Agrarian League (Finland)
농민동맹 (핀란드)
A Finnish party formed when regional organisations founded in 1906 to represent the rural population united in 1908 as the Agrarian League (Maalaisliitto). It was renamed the Centre Party in 1965 and the Centre Party of Finland in 1988. It formed the first “red-earth” government with the Social Democrats in 1937, was the centre of the pro-Soviet friendship line under Urho Kekkonen after the war, and has produced three presidents and twelve prime ministers.
In depth
According to the Finnish source, the party can be considered to have been born in 1906, when the Finnish Rural People’s League of the southern Oulu constituency and the South Ostrobothnian Young Finnish Agrarian League, which had split from the Young Finns, were founded; they merged in 1908 into the nationwide Agrarian League. In the first parliamentary election of 1907 they still ran as separate regional parties. Its ideological father was the Young Finn Santeri Alkio, who joined the Agrarian parliamentary group in 1907. In its early years the party relied on the interests of smallholders and independent farmers, and Kyösti Kallio placed it between capitalism and socialism.
On the question of the form of government the Agrarian League belonged to the republican bourgeoisie, and after the Civil War it sought national reconciliation, accepting amnesties for the Reds. In the early 1930s many members took part in the AKS and the Lapua Movement, but the party later opposed the far-right line of the Patriotic People’s Movement (IKL), increased cooperation with the Social Democrats and formed the first “red-earth” government in 1937. Lauri Kristian Relander was the first president from the party; when the Winter War began the president was Kallio, whose term ended early in 1940 for health reasons.
After the war the Agrarian MP Urho Kekkonen was prime minister several times. The Finnish source says that in the 1956 presidential election he obtained KGB support and won by the narrowest possible margin with communist electors’ votes. Within the party the “K-line”, supporting eastern policy, cooperation with the left and Kekkonen, held the majority. In 1958 a northern smallholder wing broke away as Veikko Vennamo’s Finnish Smallholders’ Party, and to become a nationwide party rather than an agrarian one the party renamed itself the Centre Party on 17 October 1965 (by 1036 votes to 127).
Paavo Väyrynen became chairman in 1980; the Liberal People’s Party became a member organisation of the Centre Party in 1982 and left in 1986. The party took the name Centre Party of Finland in 1988, became the largest party in the 1991 election and led a bourgeois coalition under Prime Minister Esko Aho, but lost first place to the Social Democrats in 1995. Antti Kaikkonen has been chairman since 2024.