The Finnish Front Line | With Gordon F. Sander & Consul General of Finland Jarmo Sareva

See a discussion and presentation on "The Finnish Front Line: Kekkonen, Kennedy, and Khrushchev’s Cold War Showdown" with author Gordon F. Sander and Consul General of Finland Jarmo Sareva! "The Finnish Front Line" is a historical biography of Urho Kekkonen, the eighth and longest-serving president of Finland. The most controversial as well as the most misunderstood figure in Finnish history, Kekkonen governed Finland for 25 years from 1956–81. 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. Held at Scandinavia House on June 2, 2026, the speakers discussed this overlooked chapter of the Cold War as well as the revealing if forgotten episode in the presidency of John Kennedy and his secret offer to help Kekkonen, which the latter rejected, ultimately to avoid making Finland into next front of the Cold War. "The Finnish Front Line" is out now from Cornell University Press. Learn more here: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501781308/the-finnish-front-line/ Learn more about programming at Scandinavia House: https://www.scandinaviahouse.org/ #coldwar #finland #booktalk