Väinö Leskinen

Väinö Leskinen (1964)

Väinö Olavi Leskinen (born March 8, 1917 in Helsinki , † March 8, 1972 ibid) was a Finnish politician . Joined the Finnish Social Democratic Party during the war years , in the immediate post-war years he belonged to the group of so-called Brother-in-Arms Socialists, which directed the party's decidedly anti-communist policies. Leskinen was a minister in four governments between 1952 and 1959, during which time he became a political opponent of President Urho Kekkonen . In the 1950s he was one of the protagonists in severe internal party power struggles that ultimately led to the party split. In the course of this, he brought the Social Democratic Party under his control, but subsequently fell into political isolation along with the party, which was due in particular to foreign policy tensions in relation to the Soviet Union . In 1963, Leskinen had to leave his party offices. Thanks to a spectacular political turnaround and the associated rapprochement with his previous political opponents, Leskinen managed to return to politics and was first economics minister from 1968 to 1971 and later foreign minister .

Origin and early years

Väinö Leskinen was born into a working-class family in Helsinki. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Siuntio to avoid the violence that followed the civil war . In this then still purely Swedish-speaking community, Väinö was forced to attend the Swedish elementary school and thus acquired language skills that would later be beneficial to his political career. The young Leskinen was an ambitious and good athlete. In 1937 he won two gold medals in the breaststroke at the Workers' Olympics in Antwerp . Unlike his peers of similar origins, Leskinen came into contact with foreign cultures and languages ​​early on through his sports trips.

After briefly studying law , Leskinen took part in the winter war with the Soviet Union as a front soldier in 1939/40 . After the war, his political career began with his election as General Secretary of the Workers' Sports Association ( Työvänen Urheiluliitto , TUL). In the same summer he joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the recently founded Finnish Brotherhood in Arms (Suomen Aseveljien Liitto) , which was a support organization for veterans and war widows and orphans , but also had political weight as a reservoir for anti-communist forces.

During the Finnish-Soviet continuation war that began in 1941, Leskinen gained fame as a company commander of the successful 26th Infantry Regiment, the so-called Ässä Regiment, before he was wounded in August 1941 and never returned to the front. He has now been elected General Secretary of the League of Arms. The almost 4,000 members of the Ässä regiment with their families formed the core of Väinö Leskinen's political backing after the war.

Leskinen's character traits earned him many followers and critics throughout his career. He maintained the lifestyle of a bohemian , often combined with excessive alcohol consumption. He loved puns and rude jokes, be it at the expense of his interlocutors. Urho Kekkonen called him a bohemian in politics too. Fundamental and ideological considerations were not alien to him, but often remained secondary to his spontaneous and impatient activism . He always understood politics to be competition and gambling: "Life is a game, whether you win or lose."

Political activity until 1955

After the war, Väinö Leskinen belonged to the influential group of the so-called Brother-in-Arms Socialists, which determined the pointedly anti-communist politics of the Social Democratic Party in the first post-war years. In the early 1950s, Leskinen was a minister in various Finnish governments. During this time a competitive relationship with the Landbund and its leader Urho Kekkonen developed.

Brother in arms socialism

In the Social Democratic Party, Leskinen was elected in 1944 as a delegate to the party congress to be held in November 1944 . The party congress turned into a confrontation between the representatives of the previous party line and the so-called peace opposition. Finland had signed a separate peace with the Soviet Union in September. The Social Democratic Party had supported the country's politics in the government during the war, while the representatives of the peace opposition had been calling for a separate peace since 1943. The latter now demanded a clear departure from the old policy and cooperation with the regaining strength of the Finnish communists . At the party congress, Väinö Leskinen vigorously defended the previous policy and its personification Väinö Tanner , who had been foreign and economic minister during the war years. The majority of delegates eventually followed this line. Some of those who remained in the minority subsequently switched to the Democratic Union of the Finnish People's electoral organization founded by the communists , while others remained as an internal opposition.

The League of Arms was dissolved in January 1945 at the request of the Allied Control Commission . For Väinö Leskinen, however, his social-democratic comrades-in-arms remained the most important reference group in the Social Democratic Party for years. The so-called Brother-in-Arms Socialists, who appeared with great unity in the post-war years, became an important power factor within the party. Väinö Leskinen formed the core group together with Unto Varjonen and Penna Tervo . The 1944 party congress elected Varjonen as party secretary. Shortly thereafter, Leskinen was appointed the party's organizational secretary. When Varjonen became editor-in-chief of the party organ Suomen Sosialidemokraatti in 1946 , the party congress appointed Leskinen as his successor. Together with Leskinen, Varjonen and Tervo were also elected to the party executive.

