the group meetings. In a meeting in June 1966, also reported by the Danish delegation, the Spanish representative had emphasized that the presence of two communist ministers in the new Finnish government was a problem for Spain’s acceptation of a Finnish candidate.Footnote 37 The presence of communist ministers in Finland was not the only reason for Spain’s opposition: Spain complained that it never had a seat on the Executive Board, and had previously denounced the Nordic practice of rotating seats.Footnote 38 Hela thus demanded in April 1966 in a personal letter the support of the USSR in getting him the place in the Executive Board.Footnote 39

In the 1960s, the Finnish delegations dully noted divisions between various groups in the organization and stayed extremely cautious especially in affairs dividing East and West. In such questions as, for example, the question of China’s representation, the country sided mostly with the Eastern bloc. The instructions of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs insisted regularly on the potential political content of technical affairs, reminding the delegations of Finland’s “non-aligned and neutral foreign policy”, its will to remain outside of great powers’ conflict and to favour objective solutions.Footnote 40 Instructions always started with the usual: “the delegation should in its actions and speeches work according to Finland’s policy of neutrality and to the principles that Finland tries to adapt in all situations to all relations between states”. Finland emphasized solutions and decisions that had universal support, and abstained from difficult votes.Footnote 41 Voting instructions and speeches were given by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, mostly the political department. Instructions insisted on the organization’s budget ceiling and on keeping Finland within solutions that had the widest possible backing.Footnote 42 The Finnish delegations thus noted with increasing worry in the mid-1960s that international tensions started to show in UNESCO’s proceedings. US policy in Vietnam was criticized by the Eastern bloc, and tensions flared in relations between the South and the industrialized North.Footnote 43

Sakari Kiuru, who became head of the UNESCO committee after Siikala in 1966, emphasized that Finland’s activities in UNESCO were mostly technical and tried to keep out of political questions.Footnote 44 In a 1968 memorandum dealing with Finnish participation, the Finnish UNESCO committee drew a quick summary of its activities,Footnote 45 emphasizing technical tasks and the formal aspects of participation in an international organization: reports, surveys, statistics, meetings and visits. For the committee, Finland was clearly on the receiving end of UNESCO’s activities, getting inspirations and concrete cooperation to global educational, scientific and artistic projects. Finding a balance and keeping to these technical matters became more difficult in the 1970s, when even the Nordic countries were divided in their UNESCO policy. Finland abstained when a conflictual resolution on mass media was put to a vote in 1972.Footnote 46 A Swedish initiative in 1974 to find a compromise between the free flow of information defended by the United States and EC countries and the controlled flow of information defended by socialist countries divided the Nordic group. The 1973 meeting of national committees was sour, and UNESCO was then described by the Finns as a hotbed of political disputes. After 1976, none of the groups seemed to be ready to compromise.

Finland’s UNESCO membership also brought new avenues for coordination with the Nordic Countries.Footnote 47 Finland’s UNESCO committee organized in March 1957 a meeting of all Nordic committees in Helsinki, which was meant to strengthen the Nordic countries’ cooperation in UNESCO. Contacts consisted mostly of information sharing but also coordination of initiatives and positions, harmonization of common positions on certain matters during delegation work.Footnote 48 As mentioned earlier, a joint representative in UNESCO’s Executive Board rotated between the Nordic countries. This cooperation in UNESCO was important during all the period under study here.Footnote 49 There are plenty of concrete examples of this coordination: in 1958, for example, in preparation to the discussion on the designation of a new general secretary for UNESCO, the Nordic countries discussed their support for the candidacy of the Swede Alva Myrdal.Footnote 50 Siikala made clear during the meeting that Finland would not back any candidates, but he assured personally that the Finnish committee would have nothing against Myrdal.Footnote 51 The Nordics also organized together their participation in common programmes such as the East-West programme or salvage archaeological operations in Sudan and Egypt.

