"A sensational flight from Kuopio to Suonenjoki. Silvo Sokka, only 17 years old genius, had made aviation history" wrote the Saturday edition of "Helsingin Sanomat" of October 1948. Sokka had flown a distance of 50 kilometres in Savo province airspace with a homemade rocket plane. The newspaper reported that Sokka had been building his rocket since February. It was seven metres long, cigar-shaped and wingless except for the rudder. The plane flew on home-made fuel. The dizzying flight had taken place two days earlier on the afternoon of Thursday 7 October. The launch had gone well, and initially the rocket's speed had been low, according to Sokka. Sokka had been in contact with his ground assistant only once because the radio had gone off. In his message, he announced that he was going into horizontal flight at 7000 metres. Then an accident had happened: the fuel tank ruptured and fuel splashed into the pilot's eyes. The rocket's controls failed and the plane flipped upside down. However, Sokka managed to turn the rocket into a glide until the plane turned upside down again over Suonenjoki and Sokka fell 10-30 metres into a lake. Sokka had then swum about half a kilometre to the shore and swam to a nearby landman's school. There he had been found lying on the ground by a chaplain who had arrived at the school. Sokka had soon recovered after reaching the sauna to warm up. His father had driven him home. Aviation experts in Helsinki had already cast doubt on Sokka's flight in the first news item. Rocket planes would not be built in a simple countryside workshop. If the information about the flight reported by Sokka was correct, the plane would have reached a speed of 830 km/h. The newspapers also reported on Sokka's background. He had attended a one-grade school in Kuopio, but dropped out because mathematics was too much for him. At the time, Sokka was working at Saastamoinen's panelwood factory in Kuopio. Sokka's father was a weapons technician in the army, and there were six children in the family. Sokka was described as a lonely young man. According to a neighbour's little girl interviewed by the newspaper "Finnish Social Democrat" , Sokka was "somehow strange" Helsingin Sanomat had reached a "high-ranking military official" who thought that the boy was a genius and that society should help him get ahead. It is not clear from the news whether this military officer knew Sokka or whether he spoke in a more general way. The news of Silvo Sokka's flight was indeed a sensation. After the defeat of the war, Finland was in need of an inspiring young genius. 'In any case, the Finnish people can be proud these days of their youth, which cannot be restrained even by the law, when it comes to realising big dreams', Arijoutsi wrote in his article. This belittling attitude towards the peace treaty was pointed out by the SKDL's "Vapaa Sana" a few days later, although it failed to mention that it was just a newspaper story. But the same enthusiasm was evident in an announcement by the Finnish Youth Student Fund, published in the Helsingin Sanomat on the same page as the rocket flight announcement: 'Remember young people like Silvo Sokka, we must all help them to move forward'. A Stockholm newspaper sent their journalists, and it was reported that a journalist from London would be arriving on a private plane. Sokka answered journalists' questions at a press conference on Saturday evening, 9 October. Han explained the technical details of his plane fluently, but seemed nervous and did not make eye contact with the journalists. It turned out that the construction of the rocket plane had been financed by a mysterious German engineer, Ganzeuge, who had worked at the "Saastamoinen OY" machine shop earlier in the year. He had been fascinated by the blueprints of the rocket plane that Sokka had shown him. Before the rocket plane, Sokka had worked mainly on model planes. According to Sokka, the rocket plane had been built in a hayloft in Riistavesi. Parts had been ordered from a dozen factories. The fuselage was made in Tampere. The fuselage was made of steel tubes and the shell of duraluminium. The machine consisted of three parts: the nose, the engine and the cab. The Sokka rocket weighed 2 000 kg and cost over 300 000 marks. Sokka also drew a nice picture of his plane and called it the Silver Star. On the day of the flight, Sokka and Ganzeuge had transported the rocket three kilometres to an improvised launch pad. Ganzeuge had an assistant with whom Sokka said he had been in contact during the flight. The journalists were keen to speak to engineer Ganzeuge as well. Sokka said he tried to reach Ganzeuge by telephone the morning after the flight, but he had reportedly travelled and Sokka did not know where. The reporters asked Sokka for the engineer's phone number. "Jännevirta 404," Sokka said. According to "Uusi Suomi", Jännevirta did not have such a phone number. And that wasn't the only oddity revealed by Sokka's story. Among the Savo newspaper's mail was a letter signed "the engineer", lamenting the death of a young inventor on the maiden flight of his self-made rocket plane. The engineer describes the flight as Sokka's, but believes the boy died when the rocket broke up due to high speed or exploded in mid-air. In the final part of the letter, the Engineer expresses his grief at the loss. "The nation will mourn a young man with better talents than men, technicians and engineers. He had the most remarkable inventions at work. He designed rocket engines, but had to abandon them, he had a rocket invention in his pocket, but not on paper, he had a rocket engine for gliders, an aircraft engine (internal combustion engine), a propeller turbine, and so on. The nation's non-existent aircraft industry is losing a talent in him that will not be easily