Kekkonen, Urho (1900 - 1986)
President of Finland
The Office of the President of the Republic of Finland
Five terms as president placed Urho Kekkonen amongst the foremost figures in Finnish political history. What puts him in the very first position is the way in which he wielded power: a skilled tactician, he demonstrated absolute mastery of the whole field of politics; from foreign policy to the handling of academic organisations, from the development of Lapland to legal policy and public appointments. He was one of the best-known Finns internationally and is given credit for his skilled handling of Finland's relationships with the East in particular.
Five terms as president and five previous periods as prime minister place Urho Kekkonen amongst the foremost figures in the political history of post-independence Finland. What puts this Doctor of Laws in the very first position is the way in which he wielded power: a skilled tactician, he demonstrated absolute mastery of the whole field of politics; from foreign policy to the handling of academic organisations, from the development of Lapland to legal policy and public appointments.
As is the case with other great men, Urho Kekkonen's career bred legends which in their time served the needs of the day but which on closer inspection prove to be untrue. In the case of Kekkonen's background, such legends are associated in particular with his rural roots, his family's social status and the period before he entered politics.
Urho Kekkonen was born in Savo Province. His family roots go back far there, but the environment in which he grew up was Kainuu. As a member of parliament, Kekkonen represented the Agrarian Party (Maalaisliitto), first as a member for the western district of Viipuri (Vyborg) Province and then - after the cession of Karelia - Oulu Province. In both electorates he acquired a farm and presented himself naturally as an advocate of these regions and of rural people. But he may be regarded more as an urban intellectual.
Although the house at Pielavesi where Kekkonen was born is called 'Lepikko Croft', he did not come from a crofter background. The house had been acquired as a family residence near his father's working area. Kekkonen did not represent the independent peasantry but rather eastern Finnish country people of humble means who were neither farm-owners nor crofters. His father Juho Kekkonen, originally a farm-hand and forestry worker, joined the emerging middle class, becoming a forestry manager and stock agent at Halla Ltd. Kekkonen's mother Emilia Pylvänäinen was a farm-owner's daughter. The couple had enough money to see their son through secondary school. It was not until 1949, when Kekkonen was being groomed for the presidency, that the chimney was removed from a photograph of Lepikko Croft, thus creating a picture regarded as necessary for Kekkonen's alleged background as someone who had risen from the ranks of the common people.
As far back as his school days at Kajaani Coeducational Secondary School, Kekkonen's energy and his tendency to rashly transcend the bounds of propriety were becoming apparent. According to the minutes of a teachers' meeting, the then 15-year-old Kekkonen had "changed the marks given him by the teacher in his Russian exercise book and made alterations, and also shown unruliness and arrogance towards other teachers". His 'conduct' mark was severely reduced, and he received six hours of detention in the school cell. And just a few months before he matriculated in 1919, he received further punishment for 'impudence' and 'offending classmates'.
As a senior secondary school pupil Kekkonen joined the Kajaani Civil Guard led by Elja Rihtiniemi, and he participated in the War of Liberation on the side of the legal Finnish government in the Guerrilla Regiment. He took part in fighting at Kuopio, Varkaus, Mouhu and near Viipuri, amongst other places, and he commanded an execution patrol squad at Hamina in the spring of 1918.
Policeman, organiser and journalist
During the most important formative years of his youth, Kekkonen was a policeman by profession and an organiser and journalist on the side. He did his military service with the Helsinki Transport Battalion. After he moved to Helsinki in 1921, Kekkonen's life exhibited a clear split. On the one hand he swiftly completed his studies, graduating as a Master of Laws in 1926. On the other hand he was employed in various capacities by the security police throughout his period of education in Kajaani and Helsinki. He became thoroughly familiar with the harshest measures employed in anticommunist activities. At the security police office he also met his wife Sylvi Uino, a typist there and the daughter of a pastor from the Karelian Isthmus.