Anti-communist campaigns

Unto Varjonen and Väinö Leskinen personified the anti-communist line of the Social Democratic Party. There was concern in Finnish domestic politics at the time that the communists might attempt an overthrow. In the autumn of 1946, Leskinen initiated the campaign "Fighting Social Democracy", in the framework of which the party led the fight against the communists with posters and speeches. In 1948 the conflict came to a head when the election campaign for the parliamentary elections and for the election of the delegates 'assembly of the Workers' Sports Association was conducted at the same time. Leskinen held a prominent position in both election campaigns and was also the target of the sharpest criticism of the communists, who especially accused him of his activities during the war.

Leskinen's campaign, however, was interrupted at its peak. On April 6, 1948, Leskinen was involved in a car accident in which a child was killed. Drunken MP Walter Kuusela drove the car . Leskinen was lying in the back seat at this point, also drunk. He had driven the car into the ditch before. Leskinen was sentenced to five months in prison without parole. His authority in the party as well as his personal relationships were badly damaged. After serving his sentence, Leskinen resumed his work as party secretary. However , he did not play a central role in the pushing back of the Communists from central state positions initiated by the government of his party comrade Karl-August Fagerholm after the elections .

Väinö Leskinen was elected to the Finnish parliament in the first post-war election in 1945. As a result of the scandal surrounding his drunk driving, he withdrew his candidacy for parliament in 1948. He did not return to parliament until 1951, to which he was to remain a permanent member until 1970.

Government participation and party politics

Leskinen held three ministerial posts in the rapidly changing governments of the early 1950s. From November 26, 1952 to July 8, 1953 he was Minister of Social Affairs in the third government under Urho Kekkonen. From May 5, 1954 to October 19 of the same year, he was a member of Ralf Törngren's government as Minister of the Interior . He kept this portfolio immediately afterwards in the fifth Kekkonen government.

Despite his involvement in Kekkonen's government, Leskinen became one of Kekkonen's harshest critics. The points of contention included economic distribution struggles in this time, which was characterized by high inflation and continuous labor disputes. Here the workers' interests represented by the Social Democrats clashed with the interests of agriculture, which was protected by Kekkonens Landbund. In terms of foreign policy, the SDP oriented itself primarily towards the west and to its sister parties in the Nordic countries , while Kekkonen placed particular emphasis on friendly relations with the Soviet Union. The differences between Kekkonen and Leskinen became personal when, in February 1953, a secret economic reform program leaked to the public, the implementation of which was thereby made impossible. Kekkonen blamed Interior Minister Leskinen for this process.

For the parliamentary elections in 1954, Leskinen issued the motto: “The Landbund must be smashed.” This goal was missed from the outset, the Landbund won two mandates. At the party conference in 1955, criticism of the party secretary's failed negative campaign was loud. Attempts made by Leskinen in 1954 and 1955 to put the party's relations with the Soviet Union on a new footing were also the subject of fierce criticism. In the course of his travels as a sports official, Leskinen not only made personal contacts with Soviet officials, but also spoke with them about official relations at party level. These advances, which seemed to contradict Leskinen's previous policy, were not discussed with the party bodies and met with little understanding there.

Protagonist of the 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. This development was closely linked to the person and politics of Väinö Leskinen. The Social Democrats grouped around Leskinen were therefore commonly referred to as the Leskinen camp (leskislaiset) .

Collapse of the brother-in-arms socialists

The internal party disintegration process began with a drastic deterioration in personal relationships between Leskinen and his fellow campaigners in the post-war period. The relationship between Väinö Leskinen and Unto Varjonen was already strained from 1946, when Varjonen, who was for many too bourgeois, was increasingly ousted from politics. In 1949 Leskinen proposed a new cast list for the party executive committee, on which the name Varjonen was missing, in 1952 Varjonen actually resigned from the executive committee. The relationship between the two brothers in arms broke off.