repaired," the engineer lamented. "Goodbye, Cloud Boy," he concluded ruefully. The strange thing was that Sokka had gone to the "Savo" newspaper to ask if such a letter had appeared, he would have liked to get hold of it before it was published. Other oddities were also beginning to appear in Sokka's speeches. With the police, he had visited the barn where the rocket plane had been manufactured. It was full of hay, which, according to Sokka, had been carried out during the construction and then back again. The police were not convinced. Similarly, the rocket's starting point, as indicated by Sokka, showed no trace of the 'oiled launch rails' mentioned twice in the letter received by the Savo newspaper. Experts also wondered how Sokka had managed to get his rocket plane to 'glide' if it had no wings at all. Officials began to believe that Sokka's flight was a figment of imagination. This was perhaps a good thing for Sokka. Te newspaper "Uusi Suomi" published an impressive list of all the laws and regulations Sokka would have broken on his flight. These ranged from failure to approve the plane's construction drawings to lack of a radio licence. Even the pilot would have needed training, a degree and a pilot's licence. For some of the offences, Sokka might have been pardoned as a minor, but Ganzeuge, an adult engineer, would have been fully responsible. Worst of all, Finland was banned from building reactionary aircraft under the Paris Peace Treaty signed the previous year. Faith in Sokka's story began to crumble immediately after the weekend. The peporter Inka from the newspaper "Finnish Social Democrat" was there on Saturday 10 October to talk to Sokka. "You don't have to be very clever to fool the Finnish people and others," the article was headlined. Helsingin Sanomat, perhaps the biggest media outlet to have reacted to the story, was still trying on Monday 11 October to maintain faith in some kind of surprise turnaround. According to the paper, it was possible that Sokka was just some kind of figurehead and the real designers of the rocket plane would come forward, or that Sokka would admit the story was a hoax. This is what happened, while the Monday morning Helsingin Sanomat was still fresh in the hands of readers. Silvo Sokka confessed that he had made up the whole story about his flight and the mysterious engineer. The whole event was a disconcerting, out-of-control cover story version B. Silvo Sokka would have liked to work in engineering, but in Kuopio the opportunities were few and far between. He was unemployed from time to time and was reprimanded at home for this. Angered by the situation, Sokka came up with a plan: he would go to Sweden or Norway to find better work opportunities. As he was underage, he somehow came to the conclusion that it would be better to sneak off to a neighbouring country if everyone believed he was dead. So he wrote a letter under the name of a mysterious engineer, telling of a failed rocket flight that ended tragically. Han sent the letter to the "Savo" newspaper and set off on Thursday afternoon, pedalling towards Suonenjoki. He was carrying a rucksack, lunch and flying glasses. When he reached Suonenjoki, Sokka noticed that his plan was flawed. It was dusk and his bike had no light. The journey would not continue, and he would soon need a place to stay for the night. Sokka decided to appeal to the weather. He dropped his bicycle in the lake, wet himself, and then walked to the nearby country school to lie down. That's where they soon found him. Sokka pretended to be unconscious but he had made a crucial mistake. He had forgotten his identity card, which allowed him to move around his father's workplace in the Kuopio barracks area. Because Sokka was identified, the disappearance plan was foiled. In his desperation, he decided to take the story of the rocket ride mentioned in the letter. This was the beginning of Silvo Sokka's torturous days. Hản stuck to his incredible story, even swearing it was true, even though it leaked like a sieve. To be publicly branded a liar would have been worse. Sokka said he had hoped in vain that the furore would soon blow over. Telling the truth made Sokka feel better. But it wasn't very good. When I asked him in an interview how he was feeling now, he replied simply: "I'm ashamed". In the days that followed, the newspapers engaged in a little self-criticism around the incident, although it was more of a mutual recrimination. The SKDL press, in particular, jeered at the Helsingin Sanomat, which had gone into the story with a vengeance. Of course, the fact that the first to report on Sokka's flight was a journalist from the reliable STT Kuopio made it easier for them to do so. Helsingin Sanomat used telephotography technology for the first time to report on the Sokka case, with news pictures sent to the editorial office via telephone lines. However, this pioneering work has since been forgotten, for example in a book on the history of newspaper photography. But the Sokka case was not yet completely over. Moscow radio was abuzz with the story. It reported on the Finnish press and said that Sokka's flight had turned out to be a Newspaper Hoax. But even so, the TASS news agency quoted by the radio claimed that shady dealings against the Paris Peace Accords might be going on in Finland. Apparently, Sokka's reports of ordering rocket parts from several factories and the comments of some military officials began to take on a life of their own in the Soviet Union. The Soviet embassy asked the Finnish authorities for more detailed information on the investigation of the case, but that was as far as it went, at least in public. Silvo Sokka was not charged with any offence. However, the family was so embarrassed by the case that they decided to change their surname. Not much is known about Silvo Sokka's later life. He went to a sawmill school, never married, and had little contact with his family. Silvo Sokka died at the age of 79 in January 2010 in Uusikaupunki. The saddest part of this incredible flight of ducks is the fate of Silvo Sokka. Looking back at the 2020s, it seems that Sokka was born at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Had he been allowed to dabble and share his soaring visions with his kindred spirits with the approval of his environment, who knows how high he would have soared.