During UNESCO conferences, one could observe strong Nordic routines of cooperation between delegations. The Nordic group gathered in informal meetings, had joint representation, tried to coordinate their positions and interventions and informed each other. The Nordic member of UNESCO’s Executive Board represented all the Nordic countries. National UNESCO committees met every year in a different Nordic country, for meetings informal in nature but important as a coordination and information sharing device. Common projects were developed especially in education, which was a huge part of the Nordic countries’ profile in UNESCO.

This Nordic cooperation was a very important aspect of Finland’s participation in UNESCO. Nordic activities in international organizations were generally coordinated, and education and culture were particularly important for this: culture was typical of the non-political and non-economic, mostly symbolic elements most suitable for Nordic cooperation.Footnote 52 As in general cultural cooperation in the Nordic Council, the pooling of material and intellectual resources, as well as the attempt to gain more influence as a group inside the organization, was the main motivation for Nordic cooperation. For Finland especially, identity was also important, as it wanted to be seen as part of the Nordic group: in the late 1940s already, Oittinen said that one of the central goals in UNESCO would be to “build a regional cultural bloc that as such could manifest the Nordic fellowship outward”.Footnote 53

While UNESCO affairs were mostly matters for the Ministry of Education, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs considered UNESCO as part of Finland’s delicate foreign policy balance and kept a close eye on activities there.Footnote 54 The management of relations with UNESCO happened through a cooperation between the embassy in Paris, the Ministry of Education and the UNESCO committee,Footnote 55 and big political issues such as Portugal’s departure from the organization in December 1972, or the admission of the People’s Republic of China, were decided by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In 1967, when Portugal was banned from the instances of UNESCO for its colonial policy, Finland was approached to organize the next meeting of European committees. Helsinki refused out of a desire not to have to decide whether or not to accept Portugal’s participation. In 1970, Finland voted for the first time in favour of the admission of Eastern Germany in UNESCOFootnote 56 that Czechoslovakia had inscribed to the agenda of the UNESCO conference. The thing was not discussed during the conference, but in the Executive Board, Finland voted in the favour of Eastern Germany’s accession to UNESCO, even if in the explanation of its vote Finland insisted that it didn’t mean a change to its politics towards the two Germanies - although it worked as a convenient stepping stone to Finland’s recognition of both Germanies in September 1971.

Some problematic questions inside UNESCO were also linked to Finland’s own peculiarities. In the late 1960s, Finland, for example, did not join the UNESCO convention on the fight against racism and discriminations in education. Chloé Maurel reminds us that this convention came from the Eastern bloc and the United States did not sign it.Footnote 57 While the Finns insisted on several occasions in UNESCO on these subjects, making them an important part of their discourse in UNESCO, they did not join the convention because of the specific status of education in the Åland islands.Footnote 58 An autonomous and Swedish-speaking part of Finland’s territory, the Åland islands had the possibility to refuse financial support to schools teaching in another language than Swedish, a majority language on the archipelago but a minority language in Finland. Because this provision might fall foul of the UNESCO convention, Finland did not join the convention when it was published.Footnote 59 The question was debated intensively, as Finland’s representatives felt it placed the country into an uncomfortable situation regarding the majority of UNESCO members. In 1967, in a report on the question, Ilmo Hela considered that Finland should ratify in order to avoid reputation damages, proposing a series of measures that would solve the Åland question.Footnote 60

Both protagonists in the Ministry of Education and in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs increasingly agreed after the late 1950s that UNESCO cooperation had been positive for Finland. In an undated article published in the 1960s, Siikala writes that Finland’s participation in UNESCO was largely profitable to Finland.Footnote 61 What he especially emphasized, and what one can find also in documents from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, were the advantages gained through participation in UNESCO: while Finland got prime information from the UNESCO meetings, the organization saw Finland as a country worthy of recognition, solid, neutral, engaged in international activities and constructive. Secondly, the country had opened up through UNESCO towards Africa, Asia and other horizons at very little cost to its diplomatic apparatus. And finally, Finland had beneficiated from new trends, new models and new incitation linked to internationalization, to the development of education methods and so on. Cooperation especially of the Ministry of Education with UNESCO and other international organizations corresponded to this reflection; it was mostly a series of concrete cooperation schemes, where Finland aimed for concrete gains, information, methods, finances, models, inspirations and so on.

