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Finland The Center Party
The Center Party (Keskustapuolue--Kesk), which took
this name
in 1965 with the aim of widening its appeal and adapting
to
changing social conditions, was founded in 1906 as the
Agrarian
Party. It has been, as its present name indicates, the key
party
in Finnish politics since independence; until the
formation of a
conservative-socialist government in 1987, it had
participated in
virtually every majority government. Founded to represent
the
interests of small farmers in eastern and in northern
Finland,
Kesk also gradually came to claim central Finland as an
area of
support during the 1920s. As a consequence, it was the
largest
nonsocialist party until the national elections of 1979,
when the
National Coalition Party pulled ahead. As the party of
small
farmers, the Kesk was, from its birth, suspicious of the
concentrated economic power of the south--labor, large
farmers,
and business. To counter these interests, the party
advocated a
firmly democratic and populist program that emphasized the
primacy of the family farm, small-scale firms managed by
their
owners, decentralization of social organizations, and the
traditional virtues and values of small towns and the
countryside. The party's commitment to democracy was
tested and
proven in the 1930s when it rejected the aims of the
radical
right and perhaps saved Finland from fascism. In the
second half
of the decade, it began to govern with the assistance of
the SDP,
forming with that party the first of the so-called
Red-Earth
governments that became the country's dominant coalition
pattern
for the next half-century. Kesk's claim to represent the
"real"
Finland, however, caused it, at times, to seek to curtail
the
rights of the Swedish-speaking minority, and some Kesk
leaders,
Urho Kekkonen for example, were active in the
Finnicization
program.
Although opposed to fascist doctrines, Kesk had favored
fighting on the side of Nazi Germany--as a
cobelligerent--during
the Continuation War of 1941-44, in the hope of regaining
lost
national territory. During the course of the war, however,
some
of the party's leaders came to the conclusion that good
relations
with the Soviet Union were essential if Finland were to
survive
as an independent nation. Kekkonen, in particular, was a
driving
force in effecting this change of party policy in the
postwar
period
(see Domestic Developments and Foreign Politics, 1948-66
, ch. 1). This policy change was achieved, though, only
after a
bitter struggle during which segments of the party's
leadership
hoped for Kekkonen's political destruction; however,
generational
change and his domestic and foreign successes allowed
Kekkonen
gradually to gain nearly absolute control of the party,
which he
retained even after election in 1956 to the presidency, a
post
ideally above party politics.
Soviet desires for a dependable contact in Finland, and
the
unsuitability of other parties, soon made Kesk Moscow's
preferred
negotiating partner, despite the party's anticommunist
program.
The Soviets' natural ally, the SKP, was seen as being too
much a
political outsider to be an effective channel of
communication.
Kesk's position in the center of the political spectrum
made it
the natural "hinge party" for coalition governments. After
the
Note Crisis, Kekkonen's mastery of foreign policy also
served,
and at times was cynically used, to preserve this role.
Postwar social changes, such as internal migration to
the
south and a growing service sector, have reduced support
for Kesk
and have brought about a steady decline in its share of
seats in
the Eduskunta (see
table 4, Appendix A). Attempts to bring
the
party's program into line with a changing society did not
win
Kesk new support. In prosperous southern Finland, for
example,
Kesk failed to make significant inroads, electing only
once a
member of the Eduskunta from Helsinki. Young voters in the
south,
or the coastal region as it is sometimes called, favored
the
National Coalition Party or the environmentalist Greens
(Vihreat). Also damaging to Kesk was the loss of a segment
of its
membership to the SMP, after its formation in 1959. Kesk
was not
able to retain the presidency after Kekkonen's retirement
in
1981; its candidate for the 1982 presidential election,
Johannes
Virolainen, was easily defeated, as was the 1988 Kesk
candidate
for this post, Paavo Vayrynen.
Kesk's failure, despite only slight losses, to
participate in
the government formed after the 1987 national elections
was
perhaps a watershed in Finnish domestic politics. Until
that
time, Kesk had been an almost permanent governing party.
Demographic and occupational trends continued to challenge
Kesk
in the late 1980s, but the party's large and convinced
membership, far greater than that of any other party,
probably
meant that any decline in its role in Finnish politics
would be a
slow one.
Data as of December 1988
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