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146 Anssi Halmesvirta 1he Old Foe Again: Ihe Pictorial Image of the Ruskie (ryssä) in the Finnish Sports Journal during the Winter War (1939-1940) Introduction The Finnish ‘hatred of Ruskies’, in Finnish ryssäviha, is a traditional designation for a strong xenophobia towards everything Russian, which included deep suspicion and fear of Russian activities and aggression. During the Winter War (1939-1940) when the Soviet Red Army attacked Finland, it manifested as a desire to stop Russian onslaught, and ultimately, eliminate its presence as the ‘old Eastern foe’ (in Finnish: idan vanha vainooja) in order to secure the integrity and security of the Finnish nation in the future. In general, it could also surface in hostile attitudes towards the Russian form of government, irrespective of its nature, whether tsarist or Communist, and towards Russians as people (Vihavainen 2013). Concerning the origins of the hatred and fear of Russians, there are two prevalent interpretations in vogue. The first one has it that the Finns and the Russians had been archenemies throughout history or at least since the Great Wrath (17121721), when during the Great Northern War the Russians occupied and ravaged Finland. Since then Finnish folklore and local history have carried with them the figure of the “violent, barbaric Russian” who had raped “virgin Finland” (Vilkuna 2005: 493-494, 531-533). This interpretation speaks against the earlier view, according to which there was no longer any particular enmity between Russian rule and the Finns in the long nineteenth century when Finland was an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire (1809-1917). For example, tsar Alexander II was greatly respected in Finland for his reform and language policies—his statue still dominates Senate Square in Helsinki. In his influential essays Vihan veljista valtiososialismiin (‘From Brothers of Hatred to State Socialism’) Matti Klinge explains that the ‘hatred of Ruskies’ was a later phenomenon, disseminated during the Finnish Civil War (1918), when the juxtaposition between Finns and Russians was politicised and exacerbated by the extensive White Finn propaganda war against bolshevism (Klinge 1983: 57-112). Both interpretations hold because they deal with ideas in different classes of Finnish society, the former with the longterm peasant attitudes and collective memory, the latter with the ideology of the right-wing intellectuals of the 1920s—1930s. There was a tint of racialism in the attitudes of the intelligentsia too, as the Finns were occasionally warned against “blood-brotherhood”, Russian “racial” contamination, which had augmented the “Red rebellion” and would lead to perilous assimilation of the Finns to the Rus
