Newsletter - Social Science in Eastern Europe 2000-2
Finland
Social science research on Eastern Europe in Finland[39]
Although Russia is Finland's largest neighbour, Russian studies have
traditionally not been deemed as a major field of the Finnish social sciences
and humanities. This has been the case in spite of the fact
that Finnish-Soviet trade was very significant for both sides and Finnish
neutrality in foreign policy was based on the agreement on "Treaty of
Friendship and Mutual Assistance" with the Soviet Union. In other
Scandinavian countries, several institutes existed during Soviet times. Finland
was a rare exception: there were no organised Soviet studies to speak of. One
really cannot point out any major Finnish academic experts on the Soviet world,
at least not outside of Russian language and literature studies. Why was this
the case? What was the Finnish relationship to the big neighbour in intellectual
terms?
One of the main explanations for the scarcity of Soviet studies was plainly
the lack of genuine intellectual interest. It should be noted in this context
that Finnish social sciences and humanities were more generally concentrated on
national issues. Not much interest in American society or even in
European societies existed. One could almost claim that social and cultural
studies were seen as an aspect of state building.
It would be misleading, however, to argue that there were no Soviet studies
whatsoever in Finland before the 1990's. Some major contributions were published
as dissertations in economics (Sutela 1984) and in political science (Susiluoto
1982, Iivonen 1990). Issues of Soviet trade were also analysed (Salminen 1981).
Many books were published concerning the history of relations between Finland
and Russia. Many important works were produced within the departments of Russian
languages and literature. Altogether, by the mid 1990's, the total number of
doctoral dissertations concerning Russia was more than fifty. Even in those
fields of study where general interest in Soviet issues was very marginal,
prominent individual researchers were following their own way. This was the
case, for example, with Juha Tolonen in legal theory (see e.g. Tolonen 1976). It
is characteristic of the Finnish case that these and other scholars of the
period are fundamentally self-taught. No Finnish university offered courses or
seminars in Soviet and East European studies at the time. As international links
were also almost totally lacking, this research has many of the hallmarks of
individual effort.
One existing institutional basis for Soviet studies in Finland was the
Finnish-Soviet Committee for Scientific and Technological Co-operation. This
committee had working groups in several disciplines both in the natural sciences
and in the social sciences and humanities. And it was in this framework that
Finnish scholars had the opportunity to get to know their Russian colleagues. In
the beginning, contacts were restricted mainly to Moscow but during the
Perestroika years, they already had enjoyed a broader geographical coverage.
Although in many cases the joint empirical research done was not at an
international state-of-the-art level, this co-operation did make initial
empirical data collection possible. Even if theoretical discussions were not
always convincing, they opened up new relations and possibilities, which could
be used when times were changing and ideological restrictions became
increasingly obsolete.
For example, in the working group on sociology in the 1980's, there was
active joint research and discussion on the following topics:
* gender issues; comparative analysis of social structure; time budgets;
* the media and images of the Soviet Union in the Finnish press and vice
versa;
* working life and conditions of work; and social problems, especially
alcohol policy.
Many issues were dealt within a comparative context. Research groups produced
joint reports. Although they were not theoretically sophisticated, they produced
valuable data for ongoing discussions. Within Finnish sociology, a specific
relationship with Polish sociologists had been established already before (Allardt
and Wesolovsky, 1978) on a more equal professional basis. Cooperation with the
Estonians had also started already in the 1960's.
Multi-disciplinary co-operation had been going on within the Nordic countries
on studying Russian and East European issues. In the years of Perestroika, some
enthusiastic efforts were made to develop this co-operation on a more organised
basis. A jointly compiled journal was published in English and the Nordic
Committee for Research on Eastern States (Nordisk komitet för öststatsforskning)
worked as a forum for discussion. This interest however, though genuine, was not
on a sufficiently firm footing and after a few years such formal Nordic
co-operation faded away. Research communities in different countries were too
small and diverse to maintain the necessary degree of cohesion.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was, among other things, a huge intellectual
challenge. It had several important implications for Western institutes of
Soviet studies. Originally, only few could see the true complexity of the
transition. Expertise in Russia, her history, culture, and the Soviet system
seemed no longer necessary. Even worse, it could be a handicap. An economist
versatile in the Russian language had to be a specialist of the planned system.
Therefore, he had the wrong mindset for the tasks of transition. So, ignorance
of a country perversely became a benefit. Interest in Russian studies diminished
and, above all, the political interest in financing specific institutions for
this purpose was not nearly as compelling as it had been during the cold war
period. Several institutes were reorganised. The tendency to integrate Russian
and East European studies within a broader framework of European studies was
rather strong.
