Max Jakobson was a journalist, diplomat, writer, columnist, historian and Finland’s best-known expert on foreign policy. In 1990, President Mauno Koivisto conferred the title of Minister on him. His relationship with Estonia was close and his contribution to bringing Estonia back into Europe was [...]]]> Minister Max Jakobson (30 September 1923 – 9 March 2013)

Max Jakobson was a journalist, diplomat, writer, columnist, historian and Finland’s best-known expert on foreign policy. In 1990, President Mauno Koivisto conferred the title of Minister on him. His relationship with Estonia was close and his contribution to bringing Estonia back into Europe was great. In addition to his frequent contacts with Estonian politicians and diplomats and to supporting Estonia internationally in public and at think tank conferences, he also chaired Estonia’s International Commission for Investigating Crimes against Humanity in 1999–2008. In 2002, Estonia recognised Max Jakobson’s services by awarding him the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 1st class.

Max Jakobson was an exceptional man in Finland in terms of both his origin and his career. His grandfather was a Jewish tailor from Mitau (present day Jelgava) in Courland who settled in Vyborg after serving time in the tsarist army. Max Jakobson’s father graduated from the University of Helsinki as a lawyer and worked as an attorney. He married a Finnish university student in 1919 and the couple had two sons.

Max Jakobson graduated from Helsinki’s standard lyceum in 1941. Finland’s Continuation War began in the summer of that year and Jakobson went to the front. He served in the Karelian Isthmus in an artillery observer unit for directing artillery fire. In 1944, he graduated from artillery officer school in Niinisalo. That was the end of his formal education – Max Jakobson did not attend university.

Due to his good command of English, which was not yet common in Finland at that time, he found work after the war initially at Suomen Tietotoimisto (Finnish News Agency) and later at the United Press Helsinki newsroom. He went to England in 1945 already to work as the BBC Finnish language news editor. He participated as a journalist in the 1947 Paris peace conference and was later the Finnish embassy’s press official in Washington. He served in Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1953–1974, serving as the director of the Ministry’s policy department in 1962–1965, as ambassador to the United Nations in 1965–1971, and as the Finnish ambassador in Stockholm in 1971–1974. Finland’s president Urho Kaleva Kekkonen was essentially the head of Finland’s foreign policy. Jakobson was one of Kekkonen’s closest foreign policy advisors and he wrote Kekkonen’s speeches on foreign policy.

Jakobson defended the position that Finland must not end up completely in the Soviet Union’s wake. When Urho Kaleva Kekkonen went to Tartu in 1964 and gave a speech at the university assembly hall, which is regarded as an important milestone in the recognition of the Estonianness by Finns, Jakobson did not consider it to be the correct course of action. The president’s visit to the Soviet occupied Estonia was in many respects the recognition of Estonia’s occupation. In his books he later nevertheless acknowledged Kekkonen for his Tartu speech. Kekkonen, who was a one of ideologists of a political ideology based on the kinship of Finno-Ugric nations in the interwar period, saw in the world of the 1960’s that longtime preservation of the Estonianness was possible only in Estonia.

Jakobson remained a leading ideologist of Finland’s Western orientation after the collapse of the Soviet Union as well. He maintained the position that Finland must join NATO.

The apex of Max Jakobson’s foreign policy career was his candidacy for the position of UN General Secretary in 1971. The selection of the UN General Secretary depended on the decision of the Soviet Union and the USA. Since the Soviet Union was against Jakobson for several reasons and the USA supported both candidates, the Austrian Kurt Waldheim was elected General Secretary.

Max Jakobson left the service of Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1974 and was invited to serve as managing director of the Finnish Business and Foreign Policy (EVA) think tank, which was founded by Finnish business circles. The objective of the think tank was to influence Finnish public opinion in a direction favourable to the market economy. There were influential forces in the public sphere in Finland at that time that favoured setting the Soviet Union and other socialist countries as examples for organising the nation’s economic life. It must be borne in mind that the so called Eastern trade was very important for the Finnish economy at that time and ideas of the Soviet economic system were considered attractive even by some influential members of business and economic circles. The EVA explained how the socialist economic system functioned in reports drawn up by its experts and drew up visions for the future of the Finnish economy and society. Jakobson retired from his position as EVA managing director in 1984.

Alongside his active work in foreign policy, Max Jakobson was also a productive publicist and writer of history for over half a century. His first book was published in 1952 and was about British elections. His last book Kohtalonvuodet: Suomi nousi, taipui ja selvisi was published in 2008. In his books, he interprets Finnish history and contemporary life, and also foreign policy on the background of world history and personal experiences. Among his best books are Diplomaattien Talvisota (The Winter War of Diplomats, 1955), Veden piirretty viiva (A Line Drawn on Water, 1980) about the relationships between foreign policy and politics, Finland in the New Europe (1998), and the three-volume 20. vuosisadan tilinpäätös (The Final Balance of the 20th Century, 1999–2003). Max Jakobson’s books were successful in Finland and earned several awards. They have been translated into several languages.

