I was living in Slovakia in 1993. My friends would often go hiking through the forests, which were selectively harvested over time. Very little was growing on the bottom (well, there were sure a lot of mushrooms, which my Slovak friends brought home for cooking). No ground fuel to get much of fire started. The canopy helps keep moisture in the soil.

Your article made a lot of sense. Maybe this kind of forestry shows that the communists were not that inept after all.