1881–1966
○ War-responsibility prisoner 1946–1948
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.
Activities and affiliations
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
Related historical events
Co-operative management and the rebuilding of social democracy
Tanner's political base took shape in the co-operative movement. After training at the German co-operative wholesale organisation GEG in Hamburg, he returned to Finland and became manager of a consumer co-operative in Turku at about the age of twenty-two. By 1917 he was general manager of Helsinki's Elanto and a leading figure in the central organisation of consumer co-operatives. He expanded Elanto into a large enterprise and, in 1927, was elected chairman of the executive committee of the International Co-operative Alliance, a post he held until 1945.
As Elanto's manager during the 1918 civil war, Tanner had to deal with Red Guard leaders; he opposed the revolution, calling it a crime against the working class and democracy. After the war he emerged as a leader in founding a new Social Democratic Party and played an important part in bringing it back into parliamentary politics. His strategy was contested within the workers' movement. The Finnish National Biography notes that whether he remained an orthodox social democrat after 1918 is a matter of interpretation. It also describes him as willing to cooperate across social sectors in economic affairs and as a consistent defender of democracy and constitutionalism. Co-operative management and parliamentarism thus formed a basis of his influence, but they cannot be separated from disagreements within the labour movement or debate over his political choices.