Finland's most resilient party looks back
New history reveals how Agrarian League/Centre Party survived major upheaval
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By Unto Hämäläinen
The Finnish countryside was doing well in the summer of 1963. Cattle meandered in the pastures, grain grew on large fields, horses and buggies, as well as small tractors rode along gravel roads. Sowing and haymaking were busy times.
During weekends, young people would gather at local villages to play pesäpallo and to dance at youth clubs, and on outdoor platforms that had been hastily built out of planks and boards; the postwar baby boom generation was just reaching the dancing age.
Behind all of this was the Agrarian League - Finland's largest political party, which was in power.
Urho Kekkonen was President, Kauno Kleemola was the Sepaker of Parliament, and Ahti Karjalainen was Prime Minister - all from the Agrarian League.
The Social Democrats were in disarray, the Communists were isolated, and the National Coalition Party had been psychologically crushed by the diplomatic note from the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1961, which had shocked the political right.
It is from this idyllic pastoral scene that Dr. Tytti Isohookana-Asunmaa takes her starting point in her new book Virolaisen aika - Maalaisliitosta keskustapuolue 1963-1981 ("The Time of Virolainen - from the Agrarian League to the Centre Party 1963-1981").
Johannes Virolainen rose to the leadership of the Agrarian League in 1964. In the following year the party changed its name to the Centre Party.
Virolainen led the party until 1980, when Paavo Väyrynen pushed him aside. The following year Virolainen made a new comeback as the party's Presidential candidate, defeating Ahti Karjalainen for the nomination.
The book concludes with a heavy defeat: the Centre Party lost the Presidency to a Social Democrat. It had already lost the post of Prime Minister and the status of the country's largest party in the late 1960s, but nevertheless the Centre Party managed to hold its own against the Social Democrats surprisingly well.
"The rural population decreased from 700,000 to 400,000 in less than a decade. The share of agriculture in the labour force went down by about 15 percent", Isohookana-Asunmaa notes, when writing about the great upheaval of the 1960s, which continued into the 1970s.
When 1981 came around, there was little left of the idyllic countryside of 1963. One might have imagined that the great change might also have had an impact on the political arena.
Common sense would dictate that the Centre Party should have become a small, marginal party of the sunset.
Why didn't that happen?
The party was resilient, and much more skilled than the others in politics, and especially in political tactics. The history book indicates that in those years of struggle, every Centre Party figure from Urho Kekkonen himself to the last back-woods party activist was promoting the party's cause from morning to night.
This required vast amounts of work on behalf of the party. The erosion of the natural demographic basis for its support was compensated for with activism and political savvy.
I placed President Kekkonen among the Centre Party men. It was not my purpose to put a party label on the old statesman. It is simply a fact that Kekkonen was the most important figure of the Centre Party until the autumn of 1981 [although it is the tradition in Finland for presidents to renounce their party affiliations once they are in office].
"Kekkonen had a strong position, keen intelligence, powerful eagerness to work, and an extensive network of people in his former party. As a former active politician, it was impossible for him not to act when he confronted something that needed fixing", Isohookana-Asunmaa gushes.
She also notes that "as time goes on, both politicians and civil servants accepted the President's way of doing things, which only strengthened his position".
The history of the Centre Party sharpens the image that has come out of the Kekkonen biography series and his diaries. In addition to his official duties as President of the Republic, Kekkonen also had to lead the Centre Party, or at least a significant part of it.
At the beginning of Virolainen's term as Centre Party leader, Kekkonen guided the party directly through Virolainen. At that time relations between Virolainen and Kekkonen were reasonably good.
Without the support of Kekkonen, Virolainen would never have been chosen party leader at the 1964 party congress.
Relations cooled after Kekkonen established the "K-line", at first with through Ahti Karjalainen and later, Eino Uusitalo, and in his final years, through the young Paavo Väyrynen.
The new history book provides an x-ray view of the nature and methods of action of the K-line, but it would deserve another thorough study. The K-line was a group operating in the Centre Party, which was hand-picked by Kekkonen, and which operated as if it had been a party unto itself.
"I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the support that you gave me in the race for the party chairmanship. Without that support, there would not have been any possibility", Väyrynen wrote in a letter to Kekkonen after defeating Virolainen in the summer of 1980.
Väyrynen's letter of gratitude is an important historical document. It shows that Kekkonen's touch extends into today's politics. It was during Väyrynen's time that the Centre Party changed its official title to "The Centre of Finland", and grew back to the size that it was before the great structural changes.
In wielding the highest power, the Centre has not been as strong as it was in the early 1960s. The posts of President and the Speaker of Parliament were with the Social Democrats. It was lucky for the Centre Party that the position of the Prime Minister has grown stronger at the expense of the President, and Matti Vanhanen is able to support his party well.
Vanhanen learned the basic skills for this already in the early 1970s, when he worked in the party's youth movement in the Uusimaa region, and in a number of other tasks described in the book.
Isohookana-Asunmaa has done a good job for her party, and gives a comprehensive picture of the difficult times of the Centre Party.
The book might be criticised as being too broad, or going into excessive detail. There are good reasons for its copiousness: the Centre Party was so fully into politics, that even the full 720 pages is merely scratching the surface.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.11.2006
UNTO HÄMÄLÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
unto.hamalainen@hs.fi
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| 7.11.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 Finland's most resilient party looks back |
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