Urho Kekkonen, Finnish journalist, lawyer, and politician, 8th President of Finland (d. 1986)
Urho Kaleva Kekkonen (pronounced [ˈurho ˈkekːonen] (listen); 3 September 1900 – 31 August 1986), often referred to by his initials UKK, was a Finnish politician who served as the eighth and longest-serving president of Finland from 1956 until 1982. He was the third and most recent president from the Agrarian League/Centre Party. As head of state for nearly 26 years, he dominated Finnish politics, held a large amount of power, won his later elections with little opposition and has often been classified as an autocrat. Nevertheless, he remains a respected figure.
As president, Kekkonen continued the "active neutrality" policy of his predecessor President Juho Kusti Paasikivi that came to be known as the Paasikivi–Kekkonen doctrine, under which Finland retained its independence while maintaining good relations and extensive trade with members of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Critical commentators referred to this policy of appeasement pejoratively as Finlandization. He hosted the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in Helsinki in 1975 and was considered a potential candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize that year. He is credited by Finnish historians for his foreign and trade policies, which allowed Finland's market economy to keep pace with Western Europe even with the Soviet Union as a neighbor, and for Finland to gradually take part in the European integration process. On the other hand, his perceived hunger for power, his divide-and-rule attitude in domestic politics and the lack of genuine political opposition, especially during the latter part of his presidency, significantly weakened Finnish democracy during his presidency. After Kekkonen's presidency, the reform of the Constitution of Finland was initiated by his successors to increase the power of the Parliament and the Prime Minister at the expense of the President.
Before becoming president, he had served as Prime Minister of Finland (1950–53, 1954–56), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1952–53, 1954), Speaker of the Finnish Parliament (1948–50), Minister of Justice (1936–37, 1944–46, 1951) and Minister of the Interior (1937–1939, 1950–1951). In addition to his extensive political career, he was an athlete in his youth, a veteran of the Finnish Civil War, and an enthusiastic writer who wrote humorous, informal columns (causerie) for the Suomen Kuvalehti magazine (edited by his long-time friend Ilmari Turja) under several pseudonyms, even during his presidency.