Gissurarson: Fate of Baltic Nations Little-Known

Posted on 06.11.13

26 August 1991: Prime Minister Oddsson with the foreign ministers of Iceland and the Baltic countries.

Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson delivered a paper 25 October 2013 on “Different Nations — Shared Experiences: Iceland and the Baltic Countries” in a seminar on the international angle at the annual conference “The Mirror of the Nation” where teachers at the School of Social Sciences at the University of Iceland present their research. He pointed out that Iceland and the three Baltic countries all gained sovereignty the same year, in 1918. All four countries were occupied in the spring of 1940, Iceland by the British, and the Baltic Countries by Stalin’s Red Army. In all four countries, military control passed to another state in the summer of 1941: Iceland made a defence treaty with the United States, and the German Army occupied the Baltic countries, driving out the Red Army. The year 1944 had also been significant in all four countries, Iceland becoming a republic, and the three Baltic countries being forced to re-enter the Soviet Union where they had been briefly, and nominally, member-states before the German occupation.

From the outset, the history of the international communist movement was linked to the history of those four small countries. Professor Gissurarson gave a brief account of the history of the Icelandic communist movement which started when Brynjolfur Bjarnason and Hendrik Ottosson became Bolshevik supporters after street riots in Copenhagen in 1918, and went on to become delegates to the Comintern Congress in Moscow in 1920. In 1923, a Latvian Jewess, Liba Fridland, gave lectures in Iceland about the Bolshevik Revolution, with Ottosson vehemently protesting in the organ of the Social Democratic Party (where the communists operated until 1930 when they founded the Communist Party under orders from Moscow). Professor Gissurarson also described a controversy in 1945–1946 about the situation in the Baltic countries between the conservative newspaper Morgunbladid and the socialist organ Thjodviljinn. A Lithuanian refugee, Teodoras Bieliackinas, had written about the Soviet oppression of the Baltic countries, with the result that the socialist organ called him a “Lithuanian fascist”. By then, the Communist Party had been dissolved, but the Socialist Party replacing it in 1938 also strongly supported the Soviet Union.

Ants Oras

Professor Gissurarson mentioned the 1955 foundation of the Open Book Club, the Almenna bokafelagid, which was to resist the communist dominance of Icelandic cultural life. Its first publication was Baltic Eclipse by Estonian Literature Professor Ants Oras. In the summer of 1957, the Icelandic President, Asgeir Asgeirsson—a staunch anti-communist—and Foreign Minister Gudmundur I. Gudmundsson received Dr. August Rei, Prime Minister of the Estonian government-in-exile in Stockholm, at the President’s residence, after which the Soviet Ambassador, Pavel Ermoshin, protested formally. In 1973, the Open Book Club published Estonia. A Small Nation Under Foreign Yoke by Andres Küng, an Estonian-Swedish journalist and writer. The book was translated into Icelandic by a law student at the University, David Oddsson. By this time, most leftists in Iceland had turned their back on the Soviet Union, even if some of them maintained ties with Cuba and China. On the far left, the People’s Alliance had replaced the Socialist Party. In 1991, when Iceland became the first country to re-recognise the independence of the Baltic countries, Oddsson was Prime Minister.

Historian Karlsson leads a protest march in the 1970s against Iceland’s alliance with the West.

Finally, Professor Gissurarson presented the findings of a survey that he did with his student, Helena Ros Sturludottir, on the treatment of Baltic history in Icelandic textbooks. In particular, Professor Gissurarson criticized the widely-used textbook Modern Times (Nyi timinn) by two socialist historians, Gunnar Karlsson and Sigurdur Ragnarsson. In this book, the fact is not really mentioned that the Baltic countries were occupied by the Red Army in 1940; instead it is said that they were “annexed” by the Soviet Union, becoming Soviet republics. It is also said that the Western powers at Yalta de facto recognised Soviet control of the Baltic states. According to Professor Gissurarson, this was highly debatable, the main point surely being that the democratically-elected Western leaders and the Eastern dictator used the concept of a “sphere of influence” in different senses. Furthermore, in the book by Karlsson and Ragnarsson it is said that the Baltic countries in 1991, under the influence of growing nationalism, used their right under the Soviet constitution to secede from the Soviet Union. This was not relevant, Professor Gissurarson responded. If the Baltic countries did in fact have this right, why did they not secede much earlier, given the unpopularity of the Kremlin masters in those countries? It was clear that the Baltic countries had never freely joined the Soviet Union. Their status in 1940 to 1991, under international law, was that of occupied countries, not that of fully recognised Soviet republics.

The lecture of Professor Gissurarson forms a part of the joint project by RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe of the Victims: Remembering Communism”. He also co-operated with institutes in Estonia and Latvia working on the project “Different Nations — Shared Experiences”.