In 1995, Finland became a member of the European Union (EU). The Finnish
membership of the EU implied that the relationship with Russia was no longer a
relationship between a superpower and a small country. Finland is quite
determined in seeing its own situation as a part of a broader constellation
between the European Union and Russia. In this context, a search for Finnish
expertise on Russian issues was inevitable, not only for Finland, but also for
Europe in more general terms. That partly explains the recent upsurge of Russian
and East European studies in Finland.
In the middle of the 1990's, the Finnish Ministry of Education started two
comprehensive efforts to promote Russian studies in Finland. The first
initiative was to launch a distinctive research programme at the Academy of
Finland. The second initiative was to establish the Aleksanteri Institute[40] as a special institution at the University of
Helsinki. The institute is working as a nation-wide network for Russian
and East European studies. The networking of the Finnish universities was
regarded as inevitable because of the need for job sharing and the
limited resources in individual universities. Finland has a highly dispersed set
of universities, most of which have been founded within the last few decades,
often as regional policy measures. Almost all of them have at least some
activities in Russian and East European studies.
The Aleksanteri Institute has good connections to the administration and to
economic life. The Ministry of Education provides its basic funding. The various
research and development projects are financed with national and EU project
funding consortia. In 1999, total funding was over 10 mill. Finnish marks, in
2000, the budget is about the same. Its staff comprises about 20 persons and is
directed by Professor Markku Kivinen. The mission statement of the Institute is
to
* promote research on Russian and Eastern Europe
* promote and coordinate academic studies and continuing education on Russia
and Eastern Europe
* maintain databases and information services
* offer expert services concerning research on contemporary issues in the
region
* promote networking in the academic community with actors in business,
politics and public administration
* promote Finnish expertise abroad
* offer consulting services particularly in connection with the EU funding of
academic projects
* publish research results in Kikimora Publication series.
In 1998, the Institute started both an M.A. programme and a Ph.D. programme
for the field. About 25 young scholars are currently enrolled in the doctoral
programme of the Aleksanteri Institute. The programme is based on
multidisciplinary courses and it is assumed that all new scholars in the field
have a rather thorough knowledge of transition, Russian culture and history and
also of Finnish-Russian political and economic relations. The doctoral programme
involves co-operation with leading Western and Russian specialists. The M.A.
programme has a similar kind of multidisciplinary profile. Each of the Finnish
Universities has developed a profile of its own in teaching Russian and
East European issues. For example, the University of Lapland is active in
arctic issues, while the University of Joensuu, which is geographically located
near the Eastern border, is concentrating on the problems of Karelia and other
border regions. The University of Jyväskylä is active in intercultural
communication and the University of Tampere has a long tradition in analysing
the working life and social structure of Russia. Of course, Russian culture and
history is taught in several universities and the University of Helsinki has
several strong departments in different faculties. Such division of labour is,
of course, not determined from above, and it is all the time changing according
to the interests of the researchers and students. Several universities have also
launched their own M.A. courses and have even established a few professorships,
although only on a temporary basis so far.
Specific units for studying East-West trade have long been working at the
Turku School of Economics and Business Administration and more recently also at
the Technological University of Lappeenranta. The Helsinki School of Economics
and Business Administration has recently established a new institute for Russian
and Baltic issues.
In addition to the universities, several research institutes are working in
the field. The Bank of Finland has an internationally renowned Institute for
Economies in Transition (BOFIT), and an important body of Russian expertise has
been groomed at the Finnish Institute of Foreign Affairs. Many Finnish
ministries have been active in funding more practically oriented research and
several development projects, financed by regional councils and the EU, have a
research component in their approach. Worth mentioning here is the Finnish
Institute for Russian and East European Studies (FIREES), which concentrates its
activities on support services, such as library supply and conference
organisation[41].
The recently founded Finnish polytechnics have also been activating their
teaching and even been conducting some research on Russian and East European
issues.
The research programme of the Finnish Academy was started with a
comprehensive discussion of its focus. For example, the following issues were
raised in the discussion:
To what extent should the programme concentrate on current political and
economic issues? The Ministry of Education, which provides funding for the
programme, was keen to point out the priority of economic, political and
administrative topics. On the other hand, it was argued by many in the
Academy that the present could be understood and analysed only on the basis of
fundamental research on Russian culture and history.
* To what extent should the development of Finnish research and expertise be
focused on those regions of Russia, which geographically are most attractive for
practical interests , that is, mainly on northwest Russia?
* Should the funding be concentrated on the already existing strong fields,
or should it especially generate interests in new disciplines, especially those
that would be relevant for contemporary change?
* Should the programme support rather large research groups or individual
researchers?
