The Finnish Front Line: Kekkonen, Kennedy, and Khrushchev’s Cold War Showdown

Summary

The Finnish Front Line is a historical biography of Urho Kekkonen, the eighth and longest-serving president of Finland. Gordon F. Sander focuses on Kekkonen's pivotal first term as president, which was bracketed by two crises that together formed the template for both Finland's relationship with the Soviet Union from 1956 through the fall of the USSR, and Kekkonen's own "special" relationship with Moscow: the Night Frost crisis of 1957, which derived from the Kremlin's desire to exert greater influence on Finnish politics, and the Note Crisis of 1961, which coincided with the great Berlin crisis of 1961, and occurred when Moscow suddenly invoked the clause in the 1948 Finnish-Soviet treaty that entitled the Kremlin to call for mutual discussions between the Finnish and Soviet militaries and was perceived as a threat to Finnish independence. Thinking this might presage a Soviet invasion of Finland, a distressed Kekkonen was able to resolve the crisis by flying to Siberia to meet with his erstwhile friend Nikita Khrushchev—who may well have precipitated the crisis in order to insure Kekkonen's reelection. This book centers on an overlooked chapter of the Cold War as well as a revealing chapter of the presidency of John Kennedy and his secret offer to help Kekkonen, which he later rejected, ultimately to avoid making Finland into the next front of the Cold War.