THE ROLE OF FINNISH LEFTISTS IN SOVIET–FINNISH ARTISTIC EXCHANGES DURING THE LATE SOCIALIST PERIOD

The article examines artistic exchanges between the USSR and Finland from the viewpoint of the Finnish left. After WWII, Finland was in a difficult geopolitical position; although not occupied by the USSR, it received little support from the West and so remained an independent capitalist democracy, with little foreign leverage. The Soviet influence was felt in many areas, and throughout the Cold War, Finland received many more world-class Soviet artists than any other Western country. This was in part a consequence of Finland’s proximity to the USSR, but the Finnish Communist Party, a major domestic political force, also played a role. Immediately after the war, organizations associated with the Finnish Communist Party enjoyed a virtual monopoly over such exchanges, but this began to change in the mid-1950s. Around that time, the USSR began to allow Finnish artists to train and perform at its world-class arenas, and many of those Finnish students had links with the political left. Based on interviews and supported by archival material from Finland and Russia, the article explores the role of the Finnish left in these artistic exchanges.     

YOUNG MAN M

This article focuses on the case of young man M, who had planned to assassinate the Governor-General of Finland in 1878. The Physician-in-Chief Thiodolf Saelan conducted a psychiatric assessment on M’s mental state and concluded that M suffered from moral insanity. Saelan backed up his argument with cases of political violence in Europe and in the United States that Finnish newspapers had reported with great detail. I argue that Saelan had specific aims in presenting M’s case to the public, and the main aim was to defend the category of diminished responsibility in criminal law. He stressed the role of psychiatric expertise in evaluating responsibility. Saelan’s arguments were a success, as the category of diminished responsibility was included in the Criminal Code of Finland (39/1889).     

FROM MEMORY TO HISTORY: YEAR 1968 IN FINLAND

As in other Scandinavian countries, in Finland the year 1968 has become a significant memory place, still influencing the current political debate. The first part of the article discusses how the 1960s started in Finland already during the 1950s when matters like internationalism and the Third World, pacifism, party‐political activities, women's issues, critical attitudes towards the church and the army etc. had already begun to affect the general opinion. The student movement in Finland was an essential part of the modernisation process with clear aims and cultural and political consequences. The students became main bearers of radically different vision of society, crucial years being 1964–68. The movement culminated in the occupation of Old Student's House in Helsinki in November 1968. The second part of the article discusses the development of Finnish historiography, as seen in the context of 1968.     

"Sound law and undoubtedly good policy": Roe v. Wade in comparative perspective

This article traces the abortion reform processes in the US, the UK, and Australia to reveal the underlying rhetoric and policy rationales which served to fuel abortion reform. The early abortion legislation in Great Britain, Australia, and Texas is described to lay the groundwork for a discussion on the widespread modification the laws were subject to through medical practice and judicial interpretation. In 1938, a trial judge in Britain carved out a legal loophole to sway a jury to acquit a physician who openly performed an abortion on a 14-year-old rape victim. The judge found that the law neither prohibited abortion absolutely nor permitted unrestricted medical discretion, but rather lay within the two extremes. Before the 1960s, psychiatric subterfuges were used by physicians as justification for performing abortions for "social" reasons, but reform was spearheaded by concerns about rape, incest, and fetal damage (especially after exposure to rubella or thalidomide). Reformers also argued that abortion would reduce poverty, and it soon became clear that all but the poor could obtain safe abortions. Claims were also made that abortion had historically been allowed before quickening. A new consensus grew and was encouraged by physicians who accepted abortion because it furthered social justice. The law struggled to keep up. In Britain a major reform bill was enacted by Parliament. In Australia, the police gave up trying to prosecute doctors as judges interpreted the law in such a way as to render the doctors innocent of wrongdoing, and, in the US, some states adopted liberal laws. The Roe vs. Wade decision in the US, therefore, may have made abortion a constitutional issue through use of the doctrine of privacy, but the other elements of the decision reflected the situation in the UK and Australia. For example, the Row decision relies on the physician-patient relationship to regulate abortion on demand. Also, the decision acknowledges that conflicting rights exist which allow the law to neither prohibit abortion nor leave it entirely unrestricted. In each country, the legislation is centered on the professional competence of the practitioner and on the provision of abortion before quickening. This reliance on a medical decision imbues the abortion debate with a certain ambiguity which is shared by all three countries.     