Given the fact that many universities and disciplines are represented in the
decision-making research councils of the Academy of Finland the result seems to
be a compromise allowing many kinds of approaches and emphasising the fact that
the focus should not be too restrictively defined. In the actual programme,
strong fields of study appeared to be social sciences (seven projects) and
history (six). Culture and language were represented by several projects,
altogether five. Four projects dealt with economic issues while only one project
had a politological profile. Only one project dealt with change in the legal
system. The relative quantitative weakness of political and legal studies in the
programme is a clear problem, and presumably reflects the small amount of
interest in these disciplines. Due to the lack of sufficiently strong proposals
from the research community, the original priorities of the Ministry could not
be fully implemented.
As the discussion above should make clear, the interest in Eastern and
Central Europe in Finland is primarily a matter of interest in Russia. However,
there are intensive connections with Estonia which result in a wide range of
reseach projects. Since co-operation with Estonia is regarded as mainly
problem-free, it needs much less co-ordination than its bigger neighbour Russia.
At Aleksanteri Institute, there are eg. research projects conducted on:
"Acculturation and Identity of Ingrian-Finns. Estonians and Russians in
Finland" (by Eve Kyntäjä), "Everyday Life and Coping Strategies of
the Rural Population in Estonia" (Anna Kokko), and "The Estonian
Orthodox Church in Soviet Foreign Policy 1917-1923". Poland, Hungary, and
other post-socialist Central Europan countries are of interest also, but the
number of Finnish research projects targeted at Central Europe, is small. For
example, the contacts with Hungary are still tight, especially in the field of
Finno-Ugric studies. The programme of the Finnish Academy of Sciences also
concentrates heavily on Russia. There were several projects on the Baltic
countries but only two dealing mainly with Eastern Europe in more general terms.
At the original launching of the programme some emphasis was put on the nearby
regions, but it is a matter of conjecture as to whether this priority was
actually carried through. As far as the organisation was concerned, many
projects were fairly large and in many cases umbrella projects with a somewhat
dispersed focus. It should be no surprise, given the background outlined above,
that most projects did not really have a strong leader. Much of the output
consists of licentiate and doctoral dissertations rather than of work of
well-established senior scholars. That, naturally, also raises the issue of
continuity in research funding.
All in all, the programme seemed to be a mix of compromises between different
orientations and disciplines. Social sciences were actively involved. The
programme clearly enforced Russian studies in that field. The scope of the
projects was large and the orientation mainly empirical. It might
be asked whether this is due to the empiricist nature of current sociology in
general or whether it is simply a wise approach in the circumstances, where not
very many theories on a social sphere in transition can be found anywhere. In
any case, Finland is now one of those rather few countries where lots of
sociologists are collecting and analysing empirical data on Russia. There
can be no doubt that the professional level of empirical analysis has been
improving. Jukka Gronow (1997) and Markku Kivinen (1998) made efforts to bring
forth some new theoretical openings. Gronow analysed much neglected
issues on Soviet patterns of consumption whereas Kivinen made an effort to
conceptualise the Soviet system based on the basic cultural code of the
Bolshevik revolution.
The relative lack of politological analysis is an obvious defect of the
programme. Civil society, democracy and the law-based state are still the key
political issues in Eastern Europe. With the exception of Juha Tolonen and his
junior colleagues dealing with civil law, (e.g. Lehtinen 1997) Finnish research
has not been able to create any comprehensive research group thus far, let alone
a Finnish School on these issues. However, individual contributions were of a
high quality. Within the programme, Christer Pursiainen (1998) produced a very
fundamental analysis of the "End of Sovietology", analysing the change
of the paradigm concerning Russian foreign policy. He used the first war in
Chechnya as the basis for his empirical case study. Some important individual
contributions have been presented outside of the programme.
Marja Nissinen (1999) analysed the political aspect of Latvia in transition
whereas Timo Aarrevaara (1999) made an empirical analysis on change in the
Ukrainian administration.
The fact that economics was not as strong in the programme as might have been
expected, is probably explained by the specifics of Finnish academic economics,
which tends to be more theoretically than country oriented. Among the economics
projects, two approaches seem to dominate. There was much research on
trade and particularly investment, but also network-based studies on empirical
topics.
History, as mentioned above, was a strong aspect of the programme. Here, as
might have been expected, the emphasis was on the utilisation of newly available
Russian archives, in particular concerning Soviet-Finnish relations and the
influence of Soviet authorities on Finland. Books on such issues by Ohto
Manninen, Hannu Rautkallio, and Kimmo Rentola have been major best sellers.
Antti Laine and others also did path-breaking work on the political history of
Soviet Karelia. Cultural studies, spanning Russian language to art and
literature, were another major priority in the programme at the time.
