Home - Tuesday 30.5.2000

Did I spy...

...with my little eye, for someone beginning with S?

By Saska Snellman and Anu Nousiainen

Now there’s a question. Last Monday the Finnish Broadcasting Company screened an investigative documentary in their M.O.T. series , examining the role of Finns in working for the East German intelligence and espionage service, the Stasi. In the days following the programme the debate in Finland has raged on whose names might be on the list discovered from Stasi archives, now in the hands of the United States. The Stasi will have had no shortage of possible recruits, as hundreds of Finns studied in the DDR during the 1970s and ‘80s, for example medical students and German linguists. The great majority of the students were useful idiots, ideological warriors, or youngsters with a taste for adventure, but the line between friendship and overt assistance is sometimes rather blurred. Now many are waiting nervously to see if their name and number comes up. Helsingin Sanomat’s article does not play “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, but there are a number of categories to choose from.

The Idiot

Professor Seppo Hentilä of Helsinki University believes that the Stasi papers may throw up one or two real spies. “When the names come out, we may see treason charges filed in some cases. For the most part, it will concern civil servants, particularly those within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Hentilä feels it is only right and proper, and important, too, that the real spying cases should be examined thoroughly. “If one signs an agreement, takes money, or supplies material emerging from one’s position or work, then it’s a clear-cut case”. He warns, however, that the bath water that will be thrown out over this issue may contain a few innocent babies. “Many can have found themselves on these lists completely without their knowledge. It is hardly likely that either Kustaa Vilkuna (ethnologist and academician) or Urho Kekkonen (long-serving President of the Republic) ever signed any bits of paper, even though they were included in the Russian intelligence documents under code-names.” Hentilä admits that his name might be one that comes out of the hat. “I wouldn’t say it’s an impossibility. Lord, it would be a treat for my enemies.” Hentilä, who teaches at the Political History Department, is currently completing research on the political influence of the DDR in Finland. His book on the subject Harppi-Saksan haarukassa (roughly translated, it comes out as “In the sights of the East Germans”) should be in the shops next spring. Hentilä points out that relations between the DDR and Finland in the 1970s were very cordial. The most important political parties, the trade union movement, and the scientific community all had close relations with East Berlin. “Finns were welcome visitors to the DDR, since particularly in the early 1970s the country was desperately trying to shrug off its international isolation. In East Germany, Finland was regarded as a weak link in the capitalist world’s armour.” The DDR gathered information from and about Finland by three routes: through their own agents stationed in the West, via East Germans living here, and from Finnish helpers. “Probably most of the Finnish sources of information were blue-eyed fools who opened their mouths a bit too wide”, says Hentilä. Hentilä confesses that he, too, falls into the category of “useful idiot”. In 1970, at the age of 22, he went to the DDR to study. He was drawn to “hammer & compass Germany” by the lure of the famous Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig, but left-wing sympathies also played a part. In Hentilä’s case, however, things did not go the way of most hopeful travellers in search of socialism: his leftist political zeal waned as a result. “When I left for Germany, I had voted for the SKDL (Finland’s moderate communists, the Finnish People's Democratic League, 1944-90), but in 1973 I joined the Social Democrats. If I’d stayed in Helsinki, the chances are I’d have wound up as a Taistoite (belonging to the hard-line minority wing of the Finnish Communist Party under their leader Taisto Sinisalo). For me, the DDR was a learning experience, a place to grow up.” The East Germans nevertheless regarded Hentilä as one of their “trusties” in Finland. He calculates he must have arranged a dozen seminars for Finnish and DDR history scholars. “They probably did not try to recruit me as a spy because I had nothing really of any worth to give them. Or then again, perhaps I was more worthwhile as a contact who promoted cooperation in the academic world.” Hentilä will admit to his having received tentative feelers on occasion. “A couple of times I was involved in conversations where one of the other parties at least implied that he was a representative of the security services.” Those Finns who did spy for the DDR can consider themselves most unlucky. It is almost unheard of for a country to collapse so completely and so abruptly that even its most sensitive documents fall into the hands of outsiders. Hentilä has been in Washington, looking at the reports filed from Helsinki by the US Embassy to Finland. These are now in the public domain up to and including 1973. “It would seem that Finns were running to Kaivopuisto just as eagerly as they were running to Tehtaankatu”, he says, in a reference to the locations of the US and Soviet embassy compounds. “My guess is that it was about six of one and half a dozen of the other when one considers the amount of “illegal” collaboration that was going on in the two directions. I would not be at all surprised if for instance the Finnish Defence Forces had much closer relations with the West than we have been told of. But then the winners always get off lightly.”

