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Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 6 and 7 July 1958. [1] The communist Finnish People's Democratic League emerged as the largest party, but was unable to form a government.
Between March 1956, when Urho Kekkonen (Agrarian League) became president, and the 1958 elections, Finland had had four governments; Karl-August Fagerholm's Social Democratic Party majority government, V. J. Sukselainen's Agrarian minority government, and two civil-service caretaker governments, led by the Governor of the Bank of Finland, Rainer von Fieandt and the Chief Justice of Finland's Supreme Administrative Court, Reino Kuuskoski. The Social Democrats and Agrarians found it difficult to work together in the government, which significantly reduced Finland's chances of having a stable government, because the two other large or fairly large parties, the Finnish People's Democratic League and National Coalition Party, were excluded from the government.
The Social Democrats had been split into two parties since Väinö Tanner, a veteran Social Democrat and a former political prisoner (one of the eight "war culprits" after World War II), had very narrowly been elected the Social Democratic leader over Fagerholm in July 1957. The Social Democrats were among Kekkonen's chief opponents and wanted to defeat him in the 1962 presidential elections. After becoming president, Kekkonen wanted to defeat the Social Democrats politically, and thus their split into the majority and the minority, the so-called Skogists (after former Defence Minister Emil Skog) helped him move closer towards that goal.
In addition, Finland was suffering from a recession and, by that time's standards, a high unemployment rate, which helped the Finnish People's Democratic League to increase their support. After these elections, Fagerholm formed his third government, which included the Social Democrats, Agrarians, National Coalitioners, Swedish People's Party and the People's Party of Finland, in August 1958. Already when he appointed Fagerholm's government, President Kekkonen indicated that he would not help if it encountered problems. Soon the government ran into difficulties: the Soviet Union interrupted its trade negotiations with Finland, and in November or December 1958, the Soviet ambassador to Finland returned to the Soviet Union. These "night frosts," along with President Kekkonen's and the other Agrarians' opposition (Foreign Minister Virolainen resigned from the government at the beginning of December 1958, and former Assistant Finance Minister Karjalainen wrote that it was time for the wise people to leave the government), caused Fagerholm to tender his resignation in December 1958. Sukselainen formed another centrist minority government in January 1959, while Kekkonen visited the Soviet Union where the Soviet leader Khrushchev assured him that all was again well in the Finnish-Soviet relations. [2] [3]
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | |
| Finnish People's Democratic League | 450,220 | 23.16 | 50 | +7 | |
| Social Democratic Party | 449,536 | 23.12 | 48 | –6 | |
| Agrarian League | 448,364 | 23.06 | 48 | –5 | |
| National Coalition Party | 297,094 | 15.28 | 29 | +5 | |
| Swedish People's Party | 126,365 | 6.50 | 13 | +1 | |
| People's Party | 114,617 | 5.90 | 8 | –5 | |
| Social Democratic Union of Workers and Smallholders | 33,947 | 1.75 | 3 | New | |
| Liberal League | 6,424 | 0.33 | 0 | 0 | |
| Åland Coalition | 5,487 | 0.28 | 1 | 0 | |
| Agrarian League Opposition | 5,057 | 0.26 | 0 | New | |
| Finnish Christian League | 3,358 | 0.17 | 0 | New | |
| Free Citizens and Centre List | 3,033 | 0.16 | 0 | New | |
| Free Economy List | 331 | 0.02 | 0 | New | |
| People's Co-operation League | 160 | 0.01 | 0 | New | |
| Others | 242 | 0.01 | 0 | – | |
| Total | 1,944,235 | 100.00 | 200 | 0 | |
| Valid votes | 1,944,235 | 99.48 | |||
| Invalid/blank votes | 10,162 | 0.52 | |||
| Total votes | 1,954,397 | 100.00 | |||
| Registered voters/turnout | 2,606,258 | 74.99 | |||
| Source: Tilastokeskus 2004, [4] Suomen virallinen tilasto [5] | |||||
| Electoral district | Total seats | Seats won | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SKDL | SDP | ML | Kok | RKP | SK | TPSL | ÅS | ||
| Åland | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Central Finland | 12 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Häme | 14 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Helsinki | 19 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | ||
| Kymi | 15 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 1 | |||
| Lapland | 9 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 1 | ||||
| North Karelia | 11 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 1 | ||||
| North Savo | 12 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 1 | ||||
| North Vaasa | 8 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | |||
| Oulu | 18 | 7 | 2 | 7 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Pirkanmaa | 13 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | |||
| Satakunta | 14 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | ||||
| South Savo | 12 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 1 | ||||
| South Vaasa | 10 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | |||
| Uusima | 16 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | ||
| Varsinais-Suomi | 16 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Total | 200 | 50 | 48 | 48 | 29 | 13 | 8 | 3 | 1 |
| Source: Statistics Finland [6] | |||||||||
Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, often referred to by his initials UKK, was a Finnish politician who served as the eighth and longest-serving president of Finland from 1956 to 1982. He also served as prime minister, and held various other cabinet positions. He was the third and most recent president from the Agrarian League/Centre Party. Head of state for nearly 26 years, he dominated Finnish politics for 31 years overall. Holding a large amount of power, he won his later elections with little opposition and has often been classified as an autocrat.
Johannes Virolainen was a Finnish politician and who served as 30th Prime Minister of Finland, helped inhabitants of Karelia, opposed the use of alcohol and created Mandatory Swedish in Finnish basic schools.