Kekkonen was also planning a doctoral dissertation on secret police activities (Agent provocateur), but after he had publicly suggested the abolition of the security police through its merging with the criminal police, he was forced to resign. In 1927 Kekkonen became the lawyer of the Maalaiskuntien liitto (Association of Rural Municipalities), but his irritating way of talking and taking positions led to his resignation in 1932. He published a commentary on municipal law, and his doctoral dissertation, completed in 1936, dealt with municipal suffrage under Finnish law.
Unlike provincial politicians, Kekkonen did not rise to the summit of power via practical municipal life. He trained for politics in student and sports organisations and by writing constantly for various newspapers and magazines. At Helsinki University he was active in the Northern Ostrobothnian Students' Association and among the association's Law students, leading a lively student life. He was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper Ylioppilaslehti in 1927 - 1928.
Kekkonen's ideological roots lay in the nationalistic student politics of the newly independent Finland. From 1924 on he was a member of the group around Niilo Kärki, the Akateeminen Karjala-Seura (AKS: Academic Karelia Society), and he supported Yrjö Ruutu's state-socialist ideas. The unification of the nation, hatred of the Russians, the linguistic struggle on behalf of Finnish, and the Eastern Karelia question were important to him as well. Kekkonen was a columnist for the AKS paper, Suomen Heimo ('The Finnish Tribe'). In 1930 he became chairman of the Suomalaisuuden Liitto (SL: 'Finnishness' Association), which had been taken over by the AKS three years earlier. After his estrangement from the AKS, which had become radicalised with the rise of the right-wing Lapua Movement, he continued to write columns for the SL's mouthpiece Suomalainen Suomi ('Finnish Finland'), concentrating mainly on pushing forward the finnicisation of the University.
Back in his days with the Kajaanin Kipinä sporting club, Kekkonen had already been active both as a player and an organiser. His best achievement as a sportsman was to become Finnish high-jump champion (1.85 m) in 1924. The standing jump was his best discipline. On the organisational side he went as far as to become the first chairman of Suomen Urheiluliitto (The Finnish Sports Federation) in 1932 and the chairman of the Finnish Olympic Committee.
Kekkonen was more gifted in action, and especially in tactics, than as an ideologist. He cannot be described as an ideological formulator of his generation's objectives but rather as a very effective implementer of the main ideas of each period.
The climb into the political inner circle
Kekkonen was not a party politician until 1933, when he became a member of the Agrarian Party, gained a post in the Ministry of Agriculture and made his first attempt to enter parliament. Kekkonen belonged to a first-generation intelligentsia from rural areas, along with his fellow lawyers Kaarlo Hillilä and Paavo Säippä, who also became civil servants. Kekkonen kept in close contact with Hillilä, who rose to the position of Governor of Lapland, and he appointed Säippä head of the security police as Esko Riekki's successor.
Kekkonen visited Germany in 1932 and 1933 in connection with his dissertation, and he witnessed Hitler's rise to power. Communism had been banned in Finland, and Kekkonen wrote a pamphlet entitled Demokratian itsepuolustus ('The self-defence of democracy'), in which he drew attention to the threat from the extreme Right.
Kekkonen got into parliament on his second attempt in 1936. He immediately became the second Minister of the Interior in Kyösti Kallio's government. His most conspicuous action as Justice Minister in Aimo Cajander's 'red soil' Socialist-Agrarian government was his unsuccessful attempt to ban the right-wing extremist Isänmaallinen kansanliike (Patriotic Popular Movement) in 1938.
Kekkonen was not included in the Winter War government. He opposed the Moscow peace treaty in parliament in March 1940. During the period of the Second World War he served as the director of the Karjalaisen Siirtoväen Huollon Keskus (Karelian evacuees' welfare centre) from 1940 to 1943 and - in a position created at the initiative of Minister of Finance Väinö Tanner - as the ministry's commissioner for coordination from 1943 to 1945, his task being to rationalise public administration.