5.1.4 Finland in UNESCO’s Programmes

Concretely, Finland’s activity in UNESCO was organized around UNESCO programmes. Programmes were used to facilitate the work of Finnish organizations, provide them with new outlets and funding, develop their international contacts, orientate their activities in certain directions, and enhance Finland’s educational, cultural and scientific modernization. Mixed into that was also the will to develop a Finland more open to the world and to promote UNESCO’s rhetoric of pacified international relations.

Finnish participation in UNESCO’s East-West programme is a good example of that. The programme started in the 1950s and was one of the first Finland participated in. It was mostly realized through subsidies given to organizations in Finland to organize seminars on Asia, predominantly on India and Indian culture. While the UNESCO committee worked as a facilitator, Finland’s friendship societies and especially the Finland-India and Finland-Pakistan societies were the main agents of the programme’s realization. This was also realized in cooperation with other Nordic countries: India’s then Vice-President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was invited by the Nordic committees in the late 1950s.

In 1960, Finland joined one of the longest projects of the 1960s, the UNESCO campaign for saving the treasures of the Nubian valley in Sudan and then the preservation of the temples of Abu-Simbel in Egypt from the consequences of a dam construction.Footnote 62 The goal in Finland in the early 1960s was first to secure Finnish and Nordic participation in the expedition to Sudan starting in 1961. A sub-committee was created, headed by professor Esko Suomalainen and archaeologist Ella Kivikoski. The expedition, organised under UNESCO’s patronage, was supposed to work in Sudan for four months during four to five winters. The Sudanese government had promised half of the objects salvaged to the expedition, and Finland in 1960 contributed 2.5 million Finnish marks to this Nordic project. Finnish archaeologists participated in the Nubian research campaign, and following that Finland remained involved in salvaging the Abu Simbel temples.Footnote 63

Another programme in which Finland participated in the 1960s was the ASPRO programme, Associated Schools Project for Education in International Understanding and Cooperation. The ASPRO programme was created in 1953 and Finland joined it in 1959, with the affirmed goal of the UNESCO committee being to promote “international values” in Finnish education.Footnote 64 The programme went through three phases: the sensibilization of pupils first to the UN and questions linked to international cooperation, then to a given foreign culture (Finland chose India), and finally to the Declaration of Human Rights and its principles. In the autumn of 1962, there were seven Finnish schools in the programme, mostly in the biggest towns of the country.Footnote 65

The programme was seen by the Ministry of Education as a channel for the opening up and internationalization of the country. UNESCO was the inspiration of this work, and the Finnish documents repeat the rhetoric of UNESCO documents, with the main goal being “education for international understanding and cooperation”.Footnote 66 This meant a place in school programmes for international themes, the refurbishing of textbooks and teaching aids, work with youth organizations and so on. This was particularly marked in 1970, when Finland participated in the year of international education, with publications on international cooperation and international education.Footnote 67 It also worked as a rehearsal for the themes emphasized during Finland’s school reform and the debates on the introduction of the International Baccalaureate: the university of Helsinki started work towards the establishment of the IB in 1970. The 40th Nordic school youth meeting in Helsinki, in May 1970, dedicated its seminar to internationalism at school and worked on translation of UNESCO material on the subject.Footnote 68

Kaisa Savolainen, a former UNESCO civil servant in the field of adult education, did a PhD in 2010 on the subject of this internationalization of education in Finland,Footnote 69 where she emphasizes the role of UNESCO in importing to Finland the idea of education as a basis for peace and mutual understanding. She looks especially at the 1974 UNESCO recommendations on education to international understanding, cooperation and peace, as well as human rights and basic freedoms. The context was the CSCE negotiations, but this also revealed a more important dilemma in Finland between the committee’s international and its domestic work. In 1968, a report by the committee emphasized this double role of the committee, in which its “concrete work to promote international intellectual cooperation” contains constant efforts to connect domestic organizations to multilateral and international cultural activities, programmes, projects and organizations.Footnote 70 In a striking image, the report described the committee as both an electrical wire and a transformer, connecting the domestic and the international and adapting one to the other.

