Peat-Bog Protest

In Finland, which fought two doughty wars to save its independence from Communist Russia, the Communists took first place last week in the vote for a new Parliament.

Main cause for this surprising turn seemed to be popular dissatisfaction over Finland's economic slide and the ruling center parties' failure to stop it. Over the past four years Cabinet after Cabinet has fumbled and drifted while inflation soared 32%. High-priced Finnish export industries lost out in vital foreign markets, and unemployment rose last winter to 6% of the labor force. In last week's election, right and left gained at the expense of the center. Many other voters stayed home in disgust. The irondisciplined Communists, while increasing their total popular vote by only 17,000, captured 50 of 200 parliamentary seats (a gain of seven).

The Communists harvested most heavily in the tiny clearings of Finland's northern forests, where impoverished smallholders try to farm their skimpy tracts in the summer and seek lumber-camp jobs the rest of the time. This year, when the big pulp and paper firms had no jobs at all to offer in the pineries, the ruling Agrarians complacently tried to hold the peat-bog farmers and other workers of the land with sky-high agricultural subsidies. The Communists, led by handsome Hertta Kuusinen,* shouted that the men of the forests wanted jobs, not fatter butter prices--and took five northern seats.

Though President Urho Kekkonen continues to keep up perfectly correct ties with the powerful Soviet neighbor (and last May accepted a $50 million low-interest credit during a visit to Moscow), the Communists are not likely to be asked to form the new government even join it. The great majority of Finns remain deeply antiCommunist. "Raw or cooked," runs an old Finnish saying, "the Russian tastes the same." After last week's vote, Helsinki newspapers called for the half-dozen non-Communist parties to form a patriots' regime that will balance the economy and so keep Finland free.

* Daughter of Old Bolshevik Otto Kuusinen, 77, who went to Russia in 1918 and is now a member of the Soviet Union's top Presidium.

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