The Social Democratic realist who faced Stalin as Finland's Winter War foreign minister, rising from the cooperative movement
At the final meeting on 9 November 1939, when Finland refused even the reduced demands, 'the eyes of our opposite numbers opened wide.' Stalin asked: 'You don't even offer Ino?'
The politician who rebuilt Finland's Social Democratic Party from the ashes of the 1918 civil war into a parliamentary-democratic force. He became prime minister of Finland's first leftist government in 1926, and during the Moscow negotiations on the eve of the Winter War he joined Paasikivi at the table, urging Helsinki to accept a territorial exchange. It was Tanner who later recorded that when Finland rejected even the reduced Soviet demands at the final meeting of 9 November 1939, Stalin's and Molotov's 'eyes opened wide.' After the war he served a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence under Soviet pressure, but returned to parliament and led the party into the early 1960s.
Career Timeline
- 1907Member of Parliament, SDP
- 1917Senator for Finance
- 1926–1927Prime Minister
- 1927–1945President, International Co-operative Alliance
- 1937–1939Minister of Finance
- 1939–1940Minister of Foreign Affairs
- 1942–1944Minister of Finance
- 1957–1963Chairman, Social Democratic Party