In the late 1960s, there were long reflections on the development of internationalization programmes in Finnish schools.Footnote 71 In a 1967 speech, Kalevi Sorsa spoke of education to internationalization as “a kind of spiritual national defence”, a basis for the global reflections necessary for the youth to understand and manage global problems. Sorsa emphasized the insufficiencies of the current situation, where Finns travelled but failed to get the right impressions and influences from foreign examples. Hence, the need to internationalize the school system, to ensure the “education of citizens who are cooperative, without prejudices, and open to other cultures”. He proposed the development of the network of ASPRO schools, and the Ministry also strongly supported UNESCO clubs, organizations of high school students or UN societies in the country.

Finland showed also significant interest in questions of environment in UNESCO. In 1966, during discussions about the creation of an international centre for environment studies, Finland tried to lobby for the centre to be created in Finland. The argument developed by the delegation in its report to Helsinki spoke of cultural policy, but also of the “significance it could have from the point of view of our foreign policy, that aims at peaceful international cooperation”.Footnote 72

5.2 New Winds in Finland’s Multilateral Cultural Relations During the 1970s

5.2.1 The Nordic Countries in UNESCO Between Criticism and New Avenues of Cooperation

The Nordic countries became more critical of UNESCO in the early 1970s.Footnote 73 The organization was accused of inefficiency, its portfolio of programmes was described as bloated and inefficient, with fragmented projects and lack of concrete actions. Although opinions varied amongst the Nordic countries, many shared the view that parliamentary decision making, as well as practical cultural cooperation, had to be strengthened in the organization. Some of the national committees felt that the influence of member states was diminishing, as were the opportunities to influence the work of UNESCO. The Nordics thus tried to develop cooperation, although with little success. At the 1978 meeting of national committees, despite strong pressures from Sweden, the committees were unable to reach an agreement on what should be done to strengthen their cooperation as a solution to UNESCO’s shortcomings. Denmark also increasingly behaved as a member of the European Communities after its accession to the organization in 1973, and the other Nordic Countries suggested that it might threaten the Nordic profile in UNESCO. These discussions were a first taste of the tensions that would split UNESCO in the 1980s.

Like the other Nordic Countries, Finland was associated to a Swedish proposal in 1972 trying to change the composition of the Executive Board by making its members representatives of member states and not anymore private individuals.Footnote 74 They reminded Maheu of the 1954 reform, where it was decided that the board’s members would be representatives of their government, although they would retain the necessity to be qualified in UNESCO’s fields of competence. The Swedes demanded that this proposal would be conducted to its logical end, which is to enable the general conference to elect member states as members of the board instead of private individuals. That would make the member states more interested in the work of UNESCO.Footnote 75

The 1970s however opened new avenues of cooperation that the Nordic Countries and Finland were quick to adapt to, as the CSCE became an essential backdrop to these countries’ foreign policy. This showed both at the Nordic level and in Finland’s UNESCO activities and participation in the CSCE process. It was not an entirely unproblematic development for Finland, as the Finns tried to maintain an even keel between the blocs and the various power players inside UNESCO, but progressively the CSCE project became an increasingly important part of Finland’s foreign policy.Footnote 76 In 1970, delegations at the Nordic Council meeting in Reykjavik demanded that Nordic cultural relations would be strengthened in the perspective of the CSCE: in March 1971, a treaty for cultural cooperation was signed between the five Nordic countries. The treaty emphasized old cultural links between these countries but planned also vast areas of new cooperation in the field of education, workers’ education and the management of intra-Nordic movements of population, scientific relations and so on. Siikala’s reaction to this increased institutionalization of Nordic cultural relations could not be anything else than enthusiastic: he wrote then that, finally, Nordic cultural relations were moving away from “punsch Scandinavism”, a Scandinavian cultural cooperation of elites and students drinking punsch in academic settings, and had moved towards the creation of a genuine Nordic cultural area.Footnote 77