The rift with Penna Tervo had far-reaching consequences. According to the Leskinen biographer Tuomas Keskinen, both men had a thirst for power in common. Furthermore, Tervo had been irritated for a long time by Leskinen's jokes, which repeatedly occurred at his expense. The break was finally caused by an incident in the autumn of 1952, when Tervo, at the time Minister of Economics in the third Kekkonen government, had given a speech in the exhibition hall in Helsinki in a visibly drunk state. Regardless of his own past as a convicted drunk driver, Leskinen subsequently demanded Tervo's immediate resignation from the government.

In addition to these personal differences, political differences also began to emerge. While Leskinen basically remained an opposition politician, the party chairman of the SDP, Emil Skog , who had been in office since 1946 , and Penna Tervo began to show greater understanding, particularly for his foreign policy line, in the course of government cooperation with Urho Kekkonen. As the social democratic movement began to disintegrate, questions of content played a subordinate role compared to personal differences.

Formation of the fronts

The power struggle began in sports politics. This has had a prominent social importance since Finland's independence, as sport was used by all political directions for the purpose of ideologically bonding young people. Areas of tension existed on the one hand between the Workers' Sports Federation (TUL) and its bourgeois counterpart, the National Sports Federation of Finland (SVUL), on the other hand within the TUL, in which social democrats and communists vied for supremacy.

Leskinen was chairman of the TUL since 1951. In the following years he tried in various ways to achieve rapprochement and a possible merger with the SVUL. However, his advances were rejected several times in the association council. Leskinen's former assistant, Pekka Martin , finally got in touch with Penna Tervo in 1954 and they both decided to oust Leskinen from the chair. They succeeded in doing this after bitter disputes. The meeting of the Helsinki district assembly in February 1955 was decisive, in which the supporters of Leskinen formed the majority in the social democratic group, but the supporters of Tervo prevailed with the help of the communist representatives. Leskinen's supporters then withdrew from the meeting, and the two camps subsequently accused each other of breaking the party's internal code of conduct.

Leskinen faced severe criticism at the 1955 SDP party congress. The division of the party into two camps was already evident here, with the Leskinen camp contrasting with the Skog camp in the public eye. At this party congress 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. Leskinen then withdrew from the government in September so that he could devote himself fully to the power struggle in the party.

Leskinen founded his own correspondence office, called "the bunker", from which he began to work towards the convening of an extraordinary party congress. 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.

escalation

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.

In the escalation that followed, Väinö Leskinen played a central role. 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. The majority around Leskinen rejected this. As a result, the group that remained in the minority withdrew from the party congress. Immediately thereafter, Leskinen took the floor, sharply criticized the Skog group and proposed his supporter Kaarlo Pitsinki as party secretary. This was elected unanimously by the remaining delegates. Only then was a break in negotiations scheduled to negotiate the composition of the party executive committee. In these negotiations a solution emerged in which the board of directors would have been represented equally, with the chairman Tanner tipping the balance. Leskinen opposed this solution because it would have depended his majority on Tanner's goodwill. The compromise failed, and in the end the party congress elected a board made up entirely of Leskinen supporters.

This practically sealed the split in the party. Skog's supporters soon formed their own party, the Social Democratic Union of Workers and Small Farmers (TPSL). At the same time, the Finnish trade unions split . The unity of the social democratic movement could only be restored in the 1970s.

Political decline

After the party congress in 1957, Väinö Leskinen was one of the most powerful politicians in the Social Democratic Party. At the same time, however, the development took a direction that increasingly appeared to be a dead end due to foreign policy isolation. In conjunction with personal setbacks, this development brought Leskinen into political sideline in 1963. The Leskinen biographer Tuomas Keskinen summarizes the events as follows:

"The total victory of the bunker in 1957 led the party away from responsibility for the interests of the country, caused electoral defeats and ultimately led to Leskinen's ousting, to his total defeat."

In the face of foreign policy headwinds

In the immediate post-war period, Väinö Leskinen had distinguished himself as an uncompromising anti-communist and inevitably brought himself into conflict with the Soviet Union. In the 1950s, especially in 1954 and 1955, Leskinen took various initiatives to forge new friendly relations with the decision-makers in the eastern neighbor. As a result, Leskinen had working contacts with the Soviet representatives in Finland until 1957. The events of the party congress in 1957 led to a radical change here. From the perspective of the Soviet Union, the new party chairman Tanner was one of the main culprits of the war and, as a political interlocutor, was a non-person. After Tanner became chairman at Leskinen's instigation, Tanner, the SDP as a whole and Leskinen personally became the subject of violent attacks by the Soviet press.

