I have been following the discussion here, and I think that you are working with a somewhat skewed understanding of Finland's position during the Cold War - at least when looked at from a Finnish perspective.
Saying that Finland proactively did *everything* it expected Moscow to want would be a mischaracterization of the Finnish Kekkonen-era practices, in my view. It would be closer to the mark to say that the Finnish leadership tried to predict what Moscow wanted from Finland, and then proactively did the perceived bare minimum along those lines, to keep the Soviets placated and "off their case", and to be able to advance their actual interests.
The Finnish leadership understood since the end of WWII that Finland had practically ended in the Soviet sphere of influence. The Paris Peace Treaty and the Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 made this placement not just de facto but also, to an extent, de jure. Like Paasikivi famously said, "we can't change geography". Finland was in the bear's embrace, but then, again, only to an extent, if we compare it to the nations the Red Army had occupied after the war, which were made into people's republics, and became actual members of the Warsaw Pact.
Practically, the Finnish playbook in the Kekkonen era was to play nice to Moscow, to go through the motions, so that the Soviets don't take a too close interest into Finnish issues. Doing this allowed a measure of leeway the Finns could use to try to slowly integrate the country closer to the Western countries and their economic system. Increasing connections and access to the European societies and international markets was a consistent effort the Finns were doing "under the radar", and as Kekkonen and his allies saw it, it was necessary to have Moscow's trust to reduce Moscow's attention. Had the Finnish government committed to an openly anti-Soviet ideology and policies, the USSR could have used different sources of leverage to make the Finnish government's and nation's position quite difficult.
The Treaty of 1948 was one of those leverages, as de jure it made Finland a Soviet ally in the case of a war against NATO. In peace time, though, this did not apply, especially if Finland was not "under threat of war by Germany and its allies". This situation led to different things in terms of the Finnish defence policies - like Finland buying a lot of Soviet weapons. On one hand, Finland needed to prove to the Soviets that it had a "believable defence" to be able to defend the country against a NATO attack - otherwise, Moscow could argue having to extend its own military umbrella over Finland. On the other hand, in the prevailing situation, due to the Western countries' mistrust towards Finland, the Finns could scarcely buy modern weapons from the US or Britain, say. In many cases, the only way to boost Finnish defence against *any* side was to buy Soviet weapons.
Trade was another leverage. Finland made good business selling roughly Western quality consumer products to the Soviet market, being one of the few easy sources of such the USSR had. This trade, which was built upon the Finnish war reparation production sent to the USSR, amounted to tens of percents of Finnish exports, and included Finland buying raw materials and energy from the USSR at quite affordable prices. This was a double-edged sword - there were obvious benefits in this trade, in terms of the Finnish export industry and national income, but then too much trade with the Soviets risked losing a competitive edge in the Western markets. And, of course, if Moscow decided that it needed to punish Finland for some transgression against it, it would be easy to cancel or postpone important deals and deliveries on bullshit reasons.
The goal of Finland's "friendly" policies towards the USSR were then to try to make lemons into lemonade, make the best of a poor situation, and try to keep Moscow relatively uninterested into Finland so that the country could slowly edge towards the West, and towards greater actual neutrality. Kekkonen's favorite formulation was Finland's "aspiration to neutrality", implicitly admitting for Moscow's benefit that Finland was not fully neutral, and at the same time signalling to the West what Finland really wanted to be - something very closely like Sweden. Working actively for the Nordic project was a part of this effort, to find Finland practical (if not de jure) allies Moscow would not find too objectionable, moving Finland closer to a "Western" community through economic and cultural cooperation.
It was all a game of looking for angles to advance the Finnish national interest, as understood by Kekkonen and his allies. It is true that Kekkonen's monopolization of the presidency, and the overt influence he and his supporters had over the Finnish politics and political process damaged democracy in Finland. In defence of the man, I think it needs to be said that he apparently seems to have worked in good faith to help Finland and also to protect Finnish democracy, as paradoxical as the latter one seems today. If we look at the process in context, though, Kekkonen et al seem to have believed that if Finland did not have a democratic system shaped by them and implicitly curtailed by the demands of their policies, then Finland would stand the real risk of having a non-democratic system shaped by Moscow and explicitly controlled by Soviet demands. In the view of those who supported the "Paasikivi-Kekkonen line", they were defending a narrow Finnish freedom of action against both the far left, who would have given Finland over to direct Soviet control, and the political right, who with their anti-Soviet policies would have invited Moscow to wield its different leverages against Finland to hurt the nation in different ways, while the west could (and likely would) not do anything concrete to help Finland. The logical end point of both those options was significantly increased Soviet control of Finland, the supporters of a "Kekkonian" position could have argued.
Along with the threat of the actual pro-Soviet far left, more pronounced in the late 40s and the 50s, there was by the 70s also a new issue with a "societal Stockholm Syndrome" taking root in also the dominant political parties - younger politicians coming to believe that friendship with Moscow was *the point* of the exercise, not just a smokescreen to allow Finland to do other things. This process, and seeing the aging and increasingly mentally frail Kekkonen as "indispensable" for Finno-Soviet relations, created the particular troubled atmosphere Finland had in the late 70s and early 80s, something very specific for Cold War era Finland.
As to what this all has to do with a theoretical neutral Germany? At the very least we can say that Finland should not be seen as a model of what a neutral Germany would be. The countries' positions would be very different, one of them a small one next to Leningrad, the other one a major country in the middle of Europe. Because Finland was so small and so alone, Moscow could allow it some leeway as long as it saw its interests being sated. With Germany, they could not do the same - allow Germany too much room for independent action, and it will stand a real risk of the Germans "going west" as soon as possible. As it is, I believe that the USSR could not afford a united Germany with any real freedom of action. Connected to this, I do also agree with those who say that the so-called Stalin note was not a bona fide offer, but just a cynical propaganda stunt by the Soviet dictator.
