Citizen Kekkonen
INTRODUCTION TO CITIZEN KEKKONEN
The following is the introduction to Kansalainen Kekkonen (Citizen Kekkonen), my historical biography of Urho Kekkonen, my seventh book, and my third book about Finland, published by WSOY in August,2021.
--”Because he was a man”
Director Aki Kaurismaki, from an interview with the author, after he was asked why there was a photo of Urho Kekkonen in each of his films, 1990
TWO of the most significant—if not the two most significant—figures in the history of the Finnish
commonweal, most Finns will agree, were Gustav Manneheim and Urho Kekkonen, the sixth and
eighth presidents of the republic, respectively.
Seventy years after his death, the place of the Savior of Finland--as the former commander-in-chief of
Finnish forces during the Second World War has been called—in Finnish annals, as well as the hearts of his countrymen continues to be a fixed (or relatively fixed) and prominent one, for which the equestrian statue of Mannerheim that stands astride the portals of Helsinki is a proper analog.
Although he was a force in the life of the Finnish nation for as long as Mannerheim—technically longer if counts the entirety of his term of public service, from his two terms as Minister of Justice in the late 1930s and mid-1940s, through prime minister under his mentor Juho Paasivki, and finally his twenty five year long presidency—Kekkonen’s place in Finnish annals is not as fixed, as well as considerably more controversial than that of his predecessor.
To be sure, there is also a monument to Kekkonen, a large boulder in Toolo, adjacent to Finlandia Hall that bears his name, rather than his likeness, along with an accompanying pool. However, like the legacy of UKK, as he was also known, the message is conveys, insofar as a monument conveys one, is more anomalous.
It is the objective of this book and the eight year long journey I undertook to research and write it, to elucidate that ambiguous, and still controversial, legacy, and the man, as well as the legend, behind it.
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HOW did this journey, the longest of my career, begin?
I suppose you could say it began in 1977, on my first fact-finding trip to Finland, when the then 75 year old president, who had already been in office for over twenty years and was coming to the end of his record third term, after which he was “supposed” to retire, and had become a fixture of Finnish life and
a living monument himself.
*To be sure there are other monuments to UKK elsewhere in Finland that do bear his likeness.
There were no monuments to Kekkonen—yet--however there was a 500 Finnish markkaa note in circulation that did bear his balding, bespectacled likeness. Not that I carried around too many of those—500 markkaa was the equivalent of roughly 85 euros. But I remember that. It seemed odd that a democratic country had currency which bore the face of its current head of state. The only other I knew that did that was Great Britain, and Britain had a queen. I remember that. Was Kekkonen king of Finland? Not quite, but he obviously carried a lot of influence! That was also the summer when I covered my first breaking international story—the hijacking of an Aeroflot jet with 85 passengers by two “armed” hijackers desperate to flee the USSR to Helsinki. The hijackers, who turned out not to unarmed, were overcome and captured by Finnish police, whereupon they were promptly repatriated back to the Soviet Union. I had a feeling that Kekkonen, who had long prided himself on his friendship with the denizens of the Kremlin, had something to do with that.
He did, of course.
At any rate, it was clear to me, if one wished to understand the Finland of the postwar period—including, and especially The Special Relationship—one needed to understand something about Urho Kaleva Kekkonen and his quixotic hold on the Finnish state and people. So, there I was, forty years, two books and a myriad articles about Finland later wading through Kekkonen’s correspondence and memorabilia, looking for UKK’s Rosebud: In Citizen Kane, the classic 1940 American movie based on the rise and fall of a mythical magnate by the name of Charles Foster
Kane, a reporter searches for the secret that made him tick.
I am not sure I found it, or even if he had one, but it certainly has been a remarkable journey!
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AS one might expect during a historical-cum-biographical journey of this sort, I discovered quite a few things along the way about both Finland and its eighth president.
I was surprised, for example, by the poor state of the Finland of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Finland where Kekkonen first came to power The spare, provincial Helsinki that is the backdrop for UKK’s pivotal first term bears virtually no comparison with the booming, international metropolis of
today.
There were only 150,000 cars in all of Finland in 1960.
That was a surprise.
I also was surprised by the amount of attention the Western media and newspapers gave to Finland, including its controversial, Soviet-friendly president, were often front page news in the U.S. during this period, particularly during the Night Frost and Note Crisis, the two crises which bookended the first term and shaped the remainder of the Kekkonen regency.
That was something of a surprise. But that was also because of the key supporting role that Finland played in the Cold War, when there was concern that Suomi would become the next Berlin. Americans were actively worried that the USSR might invade Finland. So were quite a few Finns at the height of the Note Crisis.
To be sure there were some hard-liners, including some colleagues of Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, who were not as fond of UKK as he was, who would not have minded if that happened. Fortunately it didn’t. UKK deserves some credit for that, which he received, after he resolved the crisis with his dramatic (not to mention physically dangerous) trip by Aeroflot to Siberia to meet with the impetuous Russian, along with a commensurate share of opprobrium from the West.
Was the Note Crisis staged by Khrushchev in cahoots with Kekkonen, as many if not most Finnish scholars have alleged? I have some surprising information about that question from someone who ought to know: his late son, Sergey, who granted me an exclusive interview at his Providence, Rhode Island home, as the ghost of his late father, to whom he was a close advisor, looked on.
