Finland: Neutrality with a Tilt

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Though it sounds like a rural rail route, the Paasikivi-Kekkonen Line is in fact the name of the foreign policy that has guided Finland since World War II: seeking accommodation with its mighty eastern neighbor, the Soviet Union. In pursuit of this policy, Finnish President Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, 69, flew to Moscow last week for the 16th time since he became Finland's head of state in 1956. This week, in keeping with his country's enduring but slightly off-balance neutrality, he will make his second state visit to the U.S. to discuss such matters as a proposed European security conference.

Some Finns complain that Kekkonen, unlike his predecessor J.K. Paasikivi, is unnecessarily obsequious to the Soviets. "Paasikivi waited for the Russians to ask," grumbles one of the President's critics. "Kekkonen goes to the Russians and offers." His reasons are all too obvious. Finland has a population of only 4,700,000 (v. the Soviet Union's 240 million) and shares 788 miles of its 1,583-mile frontier with the Soviet Union. The Finns have been at war with Russia, both under Sweden's suzerainty and on their own, for a total of 90 years. The brutal 1939-43 wars with the Soviets cost the country 10% of its territory and more than 65,000 men.

Helsinki Club. Mindful of all this—and of Nikita Khrushchev's attacks on the Finns in 1959 for including anti-Soviet politicians in their Cabinet—Kekkonen does indeed go to great pains to avoid antagonizing the Russians. His government deplored the U.S. invasion of Cambodia but made no mention of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. It torpedoed Nordek, the proposed Scandinavian common market, mainly because the Soviets were suspicious of it. Even domestic politics reflects this concern. In Finland's March elections, the Conservatives finished in second place (out of eight parties). But when a five-party coalition was finally formed last week with longtime Foreign Minister Ahti Karjalainen as Premier, the Conservatives were excluded because Moscow might disapprove.

Though Kekkonen is sometimes accused of being the Kremlin's errand boy, he has actually performed an adroit balancing act in his dealings with the Soviets. A northern lumberman's son who was once the national high-jump champion (top performance: 6 ft. in 1924), Kekkonen fought the Russians during World War I and in 1940 was one of only two members of Parliament who voted against ceding any Finnish territory to the Soviets. In 1943, however, he realized that the Nazis were losing the war and concluded that Finland would have to adopt a policy of Soviet-oriented neutrality.