Editing Urho Kekkonen (section)

====First term (1956–62)====
[[File:JFKWHP-KN-C19113.jpg|thumb|left|Kekkonen's visit to the United States in 1961 and first time in the [[White House]]. Left: Urho Kekkonen, [[Sylvi Kekkonen]], [[Jacqueline Kennedy]], and [[John F. Kennedy]].]]
[[File:Kekkonen ja Khrushchev.jpeg|thumb|right|Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]] attended Kekkonen's 60th birthday party in [[Presidential Palace, Helsinki]]. The party continued until 5&nbsp;a.m. at the [[Tamminiemi]] residence.]]
In the [[1956 Finnish presidential election|presidential election of 1956]], Kekkonen defeated the Social Democrat [[Karl-August Fagerholm]] 151–149 in the electoral college vote. The campaign was notably vicious, with many personal attacks against several candidates, especially Kekkonen. The tabloid gossip newspaper ''Sensaatio-Uutiset'' ("Sensational News") accused Kekkonen of fistfighting, excessive drinking and extramarital affairs. The drinking and womanizing charges were partly true.  At times, during evening parties with his friends, Kekkonen got drunk, and he had at least two longtime mistresses.<ref name=r1>Seppo Zetterberg et al. (eds.) (2003) ''The Small Giant of the Finnish History''. Suomen historian pikkujättiläinen, Helsinki, Werner Söderström Publishing Ltd.</ref><ref>Pekka Hyvärinen (2000) ''The Man of Finland: Urho Kekkonen's Life''. Suomen mies.  Urho Kekkosen elämä, Helsinki: Werner Söderström Publications Ltd.</ref>

As president, Kekkonen continued the neutrality policy of [[Juho Kusti Paasikivi|President Paasikivi]], which came to be known as the [[Paasikivi–Kekkonen doctrine|Paasikivi–Kekkonen line]]. From the beginning, he ruled with the assumption that he alone was acceptable to the Soviet Union as Finnish President. Evidence from defectors like [[Oleg Gordievsky]] and files from the Soviet archives show that keeping Kekkonen in power was indeed the main objective of the Soviet Union in its relations with Finland.{{citation needed|date=April 2011}}

In August 1958, [[Karl-August Fagerholm's third cabinet]], a coalition government led by the [[Social Democratic Party (Finland)|Social Democratic Party]] (SDP) and including Kekkonen's party [[Agrarian League (Finland)|Agrarian League]], was formed. The Communist front [[SKDL]] was left out. This irritated the Soviet Union because of the inclusion of ministers from SDP's anti-Communist wing, namely [[Väinö Leskinen]] and [[Olavi Lindblom]]. They were seen by the Soviet Union as puppets of the anti-Communist SDP chair [[Väinö Tanner]], who had been convicted in the [[War-responsibility trials in Finland|war-responsibility trials]].<ref name="Varjus2019">Varjus, Seppo. ''Näin valta otetaan ja pidetään.'' In YYA-Suomi – suomettumisen vuodet, Iltasanomat, Sanoma Media Finland 2019, pp. 14–17.</ref> Kekkonen had warned against this but was ignored by SDP. The [[Night Frost Crisis]], as coined by [[Nikita Khrushchev]], led to Soviet pressure against Finland in economic matters. Kekkonen sided with the Soviet Union, working behind the scenes against the cabinet; Fagerholm's cabinet consequently resigned in December 1958. The [[Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Finland)|Finnish Foreign Ministry]] ignored United States offers for help as promised by Ambassador [[John D. Hickerson]] in November 1958.<ref>see Country-studies.com, U.S. Embassy in Finland website, [[U.S. State Department]] website</ref> The crisis was resolved by Kekkonen in January 1959, when he privately travelled to Moscow to negotiate with Khrushchev and [[Andrei Gromyko]]. The crisis established Kekkonen as having the extra-constitutional authority to determine which parties may participate in government, effectively restricting the free parliamentary formation of governing coalitions for many years ahead.

[[File:Urho ja sylvi kekkonen.jpg|thumb|right|President Kekkonen and his wife Sylvi in Mälkiä, [[Lappeenranta]], in 1961]]
The second time the Soviets helped Kekkonen was in the [[Note Crisis]] in 1961. The most widely held view of the [[Note Crisis]] is that the Soviet Union acted to ensure Kekkonen's reelection. Whether Kekkonen himself had organized the incident and to what extent remains debated. Several parties competing against Kekkonen had formed an alliance, ''Honka-liitto'', to promote [[Chancellor of Justice (Finland)|Chancellor of Justice]] [[Olavi Honka]], a non-partisan candidate, in the 1962 presidential elections.<ref name="Varjus2019" /> Kekkonen had planned to foil the ''Honka-liitto'' by calling an early parliamentary election and thus forcing his opponents to campaign against each other and together simultaneously. However, in October 1961, the Soviet Union sent a [[diplomatic note]] proposing military "consultations" as provided by the [[Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948|Finno-Soviet Treaty]]. As a result, Honka dropped his candidacy, leaving Kekkonen with a clear majority (199 of 300 electors) in the 1962 elections. In addition to support from his own party, Kekkonen received the backing of the [[Swedish People's Party (Finland)|Swedish People's Party]] and the [[Liberals (Finland)|Finnish People's Party]], a small classical liberal party. Furthermore, the conservative National Coalition Party quietly supported Kekkonen, although they had no official presidential candidate after Honka's withdrawal.<ref name="r1" /> Following the Note Crisis, genuine opposition to Kekkonen disappeared, and he acquired an exceptionally strong—later even autocratic—status as the political leader of Finland.

Kekkonen's policies, especially towards the [[USSR]], were criticised within his own party by [[Veikko Vennamo]], who broke off his Centre Party affiliation when Kekkonen was elected president in 1956. In 1959, Vennamo founded the [[Finnish Rural Party]], the forerunner of the nationalist [[True Finns]].