Building the New Cultural Finland: the student magazine Ylioppilaslehti,the public sphere and the creation of the Finnish cultural elite in the post-war era

The Finnish student magazine Ylioppilaslehti has been an important publication in the Finnish public sphere. This article studies the role of Ylioppilaslehti in creating the Finnish public sphere in the post-war decades. On the one hand, this was a period in which the political position of Finland was unstable, but, on the other, the students experienced ‘a hunger for culture’. The article is also interested in what role Ylioppilaslehti played in creating the Finnish elite. The magazine is an institution, which has been an arena for the Finnish cultural and political elite throughout the 20th century, and the 1950s was a particularly significant period for its participation in the Finnish process of social construction.     

"Abortion will deprive you of happiness!": Soviet reproductive politics in the post-Stalin era

This article examines Soviet reproductive politics after the Communist regime legalized abortion in 1955. The regime's new abortion policy did not result in an end to the condemnation of abortion in official discourse. The government instead launched an extensive campaign against abortion. Why did authorities bother legalizing the procedure if they still disapproved of it so strongly? Using archival sources, public health materials, and medical as well as popular journals to investigate the antiabortion campaign, this article argues that the Soviet government sought to regulate gender and sexuality through medical intervention and health "education" rather than prohibition and force in the post-Stalin era. It also explores how the antiabortion public health campaign produced "knowledge" not only about the procedure and its effects, but also about gender and sexuality, subjecting both women and men to new pressures and regulatory norms.     

State restructuring,urban competitiveness policies and technopole building in Finland: a critical view on the glocal state thesis

This article examines processes of state restructuring and technopole formation in Finland and in the Helsinki region and takes a critical stand towards the glocal state thesis. The relationship between the nation state and the capital region cities is analysed by focusing on the implications of recent national technology, regional and economic policy measures on the Helsinki region cities and on their responses to national policies. The characteristics of new urban competitiveness policies of the Helsinki region cities are scrutinized with particular attention to the efforts of constructing technopoles as new technology-based agglomerations of research and business activities. The article concludes that the glocal state thesis is inaccurate to describe the Finnish situation as it provides a picture of the nation state that is monolithic and too rigid. In some respects, the developments in Finland have moved in an almost opposite direction.     

‘A Shop Window Where You Can Choose the Goods You Like’

This article examines the Finnish industrial and trade fairs held in the Soviet Union in the context of Finnish–Soviet trade and scientific–technical cooperation in the 1950s and 1960s. While primarily focused on fairs, it also discusses different activities that accompanied them, such as lectures, visits, and negotiations between Finnish traders and Soviet officials and specialists. This study illustrates how such first-hand contact played an important role in Finnish–Soviet communications. First, they helped Finnish producers showcase their goods and technologies directly to Soviet buyers in various ministries and organizations. Second, these contacts included diverse activities such as face-to-face contacts, lectures, and seminars, being a means of technology transfer from Finland to the USSR . Finally, although they were commercial interactions without explicit ideological purposes – like many international exhibitions of the last century – Finnish fairs demonstrated a technological gap between Finland and the USSR.     

The impact of crime on firm entry

The article investigates the effect of crime on firm entry rates in Italian provinces over the period 2007–2016. The extant literature focuses mainly on the relationship between crime and the sorting of new businesses. The present paper contributes to this stream of work by estimating the effect of crime on the overall propensity to engage in entrepreneurial activities across a national territory. We measure the extent to which property and violent crime affect firm entry rates using an instrumental variable approach in which the instrument for criminal activity is the effective abortion rate. Our findings suggest that crime has a negative, sizable impact on firm entry. The results are robust to alternative instrumental variables and firm entry indicators. This empirical exercise emphasizes the need to consider loss of new business activities as a downstream effect when computing the social costs of crime.     