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Gissurarson: Foreign Factors in Collapse Unexplained

Posted on 05.11.13

25 October 2013, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson read a paper at a seminar on the 2008 Icelandic bank collapse, a part of the annual conference “The Mirror of the Nation” where social scientists at the University of Iceland present their recent research. Professor Gissurarson rejected two common explanations of the bank collapse. One of them was that, under the influence of “neo-liberalism”, Iceland had deregulated the financial market. Gissurarson pointed out that Iceland operated under precisely the same legal and regulatory framework for the financial market as other member-states of the EEA, European Economic Area, which Iceland joined in 1994. The second explanation was that Icelandic bankers were more reckless than bankers elsewhere. Gissurarson pointed out that they had been able to find customers, both depositors and creditors, who would then have been guilty of the same recklessness. But, Gissurarson submitted, there were nevertheless two systemic risks to be found in the Icelandic banking sector. One was extensive cross-ownership and excessive borrowing by one business group — clearly identified and explained in the report by Parliament’s Special Investigation Commission on the bank collapse. The other additional systemic risk was the enormous difference between the banks’ field of operations — all of Europe — and their field of institutional support — Iceland alone, as it turned out.

Red line: Loans to Baugur Group

Professor Gissurarson displayed a graph which he had drawn with figures from the report of the Special Investigation Commission about the total borrowing in Icelandic banks by the three dominant business groups in Iceland before the collapse. It is clear from that graph that the Baugur Group and their associates were quite distinct in this respect. However, what was crucial for the collapse was that into this already vulnerable situation entered three decisions made abroad. One was the refusal of the American Federal Reserve System to make currency swap deals with the Icelandic Central Bank, at the same time as it made such deals with the other Nordic central banks and in fact with all central banks in the Western world, outside the Eurozone. A second decision was that of the British Financial Supervisory Authority to close the two London banks owned by Icelanders at the same time—indeed, the very same day—as it offered all other banks in Britain a generous rescue package. The third decision was that of the British Treasury to invoke the British anti-terrorism law against an Iceland bank, with repercussions not only for that bank, but also for the whole Icelandic financial system. The subsequent sale of Icelandic assets fetched much less than reasonable prices, even in an international financial crisis. Professor Gissurarson gave a few examples from Norway. His paper formed a part of a joint project by RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”.

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Gissurarson: An Icelandic Octopus? Tuesday 5 November 12–13

Posted on 04.11.13

Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson will give a lecture Tuesday 5 November 2013 in a seminar at the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Iceland, 12–13, in room HT-101 in the University Plaza. The topic is: “Did an Octopus control the Icelandic Economy until the End of the 20th Century? And What Happened Then?” Professor Gissurarson will discuss the thesis presented in some recent works on Iceland, for example in the book Meltdown Iceland by British journalist Roger Boyes, and by Robert Wade and Sigurbjorg Sigurgeirsdottir in New Left Review, that until the final decade of the 20th Century, the Icelandic economy was dominated by an “Octopus” or some “Fourteen Families”, and after that by three business clans.

Professor Gissurarson will analyse the origin and meaning of the two concepts “The Fourteen Families” and “The Octopus” in the Icelandic debate, both of those concepts having interesting foreign roots. He will look at the empirical evidence for the hypothesis that groups which could be characterised in either of these two  ways had been dominant in the economy for some period of time. In this context he explores surveys of the biggest Icelandic companies in the 1980s and 1990s, the relative sizes of the private and the public sector in Iceland and the size and influence of the cooperative movement. He will move on to discuss the three business groups which became powerful in the early 2000s, the Baugur Clan, the Exista Group and the two Bjorgolfs, father and son. In the report by the Special Investigation Commission on the 2008 bank collapse it was criticized that public authorities did not regard those three groups as interrelated, creating an additional systemic risk. Professor Gissurarson’s lecture forms a part of the joint project of RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”.

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Starving the Beast: Monday 4 November, 12–13

Posted on 01.11.13

The government is more and more becoming like a leviathan, a big beast, greedy for our money. Dr. Daniel Mitchell, the chief tax analyst at Cato Institute, will discuss how to starve the beast at a meeting jointly organised by RNH and the Icelandic Taxpayers’ Association, Monday 4 November, 12–13, in Askja, the House of Natural Sciences at the University of Iceland, Room N-131. Dr. Mitchell will discuss the recent increase of government spending in the wake of the international financial crisis. He will also describe the logic of the Laffer Curve which has created some controversy in Iceland: whereby government revenue will actually decrease with higher tax rates, as the tax basis gets eroded.

Mitchell’s lecture forms a part of the project “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”, which RNH organises in cooperation with AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, whose patron was the late Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. Erla Osk Asgeirsdottir, MPA and market manager at Handpoint, chairs the meeting which is open to all, with admission free.