The young men are dressed in sweatpants and T-shirts with a rainbow image. They are sitting on an elongated mattress in the lotus position with their arms crossed. Suddenly they start bouncing vigorously, their legs still folded in the lotus position and their arms together. The bounces take them briskly towards the other side of the mattress. The action looks like a painful exercise movement, but it is a yoga flight. The Natural Law Party has just bounced into the consciousness of the Finnish people on Yle's main news broadcast on September 25, 1994. Just over a month later, the required 5000 supporter cards were collected and the party could be registered. It intended to participate in the parliamentary elections to be held the following year. The new Natural Law Party may have been the most unique actor in Finnish party history up to that point. Many of the party's goals did not sound very special in themselves. It intended to fight the prevailing depression and unemployment in the same way as other parties. The specialness lay in the party's methods: the Natural Law Party sought to awaken the intellectual abilities of citizens. Natural Law did not refer to the law of gravity that resisted yoga bouncy castles, but to the "organizing power of nature" that was hidden in every living being. Social problems, such as unemployment and crime, were caused by the violation of this "natural law". Newspaper reports may not have been enough to clarify the details of the party's ideology, but the party had a very concrete proposal. The state should hire and train 7,000 yoga pilots, whose meditation power would greatly improve Finland. The effects of yoga flying would be both general, such as improving the social atmosphere and making it easier to overcome difficulties, and very specific. Tero Mäntylä, the leader of the Natural Law Party's youth organization, promised in an interview that crime would decrease by 30 percent and morbidity by 50 percent in three years. Yoga pilots would need their own hall. Its construction would cost 500 million marks. The most special thing about the theory was that the effects of yoga flying were not limited to the yoga pilot himself, but radiated to the surroundings. In other words, yoga flying was done together. Because of this, yoga pilots also believed that they could have a social mission. The stress-reducing effect of yoga flying would extend to the entire society. Yoga pilots also believed in the scientific nature of their activities. It was just based on science that had not yet been developed. The party's website presented the effects of yoga flying with measurement curves and the bibliography included neuroscientific publications. The sport was also developing. In the very first news broadcast, party chairman Timo Lahtinen stated that yoga pilots were now jumping higher than they would have jumped 3040 years ago. In the future, flights would become longer and yoga jumps would be replaced by genuine levitation. In total, the yoga flight project would cost the state 1.5 billion marks. The party blandly promised to also put its possible future party support into the project. But what on earth was a yoga flight? The Natural Law Party said that it was a kind of mind-body collaboration. A yoga flight was a spontaneous and surprising consequence of meditation, accompanied by a feeling of bliss and freedom. This is how a person soars upwards. However, a jump violates the required state of mind and is followed by a fall back to the surface of the earth. An experienced yoga pilot could still fly higher and further. The most spectacular flights could not be performed in public performances, as they would involve too many distractions. The yoga pilots practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM), which was developed by the Indian Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918-2008). Maharishi became famous in the late 1960s, when members of the band "The Beatles" were fascinated by his teachings for a while. The party was certainly not just a Finnish phenomenon. It was part of the Natural Law International Natural Law Party (NLP). The party is said to have been active in a total of 74 countries, but its electoral success has not been remarkable anywhere. For example, the party's success in Britain was weak, although George Harrison organized a support concert for it. Both the American and British Natural Law parties were founded in 1992, so the political movement was already a few years old when it arrived in Finland. The reception of the Natural Law Party in Finland in 1994 was pretty much as you would expect. The party was ridiculed in the media without restraint. The subject was of course delicious for the persecutors. "When thousands of stern-looking Finnish yoga pilots would circle over Sarajevo in a tight formation, wearing caps in old finnish style and Kauhava knifes at their belts, and glide silently like ghosts over the city from the rooftops, both Serbs and Muslims would lay down their weapons and perhaps also surrender. Peace would return to the tormented city," wrote Pertti Huopainen, editor of the Southern Suomen Sanomat newspaper. On a more serious note, commentators feared, for example, that some "Donald Duck Party" would