Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change

by Jared Diamond

The concrete pay-offs from Finland’s adherence to the Paasikivi-Kekkonen line have consisted of what the Soviet Union (and, today, Russia) has and hasn’t done to Finland during the past 70 years. It hasn’t invaded Finland. It didn’t engineer a take-over of Finland by the Finnish Communist Party when that party existed. It did reduce the amount and extend the period of the war reparations that Finland owed and paid off to the Soviet Union. In 1955 it did evacuate its naval base and did withdraw its artillery on the Finnish coast at Porkkala, just 10 miles from Helsinki. It did tolerate Finland’s increasing its trade with the West and decreasing its trade with the Soviet Union, Finland’s association with the EEC (European Economic Community), and Finland’s joining EFTA (the European Free Trade Association). It was fully within the Soviet Union’s power to do, not to do, or to forbid most of those things. The Soviet Union would never have behaved as it did if it had not trusted and felt secure with Finland and with Finland’s leaders.