Unsurprisingly, the coveage of Finland in the Western media tends to tail off after the Note Crisis, but Finland was one of the more intensively countries of Finland before that. That surprised me. It also surprised Kekkonen. At the press conference at Washington’s National Press Club he gave after his extraordinary two day meeting with U.S. president John F. Kennedy, the climactic event of UKK’s first term, along with the Note Crisis, which took place while Kekkonen was still in the U.S., Kekkonen remarked how surprised he was to see how interested Americans were in his country. That is because Finland, as we see in these pages, was a player during the Cold War. And so was he.
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INEVITABLY, there also were some other surprises and shocks, as well as delights, during the paper trail dimension of this journey. It’s always rewarding for an historian when a hunch of his is confirmed. Thus, I was delighted—as well as moved—when, while examining the diaries of Kennedy’s advisor, the historian Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr., who was present at JFK’s epochal meeting with UKK, to find a lengthy account of that meeting—no less one that did not square with the one recorded by the State Department stenographer who had been assigned to record that meeting. More historiographical grist for the mill! I was surprised by how childish, as well as churlish Kekkonen could be, particularly when he was under pressure. To read the strange, inchoate notes UKK scribbled in his journal during the now all but forgotten Night Frost, is to peer into the mind of a semi-deranged child-man.
And yet somehow, in the end, UKK managed to keep his balance—and “the Russian card” in the balance, even if meant blowing up the government of his co-father-in-law, Karl-August Fagerholm to do so.
That shocked me.
On the other hand, looking at matters from Kekkonen’s point of view, I was surprised by how difficult
it was for him to figure out what his putative friends in Moscow wanted. As we see here, he often had to triangulate Russian messages from different points: the Soviet Foreign Ministry, the Soviet ambassador to Helsinki, and the various KGB rezidentura at Tehtaankatu.
Was there anyone else on the Finnish political stage who was capable of this balancing act? I wonder.
This explains why Kekkonen tried to meet with the tempestuous Soviet leader as often as he could—so he could hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. And what an impulsive “horse” the Soviet leader was, as he well illustrated when he invited himself to the festivities for UKK’s 60 th birthday party at the National Theater in Helsinki and embarrassed his red-faced Finnish friend by using the festive occasion to denounce the West.
And yet somehow that evening the two men wound up toasting each other’s good health and raising hell until 5 a.m. at Tamminiemi. That was surprising.
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TOO, I was surprised—and moved—by how generous Kekkonen could be, as my assistant and I made our way through his correspondence at the Kekkonen archives, to which we were granted exclusive
access. I was surprised—and moved—to see, and read, how generous this otherwise imperious man could be with the pensioners and widows who wrote to him and asked for his help. Occasionally, he would extend his correspondents out of pocket loans to tide them over. I came to understand why Kekkonen was revered—and he was—by many Finns. Was Kekkonen a “nice man?” I don’t think so. Nor do I think that he necessarily wanted to be known as such.
But there is no doubt that the reclusive lord of Tamminiemi loved his people (at least in the abstract). On the other hand, as I also could see, reviewing the correspondence he received over the years, particularly after the Note Crisis, from the considerable number of his constituents who felt that he had betrayed Finland, there were many Finns who disliked, even detested him. And yet Kekkonen personally answered every letter he received, angry or not.
Surprising man.
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AS SOMETIMES occurs with literary journeys, particularly ones as ambitious as this, the ambit of this one changed somewhat, if not its ultimate journey.
Originally, I intended this volume to cover all four terms of Kekkonen’s presidency. However that would have resulted in a text of encyclopedic length.
Moreover, as soon became clear, UKK’s first term, from his narrowly won election in 1956, through his overwhelming re-election following his crossroads meeting in Siberia with Khrushchev and the hasty departure of his opponent, the luckless Olavi Honka, in 1962, is a standalone subject—as well as quite
a drama onto itself. It was during that term that the political and geopolitical foundation for the remainder of the Kekkonen “regency” was set down.
The Paasikivi-Kekkonen “line” as UKK’s Soviet-friendly foreign policy came to be known; his love/hate relationship with his people; the refusal to accept significant aid from the West, including from President Kennedy, lest Finland become the newest active front of the Cold War (which he actually thought the USSR was winning); self-censorship; his abiding love for and devotion to his wife Sylvi, who kindly looked the other way when it came to the other women in his life; and above all, the thirst for power which ultimately consumed him, as is did the subject of Citizen Kane—all of these themes and patterns of behavior were established, confirmed or presaged during that crucial first term.
Did I wind up finding Urho Kekkonen’s Rosebud—the thing that made him tick, and kept him going? I think I did. Actually it was pretty obvious from the start.
It was Finland of course. As Jaakko Iloniemi, who later served as ambassador to Washington and knew Kekkonen well, put it, “He did everything for Finland. The problem was, at a certain point, he thought that he and Finland were one and the same.”
Kekkonen doesn’t quite reach that point during his first term. But by the time the would be Grand Savior managed to steer his way to the end of that tumultuous first term, you certainly can see which way the wind is blowing.
Enjoy the journey. As we Americans say, to be continued.
Gordon F, Sander