Die Seele auf der Bühne der Justiz. Die Entstehung der Kriminalpsychologie im 19. Jahrhundert und ihre interdisziplinäre Erforschung

The mind on the stage of justice: The formation of criminal psychology in the 19th century and its interdisciplinary research. – Criminal psychology emerges at the end of the 18th century as a new academic discipline in lectures and publications. It has recently been investigated by a considerable number of contributions from researchers of different academic backgrounds. In many respects criminal psychology can be seen as a predecessor of criminology. Its subject is the analysis of the origins of crime and its causes and determinants in the human mind. Criminal psychology embraced at that time philosophical, medical, legal and biological aspects. The latter increase in importance in the second half of the 19th century. The conditions of individual responsibility were generally codified in penal law, but had to be individually investigated in crucial cases through expertise in court. There a conflict emerged between medical experts and judges about their ability and competence to decide. At the end of the 19th century criminal psychology is used to fulfil the needs and interests of a criminal law which understands itself as increasingly utilitarian. Force and new instruments of treatment of offenders were legitimized by scientists who were very optimistic about their own epistemological abilities.     

The Future of International Criminal Evidence in New Wars? The Evolution of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA)

This article explores the intellectual formation of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA). It illuminates how the development of the CIJA was an attempt by state and non-state actors to affect the course of international criminal justice in Syria and Iraq. First, this article argues that the CIJA was the result of four factors: the UK Foreign Office’s desire to support human rights activists in Syria; lessons learned from previous international criminal tribunals; attempts by non-state legal practitioners to invent new ways to overcome the gaps and limitations of the international criminal justice system; and the willingness of Syrian civil society to risk their lives and use the law to hold those responsible for mass atrocities to account. Second, the article argues that as non-state actors with a focus on evidence management, the CIJA may represent an innovative approach to investigating mass atrocities, particularly for activists and civil society actors who wish to play a role in evidence management in new wars. Lastly, it shows how the CIJA may work in parallel with international mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other inter-state actors, to collect evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in new wars, particularly when the ICC is unable to do so. This study combines qualitative research with empirical analysis and draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, including a number of interviews conducted with CIJA personnel, former ICC practitioners, and other practitioners in international criminal law.     

AT THE ROOTS OF THE ‘FINLAND BOOM’

Finland enjoys a positive country image in Japan, where, reportedly, enthusiasm for things Finnish reached the state of a ‘boom’ during the 2000s–2010s. What is this positive visibility based on? To shed light on the foundations of Finland’s visibility in Japan, this article tracks Finland’s national imaging there from a historical perspective. Through an empirical study of Finnish diplomatic archives, the article looks beyond nation branding – the latest mode in the official promotion of states to foreign audiences – and opens a window into the past practices of Finland’s official promotion in the distant East Asian case. In the 1960s, the Press Bureau of Finland’s Foreign Ministry drafted an image policy to support Finland’s neutrality and to broaden the country’s interaction with the West. The policy was implemented through Finland’s embassies, and therefore Finland’s newly defined characteristics also became actively promoted in Tokyo. As a result of this intensification of Finnish public diplomacy in the Cold War, many of the modern aspects of Finland’s later nation branding in Japan were introduced. Of the redefined official autostereotype, cultural and commercial dimensions proved the easiest to promote, whereas its foreign political dimension was met with the most local contradiction.     

