Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change

by Jared Diamond

The Paasikivi-Kekkonen line reversed Finland’s disastrous 1930’s policy of ignoring Russia. Paasikivi and Kekkonen learned from those mistakes. To them, the essential painful realities were that Finland was a small and weak country; it could expect no help from Western allies; it had to understand and constantly keep in mind the Soviet Union’s point of view; it had to talk frequently with Russian government officials at every level, from the top down; and it had to win and maintain the Soviet Union’s trust, by proving to the Soviet Union that Finland would keep its word and fulfill its agreements. Maintaining the Soviet Union’s trust would require bending over backwards by sacrificing some of the economic independence, and some of the freedom to speak out, that strong unthreatened democracies consider inalienable national rights.