Culture was no exception in Finland’s foreign policy during the Cold War: international cultural relations were seen by the Finnish authorities as another stage on which the basic play of Finland’s Cold War domestic and foreign policies was performed. In the maze of justifications used by administrators for improving the state’s capacity to coordinate and direct Finland’s spontaneous cultural relations, figured historical memories, conceptions of desirable directions for the nation’s development, the necessities of Finland’s geopolitical situation, and more concrete notions linked to commercial and economic development. The slow institutionalization of this cultural diplomacy and the activities it conducted aimed at Finland’s geopolitical stabilization and participation in international developments, and the country’s state-led cultural modernization.

After the improvisations of the first postwar years, Finland’s state developed a cultural diplomacy also in order to further its control of the country’s society. Finnish administrators wanted to promote certain forms of cultural modernization and adoption of foreign models. In the context of the Cold War, they also wanted better control over organizations managing cultural contacts with the Eastern bloc, and a society more in tune with at least the rhetoric of the country’s official foreign policy line. The development of Finland’s welfare state and the tensions of the Cold War, mostly for Finland the country’s relation with the Soviet Union, precipitated the concentration in the hands or under the influence of state institutions of prerogatives conceived as essential to the nation’s development and to the stability of its foreign policy. Even though the Finnish state created institutions to manage parts of the cultural field, create new forms of cultural relations, and coordinate or support a large group of private organizations, the system remained divided between private, semi-public, and public agents. Some of these private organizations however worked with state agencies through personal contacts, networks, funding and the promotion of common values and lines. The concrete forms of this cultural diplomacy went from facilitating activities on behalf of the cultural field to directly coordinating certain organizations and activities seen as essential to the state. The state tried to compensate for the perceived shortcomings of society’s spontaneous cultural contacts, especially the lack of spontaneous contacts with the Eastern bloc. It developed a form of official cultural relations and involved the Finns in the bureaucracy of multilateral cultural cooperation. In that, the Finnish state’s actions contributed in their own way to Finland’s long-term internationalization, despite a lack of resources and a number of constraints. Some activities such as cultural treaties with Eastern Europe ended with the Cold War context—others, such as academic exchanges, burst beyond the limits imposed by the Cold War and developed further.

The intellectual environment in which Finland’s administrators developed the institutions of the country’s cultural diplomacy was bookended by the memories of World War II and by the context of the Cold War. For many, memories of the war worked as an essential background for plans to modernize the country through the controlled digestion of international examples and inspirations, to pacify Finland’s relations with the USSR, and to maintain its relations with the West. Siikala’s quote at the head of this conclusion, written in 1999, is a clear example of the way most of Finland’s cultural diplomats saw their work: before everything as an attempt to create a situation in which Finland would both entertain pacified and active relations with the Soviet Union and be able to develop and fulfil its Western European cultural destiny. For state administrators like Siikala, this situation did not appear as a difficult compromise pushed on Finland by the result of the war, but as a desirable state of affairs making the most of Finland’s geopolitical situation and allowing for the controlled development of Finland’s cultural level. On this basis, he could very well in 1999 consider Finland’s trajectory since World War II as a single rising curve, tracing his country’s harmonious integration into global cultural developments and cultural, scientific and educational modernization. In this vision, cultural globalization in the 1990s and the very questioning of the tenets of Finnish cultural identity could be seen as more disruptive to Finnish culture than the Soviet Union or the end of the Cold War. What this narrative understates is the domestic political consequences of Finland’s Cold War status, the self-censorship, uniformization and state control this entailed. What it overstates is the role of the Finnish state in a process of opening Finland to the world, in which the state was never the only, nor even in certain sectors the main protagonist.

Finland’s cultural diplomats in the years 1945–1975 envisioned a necessary increase in the capacity of the Finnish state to control, develop and coordinate the spontaneous flow of cultural relations. This had to be channelled in directions congenial to harmonious cultural development, modernization, participation in international cultural cooperation and good relations with the Soviet Union. In the Cold War context, extending the structures of the welfare state to culture was not only a process aiming at modernizing society following a statist vision of relations between state and culture:Footnote 1 it was also a way to support Finland’s official foreign policy, as some essential things could not be left to domestic political passions or to the market. Because of a need for modernization and in the context of relations with the Soviet Union, cultural, intellectual, scientific or artistic international relations became conceived as too important to be completely left to society. They had to be linked to the state-led harmonious development of the nation and to the balanced development of its foreign policy. Geopolitics also provided a sense of national emergency, a tension that allowed for increased state coordination in society.

