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Finland, France, and Europe
France and Europe
In reviewing Charles Cogan, French Negotiating Behavior. Dealing with la Grande
Nation, I said "The book was written before the recent French regional
elections, in which the left swept the board, with only Alsace remaining in
pro-Chirac hands. It seems likely that the Socialists will take over the national
government, and that may happen also in Italy. The US would then be confronted
with an almost solidly Socialist Europe". From France, Christopher Jones
says: " I wouldn't jump to this conclusion too fast, because there are
three years to go until the next Presidential elections. Although the combined
left swept the board, I remind WAISers that two years ago Socialist presidential
candidate Lionel Jospin was unable to garner enough votes to surpass the Front
National's Jean-Marie Le Pen and enter into the final runoff. In fact, the Front
looked set to do very well in the first round of voting and in southern France
had scores of between 20 and 30 percent, despite the fact that the Front's Le
Pen had been barred from running. In the second round, it looks like the voters
were more interested in NOT voting for Chirac's UMP than anything else. In solidly
conservative areas like the Picardie, the Socialist victory was left unexplained.
If you look at the percentages, France has taken on the look of Austria where
a tripartite schema dominates politics. On the left the Socialists and on the
right a bourgeois conservative group (the old Gaullists) and a populist right
wing party (in Austria the Freedom party and in France, the Front National.)
It should be also noted that the Front has never done well in the second runoff.
We will have to wait until the Euro elections to see a confirmation. Some had
predicted that the FN could even surpass the UMP in these elections, but I am
not so sure. Completely uninterested by Iraq, the French electorate has begun
swinging left and right in search of a political group that will address the
issues that concerns the majority of the citizens in this country: pensions,
employment, health care -- don't forget about those 50,000 deaths last year
in the heat wave -- and the cause for the breakdown of the social welfare state,
globalization. Law and order and immigration play a big role, particularly in
the south. The problem is that, as in Germany, the French electorate will not
accept a cut in its social welfare system in the name of competitiveness. The
people feel cheated by a ruling elite that preaches savings but cozies up to
plutocrats loaded with lots of Euros. It is a potential explosive situation
that could bring very unexpected results".
Finland and Alcohol
I said " Vodka is a real problem in Russia. What about Finland?". George Sassoon reports: "In about 1974 I was outside a hotel in what was then Leningrad, and saw a fire appliance arrive and park nearby. There being no visible fire, I asked the hotel doorman why. "Wait and see", he said. Shortly after, some buses arrived and young men were staggering, falling, and being carried out of them. "Finns", the doorman said. The drinking age in Finland is 21 and in the USSR it was only 16, to try and keep the Russians off drugs I was told. The Finnish lads got the vodka at the border and managed to get blind drunk during the short trip to Leningrad. The fire brigade was there to hose the vomit out of the buses.
I also encountered drunken Finns in Mallorca when there with a German friend
who spoke Finnish. He started chatting up a blonde girl, very pretty but with
a glazed expression. Getting no reaction, he gave her a nudge and
she toppled off her bar stool. The barman laughed and said "she's had ten
vodkas since 6 o'clock!". The Finns are notorious in Europe's holiday resorts.
Work hard and play hard is their philosophy".
RH: Falling off a bar stool is not my idea of philosophy.
Miles Seeley sends this sobering report: "When I was in Finland (many years
ago) the government recognized the alcohol problem and there were severe penalties,
for example, for driving drunk- in fact, you were sentenced to a road gang and
made little rocks out of big ones. There was a member of Parliament doing just
that at the time. I don't know if they are still that tough. The Russians I
knew, and there were many, also knew they had an alcohol problem. As one told
me, "We drink to get drunk, as fast as possible," and I saw that demonstrated
many many times". RH: In the good old times, getting drunk has a certain
amount of social prestige, e.g. "drunk as a lord". Modern health concerns
and the spread of machines, including the automobile, have put drunkenness is
a proper perspective.
Hank Levin writes: "The most common Finnish joke in Sweden is the following
(I have heard it many times in my considerable time there): A Swede and a Finn
agree to meet to drink together. They bring several bottles of the high-proof,
Finnish vodka. They sit across from each other in perfect silence and pour glasses
of vodka, not speaking. After three hours the Swede fills both glasses and says
“Skol”. The Finn looks at him in disgust and asks: “Did we
come to talk or did we come to drink?”
