In the future, the Police Museum will keep the historical artefacts of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo). The items transferred to the museum collections include objects such as a secret mailbox from the 1950s related to espionage and bottles found at sea in the 1970s, intended for the smuggling of prohibited material.
The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service and the Police University College, which administers the Police Museum, have signed an agreement on the preservation of the historical artefacts of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service in the museum collections. At the same time, an agreement was concluded on other cooperation in recording the history of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service.
“The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service has a very interesting history, and it has played a key role in terms of the functioning of the Finnish state. It is essential that the preservation of the historically significant materials of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service and its predecessors is ensured,” says Lauri Haavisto, Intendant of the Police Museum.
The collections of the Police Museum have already included some of Supo’s items, such as microfilming equipment and cameras. In 2011 to 2012, the museum hosted a special exhibition entitled From Okhrana to Supo, where museum visitors could get acquainted with issues such as an armored car of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service and see the type of cell where the persons suspected of treason were held during the war years.
“The new agreement with the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service will not immediately bring new objects to the display cases of the museum for visitors to marvel at, but in the future we will certainly also display material from Supo and tell stories related to the objects. The Police Museum collections currently encompass approximately 24,000 objects and 141,000 photographs, so not all material is available to the museum visitors at once.”
The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service was previously part of the rest of the police administration, but in 2016 it was transferred under the Ministry of the Interior. Due to the transfer, the Police Museum was no longer responsible for recording the history of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service, until it was now agreed otherwise.
