| Summary: | Journalist and publisher Kauko Kare (1914-1996) was one of the best-known dissidents of the Finlandization era. Kare, who had long worked as the subeditor of Suomalainen Suomi magazine and as an editor for WSOY, became known to the whole nation after he published his pamphlet Tähän on tultu in 1967, which attacked the political phenomena of Urho Kekkonen's presidency. Encouraged by the success of his book, Kare continued the Alea-kirja publishing house he had founded to publish the book and set up the magazine Nootti (1968) alongside it. Through his publishing activities, Kare participated in the political debate until the early 1990s, giving voice to many viewpoints that would otherwise have remained silenced in Finlandized Finland. In my dissertation, I show that Kauko Kare was a questioner, a defender of freedom of expression and a perpetual oppositionist, who defended his own autonomy and opposed authority and totalitarianism. In questioning authorities of his time, his idols were Erasmus of Rotterdam, one of the Renaissance humanists, and Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire and Rousseau. Kare was a patriotic dissident who opposed communism, but was also not enthusiastic about mass movements of the right such as the Academic Karelian Society. Kare sought to look at cultural issues from the perspective of the common people, opposing both conservative elitism and the new generation of modernists and cultural radicals. Politically, Kare identified himself as a Tannerian right wing socialist, influenced by the patriotic and classless upbringing of his childhood home. Kauko Kare's anti-Kekkonen attitude stemmed from the threat to Finland's independence posed by the prevailing politics, his opposition to the self-censorship of the era and his dislike of Kekkonen's opportunism. Kekkonen, on the other hand, succeeded in establishing his position of power by using the Soviet Union to maintain a climate of fear that made the people rely on a strong leader, and by using power politics and political appointments ...
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