It soon became clear that the hostile attitude of the Soviet Union also had concrete political consequences. After the parliamentary elections in 1958, a parliamentary majority government under Karl-August Fagerholm was formed on August 29, 1958. In addition to the SDP, this included all bourgeois parties of the center-right spectrum. Leskinen took over the office of Minister of Social Affairs. Soon after the government took office, the Soviet Union froze practically all relations with Finland. The high-ranking diplomatic representatives in Helsinki have been removed from office in Moscow for an indefinite period, and negotiations on various important trade agreements have been suspended. The massive foreign policy pressure from Moscow resulting from this so-called "night frost crisis" led to the overthrow of the government in January 1959.

The magnitude of the headwind appeared to be largely related to Leskinen's involvement. How Leskinen got into government in the first place is still not fully understood. Tuomas Keskinen emphasizes that the SDP sought government participation in order to break out of political isolation. He explains about Leskinen's role:

“The weakness of the Social Democratic Party at the time was its bad relations with the Soviet Union. An even greater burden was that the manager and MP Väinö Leskinen had even worse relationships. For all political observers it gradually became clear that the name Väinö Leskinen should not appear on the ministerial list of the new government. "

The Landbund's negotiator, Johannes Virolainen , had promised President Kekkonen that he would not participate in any government in which Tanner or Leskinen are ministers. Nevertheless, Leskinen appeared on the list of proposals for future Prime Minister Fagerholm and was finally accepted by Virolainen. Apparently Leskinen had wanted to be part of the government himself. The question of who was responsible for the decision later resulted in mutual accusations between Fagerholm and the party leadership.

Low point

The development described made Väinö Leskinen appear as the most prominent counterpoint to Urho Kekkonen's foreign policy. While this was aimed at a neutrality policy made possible by the understanding with the Soviet Union , in the public perception Leskinen stood for a West-oriented policy that was emphatically independent of the Soviet Union. As a result of the night frost crisis and because of this line, the Social Democratic Party and Leskinen personally fell into political isolation. Participation in the government seemed out of the question for the foreseeable future.

Leskinen's personal career was hit again in September 1960 when he was caught drunk for the second time. This was followed by a five-month prison sentence, which he served as a labor service in the construction of the airport in Mariehamn on Åland . Despite a request from party chairman Tanner, Leskinen did not give up his parliamentary mandate. However, the prison sentence meant that Leskinen was not involved in the political turmoil leading up to the 1962 presidential election.

The party congress of the Social Democrats in June 1963 marked the end of the term of office of the now 82-year-old chairman Väinö Tanner. It was already apparent in advance that the new party leader would be Rafael Paasio . The former presidential candidate and prominent representatives of the so-called “third line” striving for reconciliation within the party were the hopes of overcoming the party split. However, Paasio made the condition of his candidacy that Väinö Leskinen no longer be elected to the party executive committee.

In his detailed speech at the party congress, Leskinen gave an account of the party politics of the past few years and declared that the party was now better off than it was before its split. He appealed to the delegates not to bow to foreign policy pressure in personnel decisions. He compared the cutting of positions in the party leadership to pressure from outside with the situation in Estonia occupied by the Soviet Union . Leskinen's speech did not have the desired effect. Paasio prevailed against Veikko Helle , who was elected by Leskinen's supporters , whereupon Leskinen renounced the candidacy for the party executive.

Reorientation and recovery

Väinö Leskinen's political career reached an impasse in 1963. He freed himself from this with a sensational political U-turn, in the course of which he built bridges to his old adversaries. In this way he initiated a development that opened his way into government in 1968.

"Time to fight, time to reconcile"

In June 1963, MP Väinö Leskinen found himself without a significant political office. In this situation he began to rethink his positions and look for a new, more promising political direction. In 1964 he finally made a political U-turn. He sought contact with President Kekkonen as well as with the Finnish communists. He made special efforts to establish relations with Soviet diplomats. He now promised to stand behind the foreign policy line embodied by Kekkonen, to strive for friendly relations with the Soviet Union and to support governmental cooperation between the Social Democrats and the Communists.