These official duties and his membership of the 'Long Parliament' did not slake Kekkonen's thirst for action. In 1942 he began writing reports on foreign and important domestic political issues under the name of Pekka Peitsi ('Peter Pikestaff') for the weekly magazine Suomen Kuvalehti, after Major Wolf H. Halsti had been forced to stop writing these on the insistance of Headquarters. The late autumn of 1942 marked a turning point in Kekkonen's thinking: he began to approach the position of the 'peace opposition'.
Kekkonen's thinking on foreign policy finally condensed in 1944. According to his biographer Juhani Suomi, "Kekkonen's realism was very Soviet-oriented". This meant that as far as Finland's freedom and independence were concerned, the most important thing was to eliminate Soviet suspicions and thus to create conditions for mutual trust.
At its 1945 congress, Kekkonen stated that "the Agrarian Party must further establish an orientation suited to the new world order". He demanded that "all of our public life should be made to conform with a metamorphosis aimed at the achievement of good mutual understanding". Kekkonen's policy direction later became known as the 'K Line', and right up to the end of his career this divided first the Agrarian Party and then the whole of Finnish political life according to the yardstick of reliability in the area of foreign policy.
The climb to the position of 'autocrat'
Kekkonen made his final breakthrough into the inner circle of politics when he was chosen as Justice Minister in the Paasikivi government in November 1944. One of his responsibilities was dealing with war-guilt issues associated with the political trials demanded by the Allied Control Commission. When Paasikivi became President in 1946, the Agrarian Party proposed Kekkonen for the post of Prime Minister, a move thwarted by the opposition of the Finnish People's Democratic Union (SKDL), the communist front organisation. Kekkonen became a member of the Board of Governors of the Bank of Finland (the national reserve bank). He had a sphere of political influence in parliament, first as Deputy Speaker and then as Speaker.
Kekkonen was suspicious of the communists' intentions. There appears to have been a change after a Social Democrat minority government led by Karl-August Fagerholm was formed in the summer of 1948. This point seems to mark the beginning of closer relations between Kekkonen and the Agrarian Party, now in opposition, and the communists.
In the 1950 presidential election, Kekkonen was chosen as the candidate of the Agrarian Party and conducted a vigorous campaign against the incumbent president, Juho Kusti Paasikivi. Kekkonen received 62 votes in the electoral college, while Paasikivi was elected with 171. After the election Paasikivi appointed Kekkonen Prime Minister. Four further Kekkonen governments followed.
Even when he was forming his first government in 1950, Kekkonen cited relations with the Soviet Union as the main reason for his own leading role and the composition of the government. In the latter half of this government's term, he began placing ever greater emphasis on the 1948 Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance (FCMA) signed by Finland and the Soviet Union; it became "the basis of everything". Kekkonen soon developed relations with the East into his most important political tool, which he used time and time again to ward off attempts both to bring down his governments and to oust him from the office of prime minister.
According to his biographer Juhani Suomi, it was characteristic of Kekkonen's modus operandi that he was not satisfied with obtaining a majority through compromises: his aim was the complete annihilation and public humiliation of his opponents. Kekkonen appeared to enjoy a fight. He provoked conflicts and took hair-raising risks.
When Kekkonen was finally ousted from the prime ministry in 1953, he threatened that the Soviet Union would cut off credit to Finland if he was not reinstated. In the opinion of Paasikivi, Kekkonen's linkage of the two issues was "a politically dangerous matter, since the question of a government has here been linked to an economic issue". This was, however, the basic tactical model which Kekkonen later used as the foundation of his power.
The early 1950s were characterised by a regulated economy which attempted to control economic development as a whole by means of complicated overall income-policy measures, indexation clauses and what were called 'point purchases'. Prime Minister Kekkonen's tactical skills were at their best in this system, in which the State took the lead in maintaining a balance in party politics and incomes policy on the battlefield of the labour-market organisations. In 1954 Kekkonen summarised his thinking on economic policy in his Onko maallamme malttia vaurastua ('Does our country have the patience to get rich?').
