Finnish party leader compares Olli Rehn to assassinated despotic Russian oppressor

Ellis Dee

The leader of the Perussuomalaiset (“True Finns”) party, Timo Soini, has refused calls to apologise to EU Commissioner Olli Rehn for comparing him to Nikolay Ivanovich Bobrikov (Николай Иванович Бобриков), one of the most hated figures in Finnish history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Bobrikov

Soini, whose populist, anti-EU, xenophobic, anti-immigration, anti-multicultural and homophobic party won 38 of the 200 parliamentary seats in the elections last spring, making it the third-biggest, was speaking in a TV interview about the new bailout conditions imposed on Greece when he described Rehn as “the EU’s Bobrikov”.

This astonished many viewers in Finland, given who Bobrikov was and – especially – what happened to him.:eek:

At the beginning of the last century Finland had been an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire since it was wrested from Swedish rule in 1809, with the Czar also holding the title of Grand Duke. It had its own laws, a separate currency, armed forces and could even restrict immigration from other parts of the Russian Empire.:)

All that began changing in the late 19th century when the Pan-Slavist movement set out to Russify everywhere else. Bobrikov, an ardent Pan-Slavist and former army general, was appointed Governor-General of Finland in 1898 and immediately set about dismantling the country’s constitutional rights and Russifying it. That came to an end in 1904, when a Finnish activist by the name of Eugen Schauman, shot Bobrikov on a staircase in the government building and then turned the gun on his dog and himself.

The general consensus in Finland is that Bobrikov, as nasty a piece of work as could be, had it coming, and Schauman was a patriot who did the nation a service.:D


Rehn, understandably, immediately issued a media bulletin pointing out how invalid the comparison was and calling for an apology: “This is not only insulting to a patriotic man like me, but also dangerous hate speech with its reference to a murdered person.”

Soini, who studied in Maynooth and is the only Catholic ever elected to the Finnish parliament, has refused to apologise, and indeed compounded his insults by saying that Rehn’s patriotism is now only towards the EU. Until lthis week, he had been relatively moderate in his statements, at least by the standards of his party. One of his fellow "True Finns" parliamentarians had earlier called for several named women MPs to be gang-raped by Muslims so that they could get "a taste of their own multicultural medicine".:rolleyes:

My own fear now, given that there are so many whackos around at the best of times and with people suffering so much hardship in several countries and plenty of demagogues telling them who to blame, is that one of them will think it would be a good idea for someone to do unto Rehn what Schauman did unto Bobrikov. To Finns, the name Bobrikov evokes all the feelings that a Black-and-Tan called Cromwell would evoke in an Irish nationalist. And there can be little doubt that Soini's comment and the background to it will be well publicised by like-minded anti-EU, right-wing nationalist forces all over Europe.:eek:

If only politicians, especially right-wing populist ones, would be more aware of the possible consequences of their irresponsible and inflammatory statements.
:eek:

Scofflaw

Ellis Dee wrote:

And there can be little doubt that Soini's comment and the background to it will be well publicised by like-minded anti-EU, right-wing nationalist forces all over Europe.

I wonder...it's a little obscure, perhaps, for most people, in that you need to explain who Bobrikov was - he wouldn't be as immediately recognisable as WW2 figures, for example.

I would think it has also the potential to backfire in Finland itself.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Ellis Dee

Scofflaw wrote: »

I wonder...it's a little obscure, perhaps, for most people, in that you need to explain who Bobrikov was - he wouldn't be as immediately recognisable as WW2 figures, for example.

I would think it has also the potential to backfire in Finland itself.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Thanks, good advice. I tried to keep the OP to a fairly reasonable length and opted just to include a link to a Wikipedia article on Bobrikov. Here it is again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Bobrikov

To Finns, Bobrikov is the very personification of evil, out-evilled only by Stalin himself. He was a fanatical Russian nationalist who wanted to destroy the last vestiges of Finnish culture, the national languages and the autonomy that the country enjoyed. As unpopular as Olli Rehn may be in some quarters, he is certainly not a despot on a personal mission to destroy anything, which in my opinion make's Soini's comment very inappropriate - and potentially dangerous.

From the Wikipedia article:

"In 1898, Tsar Nicholas II appointed Bobrikov as the Governor-General of Finland. Bobrikov was both hated and feared by the Finnish population as he thought that Finland was still a foreign country that threatened Russia. In 1899, Nicholas II signed the "February Manifesto" which marks the beginning of the first "Years of Oppression" (sortovuodet). In this manifesto the Tsar decreed that the laws of the Empire take higher order of precedence than the laws of Finland. Half a million Finns signed a petition to Nicholas II requesting to revoke the manifesto. The Tsar didn't even receive the delegation bringing the petition. In 1900, Bobrikov issued orders that all correspondence between government offices was to be conducted in Russian and that education in the Russian language was to be increased in schools. The Finnish army was abolished in 1901, and Finnish conscripts could now be forced to serve with Russian troops anywhere in the Russian empire. --- .
In 1903, Bobrikov was given dictatorial powers by the Tsar so that he could fire government officials and abolish newspapers. On June 16, 1904 Bobrikov was assassinated by Eugen Schauman in Helsinki."



Hopefully it will backfire in Finland - and on Soini and his party. He is really going too far when he calls Rehn's patriotism into question. Rehn was named "expatriate Finn of the year 2011" and his compatriots are justifiably proud of his achievements on the international scene.

How the Finns see Bobrikov:



And what happened to him, but hopefully not to Rehn: