Word: kekkonens
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When Britain set out to counter the six-nation European Common Market with a European free-trade area of its own-knitting together the Scandinavian countries, Portugal, Switzerland and Austria-Finland badly wanted to join to make this Outer Seven an Outer Eight. But President Urho Kekkonen, a longtime neutralist who stoutly insists that Finland's future must be based on Soviet-Finnish "friendship," said nothing doing. Russia, Kekkonen argued, would be displeased if Finland participated in a non-Communist trade bloc...
...Finns, who defended their independence through two gallant, losing wars with Russia, have also found it hard to stand up against their giant neighbor in time of peace. Last year their President Urho Kekkonen shocked many Finns by letting the Russians veto the composition of a Finnish Cabinet. Following an election in which the Communists captured 50 of 200 parliamentary seats and emerged as the strongest single party, the republic's anti-Communist forces banded together to form a five-party coalition government. Flouting its postwar treaty pledge of "noninterference in other states' affairs," Moscow brought economic pressure...
...Russians chose to express their displeasure with Conservative Premier Karl Fagerholm by withdrawing their ambassador from Helsinki and cutting off both loans and trade. Fagerholm's government quickly fell, and the Agrarian Party took over. Two weeks later, Finnnish President Kekkonen went to Leningrad for a conference with Khrushchev...
...Kekkonen returned saying he had not realized how bad Finno-Russian relations had become. "I am sure that all reasonable Finns will join me in saying that we cannot have spells of cold. Finland must naturally take into account that vital interests require our neighbor to trust us." Apparently Khrushchev had applied pressure against the free Finnish press, and despite Finnish constitutional guarantee of press freedom, Kekkonen said. "Without restraint and responsibility on the part of the press, our relations will never achieve that degree of confidence our interest deserves...
Though President Urho Kekkonen continues to keep up perfectly correct ties with the powerful Soviet neighbor (and last May accepted a $50 million low-interest credit during a visit to Moscow), the Communists are not likely to be asked to form the new government even join it. The great majority of Finns remain deeply antiCommunist. "Raw or cooked," runs an old Finnish saying, "the Russian tastes the same." After last week's vote, Helsinki newspapers called for the half-dozen non-Communist parties to form a patriots' regime that will balance the economy and so keep Finland free...