Historian says Kekkonen wanted Jaakko Pajula to succeed him
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A few months before his resignation in 1981, long-serving Finnish President Urho Kekkonen told Soviet diplomat and KGB Helsinki station chief Viktor Vladimirov that he would like to see Jaakko Pajula, the then director-general of the Social Insurance Institution (KELA), as his successor.
A report on Vladimirov’s conversation with Kekkonen was aired at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in June 1981.
The report was read out by the meeting’s chairman Leonid Brezhnev. In it Vladimirov said that Kekkonen would like Pajula to follow him.
"This is quite an unexpected turn of events. Pajula is not well known, and he has never been in political life", Vladimirov said in his report.
The newspaper Turun Sanomat wrote that the document was revealed by a historian, Professor Kimmo Rentola, in a speech in Turku.
In the spring of 1981 the Soviet Union was eager for any news on who might come after Kekkonen.
Kekkonen’s health had deteriorated; he had held the presidency since 1956, and he could not imagine remaining in office for long, although some had suggested yet another term.
Ill health forced Kekkonen to resign in the fall of 1981, and in the Presidential elections in early 1982, the main candidates were Prime Minister Mauno Koivisto (SDP), Johannes Virolainen (Centre), as well as a looming dark horse candidate Ahti Karjalainen (Centre).
Kekkonen tried to push Koivisto out of the Prime Minister’s office earlier in 1981, but he refused to quit. The confrontation boosted public support for Koivisto, and the Soviet Union stopped promoting Karjalainen. Koivisto was elected President in 1982.
Professor Rentola feels that Kekkonen’s idea of Jaakko Pajula as a presidential candidate was somewhat delusional. "Certainly in his more lucid moments Kekkonen must have understood that he (Pajula) did not have a chance."
Pajula, now 78, says that he did not know about any such ideas.
"I knew Kekkonen over a long period of time, and [the President's son] Matti Kekkonen was one of my best friends", Pajula notes.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 23.3.2007 - TODAY |
 Historian says Kekkonen wanted Jaakko Pajula to succeed him
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