Customer Reviews

Containing Coexistence: America, Russia, and the "Finnish Solution" (American Diplomatic History)

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Containing Coexistence studies what has to be one of the most interesting and least addressed questions related to the early years of the Cold War: how Finland managed to remain neutral and unoccupied. Jussi Hanhimaki has written a detailed, cogent account of the interactions of Finland, the United States and the Soviet Union, with particular emphasis to the changing American assessment of Finland's position in the Cold War.

Probably the part of the book most relevant to students of the Cold War is the first section, which explains how Finland became the sole success story of Yalta. Soviet foreign policy toward Finland is assessed as having been primarily driven by security concerns.

I personally wonder if Hanhimaki gives Finland's leadership too much credit for avoiding absorption into the Soviet bloc. It would seem that the weakness of Finland's communists, the Soviet choice not to advance into Finland in 1944, and the consolidation of Cold War tensions in Central Europe probably did more to shape Moscow's policy than did President Paasikivi's prudent policy. Clearly Helsinki played its cards very carefully and with real success, but I wonder to what extent the outcome was already determined by external events.

In any case, this is an excellent book by a capable and eloquent scholar. It might have benefited from more evidence on the Soviet side, but this is understandly harder to secure.