Also in my visits to Turku in the sixties I remember that my hosts told me that
they would be having a big party in my honor in the evening. There is a Finnish
word for a party in which drinking is the main activity. At about 6 PM I asked
them where we would eat dinner because I needed to have a large meal to absorb
the effects of the alcohol. My hosts laughed at me and called me a “weak”
American. Their point was that if you are going to a “drinking party”
the whole point is to get the maximum effect of the alcohol, not to buffer it
with food.
RH: Most vodkas are reportedly almost tasteless, so they are drunk to make
one to different degrees drunk. Can Cameron Sawyer tell us something about the
history of vodka? Some say it originated in Poland, so Ed Jajko may have information.
Like sausages, its ingredients are mysterious. Potatoes seem to play an important
role in Polish and Russiam vodka, but the potato, a Peruvian plant, reached
Eastern Europe only in the seventeenth century. Did Trofim Lysenko write anything
about this? Meanwhile ·"Skol!" to all WAISers.
Finland: Education and the Neanderthals
Cameron Sawyer adds this note to his report on Finland and Russia: "Crossing
from Russia to Finland, one is still impressed with how neat, clean, and orderly
everything is in Finland. And SMALL. It seems like a perfect miniature model
of a country. But in other respects this subjective difference has changed.
The mood in Russia is remarkably different from Soviet times, when people were
afraid to even smile at strangers on the street. Nowadays Russians seem almost
Latin in their exuberance. Scandinavians, by contrast, seem grim. Russians complain
particularly about how gloomy the Germans are". RH: Is there some inconsistency
between the reports of hopelessly drunk Finns and the "neat, clean, and
orderly Ginland" (sorry, I meant Finland)?
Randy Black recalls the good old times in Omsk, drinking vodka and thinking
he was in Tomsk: "Can we ask Cameron Sawyer how much a bottle of vodka,
local brew, in Russia costs these days? I recall from 1993, that it ran about
half a US dollar per bottle, which was a smaller bottle that I was accustomed
to in the US. Then it went to a buck a bottle and everyone had a fit. Shortly
thereafter, the hospitals started filling up with Russian men poisoned by their
home brew, a rather nasty drink called Samagon. My colleagues told me that every
time the State raised the price of vodka in Russia, this was the norm. I noted
that, when a Russian held a party in his flat, he furnished ONE bottle for each
guest. I also noted that Russian vodka came with a bottle cap similar to that
on a bottle of Coke. In other words, once it was removed you could not replace
it. I questioned my colleagues and the reply was that "We don't have replaceable
tops on vodka bottles because no self-respecting Russian would open a bottle
and not finish it!"
Finland: Ethnic Purity
Alberto Gutiérrez is "just back from Madrid, with a second-degree
burn on my left leg on account of small accident". He sends some memories
of Finland: "Indeed there is not such thing as "pure Finnish blood".
Besides the Russians, the nomadic Lapps are a minority who probably migrated
to Scandinavia from Russia. Lapland is the region from the Norwegian coast to
the White Sea inhabited by the Lapps, and even today they follow the migratory
reindeer herds regardless political borders. I particularly remember their hardy
lifestyle, their tents in the wilderness similar to the tepees of US Indians,
and their red and blue outfits. Somehow they didn't seem affected by the mosquitoes
that abound during the summer in the Finnish corridor between Sweden and Norway.
There is a fine Lapp museum in Jokkmokk, a Swedish town just above the Arctic
Circle.
Many years ago I worked under a Finnish merchant marine captain. A very difficult
man who drank a lot and hated Russian communists. The first mate aboard the
same ship was a political exile from Estonia who resided in Canada. He ibformed
me about the relationship between the Finns and the Estonians. Their languages
are related to the Magyar, Karelian and a few other Finno-Ugrian languages"
RH: Jollmokk is on the railroad which stretches to the very north of Sweden.
I always wonder how the Lapps and the US Indians living in tents could tolerate
the cold.
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