---
title: "1992, the Hornets and Russia | Esko Aho | Negotiator 158"
titleOriginal: "1992 Hornetit ja Venäjä | Esko Aho | Neuvottelija 158"
episodeNumber: "158"
guest: "Esko Aho"
datePublished: 2022-10-29
duration: "01:01:50"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0rBUpiA8qw"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["geopolitics","leadership_governance"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata and the neuvottelija.fi episode record. No chapter marks are published here: the publisher's list holds three marks, at 0:00, 1:02 and 4:36, and the last one's own text quotes a timestamp of 1:01:50 — it is a split of the show-note text rather than a chapter list, so republishing it would assert timestamps that do not hold. No transcript is published either — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. Two disclosures: the episode carries a sponsor segment for MyHeritage, demonstrated by the host, which is unrelated to its content; and it is built around the guest's own book, with the guest recounting decisions he himself took as prime minister and no contemporaneous opponent present."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/226-1992-hornetit-ja-venaja-esko-aho-neuvottelija-158"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep158-1992-hornetit-ja-venaja-esko-aho/
---
# 1992, the Hornets and Russia | Esko Aho | Negotiator 158

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Summary

In three and a half months at the start of 1992 Finland detached itself from the YYA Treaty, applied for membership of the European Union and bought the Hornet fighters — and none of it was in the government programme. The former prime minister Esko Aho explains why the totem animal of his book is a phantom cat, the Lion of Ruokolahti, and how the same imagined beast is still being hunted in politics from Trump to Putin. The conversation runs from the Tehran Conference to the floating of the markka, the rupture between the Bank of Finland's Kullberg and the government, and Yegor Gaidar's prediction of post-imperial nostalgia, a passage Aho says he has read fifty times. It also covers the Sberbank board seat, the agricultural terms of EU membership, and what 1992 has to teach 2022.

## Three decisions, none of them planned

Leaving the YYA framework, applying to the European Union and buying the Hornets happened inside about fifteen weeks, and none of the three appeared in the programme the government had been formed on. Aho's point is not that programmes are useless but that the decisions that matter tend to arrive from outside them, and that a government which treats its programme as a boundary will miss them.

## The passage he has read fifty times

Yegor Gaidar's account of what happens to an empire after it loses its empire is the single text Aho returns to. Read in 1992 it was a forecast; read in 2022 it is a description, and the episode's treatment of Russia rests on it.

## Kullberg and the markka

The public breach between the Bank of Finland and the government is the most concrete domestic episode here, and it is the one that decided the currency's fate. Aho tells it from one side, which is worth remembering while reading it.


## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: [1992 Hornetit ja Venäjä | Esko Aho | Neuvottelija 158](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0rBUpiA8qw).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at [www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/226-1992-hornetit-ja-venaja-esko-aho-neuvottelija-158).

## In depth

The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode:
[English](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep158-1992-hornetit-ja-venaja-esko-aho/) · [suomeksi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/yhteiskunta/ep158-1992-hornetit-ja-venaja-esko-aho/).

## Explore the ideas in depth

- [Negotiation Strategy, Leverage and Power: Reading the Counterparty You Actually Have](https://www.neuvottelija.com/guides/negotiation-strategy-leverage-and-power/): A negotiation guide from the co-author of Neuvotteluvalta — the sources of leverage, BATNA and anchoring in practice, using information asymmetry, breaking deadlocks, and what to do when the counterparty negotiates on power rather than consensus. Grounded in Neuvottelija conversations and two decades of negotiation writing.

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Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — 1992, the Hornets and Russia | Esko Aho | Negotiator 158, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep158-1992-hornetit-ja-venaja-esko-aho/, 2022-10-29. For quotes include episode 158 and timestamp.