Karl-August Fagerholm was a Finnish politician. Fagerholm served as Speaker of Parliament and three times Prime Minister of Finland. Fagerholm became one of the leading politicians of the Social Democrats after the armistice in the Continuation War. As a Scandinavia-oriented Swedish-speaking Finn, he was believed to be more to the taste of the Soviet Union's leadership than his predecessor, Väinö Tanner. Fagerholm's postwar career was, however, marked by fierce opposition from both the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Finland. He narrowly lost the presidential election to Urho Kekkonen in 1956.
Uusimaa is one of the 13 electoral districts of the Parliament of Finland, the national legislature of Finland. The district was established as Uusimaa Province in 1907 when the Diet of Finland was replaced by the Parliament of Finland. It was renamed Uusimaa in 1997. It is conterminous with the region of Uusimaa but excludes the municipality of Helsinki which has its own electoral district. The district currently elects 37 of the 200 members of the Parliament of Finland using the open party-list proportional representation electoral system. At the 2023 parliamentary election it had 801,205 registered electors.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 17 and 18 March 1945. The broad-based centre-left government of Prime Minister Juho Kusti Paasikivi remained in office after the elections.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 1 and 2 July 1936. Following the election Prime Minister Toivo Mikael Kivimäki of the National Progressive Party was defeated in a confidence vote in September 1936 and resigned in October. Kyösti Kallio of the Agrarian League formed a centrist minority government after Pehr Evind Svinhufvud refused to allow the Social Democrats to join the government. After Svinhufvud's defeat in the February 1937 presidential election, Kallio took office as the new President in March 1937, and he allowed the Social Democrats, Agrarians and Progressives to form the first centre-left or "red soil" Finnish government. Aimo Cajander (Progressive) became Prime Minister, although the real strong men of the government were Finance Minister Väinö Tanner and Defence Minister Juho Niukkanen (Agrarian).
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 1 and 2 July 1948.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 1 and 2 July 1951.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 7 and 8 March 1954.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 4 and 5 February 1962.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 20 and 21 March 1966. The Social Democratic Party (SDP) overtook the Centre Party as the largest faction in Parliament. Rafael Paasio of the SDP subsequently became Prime Minister and formed a popular front government consisting of the SDP, the Centre Party, the People's Democratic League (SKDL), and the Social Democratic Union of Workers and Smallholders (TPSL) in May 1966.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 15 and 16 March 1970.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 2 and 3 January 1972.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 21 and 22 September 1975.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 18 and 19 March 1979.
Karl-August Fagerholm's third cabinet, also known as the Night Frost Cabinet or the Night Frost Government, was the 44th government of Republic of Finland, in office from August 29, 1958 to January 13, 1959. It was a majority government. The cabinet was formed after the parliamentary election of 1958.
The Finnish Rural Party was an agrarian and populist political party in Finland. Starting as a breakaway faction of the Agrarian League in 1959 as the Small Peasants' Party of Finland, the party was identified with the person of Veikko Vennamo, a former Agrarian League Member of Parliament known for his opposition to the politics of President Urho Kekkonen. Vennamo was chairman of the Finnish Rural Party between 1959 and 1979.
Two-stage presidential elections were held in Finland in 1950, the first time the public had been involved in a presidential election since 1937 as three non-popular elections had taken place in 1940, 1943 and 1946. On 16 and 17 January the public elected presidential electors to an electoral college. They in turn elected the President. The result was a victory for Juho Kusti Paasikivi, who won on the first ballot. The turnout for the popular vote was 63.8%. President Paasikivi was at first reluctant to seek re-election, at least in regular presidential elections. He considered asking the Finnish Parliament to re-elect him through another emergency law. Former President Ståhlberg, who acted as his informal advisor, persuaded him to seek re-election through normal means when he bluntly told Paasikivi: "If the Finnish people would not bother to elect a President every six years, they truly would not deserve an independent and democratic republic." Paasikivi conducted a passive, "front-porch" style campaign, making few speeches. By contrast, the Agrarian presidential candidate, Urho Kekkonen, spoke in about 130 election meetings. The Communists claimed that Paasikivi had made mistakes in his foreign policy and had not truly pursued a peaceful and friendly foreign policy towards the Soviet Union. The Agrarians criticized Paasikivi more subtly and indirectly, referring to his advanced age, and speaking anecdotally about aged masters of farmhouses, who had not realized in time that they should have surrendered their houses' leadership to their sons. Kekkonen claimed that the incumbent Social Democratic minority government of Prime Minister K.A. Fagerholm had neglected the Finnish farmers and the unemployed. Kekkonen also championed a non-partisan democracy that would be neither a social democracy nor a people's democracy. The Communists hoped that their presidential candidate, former Prime Minister Mauno Pekkala, would draw votes away from the Social Democrats, because Pekkala was a former Social Democrat. The Agrarians lost over four per cent of their share of the vote compared to the 1948 parliamentary elections. This loss ensured Paasikivi's re-election. Otherwise Kekkonen could have been narrowly elected President - provided that all the Communist and People's Democratic presidential electors would also have voted for him.
Two-stage presidential elections were held in Finland in 1956. On 16 and 17 January the public elected presidential electors to an electoral college. They in turn elected the President.
The Night Frost Crisis or the Night Frost was a political crisis that occurred in Soviet–Finnish relations in the autumn of 1958. It arose from Soviet dissatisfaction with Finnish domestic policy and in particular with the composition of the third government to be formed under Prime Minister Karl-August Fagerholm. As a result of the crisis, the Soviet Union withdrew its ambassador from Helsinki and put pressure on the Finnish government to resign. The crisis was given its name by Nikita Khrushchev, who declared that relations between the countries had become subject to a "night frost".
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