These evolutions took some time to unravel. Immediately after the war, cultural relations with the Soviet victor developed as the private endeavour of organizations supported by Soviet resources, while the Finnish state had little means to conduct any ambitious cultural policy, foreign or domestic. Memories of wartime censorship also prevented the recreation of state-led coordination agencies. As Finland remained outside of UNESCO, the reconstruction of links with the West happened mostly bilaterally through private organizations, individuals or local administrations. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union’s edgy relations with Finnish governments before 1956 meant Moscow preferred to deal with private organizations. The most important exception to a figure of general public passivity was cooperation with the Nordic countries. Starting from this postwar situation where the Finnish authorities had only little instruments to support cultural international relations, ministries worked to create a level of official international cultural relations and achieving coordination of the Finnish cultural field in matters linked to international cultural relations.Footnote 2

In 1956, Finland became a member of UNESCO. This widened Finland’s horizons in international intellectual cooperation, and integrated it in the formal and bureaucratic universe of multilateral cultural cooperation and UNESCO’s programmes. Finland’s reflexes in UNESCO were rather similar to its participation in other multilateral organizations: the Finns contributed faithfully to the organization, but were also critical from the beginning of the organization’s costs and bureaucratic system. They tried to obtain as much as possible at the smallest cost possible, while at the same time worrying about their reputation in the organization. They worked to keep their policy statements aligned with the Eastern bloc, or to keep away from big geopolitical questions altogether. The rhetoric of understanding between nations and development of the Global South was genuinely felt by most Finnish administrators, but they also worked to keep UNESCO involved primarily in Europe, where Finland’s interests were.

The early 1960s also saw a stabilization of relations between Finland and the USSR, after a series of crises in which the president elected in 1956, Urho Kekkonen, imposed himself as the centre of a policy of friendly relations with Moscow. After 1962, détente gave Finland the opportunity to develop more contacts with the Eastern and Western blocs. The strong autonomy of private or semi-private organizations dealing with aspects of international cultural relations was allowed to continue, although the Finnish state absorbed or brought in its orbit the main organizations dealing with cultural relations with the USSR and other important aspects (exchanges, or language teaching abroad for example).Footnote 3

In March 1966, the creation of the Department of International Affairs in the Ministry of Education was the high-water mark of Finland’s state-driven development of cultural diplomacy. A centripetal force attracted various private organizations towards the Ministry of Education, either through direct funding, absorption or coordination. A vast field of organizations remained, although parts of it were increasingly coordinated by or in contact with a Ministry eager to help and support them. The need for coordination in the most important domains was regularly emphasized for reasons linked both to a strongly normative view of desirable cultural evolutions for the country and to worries about losing control over society’s spontaneous international contacts.

Finland’s solution to problems of coordination in these circumstances was genuinely original, and could still inform current practices. Forms of private–public cooperation in cultural diplomacy have ranged across a variety of models: while Germany has a distant Foreign Ministry that mostly funds middle-ground organizations, in the United States debates over cultural diplomacy have resulted in the creation of agencies in the State Department. Finland during the Cold War emphasized flexible arrangements across agencies, soft forms of coordination with civil society organizations, and the channelling of relations through close-knit networks destined to ensure that most basic assumptions would be shared and information would quickly circulate. Under strong domestic and foreign pressures, this coordination could morph into enforced uniformity in the context of a small state. The difficult geopolitical context and the need for modernization were good reasons to exert a level of pressure on non-state actors, either directly or through public resources and the state’s facilitative support. The Finnish state thus found itself coordinating important parts of Finland’s cultural relations, beneficiating from the expertise and engagement of non-state actors.Footnote 4 The state was, however, never the only protagonist, but worked through soft coordination in a context where a certain conception of the national interest in terms of cultural relations was shared widely. The increasing role of the state in Finland’s international cultural relations also meant the emergence of official, bureaucratic forms of cultural cooperation, as in cultural treaties or in UNESCO’s multilateral bureaucracy. UNESCO also brought new subjects to Finland’s debates, for example the organization of development aid.

