Paasikivi–Kekkonen doctrine

[1] This allowed Finland to retain independence in internal affairs, e.g. a multiparty parliamentary system, and not to join the Eastern Bloc.

Furthermore, the policy was heavily tied to the person of President Kekkonen, who consequently exploited his position as a "guarantor of Soviet relations" against political opponents.

Outright censorship, official as well as unofficial, was employed for films and other works considered explicitly anti-Soviet, such as The Manchurian Candidate or The Gulag Archipelago, although political freedoms were not otherwise coercively limited.

They unilaterally abrogated restrictions imposed by the 1947 and 1948 treaties with the exception of a ban on acquiring nuclear weapons, joined in voicing Nordic concerns over the coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and gave increasing unofficial encouragement to Baltic independence.

At the same time, by replacing the Soviet-Finnish mutual assistance pact with treaties on general cooperation and trade, Finns put themselves on an equal footing while retaining a friendly bilateral relationship.