MOSCOW’S NEW DEAL OF BENEFIT TO FINLAND

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27858, 5 January 1956, Page 11

MOSCOW’S NEW DEAL OF BENEFIT TO FINLAND

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

» HELSINKI. The Finns, under Moscow’s new coexistence deal, today feel masters in their own house more surely than at an\ time since the Soviet invasion in 1939. They believe that they have reached the two goals for national security set ud by the President (Mr Juho Paasikivi) when he took office nearly 10 years ago in a war-ravaged dislocated country.

These objectives, known to Finns as “the Paasikivi Line,” are: at home, democratic. parliamentary rule; abroad, good relations with all powers, particularly the Soviet Union.

Parliamentary rule has only been threatened once. This was in 1948. under a Communist Minister of the Interior (Mr Hyjoe Leino). Parliament found that he had been turning the police force into “a camouflaged striking force of the Communist Party,” and called for his resignation. Mr Leino refused to go. so President Paasikivi stepped in and dismissed him. Since that incident, all Finland’s non-communist parties have combined to keep Communists out of the Cabinet.

Relations with Russia were a much more difficult and delicate matter. To hold her big neighbour at arm’s length. Finland had to observe a number of taboos. These were defined quite clearly in official Moscow statements, in Soviet propaganda and in inspired speeches by Finland’s own Communists. Chief of these taboos, or “anti-Soviet acts” as the Moscow Government and its agents in Finland called them, were: closer ties with the three other Nordic countries— Sweden, Norway and Denmark —as Finland traditionally had before the 1939 invasion, and “revenge feelings” for the invasion and subsequent hostilities with Russia from 1941 to 1944.

Even cultural ties with Norway and Denmark were banned because these two countries are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Sweden was suspect, although neutral, because, to quote the Finnish Communist paper, “Vapaa Sana,” “military and political reactionaries are working against the policy 'of neutrality, and plotting to throw the country into the jaws of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.” Soviet and Finnish Communist propaganda did not like the fact that many Finns looked to Sweden as “the old country” of which they were one part, whereas Russia had so often been “the old enemy.” Finnish Grievances “Revenge” was the parrot cry whenever the Finns complained of their heavy reparations, of their 400.000 displaced persons, of the crippling effect on their national economy, or pf the cession of about one-twelfth of their territory to Russia under the post-war settlements. They could not even honour their own war dead without incurring the reproach of “revenge.” In this atmosphere, any attempt to redress some of the anomalies of the settlements with Russia was out of the question. Then the Soviet Government made one of those shifts of policy which have so often changed the course of Finland’s history. In rapid succession the Russians told the Finns that they could have back the Porkkalla area, west of Helsinki, which they had had to lease to Russia for 50 years; join the Nordic Council, a body of members of Parliament from Sweden. Norway, Denmark and Iceland working for closer political, economic and cultural ties between the Nordic countries; fly passenger services with Finnish aircraft and Finnish crews to Leningrad and Mogcow; and have back all those Finnish subjects who had been held in the Soviet Union since the end of World War 11. Other countries have been promised air service rights over Soviet territory. Other countries have also been promised the return of their prisoners from Soviet camps; but the Finns feel that the return of Porkkalla. coupled with Moscow’s permission for their entry into the Nordic Council, had a special meaning Porkkalla, a farming, fishing and residential area, lay across the main railway line between Helsinki and Turku, Finland’s second largest city and her big port in the south-west. Soviet batteries at Porkkalla could have laid waste Helsinki at a moment’s notice. With the territory returned and all Soviet forces withdrawn from Finnish territory, the Finns can feel delivered from what was a very real threat to their independence. Nordic Council •Entry into the Nordic Council removes the big obstacle to Finland’s cultural, economic, and political development which the Soviet Union raised after the war. The Finns are now free to plan with their Scandina-

vian friends such things as a Nordic customs union, common 'citizenship within certain limits, and other matters in which these five countries can act ’s one unit in the promotion of their own welfare.

Quite as important to the Finns as the restitution oi Porkkalla and their entry into the Nordic Council is the Soviet attitude of mind which promoted these measures. The Finns are convinced that they have shown Russia that it is in her own interests to leave them free to follow their own Western way of life and to develop their own democratic political institutions. They seek no military alliances, understandings, or aid from the West, and have repeatedly and officially proclaimed their wish to be neutral in any new war. They have made their 'reparations deliveries to the Soviet Union as punctiliously as they have been paying off their First World War debts to the United States. They have been as frank about their dislike of the Soviet system as in their disavowal of those forces opposing it. On the other hand, they have shown Russia that they v. ill not submit to pressure or be deterred by threats or aggression. This was demonstrated in 1939, when they fought the invading Red Army alone, and in 1948. when President Paasikivi removed Mr Leino, the Communist Minister accused of seeking to impose the Soviet system on Finland.