page_title: Urho Kekkonen
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Urho Kekkonen / Biography / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of the funeral cortege of Urho Kekkonen at Pohjoisesplanadi, Helsinki.
context_page_description: Urho Kaleva Kekkonen was a Finnish politician who served as the eighth and longest-serving President of Finland from 1956 until 1982. He was the third and most recent president from the Agrarian League/Center Party. As head of state for nearly 26 years, he dominated Finnish politics, held a large amount of power, won his later elections with little opposition and has often been classified as an autocrat. Regardless, he remains a popular, respected and recognizable figure.
  As president, Kekkonen continued the "active neutrality" policy of his predecessor President Juho Kusti Paasikivi, a doctrine that came to be known as the "Paasikivi–Kekkonen line", under which Finland retained its independence while maintaining good relations and extensive trade with members of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Critical commentators called this policy of appeasement pejoratively as Finlandization. He hosted the European Conference on Security and Co-operation in Helsinki in 1975 and was considered a potential candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize that year.
context_section_description: From December 1980 onwards, Kekkonen suffered from an undisclosed disease that appeared to affect his brain functions, sometimes leading to delusional thoughts. He had begun to suffer occasional brief memory lapses as early as the autumn of 1972; they became more frequent during the late 1970s. Around the same time, Kekkonen's eyesight deteriorated so much that for his last few years in office, all of his official papers had to be typed in block letters. Kekkonen had also suffered from a failing sense of balance since the mid-1970s and from enlargement of his prostate gland since 1974. He was also subject to occasional violent headaches and suffered from diabetes from the autumn of 1979. Rumors about his declining health had begun to circulate in the mid to late 1970s, but the press attempted to silence these rumors to respect the president's privacy.
  According to biographer Juhani Suomi, Kekkonen gave no thought to resigning until his physical condition began to deteriorate in July 1981. The 80-year-old president then began to seriously consider resigning, most likely in early 1981. Prime Minister Mauno Koivisto finally dealt a defeat to Kekkonen in 1981. In April, Koivisto did what no one else had dared to during Kekkonen's presidency by stating that under the constitution, the prime minister and cabinet were responsible to Parliament, not to the President. Kekkonen asked Koivisto to resign, but he refused. This is generally seen as the death-knell of the Kekkonen era. Kekkonen never fully recovered from the shock caused by this event. He felt that he had lost a significant amount of his authority.
  Historians and journalists debate the precise meaning of this dispute. According to Seppo Zetterberg, Allan Tiitta, and Pekka Hyvärinen, Kekkonen wanted to force Koivisto to resign to decrease his chances of succeeding him as president. In contrast, Juhani Suomi believed the dispute involved scheming between Koivisto and rival prospective presidential candidates.  Kekkonen at times criticised Koivisto for making political decisions too slowly and for his vacillation, especially for speaking too unclearly and philosophically.
  Kekkonen became ill in August during a fishing trip to Iceland. He went on medical leave on 10 September, before finally resigning due to ill health on 26 October 1981, aged 81. There is no report available about his illness, as the papers have been moved to an unknown location, but it is commonly believed that he suffered from vascular dementia, probably due to atherosclerosis.
  Kekkonen died at Tamminiemi in 1986, three days before his 86th birthday, and was buried with full honours. His heirs restricted access to his diaries and later an "authorised" biography by Juhani Suomi was commissioned, the author subsequently defending the interpretation of the history therein and denigrating most other interpretations. Critics have questioned the value of this work; the historian Hannu Rautkallio considered the biography little else than a "commercial project" designed for selling books rather than aiming for historical accuracy.
caption: Funeral cortege of Urho Kekkonen in Helsinki, 1986
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