20世纪50年代安徽水灾中医疗救助活动述论——以1954年淮河水灾为例

20世纪50年代安徽淮河地区遭遇严重水灾,各级各地政府紧急组织救灾活动,并对灾后的农村进行医疗救助。本文以安徽省卫生厅档案资料为依据,梳理、阐述1954年安徽淮河水灾后各级各地政府的医疗救灾措施,揭示医疗救灾活动在社会救灾中的作用,探究其取得成效的原因及存在的不足之处。     

Science,Technology and Changing Power Relations: the negotiation process of the agreement on Finnish-Soviet Scientific-Technical Cooperation, 1955

Finland and the Soviet Union signed the Agreement on Finnish-Soviet Scientific-Technical Cooperation, the so-called TT-agreement, in 1955. Previous research has emphasized the viewpoint that the agreement was part of a new ‘softer’ strategy of the Soviet Union, the aim of which was to entangle Finland scientifically and technologically in the Soviet sphere of influence, and that anti-communist Finns formed a unanimous front against this inconvenient initiative. This article illustrates that adopting a different perspective makes possible an interpretation which indicates that the negotiation process for the agreement was less straightforward. Throughout the negotiations it is possible to observe the key issues of centralization and decentralization as well as the question of the status of science and technology policy in Finnish society. In essence, the TT-agreement was about determination of power relations and dominion not only between Finland and the Soviet Union but also between different interest groups inside Finland.     

The Ryti Case: language,gender and the rules of the game in Finnish academic medicine in the 1920s

This article focuses on a controversy that took place in the academic medical circles of Helsinki in c. 1925–1927. Among the main actors in this controversy was Elsa Ryti, MD, one of the first women to make herself a name in medical science in Finland. The controversy became public in early 1926 and was then discussed by the Board and the Council of the Finnish Medical Association. The dispute is historically interesting because of its capacity to disclose tensions, power structures and lines of power within the field of academic medicine. In order to understand the course and outcome of the controversy, it is necessary to take into account several intersecting lines of power: the asymmetrical distribution of power and knowledge at the university clinics, the acute language strife at the time between speakers of Finnish and Swedish, the tension between the clinic and the laboratory and, last but not least, the matter of gender.     

Toronto,an American city: Aspects of its postwar planning, 1940–1960

Toronto is conventionally considered quite unlike “American cities.” This article does not fundamentally challenge this convention, but does suggest that differences between Toronto and American cities may be overdrawn and that Toronto may have more American elements than is generally recognized. The evidence presented in this study comes from three episodes in Toronto’s postwar planning history: creation of an ambitious postwar master plan in 1943–44, formation of metropolitan government and planning in the mid-1950s, and the design and construction of the iconic suburban neighborhood of Don Mills also in the 1950s. All three show strong American planning connections. The article then offers some reasons why these American planning ideas did not produce an “American city,” and concludes by challenging the view that it is due to Canada having a fundamentally different urban culture.     

Botswana: abortion "debate" dynamics

The Penal Code (Amendment) Bill or the abortion bill has the objective of liberalizing the current law on the regulation of abortion. Abortion had been strictly prohibited and carried stiff penalties. Anyone who attempted to assists a woman to procure an abortion could be liable to 7 years' imprisonment. However, medical abortions were distinguished as being medically determined to save the health of the mother. Demands for a reevaluation of the law came from the medical profession, and in response the Minister for Presidential Affairs submitted a bill to Parliament in November, 1990. The expressed government rationale for these proposed amendments was concern about the health of women. In Botswana about 200 women die yearly because of pregnancy. According to the proposed law: an abortion could be carried out within the first 16 weeks of pregnancy if: 1) the pregnancy were a result of rape, incest, or defilement (the impregnation of a girl aged 16 or less, the impregnation of imbeciles or idiots), 2) the physical or mental health of the woman were at risk because of the pregnancy, 3) the child would be born with a serious physical or mental abnormality. The abortion could be carried out only if 2 medical doctors approved it. The amendments fall far short of increasing women's control over their bodies. The Botswana Christian Council issued a statement early in the public debate. While it did not oppose the bill in its entirety, clear concern was expressed concerning the apparent right of determining who lives and who dies depending on the handicap of the child. This rather liberal position was challenged by the Roman Catholic Church which interpreted abortion as the murder of God-given life. The bill was nevertheless passed by Parliament in September 1991, and the President signed it on October 11, 1991.     

