Emil Skog

Emil Skog (1957)

Emil Albert Skog (born June 30, 1897 in the rural municipality of Helsinki , † September 20, 1981 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish social democratic politician . As a young metal worker, he joined the trade union movement, where he quickly rose to positions of responsibility. After World War II , Skog focused on politics and became chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Finland in 1946 . He held this office until 1957 and during this time was also defense minister in the Finnish government several times , especially in several tense coalitions with the federal government and its leader Urho Kekkonen . In the 1950s he was one of the protagonists in severe internal party power struggles that ultimately led to the party split. His camp fell into the minority in 1957 and founded a new party in 1959, the Social Democratic Union of Workers and Small Farmers . Skog was its chairman until 1964 and stood as its candidate in the 1962 presidential election . In 1965 Skog returned to the parent party.

Early activity in labor movement and unions

Early years, civil war and imprisonment

Emil Skog, son of a working-class family, took up an apprenticeship as a boilermaker in the Helsinki metal company Koneja Siltarakennus Oy in autumn 1914 at the age of seventeen . A few months later he joined the metal workers' union ( Metallityövänen Liitto ). At that time, Finland was part of the Russian Empire as an autonomous Grand Duchy , but was not directly involved in the First World War . However, Skog's employer helped arm Russian warships. For six months, Skog worked on the guns on the Aurora , which would later become one of the symbols of the Russian October Revolution .

After the harsh working conditions on the warships got over his strength, Skog took a job with the Helsinki Fire Department in 1916 . After an argument with a supervisor, Skog left the fire brigade in the autumn of 1917. He briefly took a position as a boiler maker at the Tampella machine factory in Tampere , but soon moved back to Helsinki, where he worked in a small workshop. On January 25, 1918, just before the outbreak of the Finnish Civil War , the workshop was closed and Skog was unemployed. The business owners had traveled to Ostrobothnia to join the white troops under Gustaf Mannerheim .

The civil war began on January 27 when the socialist Red Guards seized power in southern Finland. In the north, the bourgeois whites held their own, the front line soon stabilized north of Tampere near Vilppula . Emil Skog was initially not involved in the overthrow. In mid-February, however, he followed a call from the government of Red Finland, the People's Commissariat, and volunteered for training in the artillery . The training was brief: after the front collapsed at Vilppula, Skog's unit was rushed to Tampere on March 20. Skog took part in a defensive battle in Messukylä and participated in the street battles in defense of the city of Tampere. The city was finally captured by white troops on April 6th, and Skog was captured.

Skog was initially interned in a prison camp in Tampere, but was temporarily released in July because of his young age. In September one of the state crime courts, which had been hastily set up to deal with the events of the civil war, dealt with his case, found that he had belonged to the artillery and thus one of the red elite troops, and sentenced him to eight years in prison for treason . He only served two and a half months of that sentence on the fortress island of Suomenlinna before the Court of Appeals converted it to a three-year suspended sentence and Skog was released.

Union work

After his prison sentence, Skog returned to work, first in the metal industry, later as a telephone installer. But he concentrated more and more on activities in the trade union movement. In the years after the civil war, this went through a period of crisis and upheaval. After the war, the Finnish labor movement split into a communist and a moderate social-democratic direction. The Social Democratic Party of Finland ( Suomen sosialidemokraattinen puolue , SDP) was taken over by the moderate direction, the Communists founded the Communist Party of Finland in Russian exile , which itself worked underground in Finland. Well-organized grassroots work enabled the communists to occupy most of the key positions in the Finnish Federation of Trade Unions ( Suomen Ammattijärjestö , SAJ) and in many individual trade unions . The communist-ruled trade unions were banned in 1930. The Social Democrats then founded a new umbrella organization, the Central Federation of Trade Unions of Finland ( Suomen Ammattiyhdistysten Keskusliitto , SAK).

