Book Review | Professor Henrik Meinander got the first right to Kalevi Sorsa’s closed archives – the eagerly awaited biography offers a view of the most important turning points in the political career of the “nation’s number two”

The starting shots for a serious Sorsa study.

Biography

Henrik Meinander: The nation’s runner-up. Kalevi Sorsa’s political activities 1969–1993. Big Dipper. 416 pp.

About him didn’t come from Kekko. He became the “nation’s number two”, which from time to time was number one.

This is how the professor could sum it up by Henrik Meinander interpretation Kalevi from Sorsa (1930–2004), about an SDP statesman who, in the course of the 1970s and 80s, broke into the mainstream of politics just before the presidents Urho Kekkonen and Mauno Koiviston to the position.

When Kekkonen’s time as head of state came to an end in the early 1980s, Koivisto conquered the Presidential Palace right in front of Sorsa’s nose.

The loss was bitter, but Sorsa fell to his feet like a cat. He became the two-time prime minister of 1982–1987, who can be characterized as the era’s most important political power user and – for better or for worse – a symbol of democratic Finland.

If the Soviet Union had not collapsed at the end of 1991, Sorsa’s road to the nation’s number one would have been wide.

“You gave birth to a locomotive to whine”, Sorsa’s father recalled the morning of December 21, 1930, when the family’s firstborn Taisto Kalevi saw the light of day in the kitchen of a modest cottage on Haapamäki next to the railway.

The parents had met each other only a year earlier in Northern Ostrobothnia, where the future father had arrived for railway work.

The family moved from one place to another after the railway works. The itinerant life ended in 1937, when the father had managed to get himself a road master’s education and a job in Joutsa rural municipality, 70 kilometers south of Jyväskylä.

The family lived in a rented two-room log building in the Karimäki area. The yard area also included a smoke sauna, a wooden litter box and a piggery.

Winter and Continuation War broke the peace of the circle of life, even though the father didn’t have to go to war, but as a professional man to take care of fortification and road construction work.

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Kalevikin, who grew up to be a teenager, brought his cards to the table for the sake of the motherland. The experiences of the military boy during the Continuation War reinforced the dark image of the Soviet Union and the Finnish communists who admire it.

My father’s relatives swore in the name of moderate social democracy. Reformism also appealed to the young Kalevi, who fell in love with the idea during the summer vacation of 1945 in Imatra, at his cousin’s place. While living and working at an iron factory.

Political waking up combined with restlessness typical of teenage years. “Kale’s” grades at the Lappeenranta joint high school collapsed at the same time that he was reprimanded for smoking and being stubborn.

The years of “storm and frenzy” culminated in the spring of 1945 with Kalevi interrupting his vocational school studies. The young man planned to either become a journalist or a sea captain, because he wanted to grow up to be a writer in practical newspaper work or on the oceans.

The 16–17-year-old boy began to support himself by doing odd jobs at industrial plants and buildings in Lappeenranta.

Slamming doors after leaving home, Sorsa joined the Social Democratic Youth Union and energetically participated in its cultural activities as a writer and actor.

He had time to apply as an editorial trainee for the Lappeenranta-based Demari newspaper Päivän Työ, before continuing his journey to Helsinki and the University of Social Sciences, where it was possible to delve into the newspaper industry without a high school diploma.

Sorsa’s reputation as a political journalist grew in the capital region, and in 1956 he was hired as editor of the literary department at Tamme, a publishing house close to the social democrats.

Also political mentors and godfathers began to be found. The most prominent of them was the Sdp’s chief ideologist at the time, the director general of the Kouluhallitus Reino Oittinenwho advised Sorsa to avoid dogmas and to keep a distance from internal party disputes.

In the spirit of ideological realism, the party had to be guided to the “third line” and relations with Kekko, Moscow and the Finnish communists had to be explored.

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The new direction was necessary despite the fact that the bloody defeat of the Hungarian uprising of 1956 had shocked many of the party’s supporters, including Sorsa.

A tough line fight years, it was Sorsa’s luck that Oittinen, who had become Minister of Education, was able to train him to Paris to UNESCO’s headquarters.

The civil service program in an organization that supports science and cultural cooperation, which began in 1959, turned out to be instructive. The benefits of the years in Paris were Sorsa’s language skills, fluent performance, adequate sense of style and learning how to play in international relations.

When Sorsa returned to Finland in 1965 as Secretary General of UNESCO, the fiercest phase of the Sdp’s struggle began to end.

Sorsa did not delay and immediately made a return to politics by rejoining Sdp and its Töölö local association. He continued to speak passionately at the party’s forums, stir up debate on equality issues and support the party’s staying on the Paasikivi–Kekkonen line, even though no major personal political breakthrough was in sight.

There was no coincidence at the Sdp’s summer 1969 party meeting in Turku: Sorsa was appointed party secretary as a dark horse after the chairman of the Sdp, the prime minister Rafael Paasio had given Pakit to 13 candidates.

In the background of Sorsa’s choice, obscure motivations have been found, or at least wanted to be found. According to the strongest claims, it was about the KGB succeeding in mastering the power of its influencer-agents.

Meinander does not give much value to conspiracy theories, but strictly counters: of course, the KGB was interested in the conciliatory Sorsa, but the choice was decided by completely different things. The new party secretary had not received political burn marks on his side during the worst years of the party’s disintegration like most others.

The end was history. The first government of Kalevi Sorsa, who speaks of democratic socialism, was formed in the fall of 1972.

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The road to stardom was open despite the fact that the new prime minister was not considered a particularly tough, inspiring or natural political leader, nor was he a favorite of the media.

Sorsa’s suitably slow and curmudgeonly, but determined nature appeals to the voters of Puri Sdp. In terms of staying in power, it was also crucial that Sorsa managed to create such a close relationship of trust with Kekkonsee that the president was ready to support several of his political moves.

Sorsa also received background support from Moscow and its Finnish representatives, such as KGB officials From Valentin Kossov, From Viktor Vladimirov, From Vladimir Stepanov and From Feliks Karasevi. They appreciated the leading Democratic politician’s stable, even called Finnish, foreign policy line and the initiatives aimed at easing the Cold War.

What Sorsan When it comes to the Moscow card and KGB relations, Meinander doesn’t even try to have the last word. This is probably wise, because Meinander’s Sorsa archive, which Meinander got access to by first right, does not reveal much new about the hot topic.

From the archive, which has been kept closed for a long time and is now being opened for research, a number of embarrassing freedom of speech and censorship stories come to light for Sorsa. Under Sorsa’s leadership, the texts of the party’s own magazine were rewritten and cartoonists who were too outspoken were fired. At the same time, Yleä, borgarilehti and Lehtikäsiari Aatos Erkkoa translated into Finnish without profanity.

However, Henrik Meinander’s main attention is focused on the stages and twists and turns of the political career of the “nation’s number two”, which are impossible to ignore when writing the history of the period’s use of power and the construction of a welfare society.

The style is guaranteed Meinander. The book progresses restrained and controlled, sometimes too much, but always convincing and balanced.

The author is a docent at the University of Helsinki specializing in the history of Finland and Russia.

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