Backlash of the Free World: the US presence at the World Youth Festival in Helsinki, 1962

The Soviet-sponsored World Festival of Youth and Students brought an exceptional number of US citizens to Helsinki in the summer of 1962. The event was made important by the fact that it took place in neutral territory. Furthermore, this event briefly made Helsinki a centre of extensive Cold War operations. This article examines the background and impact of this festival in the larger context of the Cold War and international relations. The timing of the festival is especially intriguing, between two major Cold War confrontations, the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. However, instead of being an open conflict between warring parties, the festival reminds us of other conflicts of the cultural Cold War: it was waged through front organizations. Both the KGB and CIA were involved behind the scenes deploying their representatives and trying to impact the Finns' – but also the other festival delegates' – thinking, and win them over to their respective causes. This article exploits both Finnish and American archival sources, mostly intelligence reports from the festival. Apart from the festival in Helsinki, therefore, this article illustrates the way in which Finland was subjected to political and cultural influencing by the superpowers during the height of the Cold War.     

A centralised market orientation: the implicit determinants of Finnish cultural policy in 1990–2010

This article examines the reactions of Finnish cultural policy to the neoliberal turn in its societal environment. The analysis of cultural policy documents in 1990–2010 concentrates on three particular elements of societal change: the reforms in public management, the reorientations in international relations and the paradigm of immaterial production. It is argued here that besides the mythical democratic pluralism of the Nordic welfare states, cultural policy treats newcomers to the political arena selectively. Consequently, the system, constructed originally for protecting free artistic expression and equal distribution of cultural possibilities, has been in the front line of political market orientation in Finland. The orientation is modelled rhetorically after the ideas of cultural pluralism and economic efficiency; in practice, the fight has been a technocratic one between different notions of governmental responsibilities. This mechanism stresses formal procedures at the expense of ad hoc negotiations, leading to a centralised market orientation.     

The Cold War and environmental history: complementary fields

The Cold War was not only for the hearts and minds of people, it was also for their mouths and bellies, that is, for food, energy and raw materials. This signified a global power struggle over the control of natural resources. In addition to the increasing consumption of natural resources and resulting pollution, the destructive capacity of the weapons of mass destruction compelled human beings to recognise that their activities could ultimately endanger the planet earth. The Cold War was a propagator and framework for the birth of global catastrophism and also for the emergence of a global environmental awareness. Nature, its exploitation and also gradually its protection, opened up yet another front in the Cold War. Yet the relationship between the Cold War and the environment was reciprocal. On the one hand, concerns over environmental contamination or destruction called into question the meaningfulness of the Cold War itself. On the other hand, the specific sociopolitical structures of the Cold War deeply affected the emergence of environmental ideas, ideals, organisations and activities in different continents.     

Recent Investigations on Holocene Occupations in Northeastern Algeria: The Contribution of Kef en-Naga

The discovery of Kef en-Naga site, an open-air human occupation in northeastern Algeria, was favored by a sandstone quarrying where work truncated much of the archaeological sequence on its cross-section. A multidisciplinary rescue excavation conducted on this site provided, for the first time in the region, the evidence of superimposition of two stratigraphic levels (lower and upper) of sandy clay deposits formed in humid paleoenvironmental conditions. Besides, XRD analysis show that a large amount of hematite (Fe₂O₃) is localized at the lower level of the stratigraphic section, where iron is found in oxide form due to the moisture. As for rock magnetic property characterization analysis, the various magnetic parameters have strong values in the upper level, and the grains are small-sized. However, various magnetic parameters are lower at the lower level and the magnetic grain concentration is reduced. Although the site is lacking faunal and carpological remains, thereby depriving us of reliable dates, the two stratigraphic levels are correlated to the Holocene according to archaeological and paleoenvironmental considerations. The lower level likely corresponding to an early Epipaleolithic culture marked by the production of microliths using a microburin blow technique, while the upper level is related to a subsequent Epipaleolithic phase, characterized by the disappearance of microburin blow technique, the dominance of an industry on flakes and the existence of pressure debitage.     

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.