In the early 1970s, the CSCE process electrified the field, bringing state-coordinated culture to the centre of renewed European relations. A number of cultural treaties were signed, while the CSCE contributed to a new definition of culture that brought back the influence of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. This statist approach was mostly visible in Finland’s relations to countries in the Eastern bloc: Finnish society didn’t need much support for its relations with the West, which flowed naturally although they too benefitted from instruments created by official initiatives. Cultural treaties were a specific form of cultural relations, heavy on bureaucracy and rather official, a culture of folk groups and classical music, literature and language teaching, art exhibitions, official visits, administrators’ meetings and strictly reciprocal exchange programmes. While UNESCO was perceived as unable to play its role of bridge over the bipolar divide due to its concentration on the Global South, Finland felt it necessary to emphasize the CSCE as a new organization for cultural cooperation.

Finland’s activism in international organizations came to replicate the expansion of the state’s action, reaching a plateau in the mid-1970s. The state’s role in cultural affairs had expanded, the Cold War had reached a moment of détente, and the Ministry of Education had at its disposal a group of institutions directly managing or coordinating various aspects of international cultural relations. Finland had managed to build a cultural diplomacy defined by the development of a welfare state coordinating part of the private sector, accompanying the modernization of the country and linked to its foreign policy. The administrators of this process conceived it as a small nation waking up from its nationalistic slumber, opening up to the world, taking its place, and importing modernity on its own terms.

A rhetoric of peace through cultural cooperation, visible especially in the UNESCO context, almost perfectly corresponded to the Soviet rhetoric of peaceful cohabitation and understanding between nations. This brings into question the sincerity of such rhetoric: was it genuinely felt as an important thing for Finland or mostly borrowed as a necessary bow to Finland’s powerful neighbour? The importance of the experience of the war tends to suggest that, despite the obvious cynicism linked to Finland’s geopolitical position and Soviet pressures, the idea of a pacification of Finnish society through cultural contacts also had a resonance amongst Finnish cultural diplomats.

Can we say, as Paavo Lipponen points out, that the Finnish state “internationalized” Finland? During the three decades we studied Finnish society generally opened up to the world. After the stabilization of its international and domestic situation in the late 1950s, and following the FINN-EFTA treaty in 1961, Finland was increasingly associated to Western economic integration. Nordic cooperation also included Finland in a zone of free circulation, simplifying border crossings to seek jobs or cultural artefacts. On the other side of the bipolar divide, relations developed out of the state-enforced logic of the arrangement signed in 1948, but also in some circumstances spontaneously: the peace festivals organized by the Eastern bloc are a good example of this, which worked for many young Finns more as an avenue to the world than as a moment of ideological endoctrinment.Footnote 5 These decades saw the development of several ways through which the Finns could have international connections. While most were spontaneous, the state or an official organization could often be seen in the background, providing funding, support, networks, programmes and institutions facilitating one way or another. Ministries, however, also developed a specific field of cultural diplomacy and multilateral cultural cooperation dominated by public organizations and working of its own logic. It also set limits to what could be done and criteria for what was desirable, out of an ethos of national cultural development and the necessities of life as a friendly neighbour to the USSR.

In his work, Andreas Åkerlund questioned the link between state-funded international exchange programmes and the development of Sweden’s foreign policy between 1938 and 1990.Footnote 6 In the Swedish case, Åkerlund describes a system mostly dominated by public-funded organizations and the state. In the case of Finland, one can observe a process of slow expansion of state-funded activities that never managed to entirely monopolize the field of cultural relations, although it spread certain assumptions and became a towering feature in the cultural field. The welfare state managed to channel a significant part of the Finnish population’s international cultural contacts in these years. It also created bureaucracies and institutions that would not have developed spontaneously, mostly aiming at giving Finland visibility in international cooperation and emphasizing relations with the Eastern bloc. Next to spontaneous relations, an official form of cultural cooperation emerged involving state agencies but also local levels such as most Finnish municipalities. The Cold War imposed limits and opened opportunities, while the construction of the welfare state and debates about national identity suggested directions in which to steer Finland’s culture.

