"You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that Finland belonged to the Soviet sphere" Finnish here. In the 1970's Finnish political system was quite

"You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that Finland belonged to the Soviet sphere" Finnish here. In the 1970's Finnish political system was quite heavily listening on what Kremlin had to say. There is a good term - "finlandsierung" which means appeasing the Soviets was a prominent feature of the politics of the time. By it's system it was politically quite stagnant as it had the same man Kekkonen as president for 25 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urho_Kekkonen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urho_Kekkonen Most of the political elite, with some exceptions, paid fealty to the Soviet embassy. Close ties to East-Germany were also nurtured. As there are quite many powerful people still in active public life, who likely were in the soviet pockets, nobody wants to talk about this that much. There is a very well known list of likely Stasi collaborator s given by West German Intelligence Service to the Finnish Security Police (Supo) in 1990 that is declare secret. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiitinen_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiitinen_list This is not conspiracy theory. It's all quite well documented and understood. The details must wait for future historians to dig out once the last generation of Soviet era politicians has passed away. One has to realize that while considered a first world country, Finland is tiny and capital poor, with over thousand kilometer land border with what is now Russia, and coastline that guards the approach to St. Petersburg harbour. The weakness to influence is obvious, as well as the interest of the other party to influence events. That said the top most message is probably a bit hyperbolic. But the assessment is probably correct, that there is some bad blood between Estonians who lived through the soviet era and some people in the current Finnish administration.