Leskinen went public with his new political line in his speech to the Helsinki District Assembly of the SDP on October 15, 1965. In the speech he dealt in detail with the party's relations with the Soviet Union, the President of Finland and the local communists. In all three relationships, he emphasized the need for reconciliation:

“In politics there is time to argue and time to reconcile. Now is the time for reconciliation. For example, we Social Democrats fought with each other when we were defeated and among ourselves when we were able to exert greater influence on politics. Let us now make the opposite decision. "

Soon after the speech there was a discussion between Leskinen and Kekkonen. As a result, both regularly appeared on the same page of political debate. Since then, Leskinen has been campaigning for the Social Democrats to stand behind Kekkonen in the 1968 presidential election, which ultimately happened. Relations with the communists were also established. Together with Aarne Saarinen , chairman of the Communist Party of Finland since February 1966 , he worked actively from 1966 to overcome the split in the trade union movement.

In several unofficial meetings with Soviet representatives, in which the latter initially reacted with reluctance to Leskinen's U-turn, Leskinen admitted past mistakes. After his reconciliation speech and the election victory of the Social Democrats, Leskinen received an official invitation to Moscow in April 1966. On his return, he vigorously campaigned for the formation of the so-called Popular Front government made up of the SDP, Landbund, TPSL and People's Democrats under Prime Minister Rafael Paasio. Leskinen himself did not participate in the government.

Intra-party power struggle

The rapid turnaround and Leskinen's enthusiasm for action found not only friends in his party. Party chairman Paasio was basically on the same line, but wanted to proceed much more cautiously. When Paasio made a state visit to Moscow in November 1966, Leskinen provided him with detailed written advice in advance, without being asked, on how Paasio should promote the normalization of relations between the Finnish Social Democratic Party and the Soviet Communists. Paasio, on the other hand, was unwilling to speak about party relations on a state visit in his role as prime minister.

Disappointed about this, Leskinen attacked the chairman unusually sharply at the SDP party congress that began immediately after the trip. Relations between Leskinen and Paasio had been bad even before these events. The politically re-energized Leskinen sought again for high party offices, but Paasio was an obstacle. In addition to the annoyance at the lack of results of the trip to Moscow, Leskinen's motives also included a shift in the balance of power in the party. However, the attempt failed. The vehement attacks against Paasio turned the general mood against Leskinen himself. As a result, Leskinen was again not elected to the party executive committee.

This did not change the fact that large party circles were dissatisfied with Paasio. When his government resigned after the presidential election in 1968 in accordance with general political practice in order to enable a new government to be formed, the party council decided that the offices of head of government and party chairman were incompatible. The work of convincing Leskinen and his supporters played a significant role in this decision.

Paasio eventually remained chairman. The office of head of government went to Mauno Koivisto . In this constellation, Leskinen was able to secure a ministerial portfolio. On March 22, 1968, Väinö Leskinen took over the post of Minister of Economics after ten years of absence from the government.

Economics Minister and Foreign Minister

As Minister of Economics, Leskinen vigorously pushed forward projects for the further industrialization of Finland. During his term of office, which lasted from 1968 to 1970, the economic and political conflict over the purchase of the first Finnish nuclear power plant occurred . If this was originally tendered by international suppliers based on economic aspects , a political tug-of-war soon broke out in which the credibility of the Finnish policy of neutrality was also called into question. The tendering process was finally canceled, the power plant was bought from the Soviet Union without a tender, while certain safety-relevant components were procured from the West. Leskinen was in charge of these negotiations. The same applies to the talks about the purchase of electric locomotives , which the Soviet Union had offered, but for which there were also Finnish suppliers. Leskinen eventually negotiated the acquisition from the Soviet Union on unusually favorable terms, but he came into conflict with the majority of his own party.

Through his political turn, Leskinen had succeeded in returning to the top of politics. At the same time, however, he had alienated his traditional constituency, the veterans of the Ässä regiment. They had valued in him all those basic convictions that he had now thrown overboard. In an electoral system in which entry into parliament depends on the candidate's personal votes, this was not without consequences. Väinö Leskinen lost his parliamentary mandate in the 1970 parliamentary election, in which the ruling parties suffered a heavy defeat.

Leskinen seemed thus deprived of the basis for further high political offices. President Urho Kekkonen came to Leskinen's aid in this situation and in May 1970 appointed him Foreign Minister of the new transitional government under Teuvo Aura . Traditionally, the president had the right to appoint the foreign minister regardless of the other composition of the government. Leskinen also received this office in the new Popular Front government under Ahti Karjalainen that followed in July .

