Finns Come Down Hard on St. Petersburg

EWS

Finns Come Down Hard on St. Petersburg

By Sami Hyrskylahti

SPECIAL TO THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES

They may be neighbors, and they may come 17417p1519r to St.

Petersburg in droves, but a recent poll in one of

Finland's most popular publications shows that the

Finns have a less than flattering opinion of what

many believe is a remarkably beautiful city. In fact,

they think it is one of the ugliest places on earth.

A survey of over 8,000 readers of the City

newspaper, which is distributed free in 30 Finnish

cities and is read by more than 10 percent of

Finland's 5 million-strong population, placed St. Petersburg third in a ranking of the

ugliest cities in the world - after Moscow and ex-Soviet republic Estonia's capital,

Tallinn.

What is more, 60 percent of the respondents said that Russians are thieves, 35 percent

said they had nasty characters, 30 percent found them physically unappealing, and 17

percent said they had no morals.

"Of course, I am not a sociologist, but I think that the results are mostly based on our

readers' prejudices," commented City editor Petri Suhonen, adding that probably only

few of those who took part in the poll had ever visited Russia or personally met a

Russian.

Suhonen said that Finns' opinions are colored by what they hear of the environmental,

economic and criminal problems coming out of Russia.

"Many of [Russia's problems] are often written about in the [Finnish] media," Suhonen

said. "I, too, get upset knowing that St. Petersburg lets most of its waste straight to the

Gulf of Finland without any sewage treatment."

But he said that the history of the Soviet Union and its relations with Finland probably

played a bigger role than today's issues in forming opinions about Russia.

After World War II - during which Stalin occupied a large portion of Finnish territory,

including Karelia, which Russia still possesses - Finland was forced to sign the Treaty

of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance with Soviet Union in 1948.

Although the Soviet Union was Finland's main trading partner, it usually had to dance

to Moscow's tune, forming much of its foreign and internal policies with respect to what

its powerful neighbor wanted.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Finnish-Russian trade collapsed, and the

Finns, like many other countries which had lived in Communism's shadow, went on a

drive to re-establish their identity. With Finland joining the European Union in 1995 and

the economy growing fast, the nation has tended to look west rather east, while the

picture the media paint of Russia seems to be as virulent as it once was cloying.

Leonid Kesselman, a political analyst from the Russian Academy of Sciences, took the

poll in a less-than-serious light.

"[Finns] should go a bit further into Russian territory," he said. "We have a lot of cities

that are a lot more ugly than St. Petersburg, Moscow and Tallinn. Take a look at Tikhvin

[in the Leningrad Oblast], for example."

While the average age of the respondents in City's poll was 28 years, an annual

governmental investigation into the attitude of schoolchildren toward Finland and its

affairs this year illustrated that the country's negative attitude toward Russians is being

inherited.

Over half of the 1,000 students, aged between 14 and 16 years old, said that Russia was

Finland's potential enemy; and an even greater number said that they wanted the return

of Karelia to Finnish control.

That doesn't look a realistic prospect, at least in the near future. On her first official visit

to Moscow on Wednesday, Finland's President Tarja Halonen - the first woman in the

job - discussed the matter of Karelia with President Vladimir Putin. At a press

conference after the meeting, Putin said that any talk of the status of the territory would

be damaging to Finnish-Russian relations, while Halonen said that Karelia was not on

the list of negotiable topics.

Kesselman said that there was nothing to be surprised about in the schoolchildren's

opinion. "I heard that 90 percent of Chechens want to live in a different country.

Besides, a lot of Russians want to live abroad."

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