You've no doubt heard the story about her being a year older than Lawrence Harvey and playing his (implied incestuous --the book is much clearer that that is the case) mother.
Corruption destroys institutions. The TFG pardoning various war criminals in the military was about as corrosive of good order and discipline as anything he did. Hard to hold people to certain standards when the leadership behaves like he did/does.
My Post-Soviet Studies prof used to tell the story that the Soviet Union offered some of the land occupied after WWII in the Karelian isthmus back to Finland as part of some trade they were proposing and the Finns shook their heads and said no thanks due to the degradation of the land and soil by the Soviets and their ham-fisted management.