one day become the tipping point in the parliament. The Natural Law Party was seen as a symptom of people being alienated from politics. Then, any colorful figure would be given a vote. At best, the Natural Law Party and similar political special forces might be a warning touchdown, after which the only path would be upward, as hoped for in an editorial in Etelä Suomen Sanomat in December 1994. The reception among the traditional parties was no friendlier. "Humbugs," described Timo Kervinen, the planning manager of the National Coalition Party, for example. The Greens did not see the new party as a threat, although contemporaries in particular might have thought that the Natural Law Party was fishing for support from the same circles. Researcher Sami Borg may have been right when he doubted whether the Natural Law Party segment ultimately had anything to do with politics. "The party's clear intention is to market its own ideology, which is not primarily a political ideology. The easiest way to get publicity is to establish a party, you get completely free advertising for your cause," Borg described in an interview with "Helsingin Sanomat". It is possible that somewhere in the depths of the international TM movement the same idea has been thought up and it has been decided to encourage the establishment of parties. On the economic side, the TM movement was already working: it had founded numerous companies. On the other hand, the members of the Natural Law Party were ready to invest both time and money in the party project and were obviously serious. Active members of the party were required to donate 0.7 percent of their income to the party's activities. The party itself said that it represented a new political culture, a counterforce to the old administration of the Finnish ruling parties. The party's operations were not exactly easy, as recruiting candidates did not go quite as smoothly as collecting supporter cards. Experienced observers of politics also saw an obstacle, which the party itself set for its own success: The Natural Law Party did not enter into any electoral alliances during its entire existence. Cleverly planned electoral alliances have sometimes elevated candidates from small parties to the ranks of the elected. The Natural Law Party eventually found about 60 candidates for the spring 1995 parliamentary elections, who were divided into all the electoral districts of mainland Finland. Only in Åland did there not appear to be any candidates, but it dawned on the party too late that the party hoped to get 10-20 MPs in the autonomous municipality. Gallup polls suggested that a separate Natural Law Party should have been established in the province. However, the forecasts did not look good about a month before the elections. 0.6 percent of those entitled to vote would vote for the party. It was not much consolation that support had risen by 0.1 percentage points since December. There could be local ideological diversity in the new party, as the party's activities had not yet had time to become established. At a panel of unemployed people held in Lahti in early March 1995, a representative of the Natural Law Party proposed that unemployment be eliminated by dismantling the welfare state, lowering the standard of living of Finns, and moving to responsible anarchy, in which the state apparatus would be replaced by civic activity. Whatever this might mean, anyway. In the run-up to the elections, the Natural Law Party also tried to present the social effectiveness of yoga flying, and not just what it is. According to "Helsingin Sanomat", the party tried to bring 300 yoga pilots to Finland from Europe. Their purpose was to end the ongoing strikes by firefighters and nurses and prevent the impending teachers' strike. I could not find any information about the results or success of the experiment. The teachers' strike was indeed cancelled, but the firefighters' and nurses' strike continued beyond the elections. It is possible that other forces had a greater influence here. The role of small parties in the elections was heavy. The Natural Law Party did not qualify for the big election exam of Yle, because only two parties outside the parliament were qualified, apparently due to their better Gallup success. With the possible exception of the Natural Law Party activists, it was clear to everyone how the party would fare in the elections. After all, they went under the bench. The party received 0.25 percent of the votes and no MPs. In total, 6819 votes were cast for the party's candidates. The party's vote-getter was the vice-chairman Tuulikki Saaristo, who was running in the Helsinki constituency, with 475 votes. Of the numerous small parties that participated in the 1994 elections, only the Young Finns were somewhat successful with two MPs. The ecological party Greens received only about a thousand more votes in the elections than the Natural Law Party, but still the candidate Pertti "Veltto" Virtanen from the Pirkanmaa constituency passed. The Electoral Alliance should also be thanked for that. The Natural Law Party achieved its greatest novelty in the 1995 parliamentary elections. However, it still participated in the combined 1996 EU and municipal elections and the 1999 parliamentary elections. The focus of the party's message changed slightly after the first elections. It began to campaign especially against genetically modified food. The party brought at least two scientists who opposed genetic modification to Finland, whose visits were reported in the newspapers. If the intention was also to spread information about the Natural Law Party, it did not succeed very well. The stories focused on genetic modification, and the party was only mentioned in passing. Health was also a prominent issue in the party's program. It advocated, among other things, national health education based on the Vedic tradition and special Vedic health centers. Vedic refers to the ancient philosophical and religious literature of India and the ancient religion based on it, which is the basis of modern Hinduism. Yoga flight also remained on the list of goals, but further from the top. The party began to talk about "stress washing machines" that would be used to alleviate crises. Stress washing machines would be groups of yoga pilots who would be trained from the unemployed, the European Natural Law parties offered the help of yoga pilots, and the soldiers would be given meditation training. 