Jakobson visited Estonia for the first time in the summer of 1939 – his parents sent him to Haapsalu and to Riga in Latvia to practice German and Russian. As a tall man he was on a team that played basketball at the Karelian Isthmus front against men from an Estonian battalion deployed in the vicinity – the Estonians won because basketball began being played in Estonia considerably earlier. Yet the Iron Curtain had already fallen.

New contact was made half a century later. He met Lennart Meri in Helsinki in April of 1987. A friendship began that lasted until Meri’s death in 2006. In an interview he gave in 1999, Jakobson said that when Meri invited him to head Estonia’s International Commission for Investigating Crimes against Humanity, it was morally difficult for him to refuse. When he had met Meri the previous year, he himself had said that if Estonia and the other Baltic countries want to join the European Union, “they also have to clear up those matters of the past”. At that time, of course, the history of the Baltic countries during the German occupation was on the agenda first and foremost. This was often used among the arguments in international public opinion to prove the unsuitability of the Baltic countries for the European Union. Yet from the very beginning, the task of the Commission was not only to investigate what happened during the German occupation, but rather the era of occupations as a whole. That is why the definitions of international crimes from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court were adopted as the point of departure and all events that took place beginning with the occupation of Estonia in 1940 were considered in this light.

The Estonian Institute of Historical Memory carries on the work started by Meri and Jakobson. As Jakobson himself foresightedly wrote: “The deportations and executions of the Stalinist era are known, yet the acclimatisation of a small people with the situation in which it was forced to live for decades also has to be assessed fairly and understandingly.”

Max Jakobson was a good and perhaps even the only possible choice for Chairman of the Commission. As a meritorious diplomat and member of the Trilateral Commission, he had authority. He was personally acquainted with many of the opinion leaders of world politics at that time, among them Henry Kissinger. His origin ruled out suspicions that Estonians only want to save face with their commission. His work in the Finnish public sphere in the camp opposing the so-called Finlandisers also silenced sceptics among opponents from the other side. He was a productive writer of history, which was very important in the work of heading a commission dealing with the research of history. And finally, he was a friendly man with a simple way of interacting with people. Regardless of his high status, he did not consider it too much trouble to delve into the content of his honorary position in Estonia.

Toomas Hiio
Executive Secretary of Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity in 1998–2008

Thursday, 9 June

10:00 Opening

10:30 Panel 1: Policy, Methods and Means for Shaping Communist Identity and Personality, moderator Marcus Meckel

The aim of totalitarian regimes was the radical transformation of personalities and of the identity of their subjects into a new ideological form. During the [...]]]> Date: June 9-10, 2011
Conference Venue: Estonian Academy of Sciences, Tallinn, Estonia
Conference Languages: English, Estonian
Organizers: The Estonian Institute of Historical Memory (www.mnemosyne.ee) and the Unitas Foundation (www.unitasfoundation.org).

The aim of totalitarian regimes was the radical transformation of personalities and of the identity of their subjects into a new ideological form. During the second half of the 20th century, the image of the identity of all communist regimes included official treatments of history based on Soviet-style outlines and created under the control of the ruling single party. Official history was supposed to establish the conviction that the regime was born according to the will of the broad masses and is thus legitimate from the beginning and forever. The narrative of the Great Patriotic War waged against “fascist Germany and imperialist Japan” played a major role in forming the post-war identity of “Soviet people”. Winning the war and driving German forces out of Eastern Europe established the Eastern Bloc controlled by the Soviet Union, in other words the so-called socialist friendship alliance. Winning the war and the tens of millions of human lives sacrificed for that victory seemingly justified the aspirations of the Soviet Union to participate in a leading role in reorganising the post-war world. Artificially created official history and the new historical identity that this history forced upon the population required the establishment of a single infallible truth through half-truths and outright lies, keeping silent about events that had actually taken place and people that had actually lived.

This was not an ironbound concept. The official treatment of history changed constantly depending on changes in leadership, first and foremost in the Soviet Union but also in other Eastern Bloc countries, as well as on relations with other world powers but also with Third World countries. George Orwell’s book 1984, published in 1948, contained an entirely faithful description of the constant rewriting of history that had already taken place by his time and continued to take place until the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.