In this newly emerging structure, Emil Skog took over the chairmanship of the Helsinki local union from 1932 to 1938 ( Helsingin Ammatillinen Paikallisjärjestö , HAP). As the local central body of the trade unions, the HAP was primarily responsible for trade union education and awareness-raising. In order to prevent a renewed takeover by the communists, the social democratic trade unions were also forced to set up an effective grass-roots organization in order to exert targeted influence on the composition of the delegate assemblies through a network of local liaison officers. To this end, the Social Democratic Association of Helsinki Trade Unionists ( Helsingin Ammattiyhdistysvänen Sosialidemokraattinen Yhdistys ) was created in 1932 as a link between the party and the trade unions . Emil Skog became its chairman and made his first step into party politics. In 1936 he was also deputy chairman of the local executive committee of the SDP in Helsinki.

Even during the Winter War and the Continuation War , Skog continued his work for the trade union movement. In the metalworking union he was promoted to the board of directors before the wars and during the war he temporarily ran the business of the chairman who was fighting at the front. Between the wars, he was given the task of organizing national trade union cooperation. In the fall of 1941 he was appointed head of propaganda for the metal union and has been in the union's full-time service ever since.

Chairman of the Social Democratic Party

After the war, Skog turned increasingly to politics. As a candidate of the conservative wing of the Social Democratic Party, he became its chairman in 1946 and remained so until 1957. During this time he was Minister of Defense in six governments. During this time he became the direct negotiating partner of the later President Urho Kekkonen , with whom there was often political tension, but with whom Skog also found a basis for discussion.

Promotion to party chairman

The SDP in parliamentary elections in the post-war period
year	be right	Seats
1945	25.08%	50
1948	26.32%	53
1951	26.52%	53
1954	26.25%	54
1958	23.12%	48
1962	19.50%	38
1966	27.23%	55

In 1944 Emil Skog took part in the party congress of the Social Democrats as one of four chairmen and was elected to the party executive committee. The importance of the trade unions in politics increased after the war mainly because the Finnish communists , whose organizations were no longer banned, fought with the Social Democrats for supremacy in the trade unions. In the Social Democratic Party a special trade union department was set up, to which Skog belonged. Skog was able to increase his influence in the party when, under his leadership, the Social Democrats won a majority in the metal union elections in 1945.

In the immediate post-war years, the Social Democratic Party was split into two camps. The party had supported the country's politics in the government during the war, while the representatives of the so-called peace opposition had been calling for a separate peace with the Soviet Union since 1943 . After the war, the opposition demanded a clear departure from the old policy and cooperation with the regaining communists. At that time Emil Skog represented the line of the group around Väinö Tanner , which defended the previous policy and kept its distance from the communists. This line prevailed in 1944.

Emil Skog had already run as a candidate for the conservative majority group for party chairman in 1944. However, the compromise candidate Onni Hiltunen was elected . The extraordinary party congress in 1946 then elected Skog as the new chairman. Skog, who was supported mainly by the union representatives and the so-called brother-in-arms socialists around Väinö Leskinen , prevailed against the opposition candidate Karl-August Fagerholm . For the groups behind him, Skog, with his down-to-earth metalworking background, was a credible leader who could counter accusations that the party was right-wing.

Relationship with the party wings

Skog took a mediating position towards the internal party opposition. Under his leadership, the conflict between the camps was gradually bridged. In 1947 representatives of the opposition were added to the board as advisory members. In addition, the difference in opinion between the camps diminished in importance towards the end of the 1940s as the conflict with the communists escalated. Soon after Skog's election, party secretary Väinö Leskinen initiated the campaign “Fighting Social Democracy”, in which the party led the fight against the communists with posters and speeches. Skog himself campaigned for the ousting of the communists from the state police and the state radio station, in which the communists had at times occupied a dominant position. By the end of the decade, the communists had been removed from central positions of power and the supremacy of the Social Democrats in the trade union movement had been secured for the time being.

The central figure of the conservative wing of the party, Väinö Tanner, had meanwhile been sentenced to imprisonment in February 1946 in the war guilt trial carried out under pressure from the Soviet Union. Skog kept in close contact with Tanner during the detention period and also discussed questions about the party line with him. When Tanner was released on parole in November 1948 after serving half his sentence, Skog was reinstating him as chairman of the supervisory board of the Elanto consumer cooperative . Despite the anticipated foreign policy displeasure, Skog allowed Tanner to run for a seat in parliament again in 1951 and be elected.