The background was the CSCE but also the development of Nordic economic relations, with the signature in 1969 of the Nordek treaty. Despite the failure of this treaty to be ratified, and especially the 1971 Finnish decision not to ratify, these years were years of debate on the strengthening of Nordic integration. The 1971 treaty and its cultural institutions were the few things that remained of this discussion. Cooperation was organized by the Nordic Council, each country participating financially at the level of its contribution to the UN budget. The Nordic Cultural agreement of 1971 was the fruit of 25 years of collective cultural diplomacy practised in cooperation by Nordic governments, mostly through the Nordic Council and the cultural commission.Footnote 78 The list of domains of cooperation mentioned in a 1972 report for the Nordic Council is extensive: under the coordination of cultural secretariat in Copenhagen, led by the Finnish Magnus Kull, cooperation ranged from concrete proposals linked to the sharing of best practices in the domain of education to cultural cooperation, cooperation in the field of television, cinema, literature, the coordination and sharing of research infrastructures.

All that was linked to a rhetoric of strengthening the cultural proximity of the Nordic countries and developing a new vision of culture, away from the intellectual notion of culture as an elite practice and towards a cultural policy taking the masses into account. The budget of the organization for 1973 was 32 million Danish crowns, with the biggest single items of cooperation being funding for the Nordic centre for theoretical atomic physics and the Nordic centre for Asian studies, as well as the funding of a Nordic People’s Academy and a Nordic Department of social planning. In this context, Finland states as its goals in a 1973 report the development of cultural relations with Nordic neighbours, the harmonization of school systems, the translation of Nordic literature in the languages of other Nordic countries and cooperation in the domain of television and youth organizations.Footnote 79 Jaakko Numminen also emphasized Finland’s concrete participation into this cooperation, for example, the creation of the Nordic artists’ residency in Suomenlinna.

In various general conferences, Finland supported development aid, proposed actions for education, and was considered by African UNESCO members as a positive force in the organization, helping the emergence of a genuinely African cultural sector.Footnote 80 Siikala in 1969 emphasized this role of UNESCO as a development organization through education, writing that this work should concentrate on supporting cultural work by African countries themselves. The envoi of Siikala’s tirade insisted on educating Africans to care for themselves: “we could even say that education programmes developed without any concern for local needs and possibilities have been a problem more than a solution. They have triggered baseless hopes and social movements whose main destination was bound to be the local city slums”.Footnote 81 In Africa as in Finland, modernization and international cooperation had to be adapted to local needs, interpreted by locals, and not taken in blindly from abroad as bastardized version of the American way of life. In this work, Siikala ended, UNESCO was essential and Finland should be able to take a stronger role in that activity than it had before. Development was also clearly linked to trade: during the Nordic campaign against illiteracy in 1966, Finland delivered money to Tanzania to buy Finnish printing paper.Footnote 82

In 1961, commenting the UNESCO programme for 1963–1964, the Ministry for Education insisted on a pragmatic relation to development aid, which should mostly aim at developing education systems and other organizations in African countries, to give them the possibility to work for themselves.Footnote 83 In 1964, the Finnish committee on development aid demanded however a more active participation in international development aid.Footnote 84 Most of the work linked to development aid was organized in the 1960s–1970s by private or semi-private organizations, especially youth organizations that organized fund raising and aid projects in Africa, often in rocambolesque conditions. The state for the most part facilitated these organizations’ work: the UNESCO committee sent information and material to these organizations, for example in 1966 when the local high school youth organization of Taivalkoski wrote to ask for material.Footnote 85 This was true especially in the 1960s, when, for example, Finnish youth organizations organized the 1969 aid campaign in Mozambique.Footnote 86 The UNESCO committee served to either amplify or channel this strong interest amongst Finnish youth organizations and especially leftist youth organizations for practical development aid with countries in Africa. This was related to Finland’s growing commitment to UNESCO’s activities and was during the 1970s a shared competence of the ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs.Footnote 87 The state accompanied, supported and provided channels for these private initiatives.