The presidency fell to Kekkonen in 1956, when he defeated his rival, the Social Democrat Karl-August Fagerholm, by two votes. He had acquired 88 electors in voting for the electoral college. The key event in the meeting of the electoral college was that the SKDL backed Kekkonen in the third round of voting. It has not proved possible to piece together a complete picture of the colourful series of tactical moves - such as possible promises concerning the composition of future governments.
At the beginning of his presidency, Kekkonen sought to play a more reserved role in domestic politics in particular. The more markedly Western orientation in foreign trade, which had already begun under Paasikivi in the late 1940s, continued with the abolition of import regulations in 1957.
The Soviet Union protested against the broad-based majority government formed by Fagerholm at the end of August 1958. President Kekkonen joined in the criticism and contributed to the fall of the government in December. Historians have not been able to agree on the motives for Kekkonen's actions; it has been speculated that behind them was the concern of Kekkonen and the Soviet Union that a broad-based coalition might oust Kekkonen in the next presidential elections.
In any case, the final outcome was that Finnish domestic politics drifted into a dead-end street during the period in which it proved impossible to form majority governments. Instead of these it was necessary to fall back on caretaker governments propped up mainly by the Agrarian Party.
Internal dissension within the Social Democratic Party worsened the already tattered condition of domestic politics. Nevertheless, Kekkonen tenaciously attempted to combine his own re-election with the formation of a majority government and the achievement of foreign-policy objectives. He sent memoranda to this effect to the Soviet leadership without the knowledge of anyone else in Finland.
With Kekkonen's support, Ahti Karjalainen, who had risen from the position of his secretary to that of Minister for Foreign Trade, conducted negotiations aimed at fulfilling Finland's desire to become a de facto member of EFTA in 1961 while at the same time guaranteeing the trade advantages demanded by the Soviet Union. The result strengthened Finland's Western export markets and its ability to keep pace with integration in Western Europe.
In April 1961 Kekkonen was already planning to dissolve parliament in order to influence the alliance behind the former Chancellor of Justice Olavi Honka, who had been put forward as a rival candidate in the presidential elections. In addition, the Soviet Union sent a diplomatic note in late October, citing an article of the FCMA treaty referring to the threat of war. Concerning this 'note crisis', too, historical research has not arrived at a consensus. The most common view is that the Soviet Union was motivated by a desire to ensure Kekkonen's re-election. After Honka dropped his candidacy, Kekkonen gained the support of 111 electors and was re-elected by an overwhelming vote of 199 (out of 300).
As a result of the note crisis, genuine opposition to Kekkonen disappeared, and he acquired an especially strong - later even autocratic - status as the political leader of Finland.
The president's exercise of power
Under the Finnish system a president cannot exercise power indefinitely without the support of a majority of the parties. In order to ensure such support Kekkonen employed a very complex concept of 'reliability' in foreign politics - which meant supporting Kekkonen and his foreign-policy line - as a condition for being allowed to participate in government. For example, the (conservative) National Coalition Party was accepted in the government led by the (centrist) Johannes Virolainen after the note crisis because the National Coalition supported Kekkonen.
Another tool that Kekkonen employed to wield power consisted of his uniquely comprehensive personal networks: he kept in close contact with former fellow students and his hunting, fishing and skiing mates; he gave 'children's parties' for up-and-coming young intellectuals at his Tamminiemi residence; and he groomed trusted individuals for careers in the different branches of public administration, in the business world and in all the major parties. He had the ability and energy to mix with the most varied range of people and social circles. As a wielder of power, Kekkonen can be likened to the conductor of a symphony orchestra keeping a personal grip on all the players as he directed his own composition.
After winning the backing of the Agrarian Party, Kekkonen succeeded in gaining the open and advance support of the leftist SPD, SKDL and Workers' and Small Farmers' Social Democratic Union (TPSL), which formed a national front government in 1966. When a bill for an enabling act proposed by these parties and others in the national front government led by SDP chairman Rafael Paasio failed to get the necessary majority, these parties proposed Kekkonen as their candidate. He was thus elected in 1968 in the first round, receiving the votes of 201 electors.