Government policy

Defense Minister Skog
Period	government
July 29, 1948 - March 17, 1950	Fagerholm I.
January 17, 1951 - September 20, 1951	Kekkonen II
September 20, 1951 - July 9, 1953	Kekkonen III
5.5.1954 - 20.10.1954	Törngren
October 20, 1954 - March 3, 1956	Kekkonen V
3.3.1956 - 27.5.1957	Fagerholm II

Emil Skog was Minister of Defense in six of the short-lived governments of that period from 1948 to 1957. In this role, he had to repeatedly sound out the possibilities of the Finnish armed forces , which Finland remained after the restrictive terms of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947. Against this background, the creation of a maneuvering area in Kemijärvi in Lapland in 1949 was explosive in terms of foreign policy. The acquisition of material caused particular difficulties. In 1951, Skog managed to buy aircraft from Great Britain for the Air Force when other countries were not ready for delivery.

Apart from his first participation in Fagerholm's minority government from 1948 to 1950, the core of the respective governments was a coalition of the Social Democrats with the Landbund. While in the latter the multiple prime minister Urho Kekkonen was the determining personality, Skog as party leader of the Social Democrats was his counterpart. The cooperation went essentially smoothly in the beginning. In January 1952, however, the coalition was on the verge of rupture when Kekkonen published his so-called “pajama pocket speech” from his hospital bed, in which he illuminated the security situation in Northern Europe and suggested to NATO members Norway and Denmark that they should, like Sweden and Finland, adopt a policy of neutrality to decide. Kekkonen had not discussed this sensational statement in advance with his coalition partners. The party executive of the Social Democrats immediately published a statement condemning Kekkonen's actions, which Kekkonen understood as a rejection of his foreign policy line and responded with a threat of resignation. Only after lengthy negotiations, mediated by Erkki Tuomioja, did the parties agree on a compromise, with Skog publicly declaring that there were no differences of opinion between the coalition partners on fundamental questions of foreign policy.

The government later suffered from the “cost crisis” in which galloping inflation seriously threatened the competitiveness of the Finnish economy. Discord arose between the ruling parties over the measures to be taken to deal with the crisis. The Social Democrats rejected a program put forward by Kekkonen and put forward a less concrete program, one of the main points of which was to ensure the automatic index-linked wage increase. Kekkonen, in turn, believed that this demand would undo any stabilization effort. The Kekkonen III government fell over this dispute in June 1953 and was replaced by a minority government led by the Landbund.

The coalition partners only came together again after the parliamentary elections in May 1954. However, Skog categorically stated to President Juho Kusti Paasikivi that the Social Democrats would not participate in any government under Kekkonen. So Paasikivi finally commissioned Ralf Törngren from the Swedish People's Party to form a government. However, the working atmosphere in the government was tense from the start; This time the main coalition parties came into conflict primarily over questions of land allocation and agricultural price policy. In the autumn of 1954 the question of agricultural prices led to the collapse of the coalition again. In this situation, Skog turned directly to Kekkonen and negotiated with him not only about concessions from the Landbund on the question of agricultural prices, but also about a reform of the government. The talks led to the replacement of Törngren and the formation of a new government in October, whose Prime Minister was again Kekkonen.

Moscow trip and foreign policy readjustment

In September 1955, Skog traveled to Moscow with President Paasikivi and Prime Minister Urho Kekkonen to negotiate the early extension of the friendship treaty concluded with the Soviet Union in 1948 and possible new regulations regarding the areas ceded after the war. The President authorized Kekkonen and Skog to conduct the actual negotiations. The main responsibility lay with Kekkonen, who had also largely staked out the negotiating tactics with Paasikivi in ​​the run-up to the visit, which made Skog and the Social Democrats upset. The talks finally led to the extension of the friendship treaty by 20 years and the return of the Porkkala peninsula , on which the Soviet Union had built a military base after the war.

In Moscow, Skog had remained in the shadow of Urho Kekkonen as a representative of the anti-communist Social Democrats. While the conservative camp of the Social Democratic Party was dissatisfied with the fact that no corrections had been made to the eastern border and the wording of the friendship treaty, Skog used the events as an opportunity to demand that his party reorientate its relations with the Soviet Union. It is more important than the fight against Kekkonen to develop the previously non-existent Ostpolitik of one's own party: "We must also be able to conduct our Ostpolitik better in a tactical sense than Kekkonen."

