6.2 REGION-BUILDING PROCESS
Häyrynen (2003, 65) suggests that North Karelia has a dual nature. On the one hand, this region has for centuries been a geographic and economic ‘periphery’
20 North Karelia – as well as the other Finnish regions – does not have an all‐purpose organization
with independent budgetary power, elected decision‐makers, relevant competencies and important tasks. Rather, it is contextualized by a unitary state rooted in a strong central level and municipalities with extensive powers. Similarly to the other Nordic countries, municipalities in Finland have a very strong tradition and “until today the dominant opinion has been that administration in Finland should be more strongly grounded in municipalities” (Ryynänen 2005, 336). The regional level is characterized by both municipal cooperation (for instance, Regional Councils), and de‐centralization of the state (see for instance Virkkala 2002).
without its own cultural traits;21 on the other hand, it is considered as the only part of contemporary Finland that represents the main roots of Finnish national culture, the ‘ancient’ Karelia described in the national epic Kalevala. On the basis of these preliminary considerations, the building process of North Karelia must be discussed primarily in the light of Finnish nationalist/national interests (and associated strong ideological and mythical connotations of the border (see for instance Paasi 1996)), and, to a minor extent, in the light of its links to the macro‐
area of Eastern Finland, especially the Savo region.
Until 1809, Finland was part of the Swedish Empire, and it did not form an administrative unit of its own; to a varying degree its regions represented the
‘periphery’ of the empire, but a differentiation was evident: while the southwestern region was both geographically and socially closest to the core of the Swedish Empire (especially concerning trade connections), in the east, or the so‐called Savo‐Karelian slash‐and‐burn region, links with the chief distant centers were thin22 (Alapuro 1980, 20–25). Eastern Finland, in particular Savo and North Karelia, was as early as the 1700s one of the breadbaskets of the Swedish Empire. Slash‐and‐burn produced abundant harvests and the harvested grain was shipped to its main consumption centers (Katajala et al.
1997). Slash‐and‐burn cultivation required the people to be mobile and live in dispersed settlements; this factor explains why “there were no strong exploitative relations within the peasant population and, therefore, no strong peasant upper class. The small local gentry had only a minor role in agricultural production” (Alapuro 1980, 25–26). In the Napoleonic wars, Finnish‐speaking regions were ceded to Russia; result of this event was Finland gaining the status of an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire with its own religious organizations, laws and administrative structures (see Alapuro 1980;
Liikanen at al., 2007). Although St. Petersburg dominated politically, by means of this transfer the Swedish‐upper class continued to have a strong influence on the economic and cultural fabric of Finnish society. This phenomenon was not entirely the case in eastern Finland, where the peasant trade with the southern coast and also with St. Petersburg soon witnessed a revival. The connection between eastern Finland and St. Petersburg chiefly involved the export of butter
21 In Finland, North Karelians are not very different from the ethnic and linguistic point of view from
other eastern provinces. Talve (1980, 326) claims that “Eastern Finland folk culture is considerably uniform. Significant differences can be detected in the north, in the south, or in the south‐east, but the central regions of Eastern Finland are characterized by a common Savo cultural heritage”. Most Karelians moved to present‐day North Karelia in the 17th century: because of the Swedish‐Russian wars, they were persecuted and forced to move eastwards (see Talve 1980, 326‐327).
22 Since the early 1700s, when the current territory of Finland was still part of the Swedish state,
North Karelia has had a strong connection to the region of North Savo: in 1721 both areas were part of the province (lääni) of Savonlinna and Kymenkartano; in 1747 they were part of the province of Kymenkartano and Savo, while in 1775 the province of Savo and Karelia was established (Paasi 1990).
as well as iron and timber, and trade was strengthened by the construction of the Saimaa canal (Alapuro 1980, 11– 27).
Alapuro (1980) states that since the last decades of the nineteenth century, rural poverty in the east was much greater than in other regions. Even the timber boom did not led to the establishment of a strong peasant upper‐class.
Although the land‐owning peasants were able to profit by selling timber, the benefits of the boom were not comparable to those gained by the established peasant upper‐class in the southwest. The mid‐century crisis in slash‐and‐burn cultivation also created great difficulties for the eastern peasants, who became heavily indebted,23 and were consequently forced to sell their farms along with their forests.
In contrast to the poverty of the North Karelian farmers, the fortunes of the sawmill industry started to rise as early as the 1850s, when, for instance, many sawmills were created in Hasaniemi, Utra, and along the River Pielisjoki (Joensuu). Early sawmill industry was also present in Vyborg and other eastern Finnish provinces (Björn 2006). From the 1880s onwards, the lands of this region, especially the eastern forest zones, increasingly became the property of national, large‐scale forestry companies (Siisiäinen, 1979, 84). At the turn of the century, forest companies in North Karelia owned almost 600 farms or parts of farms.
