"NOBODY'S SATELLITES"

In the U.S.S.R., TIME Correspondent Sam Welles found out that the voice of Russia's plain people was very different from the voice of official Moscow (TIME, May 26). Last week he listened to some of Finland's people and cabled:

You can feel quite a lot about a country from the way its people talk to you. In Russia almost everybody was cautious about talking to a stranger. In Finland, right next door, they tell you what they think--even about Russia. Said one Finn, over a weak beer: "It's too bad. Russians are often such fine people individually. We have many things in common; we both like to drink. But get them in a mass and they go crazy."

There is no crazy Russian mass in Finland today. The Russians on the Control Commission have been cut to a mere 200. Every Finn I met wanted to get along with Russia, but not many of them liked the Soviet system. The Finns are doing their best to meet all armistice and peace treaty terms, including the highest per capita reparations of any World War II loser. Last year, reparations took one-fourth of Finland's total industrial production and more than one-eighth of her national income.

The Price of Honesty. The Finns are proud of their reparations record. I mentioned to Ilomari Harki, who sits on the Reparations Commission, that Finland was highly regarded in the U.S. for her honesty. He smiled: "Yes, but it's a pity it costs so much to be honest."

It is costing the Finns some things they value more highly than money. They must house and employ about 450,000 emigres--more than one-tenth of Finland's population--from the territories the Finns gave up to Russia. How many stayed behind? The highest estimate I got was 40; a leftist told me, "Not even the Communists stayed." So Finland has ruthlessly had to requisition living space. Every person over ten years old is allowed one room (two children under ten count as one adult). Many houses and apartments have three times their pre-armistice dwellers. Farmland is being requisitioned even more ruthlessly. People with a job and a house in town, plus a farm, must give up one or the other. Big farms have been slashed into small units--so small that many of them are economically impractical. That helps explain why Finland's agricultural output last year was 60% of prewar, while industrial output recovered to 86%.

The Price of Butter. Finland suffers war's inevitable inflation and the lowering of living standards. The Finnmark is officially valued at about one-fifth its prewar (2-c-) value. But its actual value is about one-tenth. By official statistics, Finnish taxes are almost seven times higher than in 1935. In the U.S. meaning of the word, almost all Finns are workers. The country has exactly 100 people with annual incomes of as much as 1,000,000 Finnmarks--$7,352 at the official rate of exchange. For workers, the cost of living has risen 4 1/2 times over 1935's -- not considering stratospheric black market prices; a kilo of butter (28 marks in 1939) now brings 600 to 1,000 marks.

This may make Finland sound grimmer than it is. The Finns are cheerful, well dressed and, judging by the violent exercise they indulge in, well fed. They have their freedom. To people whose fiber is almost as hard as the granite ledges that crop out all over their country, that means a lot. The Finns kept their national character and language for centuries under the Swedes and the Czars. They are keeping it now. Said an American who knows them: "These people are nobody's satellites. They're Finns."

Finland's present program is far from communization or even socialization. One extreme left-winger told me, crossly: "Even Finnish Socialists prefer to make small reforms in the existing capitalist system rather than change it for a new system." Said an industrialist: "Our Socialists are really very sound fellows. They are in the difficult position of having to talk a lot of socialization to attract the masses, without doing any real socializing."

On Their Sturdy Gait. Finland is a country of free speech. The joke I heard most often concerns the 1,000-Finnmark note. On this large, lavender note a group of Finns--men, women & children, all naked--are pictured facing a body of water. There is no ship in the picture, but the presence of one is suggested by a large mooring hawser the people are holding. The Finns delighted in telling me that this "symbolizes Finland in 1952, gazing at the last shipload of reparations leaving for Russia."

They don't really believe that, and that's why it's a good joke to them. They know that in 1947, as in 1937, they have more clothes and food and freedom than their Russian neighbors. They know that if they can continue to go at their own sturdy gait, 1952 will see them still relatively better off than the average Russian.

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