History
The organisation was founded after World War II on 30 June 1945 in Salo as a union of 14 regional youth organisations of the Agrarian League. The Salo meeting elected Johannes Virolainen as the first president of the organisation. Two decades later, Virolainen became the Prime Minister of Finland.
The post-war era was a politically active time in Finland. The new centrist youth organisation rapidly gained new members, reaching 50 000 members in 1954 and 70 000 members in 1962. Since then, the number of members has been gradually declining (the end of 70s being an exception).
Read more about this topic: Finnish Centre Youth
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“History takes time.... History makes memory.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)