The cornerstone of unity

23 PEACE STATION
The premises of Finland’s independent peace movement are in a beautiful two-story former train station called 
the Peace Station, which is surrounded by tall office buildings in the Helsinki district of Pasila.
The concept “independent peace movement” requires some words of explanation. This expression was used 
during the Cold War by peace activists especially in Western Europe (but also elsewhere) to distinguish 
themselves from the member organisations of the World Peace Council, which the Eastern bloc countries had 
taken over and which only criticised the West’s role in the Cold War’s arms race. There were strong member 
organisations in the West too, but the independent peace movement remained firm in its position that any arms 
build-up in the West and the East is equally dangerous.
Before it became the Peace Station, the building had been a train station for almost 80 years. It was built in 
1915 on the Karelian Isthmus, but traffic soon dried up at the station and in general between the former Russian 
Grand Duchy of Finland and the former imperial capital, St. Petersburg, when Finland became independent a 
few years later. So the underused building was dismantled log by log and rebuilt in 1923 as the first stop after 
the Helsinki Central Station, three kilometres north of the city centre in Pasila.
In the first half of the 1980s, the Peace Union of Finland and several of its member organisations had their office 
in one of the recently constructed huge concrete buildings in Pasila. In 1984, the union’s officials noticed that the 

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Finnish Rail Administration had put the wooden Pasila station up for auction and was planning to replace it with a 
new, modern station. The auction stipulated that the old building had to be moved but preserved.
Next to the station was an area that was originally reserved for a six-lane road but finally became a green 
space. The executive director of the Peace Union of Finland at the time, Ilkka Taipale, began to wonder if it 
would be possible to move the building there as a beautiful distraction from the concrete buildings and to serve 
as a centre for the peace movement. 
So the union made a bid. It wasn’t high (about 5,000 euros in today’s 
money), but it was enough to win the auction.
On the 8th of September of the same year, the then president of the Peace Union, Prof. Göran von Bonsdorff, 
put on the red cap of the last stationmaster and gave the workers the signal to start moving the building. Never 
before in Finland had a building that size been relocated intact. The distance was only moved a few hundred 
metres, but up an uneven slope. The building’s weight was 150 metric tons. A little boy watching in suspense 
remarked, “It’s only 10 tonnes less than a blue whale.”
The predecessor of the Peace Union of Finland was founded when Finland was an autonomous part of the 
Russian Empire, on the 10th of February 1907. In 1910, Senator Leo Mechelin represented the Peace Union of 
Finland at the International Peace Bureau’s world congress in Stockholm. But during the First World War, the 
Russian emperor banned all peace organisations.
The Peace Union of Finland was re-established 
in 1920 as the “Peace Union of Finland – League of Nations 
Association” to show the organisation’s goals. It became relatively well-known, especially among intellectuals, 
but it had a difficult time in the 1920s and particularly the 1930s due to extremely nationalist popular movements.
After the Second World War, the name was changed to “Peace Union of Finland – United Nations 
Association”. So the name continued to showed the organisation’s strong support of international justice and 
international institutions that protect and promote peace. The beginning of the Cold War at the end of the 1940s 
confronted the Peace Union with different challenges from those in the 30s. The World Peace Council and its 
national member organisations, which supported the Sovie
t Union’s foreign policy, became predominant in the 
international peace movement. As a result, Western propaganda denounced all peace organisations as 
communist. This put many independent peace organisations in a very difficult situation. If they weren’t 
considered communists in the media, they were called naive idealists.
This was the political and psychological situation in which the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was 
founded in the UK in 1958. Its ideological premise was that a national security policy based on an arms race in 
the era of nuclear weapons is preparation for global collective suicide. The logical consequence of this 
ideological premise was CND’s demands that Britain unilaterally give up its nuclear deterrent and politically 
focus on promoting collective security. In 1960, the philosopher Bertrand Russell founded the academic 
Committee of 100 in support of the CND’s campaign.
At the beginning of the 1960s, there was a renaissance of independent peace organisations throughout Europe. 
In 1963, as part of this wave, the Finnish Committee of 100 (Sadankomitea) was founded at the University of 
Helsinki, taking advantage of the name that the organisation founded by Bertrand Russell had made known 
throughout Europe. The Sadankomitea quickly got supporters in all Finnish university towns. In the student world of 
the 1960s, the Sadankomitea became a leading movement of its generation. Everyone wanted to join and wear a 
badge with the now famous CND peace symbol (whose origin was probably unknown to most!).
In the middle of the 1970s, the Sadankomitea proposed that the Peace Union of Finland become the umbrella 
organisation of all Finnish independent peace organisations. The proposal was natural since the ideological 
foundations of the organisations were similar despite their differences in age. 
The Pasila train station became the Peace Station in the 1980s, the decade of the international independent 
peace movement’s successful campaign for European Nuclear Disarmament (END). The relocation of the building 
received much publicity, which even grew dramatically when a fire broke out during the ensuing renovation. The 
librarian of the Finnish Rail Administration joked that the building had survived two wars in their care but had almost 
burned down in the hands of the peace movement. Enthusiastic and tenacious peace movement volunteers soon 
repaired the damage. Communal work and neighbourly help have as long a tradition in Finland as in other 
countries, where barn raising, log rolling, other bees of all kinds, and the old expressions used for them among 
settlers and farmers are however usually dying out. Finns still know their ancient expression for this well (talkoot), 
which is no surprise since they still often do volunteer communal work. Many houses have been built and many 
good projects have been carried out in Finland through such joint efforts.
The completed Peace Station provided the END campaign with visibility, publicity, and premises 
– just as it has 

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for numerous other campaigns that have been organised by the peace movement over the years. When Prof. 
Göran von Bonsdorff blew into the stationmaster’s whistle, the event was called a “mobilisation for peace”. The 
relocation and renovation of the train station have proved to be in many ways worthy of that expression. Nowadays, 
the Peace Station provides permanent premises for the Peace Union of Finland, the Finnish Committee of 100, the 
Finnish Union of Conscientious Objectors, the Finnish Branch of Service Civil International, the magazine Ydin 
(“nucleus”), many international friendship associations, and the Union of Friendship Associations in Finland. All 
member organisations of the Peace 
Union of Finland as well as other NGOs can use the Peace Station’s well 
equipped and comfortable conference rooms. The Peace Station is very visible and advertises the events that take 
place there.
The Peace Station is in a central and prominent location. It also attracts attention because it is beautiful and 
different from the surrounding concrete buildings. Most people in Helsinki know where it is.
Kalevi Suomela 
– long-time chairperson of
the Peace Union of Finland, current honorary chairperson