“She found it hard to believe that there would be any bold moves, because too many people had dirty flour in their bags, and people with filthy fingers are hardly enthusiastic about digging up the past . . . those who poke around in the past will get a stick in the eye.”
Sofi Oksanen, Purge
She’s a renaissance person and multi-award winning novelist with six books, a playwright of six plays, two movie scripts and one opera — that’s right — and she’s been called the Finnish-Estonian Charles Dickens. Her first play “Purge” (Puhdistus), set in Estonia during the Soviet occupation and mass deportations and right after the restoration of Estonian independence, grew into her third novel and was turned into a drama film, and together with her first novel with the revealing name “Stalin’s Cows” (Stalinin lehmät) , published in Finnish in 2003, set the stage for her voice at the age of 26.
But above all, the Finnish-Estonian novelist Sofi Oksanen
(b. 1977) is a truth-teller.
I was born into a family of Finnish and Estonian descent at a time when Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain, and one of my countries of origin was still under Soviet occupation. So I was for a long time more aware of the differences between east and west than of any characteristics common to Europe.
Oksanen has been telling us the truth for the entire Putin’s presidency, only, we didn’t listen. We didn’t hear. Or perhaps we didn’t hear because we did not want to hear.
Perhaps we were too preoccupied with terrorism and the sexed-up War on Terror, and the man next-door who looked like us with blue-eyes could not be a villain.
Oksanen began writing her fourth novel When the Doves Disappeared in 2007. President Putin had declared Estonia an enemy state. Suspected Kremlin hackers had launched a major cyber-attack on Estonia, the first of its kind, in the wake of a government decision to relocate a monument to Red Army soldiers. This multi-faceted attack by the Russian Federation included a return to Soviet-era propaganda: the Estonians, Putin declared, were Nazis and fascists.
According to Russia, Ukraine and Zelenskyy’s administration, of course, are full of the same Nazis and fascists. Already for several years now, preemptively, Putin’s administration has spun similar tales of Finland’s going full Nazi — undoubtedly, a reasonable Russian reason for Finland’ NATO bid, to join the club of Nazis and fascists, who threaten the peace-loving Russkiy mir.
Et tu, Sweden?
In 2011 Russia spent 1,3 billion dollars on international propaganda – more than on fighting unemployment.
The imaginary reality is needed to justify their invasions, and military expenses that are going to consume 33 percent of the state budget in the next two years at the same time as most of the citizens are extremely poor. It's needed to prevent that truth comes to light, exposing their dirty money and corruption, the money they've robbed from the people; their chance for a better future, higher life expectancy, better health, better education, lower rates in sexually transmitted diseases, and so on.
That fiction is also created to whitewash their own past in the KGB and therefore they need to revive the Soviet Union, and its heroes, like Stalin, because otherwise they would be lost. The public face of this ruling circle is the president himself, a third generation KGB-man.
“No wonder these experts of psychological manipulation fooled you.”
For West modern image of evil is Osama bin Laden, not a white, blue-eyed man wearing a suit and a tie. He and his cronies don't wear national costumes representing otherness, they don't look like terrorists, they are not Arabs, Muslims or black.
And that's why West was so certain they wanted to be like us.
"The mask has now come off and only the cold face of war is visible."
President Sauli Niinistö of Finland, February 24, 2022
We were so sure, weren’t we, that if only we were nice and courteous to Putin’s court, if only we treated Putin like the second most important statesman in the world and gave Russia the best seats in all the elite tables and the front row in the photo calls, he would want to make his country a European democracy.
It wasn't until the invasion of Ukraine that the Western countries started to talk about Russia as an imperialistic country. It took all these years to get these definitions into Western discourse even though Eastern-European countries have been trying to get rid of colonialist traces of Soviet Union for past twenty years – Russia actively harnessing this process.
We on the Eastern border of Russia have learned it takes ages to become a subject in Western discourse and therefore this Eastern European decolonization process haven't really caught Western eyes. Even though Western countries understand that slavery is one of the reasons behind the problems many countries have in Africa, they expected Easten Europe to become modern democracies in an instant.
It's because the West didn't recognize the colonialist nature of Soviet occupation and due to that it did not recognize the process when Russia returned to its practice.
Oksanen identifies herself as a “post-colonial author.”
“We know about British colonialism.
Russian colonialism is not well known.
I think we should call it what it was – and is.”
“People ask about my hair when I want to talk about human rights.”
Russia has never been “an overseas kind of empire”, Oksanen adds, rather a state that’s sought to exploit and colonise its European neighbours. Oksanen says that, growing up in Finland, she learned about the country’s past at school. But she was taught nothing of Estonia and had to fill in the gaps from oral history.
During my years at school, maps hung on our classroom walls on which the Finnish borders were clear, as were those of the Soviet Union; Estonia however, did not appear on the map.
A country that is not marked on a map does not exist by the way – be the reason for its absence what it may. It’s difficult to talk about this kind of a nation with people who don’t know it, as well as much about the injustices and threats experienced by the people of that country. It’s difficult to prove the existence of such a nation since it cannot be pointed out on a map hanging on a classroom wall, printed in a school textbook or newspaper, nor can its flag be shown. Maps however, leave a strong, visual imprint in the memory, which is far-reaching.