Leskinen's tenure as Foreign Minister was eventful in terms of foreign policy. It included numerous state visits, including to the Soviet Union and the United States , the extension of the friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, the start of the SALT negotiations in Helsinki and the advancement of the CSCE process. Leskinen's independent contribution in these matters was small, since the foreign policy was sovereignly directed by President Kekkonen. The cooperation with the president was trusting, although he had to repeatedly urge him to moderate his alcohol consumption. Leskinen's ministerial career ended when the governing coalition broke up on October 29, 1971.

Sickness and death

Leskinen's tomb

The departure from the Foreign Ministry also marked the end of Leskinen's political career. He was no longer appointed to the new transitional government of Teuvo Aura. During his tenure as minister, he had repeatedly struggled with cardiac arrhythmias . In June 1971 he had a seizure while on a trip to Turkey, and in June during Nicolae Ceaușescu's visit to Helsinki, which this time earned him a few weeks of hospitalization. In September Leskinen had to go to hospital again.

Even so, Leskinen developed new plans for a political comeback. In preparation for this, he began work on a two-volume autobiography. However, these did not get beyond the initial stage. On March 8, 1972, his 55th birthday, Väinö Leskinen suffered another heart attack while cross-country skiing , which he succumbed to before arriving at the hospital. Väinö Leskinen left four sons: Tapio, Osmo, Jouko and Väinö. He had been divorced in 1971 from his wife Margit (1915–2002), whom he married in 1941.

Fonts

• Asevelisosialismista kansanrintamaan . Kirjayhtymä, Helsinki 1967 (quoted: Leskinen ).

literature

• Tuomas Keskinen: Aika sotia - aika sopia. Väinö Leskinen 1917–1972. Tammi, Helsinki 1978, ISBN 951-30-4454-8 (quoted: Keskinen ).
• Hannu Soikkanen: Väinö Leskinen . In: Matti Klinge (ed.): Suomen kansallisbiografia 6 . SKS, Helsinki 2005, ISBN 951-746-447-9 (pp. 90-96, cited: Soikkanen ).
• Juhani Suomi: Presidentti. Urho Kekkonen 1962-1968 . Otava, Helsinki 1994, ISBN 951-1-13065-X (quoted: Suomi 1994 ).
• Juhani Suomi: Taistelu puolueettomuudesta. Urho Kekkonen 1968–1972 . Otava, Helsinki 1996, ISBN 951-1-13548-1 (quoted: Suomi 1996 ).

Web links

Commons : Väinö Leskinen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leena Laine: TUL. The Finnish Worker Sport Movement. In: Arnd Krüger and James Riordan (eds.): The Story of Worker Sport. Champaign, Ill .: Human Kinetics 1996, 67-96. ISBN 0-87322-874-X
2. ↑ Characterization according to Soikkanen, p. 96. Quotation ibid, source text: Elämä on peliä voitti tai hävisi.
3. ↑ Keskinen, p. 118 f.
4. ↑ Keskinen, p. 116
5. ↑ Soikkanen, p. 91 f.
6. ↑ Keskinen, p. 179.
7. ↑ Keskinen, p. 251. Source text: Bunkkerin totaalinen voitto 1957 vei puolueen syrjään maan asioiden hoidosta, aiheutti vaalitappioita ja johti lopulta Leskisen itsensä syrjäyttämiseen, totaaliseen tappioon.
8. ↑ Keskinen, p. 198. Source text: Sos.dem. puolueen heikkoutena oli tuolloin huonot Neuvostoliiton suhteet. Mutta suurempana rasitteena oli se, että toimitusjohtaja, kansanedustaja Väinö Leskisellä ne olivat vieläkin huonommat. Kaikille politiikkaa seuranneille alkoi käydä selväksi, että ainakaan Väinö Leskisen nimeä ei uuden hallituksen nimilistasta pitäisi löytyä.
9. ↑ Keskinen, pp. 198-200.
10. ↑ Quoted from Leskinen, p. 116. Source text: Politiikassa on aika sotia ja aika sopia. Nyt on aika sopia. Me sosialidemokraatit olemme esim. taistelleet yhdessä silloin kun olemme olleet alakynnessä ja keskenämme silloin, kun olemme vaikuttaneet poliittiseen toimintaan suuremmalla voimalla. Tehdäänpä kerran ratkaisu toisinpäin.
11. ↑ Keskinen, pp. 295-299; Suomi 1994, p. 519 f.
12. ↑ Keskinen, p. 310; Suomi 1996, pp. 25-27.

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on November 15, 2008 in this version .