Former Soviet Ambassador Deryabin: Kekkonen probably knew about 1961 note in advance

“I suspect that Kekkonen ordered the note from some employee in Soviet espionage.”

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In the view of a former Soviet diplomat, Finnish President Urho Kekkonen (1900-1986) probably had advance knowledge of a diplomatic note sent to the Finnish government by the Soviet Union in 1961.
      Former Ambassador Yuri Deryabin took part in a seminar on Kekkonen held in Moscow on Thursday evening.
      At the conclusion of the seminar, the Russian version of a biography of Kekkonen by Professor Juhani Suomi, which was translated by Deryabin himself, was published.
      “I suspect that Kekkonen ordered the note from some employee in Soviet espionage. He had good contacts with them. The aim was to secure his victory in the upcoming presidential elections, and to prove that the Soviet leadership trusted Kekkonen”, Deryabin told Helsingin Sanomat by telephone on Friday.
     
Deryabin, who was born in 1932, is a career diplomat, who specialised in Finland and the other Nordic Countries. He worked at the Soviet Foreign Ministry at the time of the so-called Note Crisis of 1961.
      The Note Crisis has been the topic of much debate in Finland.
      The controversy was revived recently when the 50th anniversary of the crisis was observed in late October.
     
In the note, the Soviet Union called for negotiations with Finland on the basis of the Finnish-Soviet treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, in light of a perceived military threat from West Germany.
      The ostensible reason for the proposed talks was the strained relations between the Soviet Union and the United States over the status of Berlin.
      Earlier that same year, officials of East Germany, a Soviet satellite at the time, had started construction of the Berlin Wall.
     
In Finland, the move has been seen as an attempt to secure the re-election of President Kekkonen in the presidential elections of 1962.
      Deryabin’s comment last week is nevertheless seen to be unusually frank as a Russian point of view.
      The note came at the end of Kekkonen’s first term in office.
      Kekkonen duly won the elections in 1962, and stayed on as president until 1982, although he went on sick leave the previous autumn.
      He was succeeded in the position by Mauno Koivisto.
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish-Soviet “Note Crisis” 50 years on (1.11.2011)

See also:
  BACKGROUND: Just routine for the Cold War years (14.6.2005) (see long footnote)

Helsingin Sanomat