Word: finlandized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There is no crazy Russian mass in Finland today. The Russians on the Control Commission have been cut to a mere 200. Every Finn I met wanted to get along with Russia, but not many of them liked the Soviet system. The Finns are doing their best to meet all armistice and peace treaty terms, including the highest per capita reparations of any World War II loser. Last year, reparations took one-fourth of Finland's total industrial production and more than one-eighth of her national income...
...Price of Honesty. The Finns are proud of their reparations record. I mentioned to Ilomari Harki, who sits on the Reparations Commission, that Finland was highly regarded in the U.S. for her honesty. He smiled: "Yes, but it's a pity it costs so much to be honest...
...costing the Finns some things they value more highly than money. They must house and employ about 450,000 émigrés-more than one-tenth of Finland's population-from the territories the Finns gave up to Russia. How many stayed behind? The highest estimate I got was 40; a leftist told me, "Not even the Communists stayed." So Finland has ruthlessly had to requisition living space. Every person over ten years old is allowed one room (two children under ten count as one adult). Many houses and apartments have three times their pre-armistice dwellers. Farmland...
...Price of Butter. Finland suffers war's inevitable inflation and the lowering of living standards. The Finnmark is officially valued at about one-fifth its prewar (2?) value. But its actual value is about one-tenth. By official statistics, Finnish taxes are almost seven times higher than in 1935. In the U.S. meaning of the word, almost all Finns are workers. The country has exactly 100 people with annual incomes of as much as 1,000,000 Finnmarks-$7,352 at the official rate of exchange. For workers, the cost of living has risen 4½ times over...
This may make Finland sound grimmer than it is. The Finns are cheerful, well dressed and, judging by the violent exercise they indulge in, well fed. They have their freedom. To people whose fiber is almost as hard as the granite ledges that crop out all over their country, that means a lot. The Finns kept their national character and language for centuries under the Swedes and the Czars. They are keeping it now. Said an American who knows them: "These people are nobody's satellites. They're Finns...