Juho Kusti Paasikivi

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Juho Kusti Paasikivi bigraphy, stories - 7th President of Finland

Juho Kusti Paasikivi : biography

November 27, 1870 – December 14, 1956

Juho Kusti Paasikivi ( November 27, 1870 – December 14, 1956) was the seventh President of Finland (1946–1956). Representing the Finnish Party and the National Coalition Party, he also served as Prime Minister of Finland (1918 and 1944–1946), and was generally an influential figure in Finnish economics and politics for over fifty years. He is particularly remembered as a main architect of Finland’s foreign policy after the Second World War.

He was born as Johan Gustaf Hellsten in 1870 at Hämeenkoski in Päijänne Tavastia in Southern Finland, the son of August Hellsten, a merchant, and Karolina Wilhelmina Selin. He Finnicized his name to Juho Kusti Paasikivi in 1885.

Independence and Civil War

During the First World War Paasikivi began to have doubts about the Fennoman Party’s obedient line. In 1914, after resigning his position at the Treasury, and also standing down as a member of Parliament, Paasikivi left public life and office. He became Chief General Manager of the Kansallis-Osake-Pankki (KOP) bank, retaining that position until 1934. Paasikivi also served as a member of Helsinki City Council 1915-1918.

After the February Revolution in Russia 1917, Paasikivi was appointed to committee that began to formulate new legislation for a modernized Grand Duchy. Initially he supported increased autonomy within the Russian Empire, in opposition to the Social Democrats in the coalition-Senate, who in vain strived for more far-reaching autonomy; but after the Bolshevik October Revolution Paasikivi championed full independence — albeit in the form of constitutional monarchy.

During the Civil War in Finland Paasikivi was firmly on the side of the White government. As Prime Minister May–November 1918 he strived for continued constitutional monarchy with Frederick Charles of Hesse (a German Prince) as king, intending to ensure Finland of German support against Bolshevist Russia. However, as Germany lost the World War, monarchy had to be scrapped for a Republic more in the taste of the victorious Entente. Paasikivi’s Senate resigned, and he returned to the KOP bank.

Paasikivi, as politically conservative, was a firm opponent of Social Democrats in the cabinet, or Communists in the Parliament. Tentatively he supported the semi-fascist Lapua movement which requested radical measures against the political Left. But eventually the Lapua movement radicalized further, assaulting also Ståhlberg, the Liberal former President of Finland, and Paasikivi like many other supporters turned away from the radical Right. In 1934 he became chairman for the Conservative Kokoomus party, as a champion of democracy, and achieved the party’s rehabilitation after its suspicious closeness to the Lapua movement and the failed coup d’état, the Mäntsälä Rebellion.

Prime Minister and President

In the summer of 1941, when the Continuation War had begun, he took up writing his memoirs. By 1943 he concluded that Germany was going to lose the war and that Finland was in great danger as well. However, his initial opposition against the pro-German politics of 1940-41 was too well known, and his first initiatives for peace negotiations were met with little support both from Field Marshal Mannerheim and from Risto Ryti, who now had become President.

Immediately after the war, Mannerheim appointed Paasikivi Prime Minister. For the first time in Finland a Communist, Yrjö Leino, was included in the Cabinet. Paasikivi’s policies were realist, but radically different than those of the previous 25 years. His main effort was to prove that Finland would present no threat to the Soviet Union, and that both countries would gain from confident peaceful relations. He had to comply with many Soviet demands, including the War Crimes trial. When Mannerheim resigned, Parliament selected Paasikivi to succeed him as President of the Republic. Paasikivi was then aged seventy-five.

Paasikivi had thus come a long way from his earlier classical conservatism. He now was willing to co-operate regularly with the Social Democrats and, when necessary, even with the Communists, as long as they acted democratically. He only once accepted his party, the Conservatives, into the government as President – and even that government lasted only about six months and was considered more a caretaker or civil-servant government than a regular parliamentary government. He even appointed a Communist or a People’s Democrat, Mauno Pekkala, as Prime Minister in 1946.