Narrowing Finland's Cold War Neutrality Narrative

Abstract

The present study examines how Finland's Cold War neutrality narrative was reformulated when Finnish diplomats engaged in dialogue with their German colleagues in the early 1990s. The article locates the reformulation of the neutrality narrative on the diplomatic stage and argues that updating neutrality began when diplomats had to position their country anew in international interactions. Furthermore, the article demonstrates how redefining Finland's neutrality narrative was a slow and complicated process. Even though Finland's neutrality policy was officially narrowed to military non-alignment in March 1992, traces of Finland's Cold War neutrality remained for example in the attitudes towards the use of force in crisis management operations. The novelty of the research lies in its archives-centric approach. While this is a traditional approach in international history, archival research is rare in memory studies.c