Word: finlandization
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...chilling graves. The expedition's survivors bludgeon their way into the city, defended by 15,000 men, and there is fierce hand-to-hand combat raging in the city's homes and streets. Then a silence, and it is over, some of the sailors fleeing across the ice to Finland and the rest on their way to Soviet trials and labor camps...
Some Finns complain that Kekkonen, unlike his predecessor J.K. Paasikivi, is unnecessarily obsequious to the Soviets. "Paasikivi waited for the Russians to ask," grumbles one of the President's critics. "Kekkonen goes to the Russians and offers." His reasons are all too obvious. Finland has a population of only 4,700,000 (v. the Soviet Union's 240 million) and shares 788 miles of its 1,583-mile frontier with the Soviet Union. The Finns have been at war with Russia, both under Sweden's suzerainty and on their own, for a total of 90 years...
...great pains to avoid antagonizing the Russians. His government deplored the U.S. invasion of Cambodia but made no mention of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. It torpedoed Nordek, the proposed Scandinavian common market, mainly because the Soviets were suspicious of it. Even domestic politics reflects this concern. In Finland's March elections, the Conservatives finished in second place (out of eight parties). But when a five-party coalition was finally formed last week with longtime Foreign Minister Ahti Karjalainen as Premier, the Conservatives were excluded because Moscow might disapprove...
...performance: 6 ft. in 1924), Kekkonen fought the Russians during World War I and in 1940 was one of only two members of Parliament who voted against ceding any Finnish territory to the Soviets. In 1943, however, he realized that the Nazis were losing the war and concluded that Finland would have to adopt a policy of Soviet-oriented neutrality...
...working friendship with the Kremlin leadership. Many of its members belong to his "Helsinki Club," a select group of statesmen who have visited Helsinki and shared a sauna with him; Western members include Dean Rusk, King Baudouin of the Belgians and Sweden's Ex-Premier Tage Erlander. Finland's cabinet has its own version of the club, meeting regularly in the sauna at Kesaranta, the Premier's official residence, to combine parboiling and policymaking. Within the bounds of Finland's "bridge building" neutralism, Kekkonen pursues a fairly active foreign policy. Last year he revived the idea...