The Communist

History researcher Jouko Jokisalo of Oulu University studied in the DDR from 1977-82 and returned there for a further three years to prepare his doctoral thesis. He sounds a little uncomfortable when he admits that his decision to travel south was an ideological one. He went to the DDR along “the Communist line”, in other words through the Finnish Communist Party. “Back in high school I pondered the problems of fascism quite a lot. The DDR was a tempting spot as an anti-fascist, socialist Germany.” When the Stasi archives were opened up, Jokisalo learnt that one of the East Germans he had shared an apartment with had been a Stasi agent. He himself reports that he had at least one run-in with the security services during his time there. “The officials in charge of the student exchange programmes started to ask me all sorts of strange and detailed questions about the political views of other students.” Jokisalo feels it is important to learn how the Stasi operated, because it may help us to understand the workings of intelligence services on a broader level. “Then again, it is important to realise the cold war game-plays that were going on and the social situation as a whole. Now we are concentrating solely on one country, because it just happens to have an abundance of material.” Jokisalo admits to being a trifle nervous about whether his name will be among those in the Stasi papers. “How would I know if my name has come up in some connection or other?” He hopes that Finland’s Security Police, familiarly known as SUPO, will not go public with the names until somebody has ascertained properly just what each person is supposed to have done. “If your name were to pop up in the newspaper, it would be rather hard to defend yourself. It would be no picnic.”

The Doctor

The Stasi contacted Esa Häkli in 1979. Häkli was studying medicine in Greifswald at the Ernst Moritz Arndt University, which was the most common location for Finnish students in East Germany over the years. The security authorities took an interest in the young Finnish leftist when he was elected to head the committee of foreign students at the university. Häkli describes the incident as a bit of fishing. Two officers arrived from Rostock with a request that Häkli report to the Stasi on what the other international students were talking about and how the mood was among them. Häkli asked if he had understood the request correctly. Did they want him to spy? According to the officers it was merely to be “a friendly exchange of opinions”. “I refused, and I was left alone. However, my lack of cooperation did have awkward consequences”, says Häkli, who is today a health centre GP in Juankoski. There were veiled threats that his studies would be interrupted or terminated. Häkli was also pressured via his East German girlfriend. There were no promises that the couple would be allowed to marry, and the girlfriend was eventually obliged to give up her teacher-training studies. Häkli believes now that had he agreed to the overtures, the cooperation with the Stasi would have led in time to real spying. When he returned to Finland, SUPO officials were waiting to have a chat with him. They were interested in his East German wife. Esa Häkli is quite certain that Stasi papers were drawn up about him. “Over there , everything that happened through official channels ended up in an Akte, a formal document of some sort.”

The Translators

German language students Tiina Holopainen and Kalle Konttinen found themselves in an exciting job-training locale in 1987-88: they were taken on by the DDR’s state-run translation agency Intertext in East Berlin. Holopainen and Konttinen studied German translation and interpreting at the University of Turku. Among the staff of the School of Swedish, German and Russian was an East German visiting lecturer whose salary was paid by the DDR. He also arranged the job-placement programmes. Three or four students from Turku wound up at Intertext. The work there involved translating DDR-info from German into Finnish. From time to time, the students found themselves acting as interpreters for Finnish sportsmen. “It was stuff like “The Church in the DDR”, that sort of thing”, recalls Konttinen, who is himself on the teaching staff in Turku today. Brochures were sent over to Finland, and here they were presumably handed out by the East German Embassy and the Cultural Centre. The information war between the Germanies was still raging hot even in those late days. Tiina Holopainen spent two summers working for Intertext. “I knew I was translating propaganda. The texts were pretty rich; it was frustrating. There was a clear sense of double standards, and everybody there knew it.” When she left Finland for Berlin, Holopainen was a DDR sympathiser. “I wanted to see with my own eyes just how things were there. I didn’t like the scaremongering that was coming out of West Germany.” It never occurred to her that the DDR would have been interested in Finnish students as a means of information-gathering. Hence she was shocked when East German youth occasionally hesitated over what they dared tell her - she might have been a Stasi agent for all they knew. Kalle Konttinen still does not know exactly whom he was working for in the late 1980s. “It’s possible that the Stasi was involved in the running of Intertext”, he says. Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 28.5.2000

 

Previously in HS International Edition:

New information on East German espionage in Finland (22.5.2000)

Stasi archives shake Germany again (14.4.)