This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Paasikivi–Kekkonen doctrine" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(September 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

ThePaasikivi–Kekkonen doctrine was aforeign policy doctrine established byFinnish PresidentJuho Kusti Paasikivi and continued by his successorUrho Kekkonen, aimed atFinland's survival as an independentsovereign,democraticcountry in the immediate proximity of theSoviet Union.

The principal architect of Finland's postwarforeign policy ofneutrality wasJuho Kusti Paasikivi, who was president from 1946 to 1956.^[1]Urho Kekkonen, president from 1956 until 1982, further developed this policy, stressing that Finland should be active rather than passive in its neutrality.

ThePaasikivi Society was established in 1958 to promote the doctrine in Finland and abroad. Paasikivi and Kekkonen became Honorary Members of the Society.^[2]

Finland and the Soviet Union signed theParis Peace Treaty in February 1947, which in addition to the concessions of theMoscow Peace Treaty provided for:

• Limiting the size ofFinland's defense forces,
• Cession to the Soviet Union of thePetsamo area on theArctic coast,
• Lease of thePorkkalapeninsula offHelsinki to the Soviets for use as anaval base for 50 years (it was returned ahead of schedule in 1956),
• Free transit access to this area across Finnish territory, and
• War reparations to the Soviet Union decided to 300 million gold dollars (amounting to an estimated 570 millionU.S. dollars in 1952, the year the payments ended).

In April 1948, Finland signed anAgreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance with the Soviet Union.^[3] Under this mutual assistance pact, Finland was obligated, with the aid of the Soviet Union, if necessary, to resist armed attacks by "Germany or its allies" (i.e.,NATO) against Finland or against the Soviet Unionthrough Finland. At the same time, the agreement recognized Finland's desire to remain outside great-power conflicts. This agreement was renewed for 20 years in 1955, in 1970, and again in 1983.^[1] This allowed Finland to retain independence in internal affairs, e.g. a multiparty parliamentary system, and not to join theEastern Bloc. However, joining NATO or other overt alliance with the West was out of question^[3] and foreign policy was often limited.

Contemporary Finns often criticized the Paasikivi–Kekkonen doctrine as tending towards a "liturgy" of good relations. Both countries were militarily prepared. However, international trade was active, in the framework ofbilateral trade. Furthermore, the policy was heavily tied to the person of President Kekkonen, who consequently exploited his position as a "guarantor of Soviet relations" against political opponents. Outright censorship, official as well as unofficial, was employed for films and other works considered explicitly anti-Soviet, such asThe Manchurian Candidate orThe Gulag Archipelago, although political freedoms were not otherwise coercively limited.

Later criticism has included the following points:

• The Soviet Union did not consider Finland a neutral country, but "striving to be neutral". Although Kekkonen was largely successful in retaining sovereign power over affairs in Finland, Finland's position on international affairs, such as the invasion of Czechoslovakia, was often ambiguous or Soviet-friendly. The1977 hijacking of a Soviet airliner further exemplifies this; the undue influence of the Soviet ambassador, who would storm a government meeting to make demands, shows that the Finnish government had trouble fending off Soviet interference.^[4] The Soviet Union had an unusually large diplomatic mission in Finland, and Kekkonen communicated with the Soviet Union through theKGBstation chief rather than by regular diplomatic channels. The Soviets intervened in Finnish politics in various ways, e.g. through theCommunist Party of Finland^[5] and Soviet-friendly contacts in other parties (e.g. Kekkonen'sK-linja in theCentre Party).
• The Soviet military kept a separate unit in readiness to invade Helsinki fromTallinn in the case of war.^[6] The plans, which were fully up-to-date, were left behind in the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Estonia after Estonia regained independence in 1991.
• The policy had little respect in the West. Western foreign policy actors and military personnel either did not know about the policy or assumed it was a failure from the outset. Regarding the former, British military officers were known to have queried how many Soviet troops were in Finland.^[4] Regarding the latter, nuclear weapons were trained on targets in Finland,^[6] with the assumption that any possible Finnish resistance to a Soviet invasion would be a certain failure.
• There was covert cooperation between the Finnish government and Western intelligence agencies. The CIA could fund the anti-CommunistSocial Democratic Party, a major, often government-leading party, though it gradually became unusually pro-Soviet beginning in the late 1960s, with many radical leftists holding influential posts among other such parties. There was also military intelligence cooperation, for instance allowingSIGINT flights to probe the Soviet radar network (according to Pekka Visuri^[who?]) and providing seismic data to detect Soviet nuclear tests.^{[citation needed]}

The Finns responded cautiously in 1990–91 to the decline of Soviet power and the USSR's subsequentdissolution. They unilaterally abrogated restrictions imposed by the 1947 and 1948 treaties with the exception of a ban on acquiringnuclear weapons, joined in voicingNordic concerns overthe coup against Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev, and gave increasing unofficial encouragement toBaltic independence.

At the same time, by replacing the Soviet-Finnish mutual assistance pact with treaties on general cooperation and trade, Finns put themselves on an equal footing while retaining a friendly bilateral relationship. Finland subsequently boosted cross-border commercial ties and touted its potential as a commercial gateway to Russia. It had reassuredRussia that it would not raise claims about theformerly Finnish territory ceded after theContinuation War (though a small but vocal minority of people disagree), and continued to reaffirm the importance of good bilateral relations untilRussia–EU relations became increasingly strained due to theRusso-Ukrainian War. Following theRussian invasion of Ukraine, the policy of neutrality was permanently abandoned. On 18 April 2022, Prime MinisterSanna Marin, with the support of both governing and opposition parties, announced abid to join NATO which resulted in Finland's entry to the bloc on 4 April 2023.

• Finlandization
• Night Frost Crisis
• Note Crisis
• Politics of Finland
• Politics of the Soviet Union

• Political history of Finland
• Finland–Soviet Union relations
• Finland–Russia relations
• Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
• Cold War policies
• Foreign policy doctrines
• Urho Kekkonen

• CS1 Spanish-language sources (es)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from September 2014
• All articles needing additional references
• All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases
• Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2022
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from February 2022