Urho Kekkonen

Biography

Urho Kekkonen was born in 1900 in Pielavesi, in eastern Finland, the son of a forestry foreman. As a teenager he fought for the Whites in the Finnish Civil War. He moved to Helsinki in 1921 to study law, working meanwhile for the security police, and later practised as a lawyer for the Association of Rural Municipalities; he took his doctorate at the University of Helsinki in 1936. He was also Finland's high-jump champion in 1924.

Joining the Agrarian League in 1933, he entered parliament in 1936 and served as minister of justice and minister of the interior, trying unsuccessfully to ban the far-right Patriotic People's Movement. During the Continuation War he became a leading voice for making peace, and after it he again served as justice minister, overseeing the war-responsibility trials, and as speaker of parliament.

Kekkonen was prime minister in 1950-53 and 1954-56 and narrowly won the presidential election of 1956. As president until 1982 he developed the Paasikivi-Kekkonen line of neutrality, keeping close ties with Moscow while trading with the West. He used his personal contacts with Soviet leaders to end the Night Frost crisis of 1958-59 and the Note Crisis of 1961, and hosted the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in Helsinki in 1975.

His dominance grew over time: a special law in 1973 extended his term, and critics accused him of weakening Finnish democracy. Failing health forced him to resign in January 1982, and he died in 1986.