Summary:

Matti Mäntylä, Northern Finland as a periphery in the socio-economic thought of Urho Kekkonen

The multidimensional interaction between President of the Republic Urho Kekkonen (1900–1986) and Northern Finland exemplifies the relations between centre and periphery in history. Kekkonen is remembered as a down-to-earth figure who understood and spoke for the disadvantaged of society. His political role as a promoter of industrial and commercial activity and infrastructure of Northern Finland has attained absolutely legendary proportion. The main reason for the birth of this image is without a doubt Kekkonen’s exceptional activity and lively interest with regard to the peripheral areas of the country from the 1940s to the 1970s. When working as prime minister in the 1950s and later as President of the Republic, Kekkonen considered the balanced development of Finland as a social question of primary importance.

Urho Kekkonen considered that Northern Finland was an isolated part of the country, whose development was still in its elementary phase. There was little industry and economic life was stagnated. These were the reasons for the high unemployment in the area. However, Kekkonen was conscious of the huge developmental potential of the region’s natural resources and, for example, water power. By way of an active industrializing policy Northern Finland was supposed to rise to the level of the southern parts of the country. In other words, the periphery had to be made less peripheral. Kekkonen saw Northern Finland first and foremost as a “resource of the future”, whose development was indispensable for the country’s economic success.

Kekkonen’s background and experiences influenced his sympathetic attitude towards the disadvantaged of society. During his premiership Kekkonen, who had lived his youth in peripheral Kainuu, made especially long hikes in the wilderness of Northern Finland so that he could discover the living conditions of ordinary people. Added to this, Northern Finland was without doubt the means of his power policy. In order to ingratiate himself with the people, politician Kekkonen took particular care of the issues of his own electoral district. On the other hand, by improving the living conditions of the people, Kekkonen strived to reduce support for communism, which he considered a very serious threat to Finnish democracy.

During his career Kekkonen balanced between two different identities. He worked at the centre of power as a prime minister and president, but at the same time he endeavoured to present himself as an ordinary man who spoke for the peripheral areas against the elite in Helsinki. It can be said that Kekkonen was an important bridge-builder between centre and periphery at his own era.