Finland Survives Mikoyan:
GOODRICH, AUSTIN
By Austin Goodrich CBS News Correspondent Finland Survives Mikoyan Still independent despite economic pressure Stockholm ONE OF the most glaring failures behind the dismissal of Anas-tas...
...How did this happen...
...Mikoyan had failed to beat Finland into submission by means of economic warfare...
...After the second Soviet attempt to conquer Finland by force of arms came to an end in 1944, the Kremlin adopted a policy of economic warfare aimed at crushing Finnish independence...
...The machine and shipbuilding industries (expanded to meet reparations deliveries to the point where they now employ some 80,000 workers) are still largely uncompetitive on Western markets and, therefore, dependent on Soviet orders...
...The People's Democrats lost almost a third of their Parliamentary strength in the elections and were thrown out of the coalition government for the first time since the war...
...What is the outlook in the post-Mikoyan years to come...
...This move, aimed at making political capital for the pro-Soviet People's Democratic party, didn't work either...
...Just before the elections, Paasikivi, acting on the advice of the Diet, removed the Communist Minister of Interior, Yrjo Leino, and thereby assured free elections...
...They own and operate a number of their own small-scale industries and shops...
...A few months ago, Mikoyan personally visited Finland and...
...The Finns knew full well that this would not be the case...
...The reparations payments to be paid to the Soviet Union over a six-year period represented 10 per cent of the Finnish national income, and served to divert the bulk of Finland's normal trade from West to East...
...before he left, agreed to grant the little country (four million inhabitants) a gold loan...
...Still, if the situation of Finnish independence is fraught with danger today, it is much more secure than when Anastas Mikoyan started his unsuccessful economic warfare a decade ago...
...Finland had lost an estimated 13 per cent of her national wealth and 7 per cent of her labor force in the wars...
...With Mi-koyan, they knew what they had, and, being human, they preferred a known evil to an unknown one...
...The Social Democrats have answered with a patriotic appeal which has taken hold...
...The People's Democrats are still one of the better organized and financed parties in Europe...
...Economic warrior Mikoyan appeared to hold all the cards...
...The result is that, for the time being at least, the Communists have been ousted from nearly all the key unions and the important Central Federation of Trade Unions rests firmly in Social Democratic hands...
...on the condition that a majority of other European states also attended...
...Yet, today Finnish independence, both economic and political, looks stronger than at any time since the war...
...This might have been expected to constitute another lever for influencing Finnish policy...
...To mention just two: The Soviet administrations of the plants consistently refused to plow back profits: and they insisted on replacing able non-Communist workers and functionaries with not-so-able political reliables...
...If the new bosses in the Kremlin now deem Mikoyan's policy a failure, does this mean a harder application of the screws by his successor...
...The labor turnover was astounding in these plants...
...Shortly after the Soviet coup in Czechoslovakia, Stalin sent a letter to Finnish President Paasikivi suggesting negotiations for a mutual-assistance treaty...
...In addition to these headline triumphs of Finnish tenacity, the past few years have seen a life-and-death struggle in the trade unions...
...In the end, the Finns agreed to a watered-down pronouncement which only stated the two countries' support for European security under "the principles of the United Nations...
...Many Finns are frankly apprehensive...
...The commercial screws, though not as potent as six years ago, still exist...
...Last spring, Soviet trade administrators, under Mikoyan's guidance, attempted to get a Finnish trade delegation in Moscow to append a political declaration to a five-year bilateral trade agreement which would virtually bind Finnish foreign policy to the lines set forth by the Kremlin...
...Instead, a Finnish trade delegation negotiated an incredibly favorable one-year trade agreement which lowered the total level of trade between the two countries and required the Soviet Union to pay for part of her Finnish imports in dollars...
...But Finnish diplomats would not agree to the same type of pact which earlier had legalized Soviet military control over Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria...
...At almost the same time, Finland signed a trade pact in London which, for the first time since the war, made Great Britain Finland's largest single trade partner, pushing the USSR into second rank...
...the morale low, production down far below prewar levels...
...The People's Democrats have openly vied for support with the threat that they are the only ones who can successfully deal with Moscow, that otherwise Mikoyan & Company might decide to turn off the spigot of trade, thereby creating mass unemployment in certain branches of the economy...
...The reasons for this failure are manifold...
...When, last summer, the Soviets bid for an all-European security conference, Finland answered yes...
...They have not returned since...
...The next Soviet bid preceded the general elections of 1948...
...The Government is still unstable because of economic strife between the two major parties, the Agrarians and Social Democrats...
...Mikoyan announced that the Soviet Union would, out of the goodness of its heart, cut the remaining reparations in half (thus lowering the total by about one-quarter...
...The Russo-Finnish treaty establishes that military cooperation between the signatories can take place only if both sides agree that a threat to Finnish security exists...
...Another behind-the-scenes development embarrassing to Mikoyan was the failure of Soviet-operated industries in Finland, culminating in the sale during the past year of over half these plants to Finnish nationals...
...Furthermore, many of the remaining Russian plants, taken over from the Germans in 1944, are losing money...
...By Austin Goodrich CBS News Correspondent Finland Survives Mikoyan Still independent despite economic pressure Stockholm ONE OF the most glaring failures behind the dismissal of Anas-tas Mikoyan as Soviet Minister of Trade was Finland...
...Ineligible for UN membership, Finland could not appeal to that body for help...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 10