Party split

In the course of the 1950s, the Social Democratic Party was increasingly torn apart by internal quarrels and power struggles. At the end of the decade, this development split the party. Outwardly, the conflict appeared as a confrontation between the camp around party chairman Skog on the one hand and the camp around party secretary Väinö Leskinen on the other.

backgrounds

The power struggle began in sports politics and initially without Skog's participation. Rather, as chairman of the Workers' Sports Association (TUL), Leskinen came to the fore in a dispute over the direction of the relationship with the bourgeois sports association SVUL. Personal antipathies were also woven into the dispute from the start. In February 1955, the dispute in the Sports Association escalated when Leskinen was ousted from the chair by his former friend Penna Tervo , the latter disregarding group discipline among the Social Democratic delegates and allowing himself to be elected with the help of the Communists.

The conflict quickly gripped the trade unions and the Social Democratic Party, where Leskinen found his opponent in Skog. The programmatic differences between the two were mainly expressed in relation to the Soviet Union on the one hand and Urho Kekkonen, who was elected president in 1956, on the other. While Leskinen basically remained an opposition politician, Skog began to show greater understanding, especially for his foreign policy line, in the course of government cooperation with Kekkonen. In addition, personal differences also played a decisive role here. The decidedly matter-of-fact Skog found no basis for discussion with the bon vivant Leskinen and, moreover, had repeatedly got into unpleasant situations due to his unsolicited initiatives.

Escalation of the dispute

At the party congress in 1955, the break could be avoided again. Leskinen agreed to the re-election of Skog as party chairman, Leskinen remained party secretary. However, it turned out that the majority of the new party executive was behind Skog. So Leskinen began to do propaganda work to get an extraordinary party convention to be called. He was able to rely on the majority of the party press that wrote openly against the party leadership. The latter felt compelled to launch their own new publication in order to be able to represent their own point of view. This in turn was exploited by Leskinen's supporters for propaganda purposes. Eventually Leskinen managed to get a sufficient number of party districts to call for an extraordinary party congress. This was convened for April 21, 1957.

In the run-up to the party congress, both camps waged a bitter struggle for the majority of the delegates, which was also waged extensively on both sides with bogus members and phantom organizations. Both sides presented long-serving compromise candidates for the office of party chairman. Väinö Tanner ran for the Leskinen camp and Karl-August Fagerholm for the supporters of Skog, who himself renounced the candidacy. The party congress finally elected Tanner with 95 votes and 94 against. The group around Emil Skog demanded an interruption of the party congress so that the filling of the other posts, in particular that of the party secretary, could be negotiated. When the majority around Leskinen refused, the group that remained in the minority withdrew from the party congress, whereupon the remaining delegates completely occupied the board with representatives of the Leskinen camp.

As a result of these events, the party was factually divided and Emil Skog resigned from all responsible positions. The Skog camp initially formed, alluding to the result of the vote, as a loosely organized group 94 within the party.

Leader of the social democratic opposition

The split in the Social Democratic Party was cemented when representatives of the intra-party opposition entered a minority government with the Landbund in 1957 without consulting the party leadership. The development eventually led to the exclusion of the most important opposition members from the party. They founded a new party with Skog as chairman. The reconciliation process was lengthy and did not get underway until 1963. Skog returned to the parent party in 1965, but years would pass before the social democratic parties were finally unified.

Cementing the split

In 1957, the minority of the Social Democratic Party founded an initially provisional commission headed by Aarre Simonen to work towards a solution to the conflict. The negotiations resulted in the signing of an agreement proposal in May. However, this was soon brought down in the party executive committee.

The prospect of a solution dwindled to zero in the same month. After his defeat in the election as party leader, Prime Minister Fagerholm announced his government's resignation. President Kekkonen commissioned Vieno Sukselainen from the Landbund to form a government. After the party leadership of the Social Democrats did not follow a clear line in his opinion, Sukselainen formed a minority government, into which he also accepted five representatives of the Social Democratic opposition. The government participation of these so-called adoptive ministers had been agreed without a vote with the party's parliamentary group and caused massive criticism. The party council called on the ministers to resign, which they refused. As a result, the five ministers were expelled from the parliamentary group in September 1957 and subsequently formed their own group of "independent social democrats".

