Karl-August Fagerholm - Third Term As Finnish PM

Third Term As Finnish PM

During his second term as Prime Minister, in 1956–57, he visited the Soviet Union, and relations appeared to have improved. After a period out of office, the general elections of July 1958 again brought a Fagerholm-led coalition cabinet to office. Their chief opponents were the Communists, who had become the largest party in Parliament. Kekkonen in this situation did nothing to mitigate a Kremlin fear that Finland would abandon the careful course steered by Paasikivi and Kekkonen since the late 1940s that sought to ensure that Finland would do nothing that conflicted with the interests of the USSR.

Finnish membership in the Nordic Council in 1955 and a progressive increase in trade with the West was seen in Moscow as a harbinger of the loss of Finland to the West, particularly under a politician like Fagerholm known for Nordic sympathies and US connections. As a consequence, over the autumn of 1958, the Soviet government pursued an escalating policy of economic and other sanctions against the Fagerholm government, canceling discussions on a range of economic issues and trying to leave little doubt in the minds of Finns that having Fagerholm as prime minister would be exceedingly costly. Finally, the Soviet ambassador was recalled. The pressure worked: on 4 December 1958, Fagerholm filed his resignation. In January 1959, after Kekkonen had traveled to Leningrad to personally assure Nikita Khrushchev that Finland would be a "good neighbor" and a Prime Minister from Kekkonen's Agrarian Center Party was appointed, all economic intercourse resumed.