Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 18:13:38 -0500 (EST)
From: ROSSERJB-AT-VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU
Subject: 100 Years of (Mis) Understanding


     A brief comment on Finland:
     I do not hold up pre-1945 Finland as any great model.
Few of the regimes in Eastern or Central Europe of that
period were worth emulating.  The question is, why
is Finland now in so much better shape than others of those?
     The relevant comparison is not with the US.  It was not
in that region and was way ahead of all those countries in 
development.  Furthermore, today Finland's workers are certainly
in better shape than are the US's.
     More relevant is the comparison with such places as Estonia,
northeastern Russia, with which Finland was about equal in 1917
and still in 1939, or better yet with Czechoslovakia, which was
distinctly ahead of Finland in 1939 on all fronts.  Finland remained
out of the Soviet bloc, despite its "Finlandization", at least in
terms of its political-economic system, but Czechoslovakia did not.
Today, Finland is far ahead of the latter or any other part of the
former tsarist Russia or former Soviet bloc.
Barkley Rosser


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