‘A mustard seed grew into a bushy tree’: The Finnish CSCE initiative of 5 May 1969

Abstract

On 5 May 1969 Finland launched its famous initiative, which led to the opening of multilateral negotiations for the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) three years later. To date there is widespread reasoning that the Finnish initiative was mainly an idea inspired by the Soviets. Based on new archival materials and interviews with contemporary witnesses, this article shows, however, that the Finns had their own good reasons to launch their appeal. The initiative was primarily designed to ease Soviet pressure on Finnish neutrality and to deal with the pending question of recognition of the two German states. The conference itself was for a long time not the main ambition of Finnish foreign policy. Offering Helsinki as a host to the talks and thereby making neutrality an indispensable condition for convening the security conference became the crown jewel in Finland's strategy towards the Soviet Union in the years 1969 to 1972.