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The Old Foe Again: The Pictorial Image of the Ruskie (ryssd) in the Finnish Sports Journal 1939-1940
sians (Aho 1918: 7, 116-117). By positing such an ominous prospect, the divided
nation—Whites vs. Reds, i.e. bourgeois vs. working-class—was to be reunited.
After the Whites won the Civil War, the message that the main threat to Finnish
integrity was now Communism was preached by the right-wing rear-guard radical¬
ism of the Academic Karelia Society (Akateeminen Karjala-Seura), and in the late
1920s and early 1930s by the Lapua Movement (Lapuanliike) and the Patriotic
Front (/sdnmaallinen Kansanliike). These movements attracted young academics,
clerics and independent peasantry, from Ostrobothnia, in particular.
Apart from historians, cultural anthropologists have also stumbled upon the
fact that the Finnish collective memory still retains the image of Russia as a sort of
eternal threat. It preoccupies the minds of the Finns, who have suspicions about
the Russians who buy land and property in Finland, and of the foreign and se¬
curity policy experts, who claim that the main purpose of Russian foreign policy
towards Finland is to instigate a silent and constant threat and thus keep them out
of NATO. Gallup International has also identified that 62% of Finns have negative
views of Russians, the second highest number after the people of Kosovo". It seems
that during the crisis in Ukraine, these attitudes and suspicions have actualised,
and are personified in the figure of President Putin. An opinion poll carried out by
Talouselämä reports that 59% of Finns, mainly right-wing people, regard Putin as
a threat to European political stability (published in daily newspaper Keskisuoma¬
lainen, May 31, 2014: 10).
The Pictorial Russian
The Finnish hatred and fear of “Ruskies’ came to the fore in many textual repre¬
sentations during the Winter War in newspapers, journals and novels. ‘Ruskie’ is a
very derogatory stereotyping noun designating the Other that could never be do¬
mesticated, standing beyond history for the Finn. During the Winter War Ruskies
were not regarded as an army of trained soldiers with military virtues but as a de¬
moralised and disorganised horde of Asiatic barbarians who attacked senselessly
and wildly, without understanding of the rules of modern warfare. The Finns were
seen as the reverse of this image, defending not only their own country but also
Western civilization and its foundational, mainly conservative but also democratic,
values (freedom, i.e. Finnish independence, the sanctity of private property, Chris¬
tianity, chastity, democracy and civic virtue) against the onslaught of the barbarian
East. The Winter War brought the juxtaposition of Western Finns and Eastern
Russians to its critical, breaking point. For example, interviews with soldiers from
the Eastern front confirmed that the “hatred of the Ruskie had reached limitless
proportions” (Swomen Urheilulehti (‘Finnish Sports Journal’), January 4, 1940),
meaning that the Finns were now fighting mercilessly for their survival (Halmes¬
virta 2014: passim).
' See: ‘Ryssaviha, Wikipedia (last accessed on: February 24, 2014).
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