Daniel Mitchell received his MA. in economics from the University of Georgia and his Ph.D. from George Mason University in Virginia. He worked for the Senate Finance Committee and Heritage Foundation, before becoming a Senior Scholar at the Cato Institute in Wasington DC, specialising in tax matters. He has written a book about the flat tax, and is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other newspapers. He is a frequent visitor to Iceland and has published papers on taxation in Iceland. He also often participates in television debates, for example about taxes on the rich:

Here he discusses tax havens:

Here he appears before a U. S. Senate committee on public spending and public debt:

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Self-Love in Rand: Friday 1 November 17.15–19

Posted on 29.10.13

Ayn Rand is one of the most popular and influential writers of all times. Her books have sold worldwide in more than 30 million copies. AB Publishing Company having published two of her best-known novels in 2011 and 2012, now turns to her most autobiographical work, We the Living (Kira Argunova in the Icelandic translation), to come out Friday 1 November 2013, edited by radio host Frosti Logason and with a postscript by Asgeir Johannesson, lawyer and philosopher: Kira is an independent and courageous girl, studying engineering in Petrograd in Russia shortly after the 1917 communist revolution. One of her friends at school is Andrei, a convinced communist, working for the secret police, Cheka. By coincidence, she meets Leo, a handsome and charming, but unemployed  and disillusioned son of a pre-revolutionary admiral, and falls in love with him. The three of them meet their fate in a time of turmoil, where life is always at stake.

Born in St. Petersburg (later Petrograd and still later Leningrad) 2 February 1905, Ayn Rand (Alissa Rosenbaum) read history and philosophy at the University of Petrograd, but emigrated to the United States in 1926 and became a scriptwriter in Hollywood—at the same time as Halldor Laxness—and a playwright, with her plays being performed on Broadway. She married the actor Frank O’Connor in 1929, but they did not have children. The novel We the Living, published in 1936, was printed in an Icelandic translation in Morgunbladid as a serial in 1949. It was filmed in Italy in 1942. The novel Fountainhead was published in 1943, became an unexpected best-seller, and a film was made after it in 1949. The novel Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, and also became a best-seller. Rand’s play, The Night of January 17th, was performed at the Icelandic Broadcasting Service in 1966 and 1994. For most of her adult life, Rand lived in New York, passing away there 6 March 1982.

On the occasion of the publication of We the Living, RNH, in cooperation with AB Publishing Company, holds a public meeting Friday 1 November at 17.15 in Askja, the Natural Sciences House of the University of Iceland, Room N-132. Dr. Yaron Brook, director of the Ayn Rand Institute in California, will discuss Rand’s philosophy and argue that self-love is both right and moral. Born in Israel in 1961, Brook was brought up by socialist parents, but when sixteen, he read Atlas Shrugged and rejected socialism. He served in the Israeli Army for three years, in military intelligence. He completed an MBA and a Ph.D. in finance from the University of Texas in Austin, taught finance in universities and set up an equity management company with associates. He became director of the Ayn Rand Institute in 2000.

SUS, the Association of Young Independents, co-sponsors the event. It also forms a part of the joint project of RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists of “Europe of the Victims”. Admission is free, and after the meeting there will be a reception on the premises. Before Dr. Brook’s talk, a short trailer from the Italian film based on We the Living and produced in the 1940s was be shown. Dr. Brook recently published the book The Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government. He is a frequent contributor to television. Here he speaks about the causes of the 2008 financial crisis:

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Is a Special Tax on Fisheries Constitutional? Tuesday 29 October 16–17

Posted on 25.10.13

Two distinguished lawyers, Jon Steinar Gunnlaugsson, former Supreme Court Judge, and Helgi Ass Gretarsson, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iceland, will discuss a special tax on the fisheries at a meeting organised by Logretta, the Association of Law Students at Reykjavik University, Tuesday 29 October at 16, in the meeting room M-103 (the court room) at the University of Reykjavik. Gunnlaugsson has publicly argued that a special tax on the fisheries is unconstitutional, whereas Gretarsson does not agree with him. At the international conference held by RNH and the School of Social Sciences at the University of Iceland 14 October, Professor Ragnar Arnason argued that a special tax on the fisheries is inefficient, not least while the fishing sector is competing with similar sectors in other European countries—non-taxed and often heavily subsidised. Gunnlaugsson and Gretarsson will however discuss the legal aspects of the special tax, not least in the light of the Icelandic constitution and the legal framework of the fisheries. RNH supports and publicizes this meeting as a part of the joint project with AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”.

Born in 1977, Helgi Ass Gretarsson received his law degree from the University of Iceland in 2005 and was admitted to the district court bar in 2006. He is a Grand Master of Chess, and an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iceland, specialising in property rights. He has published two books, Rettarsaga fiskveida (The Legal History of Fishing, 2008) and Thjodin og kvotinn (The Nation and the Quotas, 2011).

Born in 1947, Jon Steinar Gunnlaugsson received his law degree from the University of Iceland in 1973. He was a district court and Supreme Court lawyer, until he was appointed a Supreme Court Judge in 2004. He resigned from the Court in 2012. In 2002–2004 he was Professor of Law at the University of Reykjavik. He has published three books, Deilt a domarana (Arguing with the Judges, 1987), Um fordaemi og valdmork domstola (On Precedent and the Limits on Court Authority, 2003) and Um malskot i einkamalum (On Appeals in Torts, 2005).

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