5.2.2 The CSCE’s Third Basket and Expanding Multilateral Cooperation in the 1970s

According to Margaretha Mickwitz, who worked most of her career in the Ministry of Education, 1960s UNESCO was one of the forums on which the CSCE negotiations of 1970–1975 were prepared.Footnote 88 Mickwitz, who worked in Geneva for more than a year negotiating Finland’s participation in the CSCE’s so-called third basket, saw the CSCE as a continuation of European bridge-building, collective security characteristic of Finland’s foreign policy line. While development aid was important, the Finns never forgot to mention and support UNESCO’s European side and its role for a pacification of Europe’s international relations. Cultural relations thus naturally found their place into a continuum of effort going from UNESCO to the CSCE, and corresponding both to Finland’s neutrality policy and to a rhetoric of European coexistence. This was in sync with Finland’s foreign policy: in an autumn 1970 report, Siikala mentioned that Moscow wanted to use UNESCO for the strengthening of peace and security in Europe, and Finland might have a role in that. With the CSCE negotiations in the background, Siikala emphasized continuity and the possibility to use cultural relations as a support for Finland’s bridge-building efforts.Footnote 89

An important step in this process was the European intergovernmental conference on cultural policy Eurocult organized by Finland in June 1972. The first of its kind, Eurocult was organized as a cooperation of European UNESCO committees.Footnote 90 It was an important occasion in the emergence of a democratized conception of culture: René-Pierre Anouma emphasizes the way this conference was a “Helsinki before Helsinki”.Footnote 91 The Finnish organizers used the occasion not only to emphasize Finland’s position and cultural heritage, but also a to showcase a certain definition of culture. Eurocult followed the Venice Conference on Cultural Policy that had debated the same points a few years before, expressing a certain vision of culture and cultural policy.

During Eurocult, the biggest point of discussion was the definition of the concept of culture: was culture an elite activity, the arts and humanities, or was it a social phenomenon, a democratized way of life born of increasing leisure time and mass media? Of these definitions, the Assembly wished to focus on the latter and emphasized democratic cultural policy and the democratization of culture, broadening participation and inclusion in cultural life. The definition of the relationship between the two remained incomplete and also led to problems in interpreting the concept of culture. The mass media and pop culture were seen as a priority for cultural policy but also as threats to existing official forms of culture.Footnote 92

During the negotiations of the CSCE, debates over these points continued with increased alacrity, linked to the political stakes of the conference as a whole. Finland actively participated in discussions linked to the so-called third basket, aiming at the improvement of human contacts and cultural exchanges, using the discussions and ideas developed during Eurocult. Geopolitically, Finland appeared throughout the negotiation to thread the same line as the USSR, working as a mediator between the superpowers and a group of Western European countries. Finland also had its own ideas to emphasize, reminding for example the role of the state in Finland in coordinating cultural contacts,Footnote 93 as well as the importance of cultural equality, democratization of culture and UNESCO.Footnote 94 Finland affirmed its support for more circulation of information, but underlined also Soviet reluctance towards this principleFootnote 95: in March 1973, the Soviet representative praised Finland’s balanced statements and respect for the diversity of European social and political systems.Footnote 96

During discussions in the early spring of 1973, the negotiations of the third basket hit a crunch that the Finns contributed to resolve as members of the N+N group (Neutrals and Non-aligned). The discussions pitted mostly Western Europeans against the Eastern bloc, with both the US and the USSR looking at the debates from a distance. In March, Finnish remarks about the necessity to take into account European diversity of political systems and sovereignty attracted the ire of the British representative, who mocked Finland’s peace rhetoric, concluding that “it is the philosophy of my country that the broadest possible exchange of information and ideas will be the best guarantee of peace”.Footnote 97 The Eastern group and especially Poland had strongly emphasized the role of the state as a coordinator of culture in order to avoid the rise of a “brutal” under-culture, and Finland was taken in the crossfire trying to balance between statist and liberal visions of cultural policy.Footnote 98 This difficult balancing act between state control and liberalism was also one between Western and Eastern Europe.