In the area of foreign policy, on the other hand, the president could and did act alone, helped only by assistants whom he himself chose and who came mostly from the foreign ministry.
In the 1960s Kekkonen was responsible for a number of foreign-policy initiatives, involving for example the Nordic nuclear-free zone, the border agreement with Norway and a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, 1969). The purpose of these initiatives was to avoid the enforcement of the military articles in the FCMA treaty - in other words, military co-operation between Finland and the Soviet Union - and thus to strengthen Finland's attempt to practise a policy of neutrality. Following the invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968), pressure for neutrality increased. Kekkonen informed the Russians in 1970 that he would not continue as president, nor would the FCMA treaty be extended, if the Soviet Union was no longer prepared to recognise Finland's neutrality.
In contrast, Nordek - the economic association of the Nordic countries - was chiefly promoted, as far as Finland was concerned, by the Social Democrat Prime Minister, Mauno Koivisto; Kekkonen used skilful tactics to halt this project after it emerged that the Soviet Union was opposed to it. Kekkonen stated publicly that the problem was that Nordek was becoming a first step towards economic union with Western Europe.
The 1970 parliamentary elections broke up co-operation within the popular front. Kekkonen himself became more active in domestic politics, functioning increasingly as the de facto prime minister and participating, for example, in incomes policy negotiations (the U.K.K. agreement). When Kekkonen refused to let the victors in the election - the National Coalition and Finnish Rural Party - into a government, the result - after two caretaker governments led by Teuvo Aura - was a 'non-socialist popular front'. It contained the same parties as before 1970, though the position of the Centre Party (the name adopted by the Agrarian Party in 1965) was stronger.
In Finland there have been only three occasions on which the head of state has been chosen without elections or opponents: Mannerheim was chosen as Regent in December 1918 because of the desire to break away from Finland's orientation towards Germany; and he was chosen as President in August 1944 because of the desire to pull out of the Continuation War and sever ties with Germany. The third occasion was when Kekkonen's presidency was extended for four years in January 1973 by means of an enabling act.
In the case of the background to this legislation as well, there is no consensus amongst historians. According to my own research, Kekkonen forced Karjalainen to propose an extension of his presidency in January 1972 and, having appointed a Social Democrat minority government led by Rafael Paasio in February, demanded an enabling act in April - all of this in order to prevent the country's largest parties, the Social Democrats and the Centre Party, from proposing their own presidential candidates at the summer party conferences. In this way Kekkonen pushed aside the man who was then generally regarded as his candidate for successor - the Social Democrats' Mauno Koivisto, who had a clear lead in the opinion polls - as well as the long-serving centrist foreign minister and prime minister Ahti Karjalainen and the Centre Party's chairman Johannes Virolainen. The world situation following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the hardening of the Soviet Union's policies towards Finland worried Kekkonen, who considered himself the only person in Finland capable of withstanding the mounting pressure.
A second problem was, however, getting the enabling act through, since this required a 5/6ths majority in parliament. In order to obtain this, a political package was created. In addition to the enabling act, it included the free-trade agreement with the EEC that Finland had negotiated in July 1972 but which Kekkonen had put off signing, and the powers - known as 'protection laws' - wanted by the Left and providing for increased State regulation of the economy. But when even this package did not enable Kalevi Sorsa's government to put together the required 5/6ths majority, Kekkonen threatened in December to withdraw his availability as president. In his publicly stated reasons for this, he referred to the 'Zavidivo Memorandum' - a secret document describing discussions held in August between himself and the Soviet leadership - which had been leaked in November. Alarmed by the resulting confusion, parliament came up with the necessary majority, and the enabling act was passed in January 1973 by 170 votes to 28. Kekkonen's presidency was extended by four years.
