Word: kekkonens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stenographer to the Finnish Diet. His Cabinet is the most conservative since World War II. But it is only a caretaker government until the next election, probably in March. Tuomioja's real significance is that he plans to run the country without the help of ex-Premier Urho Kekkonen, the able, unpopular Agrarian who has bossed every Finnish cabinet since...
...Kekkonen's cabinet was overthrown earlier this month when he tried to force through a badly needed austerity program...
...Deal. Kekkonen let it be known that he had been secretly conferring with the Soviet ambassador to Helsinki, and that he was actually on the point of signing a big new trade agreement when his government was voted down. The agreement would have 1) granted Finland credit with no strings attached; 2) paid for 10% or even 15% of Finnish exports to Russia in sterling or dollars; 3) reopened the question of Finnish territory captured by the Red army in World War II. Moscow, said Kekkonen, was preparing to let Finnish lumbermen float log rafts down the Saimaa Canal, which...
...instead of concluding, as Kekkonen apparently intended, that the nation could trust him to deal safely and profitably with the Russians, Finns from left to right were shocked...
Painful Reminder. The Kekkonen incident was a painful reminder of Finland's dangerous dependence on Soviet trade concessions. For eight years (1944-52), the Finns worked like demons to pay the Soviet Union $570 million in reparations. The effort cost them dear. To meet Soviet demands for ships and machinery, Finland was forced to double the capacity of its metal industry. It ended up with an artificial industrial plant, geared not to its own needs but to Russia's, and lacking alternative (nonCommunist) markets to take care of the surplus. Wages were allowed to rise to uneconomic levels...