[wideawake]

A poverty-stricken land of poorly educated loggers and farmers on the edge of the Arctic Circle, few paid it any attention.

Finland in 1955 was neither poverty-stricken nor were its people poorly educated.

The author is an idiot.

[wideminded]

Finland in 1955 was neither poverty-stricken nor were its people poorly educated.

I worked with some men who had been Mormon missionaries in Finland, probably in the early 70's. They emphasized to me that life was pretty hard economically for people in Finland. However, they also quoted Finns as saying: "You think it is bad here, you should see it in Russia." (an adjacent country) IIRC the Finns had to pay some sort of reparations to the Soviets after their wars and this hurt the Finnish economy.