Word: finlandized
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Buried deep in Finland's endless pine forests some 40 miles south of Rovaniemi, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, is the little community of Varejoki. The people of Varejoki, struggling desperately to keep alive and to create a new life for themselves, are a strange assortment. There are 50 Finnish farmers-mostly refugees from the northern district of Petsamo, now Russian territory-who live with their 300 children in lean-tos and shacks. There are several score prisoners-mostly short-term smugglers and black marketeers-who live in improvised barracks almost without guards. And there...
These students come from all the western nations: Belgium, Holland, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Italy, and Greece--and from others outside the Marshall Plan: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Finland, and Republican Spain. Six Displaced Persons complete the roster, which was to have included Poland and Bulgaria, too, until last-minute difficulties kept their students away...
...Molotov Plan. Nine nations-the U.S.S.R., Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland and Albania-had declined invitations to the conference. It was a hard decision for the trade-hungry Czechs; their Communist Premier Klement Gottwald had flown to Moscow, telephoned to the Cabinet at Prague the night the decision was made. "What else could we do?" said a non-Communist official in Prague. For being good, the Czechs got another Russian treaty and a promise of 200,000 tons of wheat...
There would be quite a few empty chairs. Finland was the first country to turn down "provisionally" the invitation to Paris. Other disappointed satellites would follow. Czechoslovakia and Poland, however, wriggled restively in Mother Russia's embrace. Czechoslovakia's Communist Premier Klement Gottwald prepared to journey to Moscow for advice...
...these servants of a "classless" society dare ask their officers. They preferred to ask me, a foreigner. Most revealing of all was the view from the train's windows. On the Russian side of the border, I saw ruined, largely unrestored towns that had been part of Finland. Viipuri was ghostlike and still in the morning sun. The people were in rags. They were still living in dugouts and log houses. Few of the fields were plowed. Everything seemed static...