Between the turn of the century and Finnish independence, company ownership of forest increased markedly in many other areas (Elsinen 1982). According to Alapuro (1980), the situation in North Karelia, and for that matter in eastern Finland, was very different from the southwestern parts of the country, where peasants sold little land to forestry companies. The domination of the forest economy within North Karelian society was reflected in the structure of land ownership: in Metsä‐Karjala (Forest Karelia, located in the northeast, which included the municipalities of Ilomantsi, Pielisjärvi, Nurmes, and Valtimo) forest companies and/or state ownership was common, and more than one‐fifth of the population received a significant amount of their income from forest work; the share of land ownership by forest companies and the state was more
23 According to Saloheimo (1973, 115), various ways were sought to solve the problem of indebted
farmers. Under the supervision of the province’s governor, the state provided loans to municipalities to be distributed to farmers for basic improvements. Farmers themselves tried to collect funds, borrowing them from saving banks. These financial institutions arose from the actions of parish administrations or towns (the first date back to the 1850s in Nurmes and Pielisjärvi); their main purpose was to increase the habit of saving, not to offer financing to farmers, because banks did not have the possibilities to do so. The Hypoteekki association did not support the ordinary North Karelian farmer as much as it was supposed to, because it only gave loans to relatively wealthy farmers. Thus, the whole region did not like the association, not until the cooperative system achieved lasting improvements regarding the lack of funds in agriculture. In North Karelia, the first rural credit banks were created at the beginning of the twentieth century. In their first twenty years, they distributed loans to members which were run by a central loan fund. Saving banks and, little by little, the office network of commercial banks took care of deposit activities. The funds of the credit banks themselves grew quite slowly, as the lending and borrowing interest rate differential was for their own use, and for basic expenses (Saloheimo 1973).
than 50%. In an intermediate belt, which included the municipalities of Juuka, Kontiolahti, Eno, Polvijärvi, Tohmajärvi, Tuupovaara, Kiihtelysvaara, and Värtsilä, there was a substantial amount of either state/forestry company ownership or forest economy as a source of livelihood, or both. The third belt, Maatalous‐Karjala (Farming Karelia, which included the municipalities of Kuusjärvi, Liperi, Joensuu, Pyhäselkä, Rääkkylä, Kitee, and Kesälahti), was marked by at least 70% of private ownership and less than 15% of the people earned their living from the forestry sector. Tohmajärvi is a border‐line case, which could also be included in this latter belt (Elsinen 1982, 33).
Within the context of a narrow peasant class, and at the same time strong outside investors/speculators (forest companies), North Karelia has traditionally lacked autonomy as a region; Paasi (1990, 275), however, claims that in this area regional ambitions developed for a long time and took different forms. For instance, in 1895 both North Savo and North Karelia established their own folk high school (kansanopisto). The work of the youth association (nuorisoseura) developed its own characteristics in North Karelia in 1894, in North Savo in 1907. Another important example of regional differentiation was the division of the Kuopio farming association in two parts in the late nineteenth century (maanviljelysseura), with the establishment in 1888 of the North Karelia Farming Association, whose range of action was concentrated in that part of the province of Kuopio which was Karelia. Furthermore, in 1936, both North Karelia and North Savo established their own regional associations (maakuntaliitot) (Paasi 1990).
Despite these signs of a bottom‐up regional building process – which, according to Paasi (1990, 285), were mostly the result of economic factors – Häyrynen’s research (2003) indicates that the building process of this region has been to a great extent tied to nationalist/national interests, which have led to the strong and constant dependence of North Karelia on the central level (both in the past and today). In particular, two main phases can be identified. In a first phase, the present‐day North Karelia (as well as the other eastern border regions) were ‘utilized’ by Fennoman intellectuals (especially those of the Regional Students’ Association of Helsinki University) in order to construct nationhood. Liikanen et al. (2007, 25) claim in this regard that the 19th century was a period of active nation‐building in Finland, and gradually the border was increasingly defined in terms of an autonomous nation‐state. Starting from the 1830s, Fennoman intellectuals associated the imagery of the national landscape with the already defined historical provinces of Finland. True “Finnishness” was located in inland forested areas, such as present‐day North Karelia, to distinguish them from the Swedish‐speaking minority that inhabited the coastal regions (Häyrynen 2003, 70). He (2003, 73) goes on to say, that “the thin elite of North Karelia was quite comfortable with the expansion of the nationalist movement”. For instance, within the Fennoman movement, the North Karelian elite – who were the descendants of leading farmers, civil servants, and the
clergy – represented the region on the basis of idealistic cultural symbols, such as provincial anthems and costumes, as well as envisaging the region as the spiritual fortress of the border district policy devised by the central level (Häyrynen 2003).