10,000 for resolving the Yugoslav crisis in 1999 The electoral success of the NATO Party continued to be poor. Not a single small party got its candidates through in Finland's first EU elections in 1996. As in the EU elections later, the whole country was in the same constituency. The Natural Law Party had set a full list of 16 candidates. The party received a total of 3,327 votes, which corresponded to 0.15 percent support. The winner of the entire election was Erkki Nieminen of the Natural Law Party, who collected 57 votes from the country. The Natural Law Party participated in the municipal elections held at the same time as the EU elections in 12 municipalities but did not get a single candidate through. In total, the party's candidates received 1,217 votes. In the 1999 parliamentary elections, the Natural Law Party had a chance to prove itself. If the party is left without a member of parliament in two consecutive elections, it will be removed from the party register. The party's election program no longer mentioned the yoga flight, but the first item on the list was "Stable and lasting peace using a stress washing machine", which referred to the party's familiar methods. It also boldly promised to halve the number of illnesses and crime. The Natural Law Party had a better situation in the 1999 parliamentary elections, as it had managed to increase the number of candidates to over a hundred. Unfortunately, on the night of the results, the party was disappointed again. In the whole country, the Natural Law Party received only 3903 votes, almost half less than four years earlier. The support rate was a negligible 0.15%. This was the end of the Natural Law Party's journey as a registered party. It was removed from the party register together with various other party movements of the 1990s, which had started at the same time as the more successful Young Finns, and from the party register, because the party had decided to cease its activities. The Natural Law Party did not make such a drastic decision. The party still participated in the 2000 municipal elections with its own joint list in four large cities, but received only 360 votes. However, the former press secretary of the Natural Law Party, Asko Ali-Marttila, was elected to the Loppi municipal council through his own electoral association. One of his election themes was awareness-based, so it can perhaps be said that in him the party finally got its elected representative. The announcement regarding Ali-Marttila's election is the last press release from the Natural Law Party. The party's website was last updated in March 2001. The party's activities are said to be at a standstill and its activists are continuing to pursue their goals in other forums. The Natural Law Party was an exciting phenomenon of the 1990s. It would have been difficult to imagine it in Finland during Kekkonen's time. However, the post-Cold War depression in Finland was a more colorful place. The order represented by the traditional parties had suffered serious blows. Small parties had a spiritual mission, although ultimately not much success. In fact, 12 parties were registered in the 1990s, which makes the decade the busiest in this field, at least since the establishment of the party register in 1969. Of course, many of the parties of the 1990s were short-lived. A certain number of Finns were fascinated by the non-materialistic view of the Natural Law Party. The time was somewhat favorable for such a thing. We were living in the hangover after the great consumerist feast of the late 1980s, the country was in recession and everyone was miserable. It was not entirely impossible that some kind of meditation-based control of one's own mind could have eased the burden of the harsh times. At least it could have felt that the Natural Law Party was taking up an issue that had perhaps been overlooked by traditional parties. The Natural Law Party's yoga flight has not been forgotten. Helsingin Sanomat's editor-in-chief Paavo Rautio longed for the light and joy that the colorful actors of the 1990s, such as Veltto Virtanen of the Natural Law Party, brought to politics in the 2019 parliamentary elections. The Natural Law Party has indeed received a kind of ideological successor with permission in 2000. In 2021, the Crystal Party was entered into the party register. Although the party emphasizes spiritual values: The hippie-spirited positivity of the Natural Law Party. The Crystal Party opposes vaccines and does not believe that the corona pandemic is real. Instead of flying high, the Crystal Party has fallen into a rabbit hole. Let's give the last word to the activists of the Natural Law Party. In an interview with Turun Sanomat in 2015, the party's former vice-chairman Tuulikki Saaristo recalled the party as follows: I think the party's goals are still supportable. The program aimed to emphasize the need for continuous and conscious psychological and spiritual development of humans and how politics needs a much stronger ethical foundation than it currently does. Yoga Flight is one striking example of the methods that can be used to achieve this goal.
light sleet