Kremlin jalanjäljet: Suomettuminen ja vuoden 2002 vakoilukohun tausta ed. by Jarmo Korhonen and Alpo Rusi (review)

This book delves into a spy scandal involving fabricated allegations that an adviser to Finland's president in the 1990s had secretly worked for the East German State Security Ministry, the notorious Stasi, during the Cold War. Intrigues, backstabbing, and illegal leaks to the media made the whole thing painfully public. One might assume we were talking about a fictional television drama set in the tensest period of the Cold War. But, in fact, the book is a non-fiction account of an incident that occurred in the 21st century, long after the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.

In 2002 the Finnish security police, SuPo, officially opened an investigation into Alpo Rusi, a Finnish diplomat who had been enlisted as a foreign policy adviser to Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari (in office 1994–2000), based on allegations that he had earlier worked as a spy for the Stasi. The allegations, which never led to a conviction, were leaked to the media, turning the case into an ugly process of public scapegoating. Rusi, together with Jarmo Korhonen, now tells the story behind the humiliating witch hunt in the book under review. The authors recount an important piece of Finland's political history and provide an anatomy of scapegoating.

The book is a painful reminder that a well-organized scapegoating operation—an operation based on "kompromat," the Soviet-era term for compromising material—can work remarkably well. I can attest to its effectiveness, because it worked on me, a political scientist and long-term resident of Finland who should have known better. When the scandal erupted and Rusi suddenly came under suspicion, I did not question it.

At the time, I had just returned from a visiting fellowship in the United States and was preoccupied with writing my Ph.D. thesis on deliberative democracy. I did not closely follow either Finnish politics or Russian spy stories. What I heard about the Rusi case was what any average media consumer did. Finnish mainstream news channels fostered the image of a scapegoat, and I went along with it.

That is what makes Rusi's case a textbook example of how such labeling works. Even years later, when Rusi has repeatedly been proven innocent in courts and in public, some well-meaning and smart people still ask whether he could be guilty anyway. The public smear is harder to wash off than a misguided police investigation.

The launch of the Rusi-Korhonen book in November 2017 was well publicized in Finland and generated many positive reviews and a lot of attention—for a moment. The attention soon waned, however. The book could have, and perhaps should have, triggered a public debate about ethics in politics as well as in the media; that is, about the role politicians and journalists played in turning an innocent man into a criminal in the eyes of an entire country. Oddly, no such discussion has yet followed.

A central point made in the book is that Rusi was "collateral damage," a scapegoat in an attack whose actual target was President Ahtisaari. The authors insist that the main goal of the investigation, which had been in the works long before it was officially started and made public, was to prevent Ahtisaari from winning a second term in 2000. More broadly, they believe the scapegoating process was connected to wider and persistent attempts to steer Finland's foreign policy—in particular, the country's relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—in the "right" direction.

When in office, Ahtisaari was not yet a direct proponent of Finland's NATO membership, but he was open to a bolder debate on Finland's foreign policy options and was known for his pro-Western views. Rusi as his adviser was also considered a strongly pro-Western force in the president's office. The book offers...