In a second phase of such region‐building process, which started to occur about 15 years after the Second World War, in order to create a symbolic Greater Finland inside the national borders (to be differentiated from the urbanist and cosmopolitan ‘Helsinki elite’), a new emphasis was placed on provincial cultures, as stated by Vilkuna (1958, 4): “a free and decentralized, but yet a united organ of provincial federations would bring a lot more Heimat traditionalism, provincial patriotism, and general enthusiasm to the national cultural work”. Thus, the ‘provincial awakening’, as Häyrynen (2003, 71) calls it, was achieved by “producing a large numbers of regional intellectuals and teachers, and by locating state administration and higher education in the provinces. In the light of the loss of Karelia to Russia after the Second World War, and the resettlement of Karelian refugees in Finland, Paasi (1996, 278–279) claims that there is also the ‘written Karelian identity’, where Karelia finds its symbolic place in eastern Finland, especially in North Karelia. The representation of such identity has been exploited by the media at the national level and more especially in eastern Finland for marketing and tourism purposes. In spite of that, Paasi (1996) claims, North Karelians do not identify themselves as Karelians.
On the basis of the considerations above, one can argue that since the establishment of the state administrative County Board (1960), the political, economic, and administrative elite of North Karelia has to a large extent been “a result of and backed by national regional policy and its decentralisation mechanisms: state administrative districts, regional universities and considerable investments in the forest industry” (Häyrynen 2003, 74). In other words, the regional establishment – characterized to a great extent by a politically unrepresentative power coalition (due to the lack of a democratically‐
elected regional government) – is defined and legitimized by the spatial relations between the center and periphery (Häyrynen 2003); such relations, he (2003, 75) continues, represent a powerful instrument of domination, since it legitimates regional power constituents to maintain their status quo ‘as members of a national otherness’; furthermore, I add, it risks maintaining, rather than constructively modifying, the ‘taken‐for‐granted’, and often ‘institutionalized’
peripheral status of such a region.24
24 If, on the one hand, scholars such as Gløersen et al. (2005) define ‘peripheral’ those areas which are
extremely distant from the core European markets (such a statement could be 100% valid in the past, when modern transportation technology was absent), on the other hand, one can counterargue that nowadays regions such as North Karelia are penalized not by their absolute lack of accessibility (since modern transportation technology can be provided anywhere), but mainly by the progressive disengagement of the state in providing adequate transportation services to remote regions. In
To summarize the argumentation of this section, three main ideas emerge.
The first is that national interests have historically been the key social structures in this region; the second is the domination of the forestry economy, which has chiefly been led by external agents; and third, the weak position of farmers. All these factors have in one way or another influenced the co‐evolution of rural development and agriculture, both historically and today. These factors have also strongly influenced the implementation of the LEADER programme, who its main agents are, and the role of the local action groups in rural policy governance.
6.3 RURAL DEVELOPMENT OVERVIEW
Unlike South Tyrol, where rural development strategies have been entirely executed at the regional level (in light of the autonomous status it acquired in the early 1970s), rural development in North Karelia has been undertaken on the basis of national decision‐making and strategies. Due to its role in the national economy – based on the production of raw material for the forest industry, and its relatively remote location on the closed border with Russia – North Karelia has been one of the poorest regions in Finland (Häyrynen 2003). Nowadays, this condition – Eskelinen & Niiranen (2003) claim – is also exacerbated by globalization and international integration.
In 1940, the share of the active population engaged in forestry and agriculture in North Karelia was still 84%, while nationally it was 65%. In the following thirty years, the share of active population engaged in this field declined by more than one‐third in Finland, and by about half in North Karelia.
Economic development has been constantly slower than the national average; in the mid‐1970s 30% of the active working population was still engaged in agriculture and forestry, while in the rest of Finland the percentage was 15%
(Elsinen 1982, 24).
The dominance of agriculture and forestry was reflected in political support;
the Social Democrats and the Maalaisliitto (after 1965 called Keskustapuolue, and since 1988 Suomen Keskusta) have succeeded in North Karelia better than the national average (Elsinen 1982, 144). Landowners (maanomistajat) supported the Maalaisliitto/Keskusta more, the land tenants (torpparit, existing between the landowners and farmworkers) the Social Democrats (Elsinen 1982). As well, because of the strong forest economy, in the northern and eastern parts of North Karelia a proletariat or semi‐proletariat class took shape (see Oksa 1979, 74); it is likely that this working group voted more for left‐wing parties than other
Finland, a striking example of such disengagement occurred in 2006, when the night train connection from Joensuu to the main centers of southern Finland was cancelled. This occurred despite a petition of more than 12 000 signatures favouring the continuation of this service.