The elimination of any significant opposition and competition meant de facto political autocracy for Kekkonen. The year 1975 can be regarded as marking the zenith of his power. He had dissolved parliament and was hosting the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki with the assistance of a caretaker government. Even at this point he was proclaiming himself the candidate of the Social Democrats and the Centre Party for the 1978 elections. And in a live TV broadcast from the Presidential Palace in autumn, he 'bashed' the assembled leaders of the Popular Front parties into joining an emergency government under Martti Miettunen. In its tactical brilliance, this action can be compared to Gustavus III's coup of 1772.
From the viewpoint of power politics, the 1978 presidential elections were merely a show. When the National Coalition Party also made him its candidate, Kekkonen - whose campaign was being managed by the Paasikivi Society, founded as a forum for foreign policy debate after the 'Night Frosts' - won 82% of the votes and 260 electors (out of 300). Admittedly, during the election one of these slipped over to Raino Westerholm of the Christian Union, who received 24 votes.
The de facto end of Kekkonen's career as an autocrat came in April 1981, when Prime Minister Mauno Koivisto refused to resign, although suggestions to this effect had been heard coming from Tamminiemi. Koivisto broke the pattern of the Kekkonen era by appealing to the notion that in Finland a government should first and foremost enjoy the confidence of the parliament and not of the president.
Kekkonen's health let him down visibly for the first time during a fishing trip in Iceland in the same year. In September he went on sick leave, and in October he submitted his resignation, after which he did not appear again in public. No official medical explanation of Kekkonen's illness has been published. Evidently what was involved was a deterioration of brain function. However, it has not been conclusively shown that the illness affected his capacity to carry out his official duties.
Kekkonen remained a sick man at Tamminiemi until his death in 1986. An impressive state funeral was held, with the Narva March and a service at Helsinki Cathedral presided over by the Archbishop, and he was buried at Hietaniemi Cemetery. Tamminiemi was turned into the Urho Kekkonen Home Museum.
Kekkonen's family
In addition to his wife Sylvi, who had a career in small-scale literature, Kekkonen's family included twin sons born in 1928. Matti became a member of parliament, an official in public administration, his father's assistant and the guardian of his heritage; while Taneli, who was less in the public spotlight, became a diplomat. Taneli married Britta, the daughter of Kekkonen's long-time rival and Social Democrat presidential candidate, Karl-August Fagerholm. Sylvi Kekkonen's father Kauno Uino came from an Artjärvi farming family and was Vicar of Metsäpirtti on the Karelian Isthmus and a pastor at Puumala in Mikkeli Province. Her mother Salome Stenberg was the daughter of a St Petersburg goldsmith.
After matriculating, Sylvi Kekkonen worked for a short time for Suomen Käsityön Ystävät (Friends of Finnish Handicraft) and for a longer period at the secretariat of the security police, where she met Urho Kekkonen. After the birth of their children, she gave up paid employment. Sylvi Kekkonen was deeply interested in literature; she made her home the venue for a literary circle and herself developed a talent for small-scale literature. She published her first work, a collection of aphorisms entitled Kiteitä ('Crystals'), in 1949. A collection of reminiscences, Kotikaivolla ('At the Home Well'), appeared three years later. Her short novel Käytävä ('The Corridor'; 1955) depicts the world of a nurse, and Amalia (1958), which may be regarded as her main work, describes how a woman who sees herself as a failure struggles for self-esteem by renouncing her human desires. Her collection of childhood reminiscences, Lankkuaidan suojassa ('Sheltered by the Plank Fence') completed her literary career. Professor Kai Laitinen has described her literary legacy with the words "muted, restrained". "She speaks to the reader in an unadorned way, confidingly and close at hand".
Sylvi Kekkonen was by nature intelligent, introverted and reserved. As the president's wife she performed her public duties to the best of her ability - she suffered from rheumatoid arthritis.
