Editing Juho Kusti Paasikivi (section)

===From prime minister to president (1946)===
[[File:Mannerheim ja Paasikivi.jpg|thumb|President Paasikivi (right), his wife Alli Paasikivi (middle) and [[C. G. E. Mannerheim]] (left) in 1946]]
Immediately after the war, Mannerheim appointed Paasikivi prime minister. For the first time in Finland a Communist, [[Yrjö Leino]], was included in the cabinet. Paasikivi's policies were those of a intended to be "realistic" radically different from those of the previous 25 years.

Paasikivi sought to understand why Moscow had ordered the invasion of Finland in 1939. He concluded  that interwar Finnish portrayals of the Soviet Union were "heedlessly Russophobic", and that the Soviet attack was legitimate, strategic, and  even "defensive" rather than ideological or expansionist. Consequently, he ensured that negative references to the Soviet Union were expunged from school textbooks and that books containing "hostile" representations of the Soviet Union were removed from public libraries.<ref>{{Harvnb|Browning|Lehti|2011|p=161}}.</ref>

Paasikivi had to comply with many Soviet demands, including the war crimes trial. His main effort was to prove that Finland would present no threat to the Soviet Union, and that both countries would gain from confident peaceful relations.

When Mannerheim resigned, Parliament selected Paasikivi to succeed him as President of the Republic. Paasikivi was then age 75.