Gertrude Enderle-Burcel, Dieter Stiefel, Alice Teichova (Hrsg.): Sonderband 9. „Zarte Bande” – Österreich und die europäischen planwirtschaftlichen Länder / „Delicate Relationships” – Austria and Europe’s Planned Economies (2006)
Pekka Sutela: Finnish Trade with the USSR: Why Was It Different?
Pekka Sutela decline was 6.2 percent, the collapse of exports to the USSR would seem to be an important, but not the major cause of the deep Finnish economic crisis. The main reason, by general consensus, was the economic bubble of the latter half of the 1980s that was clue to the excessive Finnish cost level attained over a decade of higher than OECD-average economic growth, asymmetric financial deregulation and overfull employment. Also, a deep recession in such important export countries as Britain and Sweden as well as the global oversupply of forestry products contributed to the Finnish crisis. Though estimates here are very uncertain, it seemed at the time that perhaps 30 000-40 000 of the total 150 000 increase in the number of unemployed in 1991 could be attributed to the collapse of export to the USSR. These instant calculations have stood the test of time quite well,42 though it is naturally possible that the models used fail to catch all relevant causalities, running for instance through the possibly higher profitability level of Eastern exports. There are, however other ways of looking at the matter. As outlined above, the traditional system of trading with the USSR contributed to and was an integral part of the Finnish corporatist system of governance. There is a widely shared view that though corporatism may have served Finland well in the past, as a whole it had outlived its workability by about the time Soviet trade finally collapsed.43 According to this view, which was also voiced often in the economic policy debates of the time in Finland, the country now had to undergo readjustment towards competition, flexibility and an opening up of the same kind that many European countries saw during the 1980s. In this perspective, the Soviet collapse in the end did contribute to the strong recovery of the Finnish economy since 1993, in the end giving the country a place of honour in various rankings of competitiveness. 9 Directions of future research Surprisingly, Finnish post-war trade policy in general and Finnish - Soviet trade in particular remain to be researched in any detail, though some episodes, like delicensing of foreign trade in 1957 and the agreement with EFTA in 1961 have been studied. On one hand, both Finnish and to a large extent Soviet archives are now available. On the other, many of the active participants of Eastern trade - on both sides - are still available for interviews. Finally, international research on the Cold War period has in recent years shifted increasingly from political and security issues to trade and economic relations more generally. Supported by such research. 42 See Honkapohja, Seppo - Ko skel a, Erkki: Finland's depression: A tale of bad luck and bad policies. Economic Policy 29/1999, pp. 401-436 and Linden, Mika: Suomen lama ja Venäjän vienti. Kansantaloudellinen aikakauskirja 1/2000, pp. 64-72. 43 Pekarinen, Jukka - Pohjola, Matti - Rowthorn, Bob, eds.: Social Corporatism: A Superior Economic System? Oxford 1992. 328