Iran–US Public Health Cooperative Organization (PHCO): Education,Healthcare, and Health Services in the Southwest of Iran (Fars), 1950–60

Fars is among the largest provinces of Iran that received the most technical assistance from the American economic delegation in the 1950s. After settling in the province and during ten years of activity, the American delegation provided technical assistance in the fields of health engineering, health education, preventive medicine, nursing, medical services, and medical education. This paper explains how the technical assistance of US personnel contributed to the general health of the Fars province. The findings of this research show that after the formation of the Public Health Cooperative Organization (PHCO) in 1950, not only did most of the cities and villages of this province began to enjoy safe drinking water, but also public health improved. Additionally, the birth of children with disabilities and the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria and trachoma declined by means of preventive medicine centers and health education.     

Lost at Sea: Finnish government,shipping companies and the United Nations embargo against China during the 1950s

Finnish Cold War foreign policy was based on the desire to stay out of all international disputes. Yet, during the 1950s, two Finnish tankers, Wiima and Aruba, received an enormous amount of foreign attention when they tried to sail to Communist China. The United Nations had urged all countries, including non-members such as Finland, to stop selling strategic goods to China, which had intervened in the Korean War. The embargo created a highly profitable opening in the shipping market for anyone willing to transport such goods, and Finnish companies tried to fill it. This article suggests that they were in fact undermining the embargo more extensively than has been generally known. When the Finns were criticized for their actions, they interpreted this as a sign of the ruthlessness of great powers. At first, the Finnish government failed to recognize that these companies drove the country into the middle of international conflict and then took little decisive action to steer the country out of it. The allegedly pragmatic Finnish foreign policy was in this case actually based on unreliable information and incorrect assumptions.     

Becoming a camorrista : criminal culture and life choices in Naples

In 1992, Pasquale Galasso, a Camorra superboss, revealed many intricate secrets about the Neapolitan Camorra. This led to revelations from other pentiti (criminals turned state witnesses), allowing an insight for the first time into the Neapolitan Camorra from the insider's point of view. Understanding why individuals join a criminal organization, the Camorra in particular, is one of the questions addressed in this article. Using primary sources and an 'interaction model' based on the interplay of agency and structure, it studies the impact of Neapolitan criminal culture on an individual's life choices in the 1950s, and compares these with the 1980s and 1990s. It concludes that while in the 1950s criminal values were emerging as an ethos and had a somewhat limited impact on individuals, by the 1980s this ethos had become a clear 'subculture', an 'ideology' which had a pervasive influence on the life choices of many young Neapolitans. Nel 1992, Pasquale Galasso, super boss della Camorra, rivelÒ parecchi segreti sulle cosche napoletanc. La sua disponibilitÀ a collaborare spinse altri pentiti a seguire il suo csempio. CiÒ consentì per la prima volta di conoscere in maniera più approfondita la Camorra tramite le rivelazioni di alcuni dei suoi membri. Pertanto, i motivi per cui si sceglie di entrare nella Camorra è una fra le questioni analizzate nel presente articolo. Attraverso l'uso di fonti primarie e di un modello interattivo caratterizzato da una combinazione tra capacitÀ decisionale e struttura organizzativa, l'articolo sviluppa una analisi comparativa sull'impatto di una cultura criminale napoletana nei confronti delle scelte di singoli individui negli anni cinquanta, ottanta e novanta. Le conclusioni di questo studio sottolineano che, sebbene negli anni cinquanta una cultura criminale stava acquisendo un valore etico, essa aveva una influenza minima sulle scelte comportamentali dei singoli soggetti; mentre dagli anni ottanta era ormai divenuta una subcultura, una ideologia che aveva prodotto un impatto notevole sulle scelte di vita di molti giovani napoletani.