Kekkonen's image as a statesman
Kekkonen's main pastimes were fishing, skiing and hunting. In these pastimes, too, he wanted to be the first and the best. Nobody was allowed to catch more or larger fish than he did. A trip to Lapland gave rise to the term 'after-skiers'. Kekkonen was an assiduous reader, and right up to the end of his life he produced practical writings - such as journalistic articles and letters - dealing especially with the day-to-day political struggle. Kekkonen's book of memoirs - Vuosisatani ('My Century') is, however, entirely the work of Paavo Haavikko. Kekkonen's linguistic ability was limited to politics: at school he got bad marks for Russian. As a 'real' Finn, he was unwilling to learn Swedish before his terms as prime minister in the 1950s. German was probably his strongest foreign language.
Research has so far paid hardly any attention to Kekkonen's private life. His diaries are still secret; publication of the family's correspondence has begun, starting at the earlier end. There are very few research data on his lively social life. It has recently been mentioned in passing that in the 1950s he had a long and close friendship with a woman journalist - with whom he spent a holiday in Italy while prime minister - and afterwards with the wife of an ambassador.
Urho Kekkonen's posthumous reputation has two sides to it. On the one hand, there is recognition of the credit due to him as a doer in the areas of foreign and trade politics and as a master of political tactics. During his era Finland kept pace with Western European integration, preserving its market economy even with the Soviet Union as a neighbour. Finland's international position strengthened continually. Kekkonen is commonly regarded as a cunning promoter of Finnish interests, a bridge-builder between East and West who was a friend of the Russians but also a skilled manipulator of the Russians.
On the other hand, the toughness of his ways of operating, his wide-ranging powers and the length of his period as president - and above all the disintegration of domestic politics and his divide-and-rule attitude - threw a long shadow over Finnish parliamentarianism. It was not until the presidency of his successor Mauno Koivisto that a break was made from the linkage between foreign, trade and domestic politics in the formation of governments and from the atmosphere of 'self-censorship' that plagued the public radio and television service, Yleisradio, in particular. In the eyes of his critics, Kekkonen was a user of 'tricks', a power-hungry pursuer of his own interests and an unscrupulous climber.
Kekkonen can be compared to three influential figures in Finnish history. Like Gustavus III, he was a many-layered personality, an intelligent orator and writer who knew how to employ the the theatrical aspects of the State in order to steer the course of events in a direction completely to the advantage of his own position of power. As far as his political line was concerned, it was most akin to the acquiescent trend initiated by the founder of the political 'Finnishness' movement, Georg Zacharias Yrjö-Koskinen. Like Yrjö-Koskinen, Kekkonen had the temperament of a fighter and a willingness to engage in relentless activity. The basic idea of both of them was the preservation of Finnishness - internal autonomy - by making unavoidable concessions to Russia. Kekkonen can also be compared to Gustaf Mannerheim in his overdeveloped sense of self-esteem, his obsession with being right and his demand for satisfaction for wounds to his ego. Tamminiemi became Kekkonen's command post; all strings led to it, and from it his realm was manoeuvred in an ever more centralised fashion from year to year.
The changes that have occurred in the global political situation since his death have the greatest influence on an assessment of the Kekkonen era. Now that the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union have disintegrated, the main plank in Kekkonen's platform - the strengthening of Finland's national independence and neutrality within the framework of a Europe dominated by the Soviet Union - seems overly acquiescent. And the personality cult associated with his long period of power and the disappearance of genuine criticism and opposition significantly weakened Finnish democracy.
Martti Häikiö
Translated by Roderick Fletcher
Appendix
Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, born 3.9.1900 Pielavesi, died 31.8.1986 Helsinki. Parents: Juho Kekkonen, forestry manager, and Emilia Pylvänäinen. Wife: 1926 - 1974 Sylvi Salome Uino, born 1900, died 1974, wife's parents: Kauno Edvard Uino, pastor, and Salome Stenberg. Children: Taneli Kaleva, born 1928, diplomat; Matti Kaleva, born 1928, official in public administration.
© Biografiakeskus, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, PL 259, 00171 HELSINKI