The School of Economics into a School of Peace - Cold War Student Activism
The period from the 1960鈥檚 to the 1970鈥檚 was a time of great political upheaval in Finnish student life. Injustices both home and abroad from the Vietnam war to the apartheid in South Africa encouraged them across campuses to take to the streets and demand civil rights, social justice and world peace. The peace movement became a channel for many students, through which they could influence societal issues.
At the centre of the movement was the Finnish Peace Committee, which was one of the largest non-governmental organisations of the Finnish Cold War era. University students and staff formed multiple local associations under the Finnish Peace Committee. Their goal was to incorporate peace work into everyday life, because many universities were missing an association dedicated to peace work. The peace movement also resonated at the Helsinki School of Economics (now the Aalto University School of Business), where students, like those at other universities, had begun to radicalize.
鈥淚n Peace is the Future of Humanity!鈥: The Peace Committee of HSE
In the May of 1975, the Finnish Peace Committee鈥檚 Local Association at the Helsinki School of Economics was created by multiple student associations at the Helsinki School of Economics. Inspiration was especially drawn from the Peace Committee of the University of Helsinki, which was established two years earlier. At the peak of its popularity in the late 1970s, the association had over 100 registered members, but its popularity began to decline as Finnish student activism weakened in the early 1980s.
In 1975 the Peace Committee of HSE was founded. It was a member of the Finnish Peace Committee.
The Peace Committee of HSE strove to advance world peace by encouraging students, researchers and teachers to engage in peace work at campus. They did this by diverse means, including organizing lectures and charity events, hosting conversation forums, and arranging more informal events like movie nights, concerts and parties. All their events shared the common goal of educating participants about on-going global conflicts and learning about the cultures of countries where conflicts were occurring. In addition, it introduced university students and faculty to the Finnish Peace Committee鈥檚 work and encouraged them to participate in its activities.
The Peace Committee of HSE was a left-leaning association. but it was not as ideologically overt as the more radical student associations of the 1970鈥檚. For example, TOKYO ry of University of Art and Design Helsinki, whose materials can also be found in the Aalto University Archives, was openly Marxist-Leninist and called for class struggle in the 1970鈥檚. Rhetoric prioritizing peace increased the organization's popularity outside of left-wing groups. After all, the student branches of the National Coalition party and the Centre Party at HSE were founding members of the association鈥檚 founding. They also regularly organized events with the association and supported it monetarily.
On the side is a cover of a newsletter of TOKYO ry. In the 1970s, the student movement radicalized, and communism offered many students the answer to societal problems.
Peace work and solidarity
The founding year of the Peace Committee of HSE was significant, as in 1975 Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was signed in Helsinki, concluding three years of peace negotiations between Western and socialist countries. The achievements of the conference were seen within the peace movement as a great victory, and they encouraged peace activists to increase pressure on both Finland's and other countries' governments. Disarmament and the elimination of nuclear weapons were in fact among the association's most common demands. In the early 1980s, the association sent appeals to U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, and to Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, expressing concern about the threat of nuclear war and wishing success for the superpowers in their disarmament negotiations.
The Peace Committee of HSE鈥檚 Pulut-newsletters. The association aimed to inform the university community about current conflicts.
Expressing solidarity to countries in conflict was vital to student activism during the Cold War, as it is today. The Peace Committee of HSE believed that the struggles of all peoples were interconnected. Those outside of conflict countries could therefore influence conflicts by demonstrating solidarity and demanding that their own governments support victims of injustices. The association participated in the wave of boycotts against South Africa, which aimed to overthrow apartheid by isolating South Africa from the rest of the world through economic sanctions. The association's solidarity efforts also focused on the reconstruction of Vietnam after the Vietnam War and supporting Chileans following the military coup in the country.
Solidarity-themed posters by the Finnish Peace Committee. Many Finnish students sympathized with the struggles of the global south and attempted to influence international conflicts through solidarity.
The Chile Solidarity Movement
In 1973, the Chilean army, with support from the United States, overthrew the democratically elected government of the socialist president Salvador Allende. The coup and the subsequent human rights violations by the military junta led to international condemnation, and millions of people around the world demanded an immediate end to the dictatorship鈥檚 atrocities. Solidarity towards Chile continued globally until 1990, when the military junta was voted out of power in the country鈥檚 first democratic elections since 1973.
Finns also participated in the movement, and their grassroots support for Chileans turned into the largest and longest-lasting solidarity movement in Finland during the Cold War. The materials of the Peace Committee of HSE contain a lot of material related to the movement.
The Peace Committee of HSE participated in the Chile solidarity movement's protest letter campaign. It aimed to send heaps of letters to Chile, demanding information about Chileans suspected of being victims of forced disappearances. In 1978, the association drafted letters addressed to Chile's dictator Augusto Pinochet concerning two Chileans. They distributed these letters across the campus of the Helsinki School of Economics for signatures, after which they were sent to the Chilean government and the Catholic Church. Correspondence in the archives shows that the Chilean Catholic Church investigated the disappearances and later informed the association that both Chileans were safe. During the Christmases of 1979 and 1980, the association organized charity collections for the families of these two Chileans.
Soviet Union and the Peace Committee of HSE
The Finnish Peace Committee believed it was necessary for the West and the East to cooperate for the sake of world peace, but the organisation was by no means neutral between the two superpowers. In fact, the Finnish Communist Party had a strong presence in the Finnish Peace Committee, and it was a member of the Soviet-led World Peace Council. This influenced the way the Soviet Union was seen inside the Finnish peace movement. In the materials of the Peace Committee of HSE the Soviet Union is often presented as the party which advances world peace, whereas the United States is seen as its opposite. The association therefore believed that one of the primary goals for the Finnish peace movement was to advance the relations between Finland and the Soviet Union through diplomacy and trade.
Announcements about the events organized by the Peace Committee of HSE. The association organized several events to celebrate the friendship between Finland and the Soviet Union.
The Peace Committee of HSE organized multiple events celebrating the friendship between Finland and the Soviet Union to promote Finland鈥檚 relations with its eastern neighbour. Big names in Finnish politics, such as Member of Parliament Ahti Karjalainen (1923鈥1990), visited and gave speeches on foreign trade, peace work, and other current topics. In addition, the events introduced business school students to Soviet culture and experiences of student life in the Soviet Union.
Aalto University Archives contains the Peace Committee of HSE鈥檚 materials from 1975 to 1982, including minutes, correspondence, petitions, newsletters, posters as well as printed material from the Finnish Peace Committee and other organisations.
Text: Jesse Jaakkola
Sources:
Heinonen, Linda. 鈥淐hilen kansa ei ole yksin鈥: suomalaisen Chile-solidaarisuusliikkeen nousu vuoden 1973 vallankaappauksen j盲lkeen. Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto 2013.
Mets盲m盲ki, Mikko. Taistelu rauhasta: Sadankomitea ja Rauhanpuolustajat 1960-luvun Suomessa. Helsinki: Helsingin Yliopisto. 2001.