The period of imperialism of Western countries was, however, thoroughly covered in school. The word “imperialism” was never associated with the Soviet Union and was not even associated with Russia following the collapse of the Union, Bronze (Soldier) Night or the war in Georgia. Instead, expressions such as Russia’s or the Soviet Union’s “sphere of influence” and “area of privilege” are still placidly used in the Finnish media’s lexicon and school lessons where the Baltic and Eastern European states can still sometimes be referred to as “buffer states”.
The treatment of colonies or former mother countries is not considered part of this rhetoric in connection with Russia or the Soviet Union, even though these concepts apply to the Soviet Union’s activities based on oppression, stealing of possessions and activities based on slave labour, as well as Russia’s new goals.
It is easier to acknowledge a country’s defence needs and therefore the idea of privileges and buffer countries does not seem like a bad one. It sounds more natural, when privileges and buffer countries are spoken of. The elements of exploitation are dispelled, as is the economic gain, although Estonians know what the world’s largest animal is. It was the Estonian pig, whose feet and head were in Estonia, under the counter, and its carcass is on the counter in Moscow.
The same kind of oppression is not associated with privilege and buffer countries as with colonialism, even though for example Finno-Ugric peoples are held in Russia’s iron grip, because they happen to live on top of great natural resources. This is why ethnic repression can flourish in Russia: the situation of those who are downtrodden interests no one.
Decolonialization
ESTONIA
Along with becoming independent again, a process of decolonialization began in Estonia and is still ongoing: the undoing of the occupation. This entailed concrete actions, which included the removal of the occupying army from the country, returning the property to the first independence-era owners, a land reform, and restoring society, also the law, to the state that prevailed before the double occupation.
The nation’s memory also had to be rebuilt, biographies had to be collected and archived, a foundation for new research and history writing had to be created. The stories which had been preserved orally had to be given written form. The deported were rehabilitated. Books gathered and recovered the national memory that the occupations had destroyed, and gave written form to stories in which people finally could see themselves reflected.
They reconstructed the country’s past in such a way that it matched the citizens’ own experiences. Events were given terms which corresponded to the experiences of Estonians. The euphemisms and circumlocutions of the Soviet era were left behind, replaced by words such as occupation, occupying forces, repression, and deportations.
When we in the West already in school learn something about what colonialism meant to the African nations, in Russia there is no attempt to make future generations understand what Russia’s and the Soviet Union’s colonialism meant to the countries it occupied.
RUSSIA
Instead, the memory of the Soviet Union is being rehabilitated and its history cleansed and massive propaganda campaigns are perpetrated on the former “colonies” and the consequence is that the Baltic countries, one after the other, are Russia’s number one enemies.
Threats.
Because they do not want the Russians to understand that their country could have the same success, under a different administration.
That is why those small countries must remain enemies, not friends, not examples, but enemies. Then aggression toward them is justified. Then their experiences, their sufferings are also justified and there is no need to feel empathy for the victims, because after all – they deserved it.
According to Moscow’s moral code, the admission of errors, apologies, and redemption of crimes represent weakness; respect can be earned only with violence. Therefore the Western model of dealing with the past does not apply in Russia.
The absence of that moral code should have awakened the Western nations to realize that Russia will never be on the road to Western democracy.
But the Western nations also failed to look for it, because the Western nations have not learned to associate imperialism with Russia. It is as if no one understood that Russia should have had to do as much comprehensive work to deal with its recent past as any state that has lived under totalitarianism.
It isn’t our job
"Everything was repeating itself. Even if the ruble had changed to the kroon . . . there would always be . . . a boot on your neck."
Sofi Oksanen, Purge
There has not been a shortage of those suggesting that if only we had done more to appease Putin, to help Russia, more money, more red carpets, more everything.
If only Finland had rolled out the red carpet for Putin’s state visits more than just twice a year, invited him to more operas, dined & wined him more often, flattered him more to make him feel like a real big statesman, offered the President of Finland’s homemade rhubarb juice more often, then Russia would be so much better.
If only the Nordic countries had given more millions and more billions to clean up the environmental catastrophe that was the post-Soviet Russia, then, surely, the Russian people would be better off and more like us.
If only Finland had supported more Russian NGOs and democratic movements, then Russia would be like Europe today.
If only Finland, Estonia, Ukraine had developed a third cheek, and a fourth, and a fifth, so many more cheeks, to turn over and over again to accommodate the big poor wounded, hurt, suffering, downtrodden, misunderstood nuclear state next-door that is Putin’s Russia. If only.
“I wish that the Russian people would have a chance to live for 10 years in a world with freedom of speech and the press,” Oksanen says. “If they did I don’t think they’d go back.”
She argues that “it isn’t our job to change Russia” – that’s down to the Russians. In the meantime, though, we should keep out “Putin’s poodles and puppets”.
That is our job.
References
Sofi Oksanen: They fooled you - Greetings from the countries bordering Russia
Sofi Oksanen: ‘We know about British colonialism. Russian colonialism is not well known’
Sofi Oksanen: How History Is Falsified – Deportations In The Politics Of Russia And The Soviet Union
Sofi Oksanen: Your Silence Will Not Protect You
Sofi Oksanen: My family knew all about the iron curtain: it’s vital to protect the right to speak out