Life in Finland during the second half of the twentieth century was dominated and shaped by two things: a rapid transition from agrarian to post-industrial society and the country's relationship with the outside world, above all, with the Soviet Union. It was also dominated by one man, Urho Kalevi Kekkonen, president of the republic from 1956 until 1981, a controversial figure in his own lifetime and still the subject of intense debate some two decades or more after his death. The limited opening of the archives in Moscow following the collapse of the Soviet Union has revealed a degree of collusion between the Finnish and Soviet political leadership that has tarnished the reputation of Kekkonen and those closely associated with his policies. ‘Finlandisation’, a term first used by politicians and commentators outside Finland to warn of the dangers of a certain model of Soviet control being applied elsewhere has now been appropriated by the Finns themselves, and seems set to be added to the other descriptive epithets of Finnish history. Whereas for the ‘finlandisers’ of the 1970s, such as the right-wing West German politician Franz-Josef Strauss or the political commentator Walter Laqueur, the villain of the piece was the Soviet Union, which used a variety of manipulative practices to ensure control over a small and weak neighbour, already bound to it by treaty, ‘finlandisation’ as interpreted by Finnish writers since 1991 has focused directly on the Finns' own culpability for this state of affairs.