Karicatures

To little Finland, hard on Russia's border, a cool word from the Kremlin comes as the harshest winter blast. In that perilous political climate, a shy, gangling newspaper cartoonist named Kari Suomalainen has enraged none other than Nikita Khrushchev, set Finland's political leaders to quaking in their boots, and delighted his countrymen by seeing Red with a sharp satiric eye. Says Cartoonist Kari Suomalainen, 38, much more simply than the situation warrants: "It is my duty to be anti-Communist."

At least one Karicature in the liberal Helsinki Sanomat, Finland's largest daily (circ. 250,000), has become an international incident. Last fall Kari pictured Russia's Khrushchev on a Volga River barge, being pulled by Russian satellite slaves and taunting Prime Minister Macmillan and President Eisenhower (see cut). Russia protested the widely reprinted cartoon (which showed up on posters in Britain during Macmillan's mission to Moscow), and Khrushchev complained about the irresponsible Finnish press, i.e., Cartoonist Kari, when Finland's President Urho Kekkonen paid him a recent border-knitting visit.

President Kekkonen, portrayed in Karicature as a Russian boot polisher, rushed back to Helsinki and went on radio to blame the Finnish press in general, and cartoonists in particular, for endangering relations with Russia. Next day all Finland chuckled at Kari's reply: a cartoon that showed Kari drawing a bandy-legged peace dove while Kekkonen's eyes glowered from the wall over the slogan, "Big Brother is watching you."

A Roman Catholic, Kari Suomalainen (his last name means Finn) fought the Russians as a forward artillery observer during World War II, is married to a former model who placed fourth in the Miss Finland contest of 1954. Kari likes to argue Hegel over a quiet glass of sherry, approaches his cartooning by thinking up ideas, then waiting for news situations that fit them. Says he: "I can have an idea for two years before I find a spot to use it."

When he gets an idea--often during his daily, two-hour walk through Helsinki's streets--Kari does not string it out in an irritating series "like a snarling dog lunging repeatedly at a man's trouser cuff." In under-the-gun Finland, where it takes nerve even to nibble at Russian sensitivities, Kari Suomalainen prefers the single sharp bite. His highly honed teeth have made him, at $9,400 a year, one of Finland's best-paid journalists. And such is his natural appeal that even President Kekkonen, so often the butt of his bite, is the proud possessor of two Kari originals.

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