Emil Skog did not go into government as a minister himself, but was decisively involved in the decision. He justified the opposition's move with the hope of being able to force the Leskinen camp into new negotiations and to confirm the solution that had already been negotiated. At the same time, he opposed interpretations that the admission of the adoptive ministers had been deliberately used by President Kekkonen or the Landbund as a means of smashing the Social Democratic Party:

“The word adoptive minister was incorrect. Nobody 'adopted' us into the government. Our group had planned the operation and the Landbund was in a sense an assistant who, under the compulsion of the situation, got involved in the matter. ... The move to the Sukselainen government was an operation planned by the opposition, and only they are responsible for it. "

Founding your own party

The TPSL in parliamentary elections
year	be right	Seats
1962	4.36%	2
1966	2.59%	7th
1970	1.40%	0

In the end, the party expelled both the opposition parliamentary group and the leading members of the negotiating commission it had founded from the party. In 1959, Skog's supporters founded their own party, the Social Democratic Union of Workers and Small Farmers (TPSL). Skog was elected its chairman.

The new party differed most visibly from the parent party in its relationship to the Soviet Union and the President. After Tanner's election as chairman, the SDP was sidelined in relations with the East, which also increasingly impaired the party's ability to participate in the government. After Fagerholm's third government was overthrown by the massive political and economic pressure of the Soviet Union in the so-called night frost crisis in 1958, the party was no longer involved in any government until 1966. The representatives of the TPSL, on the other hand, were welcome guests in Moscow and developed into an important support for President Kekkonen's policy at home. In the government under Ahti Karjalainen from April 1962 to December 1963 , the TPSL was represented by three ministers.

In the run-up to the 1962 presidential election , a cross-party alliance was formed with the candidate Olavi Honka and the aim of replacing Urho Kekkonen as president. The TPSL supported Kekkonen's foreign policy, but decided to run the election with Emil Skog as its own candidate. Skog took his candidacy seriously and believed in his chance of winning, especially since it was believed that the TPSL candidate might also be able to count on the votes of the electors of the Communist Democratic Union of the People of Finland . Skog's election campaign received a lot of attention, among other things because of the active support of the entertainer Tapio Rautavaara .

However, the choice turned out to be a bitter disappointment for Skog. In the autumn of 1961, the financial crisis shook the Finnish public. As a result, Honka renounced his candidacy and Kekkonen received a strong tailwind as the guarantor of Finnish foreign policy. While the latter was re-elected by a large majority, Skog received just 3.0% of the vote and only two out of 300 electors.

Reconciliation and return

Even after the founding of the TPSL, Skog repeatedly sought a reconciliation with the majority Social Democrats. In 1960 he negotiated privately with Väinö Tanner and other party officials. However, no agreement was reached. The talks only had serious prospects of success after Tanner was replaced by Rafael Paasio as chairman of the Social Democratic Party in 1963 . Paasio was a prominent representative of the so-called Third Line of Social Democrats, which had tried for years to convey the opposing viewpoints.

The crucial talks began in late October 1963 and resulted in a contract signed by Skog and Paasio in February 1964. The treaty provided for the unification of the two social democratic parties and the dissolution of the TPSL. However, resistance in the left wing of the TPSL stirred against this regulation. At the party congress in spring 1964, Skog lost the chairmanship of the party to Aarre Simonen, who in turn postponed the execution of the reconciliation treaty. As a result, the minority representatives around Skog decided to return to the main party in private. In December 1965 they published a declaration with which they committed themselves to re-joining the SDP. This in turn revoked the previous party exclusions.

The Social Democratic Federation of Workers' and Small Farmers initially continued to exist, but was visibly emaciated by more returnees to the main party, with an increasingly left-wing membership remaining. In 1972 the party was renamed the Socialist Federation of Workers and Small Farmers, but was dissolved a year later and became part of the main party.

Emil Skog returned to the Social Democratic Party and was also a member of the party executive for a short time, but his active career as a politician was practically over with his return. Skog was only active in the social democratic senior citizens' organization Old Comrades ( Vanhat toverit ). In 1969 he was awarded the Väinö Tanner Medal for his party work, and in 1975 he became an honorary member of the party.