In June 1974, the Finnish Ministry for Foreign affairs sent its instructions to the delegation in Geneva: quarrels between East and West blocking the Third basket and the entirety of the conference should be solved through the addition of “non-inference in internal affairs” to the principles of the conference. The Ministry thought that only Finland could carry that proposal, and the delegation answered with a possible wording.Footnote 99 The Nordic Countries were not enthusiastic about the proposal, but the Soviet Union was thankful to Finland for efforts contributing to include this principle in the conference.Footnote 100 In fact, Sarah Snyder showed how the Soviet Union and the United States had reached an understanding on this point but, in order to avoid Western European suspicion, decided to work through Finland as a member of the N+N group to promote the solution.Footnote 101 Finnish documents show the way Finland carried on this task.

In mid-June 1974, the Soviet Union said they were ready for concessions on substance if the wording proposed by the Finns was in the introduction, and at the end of June Switzerland and Austria announced their backing of the Finnish proposal.Footnote 102 The Finnish main negotiator, diplomat Jaakko Iloniemi, reported on 26 June that discussions on formulation were ongoing.Footnote 103 In the beginning of July, Sweden was the only remaining obstacle, Stockholm wanting to add respect for international commitments amongst the principles of the conference, a red cloth to Eastern European countries. Kalevi Sorsa, now the Finnish prime minister, had to call the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme to unlock the situation:Footnote 104 in mid-July, Sweden fell behind the Finnish proposal. A package deal was finally accepted on 21 July, Finland garnering praise for its work on the matter. At the end of 1974, however, reports from the Finnish delegation in Geneva still emphasized stalemate between Eastern and Western Europeans. In November 1974, a proposal by the USSR on family reunions and international marriages was defended by France and Finland, but cultural affairs remained a bone of contention for the rest of 1974.Footnote 105

Relations between UNESCO and the CSCE were considered by Finland as important also after 1975: a list of proposals through which the work of UNESCO could support the CSCE process was discussed in 1975 by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs as part of reflections on post-Helsinki foreign policy.Footnote 106 The goal was to use the CSCE process to bring back UNESCO’s attention towards Europe.Footnote 107 The proposals were mostly scientific, cultural and pragmatic: the development of sea ecology, language training, education, heritage preservation, scientific cooperation and so on. But the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was not unanimous: the diplomat Ralph Enckell insisted that all issues mentioned could be better managed through the bilateral cultural treaties recently signed between Finland and various countries. UNESCO could not be seen anymore, for Enckell, as an efficient platform: it was too susceptible at that stage to be blocked by the majority of developing countries opposing the use of limited funds for programmes dedicated to richer countries.Footnote 108 Support for UNESCO was found mostly in the Ministry of Education, which was more optimistic: Margaretha Mickwitz insisted on the role the CSCE could play to attract UNESCO back towards Europe while acknowledging that most cultural relations could be handled bilaterally.Footnote 109

During the 1960s–1970s, Finland also became increasingly integrated in Western European cooperation mechanisms and organizations.Footnote 110 In January 1970, Finland became a member of the Council of Europe’s Cultural Cooperation Commission (CCC). The government had presented this project to Parliament in 1969, insisting on the way the treaty completed the palette of officially organized cultural international links, from UNESCO to bilateral treaties. The CCC was the first Western European cultural organization in which Finland entered after UNESCO accession. In 1975, as the Council discussed the integration of the CCC in the Council’s political architecture, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs made it clear to representatives of the Ministry of Education that it would mean Finland’s departure from the Commission, since Finland was not a member of the Council of Europe. The proposal was finally rejected. Finally, the OECD was particularly influent in education, through exchanges of teachers, spreading of material and teaching aid and so on.Footnote 111 For example, about 40 Finnish teachers participated every year to teaching courses in different parts of Europe, which had an effect on foreign language teaching in Finland’s schools. Finland was also after 1965 an observer in the Standing Conference of European Ministers of Education.

In 1970, the country had joined the OECD, and especially the organization’s committees on education, science and technology. Marjatta Oksanen emphasized the importance of this for scientific and technological cooperation with the West, which went beyond bilateral relations.Footnote 112 This vast field of organizations and multilateral agencies was coordinated from Finland mostly in the Ministry of Education, which had cemented its role as the architect of most technical aspects in Finland’s cultural diplomacy: relations with the OECD for example were managed in the Ministry of Education by the Department for universities and science.Footnote 113