These arrangements, which Finland’s cultural diplomats considered essential because of the necessity for the state to manage some things of national importance, stabilized in the 1970s but evolved in the 1980s following changes in the equilibriums of the Cold War, and the evolution of relations between state and society. Finland’s rapid economic growth and social changes came with demands of decentralization and an increase in spontaneous international cultural relations. After the mid-1970s, while demands of decentralization in domestic cultural policy started to increase,Footnote 7 the role of state institutions in the careful curating of cultural relations changed quickly.Footnote 8 One can find signs of increasing frustration in the Ministry of Education as to the seemingly anarchical development of Finland’s international cultural contacts, and a feeling of disenchantment with international cooperation. In 1981, Siikala criticized cultural globalization and the spread of crass, American, commercial popular culture: “A universal culture has emerged only in the realm of commercial mass entertainment”.Footnote 9 Siikala’s conclusion to a life spent “internationalising” Finland was bitter-sweet: the development of international relations in cultural matters was escaping the careful coordination of the state, imposing new criteria of excellence to local productions, taking too many resources and imposing new trends without first refining them for local use. These influences could not be allowed to become the main thrust of its cultural life. But in a country that was integrating into the Western world’s cultural and economic developments, Siikala’s words were already outdated.

The 1980s, despite the strong economic development of Finland, witnessed also the partial unravelling of the administrative arrangements described earlier, especially at the expense of the Ministry of Education. In the late 1980s, a large committee reflecting on cultural and image diplomacy made an ambitious programme of development of Finland’s cultural diplomacy, but was mostly unsuccessful in bringing it to concrete fruition due to an economic crisis and the disturbances created by the end of the Cold War.Footnote 10 Finland’s bid for integration in the EU, started in 1991, opened up a period where Finnish society would enter directly in contact with other societies, the state slowly withdrawing from the management of cultural affairs: in a 1994 letter to the Finnish ambassador in The Hague dealing with the possibility to create a Finnish cultural centre in Antwerp, Siikala described cultural relations as a domain where the state was less and less involved. Progressively, the state was moving away from direct contacts between citizens and cultural actors.Footnote 11 Changes after the 1970s also touched the nature of state intervention in society and of Finland’s integration in Western Europe and the world.Footnote 12 The 1991–1992 economic crisis that struck Finland derived into a deep crisis of public funding, that forced official organizations from ministries to municipalities to entirely rethink their activities.Footnote 13 This transformed what was mostly a political, technical (education, arts and cultural projects) and identity-driven project into a commercial and economic project using culture as a commodity destined to foreign markets, an asset in the global competition of states and societies, and an aspect of nation branding.Footnote 14 This retained some old aspects, such as the importance of work towards domestic audiences for “international education”, and a longing for consensus and state coordination.Footnote 15

Looking at Finland’s cultural diplomacy in 1945–1975, it appears clearly that Finland is not a sui generis case when it comes to the organization and development of its cultural diplomacy. In scholarly terms, this work comes to confirm the importance in Nordic postwar cultural diplomacy of the elements presented by Ingimundarson and Magnúsdottir: historical experiences from World War II, modernization drives, the construction and idealization of the welfare state and the development of national cultural traditions in the crossfire of the Cold War.Footnote 16 These evolutions suggest multiple chronologies of cultural diplomacy in Finland, some extending beyond the context of the Cold War and linked to the evolutions of the Finnish welfare state. Once the pressing context of the Cold War was over, financial crisis and a new liberal era made resistances to state coordination the norm, changing the structure of Finland’s welfare state. Accession to the EU allowed direct, simple and natural contacts between Finnish society and its international environment, and the incentives for state action in international cultural relations became ripe for re-evaluation. Here again, what mattered in this re-evaluation were the contours of national identity, Finland’s geopolitical context, domestic policy and increasingly commercial and economic considerations.