The aim of this upcoming international academic conference is the detailed yet at the same time general description, analysis and explanation of state policy and actions implemented in Eastern Europe aimed at forming a communist identity and personality based on the official treatments of history of the former Eastern Bloc countries. Associations between the violation of human rights and compulsory shaping of identity will also be examined. We will attempt to appraise the effectiveness of the reshaping of identities and determine the more influential historical fabrications that have carried over into the international discussion of the beginning of the 21st century. Alongside the shaping of identity by the state, we are also interested in other co-factors that shaped official identity, yet also in circumstances that counteracted the shaping of official identity. We consider it important to compare and juxtapose what took place in different countries with treatments that were widespread during the Cold War and later in the West. Interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approaches are welcome. One means of disseminating the conference is also to make the more interesting presentations available to a broader audience through public presentations.

WE INVITE PAPERS WITH TOPICS RELEVANT TO ONE OF THE FOLLOWING PANELS
(the working titles are listed below):

1. Policy, methods and means for shaping communist identity and personality;
2. The official version of the history of the establishment of communist regimes “according to the will of the people”;
3. The alteration of the narrative of the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War in the latter half of the 20th century and its application in the shaping of identity and personality;
4. Present day consequences and influences of the shaping of communist identity and personality.

The application relevant to the subject of the conference may be written in English, should consist of no more than 500 words and be accompanied by a brief academic CV. Please indicate for which panel the abstract is intended. Each panel will ultimately have 3–4 panelists.

Applications should be sent to the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory by e-mail conference@mnemosyne.ee or by mail: Tõnismägi 16, 10119 Tallinn, Estonia.

The deadline for applications is 15 January 2011. Successful applicants will be informed of the acceptance of their proposal by 1 February 2011.

A selection of papers will be published as an academic publication.

The organisers will provide speakers with compensation for travel expenses, accommodations and meals as well as fees for publication.

In addition, we hereby announce a call for participants in the conference to interested university students studying in degree programmes. Please send a brief CV and a letter of motivation to the address listed above so that we can decide the compensation of accommodations expenses.

For further questions please contact conference@mnemosyne.ee

The University of Tartu through its International Summer University invites students from universities and higher education establishments, journalists, civil society representatives, opinion leaders, etc throughout the world to participate in the summer course offered in conjunction with the conference. Participants of the Summer University program will attend the conference as part of the academic program and will be offered additional coursework prior and after the conference program. Some of the key speakers will also teach in the academic program. The University of Tartu will award to the student 3 ECTS credits for participants of the summer program, provided that they have passed the course requirements. A limited amount of bursaries for participating at the summer course will be issued by the Unitas Foundation.

Please send CV and motivational letter to info@unitasfoundation.org.

For additional information please access www.isu.ut.ee.

According to [...]]]> “Estonia and the people of Estonia have endured a lot. However, even today we don’t have a real overview of what exactly happened in Estonia during the Soviet period,” said President Toomas Hendrik Ilves yesterday in Kadriorg, at the first session of the Learned Committee of the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.

According to the head of state, together with our children we have the right to know what happened. “This is why the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory will take over where the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity finished. By mapping and investigating human rights violations that were committed during the Soviet period in 1944-1991, which do not match the definition of crimes against humanity.”

“The goal of the Institute of Historical Memory is not to explain whether human rights were violated in Soviet Estonia. There’s no question about it,” said President Ilves. “However, detailed historical research is required to answer as to how and to which extent human rights were violated.”

The President emphasised that the Institute of Historical Memory is not intended to administer justice or find someone guilty. “The facts that will be identified by the institute shall have no legal consequences. Our mission is to understand.”

The research of the institute will be carried out on the basis of grants awarded to scholars. The international committee will make the final decisions regarding the approval of research grants.

The establishment of the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory was initiated by President Ilves on 1st February 2008. The International Learned Committee of the Institute of Historical Memory involves notable researchers and politicians from a number of states:

Enrique Barón Crespo (Spain), researcher of law and economics, and former President of the European Parliament from 1989-1992

Timothy Garton Ash (United Kingdom), Professor of European Studies at Oxford University, Leading Researcher of Isaiah Berlin Lectorate of St. Anthony College of Oxford University and Senior Rerseacher of Hoover’s Institute of Stanford University

Kristian Gerner (Sweden), Professor Emeritus of Lund University, historian

Paavo Keisalo (Finland), retired diplomat, acting assistant of Minister Max Jakobson in 1999–2009, while he was discharging the functions of the Head of Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity

Nicholas Lane (United States of America), former Vice President of American Jewish Committee and Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Relations, member of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity in 1999–2009

Lasse Lehtinen (Finland), writer, member of the European Parliament in 2004–2009

Markus Meckel (Germany), religious scientist and politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the former German Democratic Republic from April to August 1990, member of the German Bundestag in 1990–2009 former freedom fighter, and the first and final democratic

Norman M. Naimark (United States of America), Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor in East European Studies at Standford University

Yakov M. Rabkin (Canada), Professor of History at Montreal University

Pavel Žacek (Czech Republic), social scientist, Director of the Institute for the Investigation of Totalitarian Regimes