Fonts

• Sosialisti ja patriootti muistelee . WSOY, Helsinki 1971 (cited: Skog 1971).
• Veljet vastakkain . WSOY, Helsinki 1974 (cited: Skog 1974).

literature

• Pekka Kaarninen: Emil Skog . In: Jukka Tarkka (Ed.): Suomen Kansallisbiografia 9 . SKS, Helsinki 2007, ISBN 978-951-746-450-5 , pp. 101-105. ( On-line in Finnish. On-line in Swedish. )

Web links

• Photo by Emil Skog.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Skog 1971, pp. 9-12.
2. ↑ Skog 1971, pp. 12-16.
3. ↑ Skog 1971, pp. 21-24.
4. ↑ Skog 1971, pp. 32-48.
5. ↑ Kaarninen, p. 101; Skog 1971, pp. 50-58.
6. ↑ Assessment of the motives according to Kaarninen, p. 102.
7. ↑ On the relationship between Skog and Tanner: Jaakko Paavolainen: Väinö Tanner - patriootti. Elämäkerta vuosilta 1937–1966 . Tammi, Helsinki 1989, ISBN 951-30-9184-8 , pp. 387-404.
8. ↑ Ministerial index of the Finnish government ( memento of the original dated November 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ↑ On the pajama bag speech: Juhani Suomi: Kuningastie. Urho Kekkonen 1950-1956 . Otava, Helsinki 1990, ISBN 951-1-10403-9 , pp. 159-172.
10. ↑ On the breach of the Kekkonen III government: Juhani Suomi: Kuningastie. Urho Kekkonen 1950-1956 . Otava, Helsinki 1990, ISBN 951-1-10403-9 , pp. 242-258
11. ^ On the formation of the Törngren government: Juhani Suomi: Kuningastie. Urho Kekkonen 1950-1956 . Otava, Helsinki 1990, ISBN 951-1-10403-9 , pp. 304-310; On the crisis of the Törngren government and the formation of the Kekkonen government V: Juhani Suomi: Kuningastie. Urho Kekkonen 1950-1956 . Otava, Helsinki 1990, ISBN 951-1-10403-9 , pp. 330-344.
12. ↑ On the talks in Moscow: Juhani Suomi: Kuningastie. Urho Kekkonen 1950-1956 . Otava, Helsinki 1990, ISBN 951-1-10403-9 , pp. 394-410.
13. ^ Quotation from the minutes of the executive committee of the Social Democratic Party of September 23, 1955, quoted from Juhani Suomi: Kuningastie. Urho Kekkonen 1950-1956 . Otava, Helsinki 1990, ISBN 951-1-10403-9 , p. 416. Original text: Meidän on pystyttävä hoitamaan idänpolitiikkamme taktillisessakin mielessä paremmin kuin Kekkonen.
14. ↑ Hannu Soikkanen: Väinö Leskinen . In: Matti Klinge (ed.): Suomen kansallisbiografia 6 . SKS, Helsinki 2005, ISBN 951-746-447-9 , p. 91 f.
15. ↑ On the assessment of the Kaarninen conflict, p. 104.
16. ↑ Presentation of the course of the dispute according to Tuomas Keskinen: Aika sotia - aika sopia. Väinö Leskinen 1917-1972. Tammi, Helsinki 1978, ISBN 951-30-4454-8 .
17. ↑ On the formation of the Sukselainen government: Juhani Suomi: Kriisien aika. Urho Kekkonen 1956-1962 . Otava, Helsinki 1992, ISBN 951-1-11580-4 , pp. 32-39.
18. ↑ Quoting from Skog, 1974, pp. 44-46. Original text: Ottopoika-sana ei ollut oikea. Ei meitä ketään valtioneuvostoon 'otettu'. Meidän ryhmämme oli operaation suunnitellut ja maalaisliitto oli ikäänkuin avustaja, joka olosuhteiden pakosta oli vedetty mukaan. … Sukselaisen hallitukseen meno oli siis opposition suunnittelema operaatio, yes se yksin vastasi siitä.