Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change

by Jared Diamond

Finland is the outstanding example of acceptance of responsibility and honest ultra-realistic self-appraisal. Its re-appraisal was especially painful because Soviet armies had killed, widowed, orphaned, or made homeless a large fraction of Finland’s population. Finns had to avoid falling into the trap of letting self-pity and resentment paralyze their relations with the Soviet Union. But they finally recognized realities: that Finland is small; that it shares a long border with the Soviet Union; that it could not count on its allies for effective support; that the responsibility for its survival lay entirely with itself; and that it was strong enough to resist the Soviet Union for a while, and to make a Soviet invasion slow and costly and painful for the Soviets, but that it could not resist the Soviets forever. Finns learned from the mistakes of their pre-war foreign policy. They finally faced the fact that the only way that they could retain their political independence was by earning Soviet trust, and by sacrificing some economic independence and freedom to speak out.