Summary:

Sinikka Wunsch, The Enemy with Many Faces. Enemy Images of the Soviet Union in Finnish Newspapers during the Winter War

This article discusses the enemy image created during the Winter War in Finnish newspapers. My principal research interests also focus on the general rules of historical imagology and enemy images.

Images born in the mind are personal views or those shared by a group. Their emergence is influenced, for example, by fears and wishes caused by the images’ object. Their emergence is influenced by long-lasting views of the object, for example, the common history of the countries and images created by it.

Because enemy images utilise the hindmost emotions and beliefs of one’s own people, they often are emotion evoking and abstract. Therefore they are difficult to validate with reason. The image changes according to need and therefore the object’s history is selectively utilised. The image can also be emphasised with the help of so-called atrocity stories associated with the enemy’s previous deeds. Archenemy-ship also belongs to concepts of the enemy image.

All of these features are found in the enemy images of the Soviet Union during the Winter War. The nucleus of bourgeois newspapers’ enemy image was that the Soviet Union was a barbaric enemy which if won would not only conquer the country militarily but would also destroy Finnish culture, religion and eventually the nation. The nucleus of labour newspapers’ enemy image was that the Soviet Union was the enemy of the western labour movement which if won would destroy all the achievements of the Finnish labour movement.

Each group of newspapers emphasised issues central to its own worldview. Therefore, details of the enemy image varied according to which issues were considered the most important in its own ideology. However, the image became more uniform as a result of the war, so that features that originally belonged to the right wing image were adopted also in other newspapers toward the end of the war.

In principle, while describing the enemy, newspapers at the same time created an image of themselves and their own world of ideology. In doing so they at the same time created an image of their readers while selecting material for the image which was believed to affect their own readers the best.