The research programme includes 28 projects, which present the great variety
of disciplines, approaches and of universities. The project by Ritta Kosonen and
Asta Salmi (both at the Helsinki School of Economics and Business
Administration) utilises a network-based approach to empirical material. But,
the materials utilised are quite different, and so are the theoretical
approaches. Markku Lonkila (University of Helsinki) comes from a different
discipline and makes use of different material - everyday life in St. Petersburg
- but comes close to Kosonen and Salmi in utilising a network-based approach.
Altogether, the research of Lonkila and others on everyday life in Russia is an
important part of the whole programme. Erkki Kaukonen, Joan Löfgren and Gerd
Schienstock (University of Tampere) tread a path between economics, industrial
organisation, management and sociology. Their topic, industrial and
technological modernisation, is a key issue for Russia's future. This project is
also a product of long-term co-operation between Finnish, Russian and other
scholars.
Ilari Karppi, 0lli Kultalahti and Heikki Rantala (University of Tampere) base
their research on the labour flow aspects of the European Union enlargement on
the empirical work they have conducted together with local researchers in
Central Europe. Mikko Kivikoski (University of Turku) is a historian with the
approach of a current Woorian. The relation between pre-revolutionary dissident
thought and post-revolutionary realities will continue to offer food for thought
for a long time to come. Markku Tykkyläinen (University of Joensuu) is a
geographer of rural change; he takes a comparative approach, looking at survival
in the rural communities of Russian Karelia and Hungary.
The programme was rich in social and cultural projects. Three of them
highlight different aspects of this field. Marianne Liljeström's (Swedish
University of Abo) research is the happy product of a coincidence of Russian
studies, women's studies and the autobiographical research approach in modern
sociology. The work of Sirkka Laihiala-Kankainen (University of Jyväskylä)
focuses on a relatively neglected but surely crucial topic, Russian education.
Finally, the research by Tomi Huttunen, Pekka Pesonen, Sanna Turoma et al. is
perhaps the largest of all the projects in the programme, studying different
aspects of modernity and modernism in Russian culture.
The programme of the Academy of Finland on Russian and East European studies
has been completed. As mentioned, this was an exceptionally large programme in
social and cultural studies by Finnish standards. Priorities by definition must
be temporary, but the Academy has an intention to finance high-quality Russian
and East European research in the future as well. From the very beginning,
science policy planning in Finland has opted for the discipline-based as opposed
to an area-based approach. The scholars involved in this programme - like all
researchers funded by the Academy of Finland - were based in research institutes
and university departments, maintaining close contacts with their disciplines.
In the Ph.D. and M.A. programme of the Aleksanteri Institute as well, students
must have a disciplinary competence first and become Russian and East European
experts thereafter.
The decision made by the Ministry of Education in the early 1990's to make
Russian and East European studies a science policy priority was, as pointed out
above, in some sense an anomaly. By now a firm basis has been created for
the future of the field in Finland. There will be an outside assessment
of the programme, but the final assessment will be made by the international
research community in the years to come. The Finns may not have always been
there, but they have come, and will not go away. Much, naturally, remains to be
done. Some things will depend on the future development of the countries
involved, but in all probability the old wisecrack will remain relevant: all
nations, all countries, all states, all people are different, but Russia is more
different than most.
References
* Aarrevaara, T. (1998), Councillors and Civil Servants in the Ukrainian
Self-government. Kyiv: Naukova dumka.
* Allardt, E., Wesolowski, W. (eds) (1978), Social Structure and Change:
Finland and Poland in Comparative Perspective. Warsaw: Polish Scientific
Publishers.
* Gronow, J. (1997), The Sociology of Taste. New York: Routledge.
* Iivonen, J. (1990), Independence or Incorporation? - the Idea of
Poland's National Self-determination and Independence within the Russian and
Soviet Socialism from the 1870s to the 1920s. Helsinki: The Finnish
Institute of International Affairs.
* Kivinen, M (1998), Sosiologia ja Venäjä. Helsinki: Tammi
* Lehtinen, L. (1997), Venäläinen osakeyhtiö. oikeudellisen perustan
kehittyminen suunnitelmataloudesta markkinatalouteen siirtyvässä valtiossa
yritysmuotojen ja erityisesti osakeyhtiön oikeudellisen aseman kannalta
tarkasteltuna. Helsinki: Lakimiesliiton kustannus.
* Nissinen, M, (1999), Latvia's Transition to a Market Economy. Political
Determinants of Economic Reform Policy, Basingstoke: Macmillan, New York:
St. Martin's Press.
* Pursiainen, C. (1998), Beyond Sovietology: International Relations
Theory and the Study of Soviet I Russian Foreign and Security Policy. Helsinki:
Ulkopoliittinen instituutti.
* Salminen, A. (1981), Idänkauppa ja hallinto: tutkimus Suomen idänkaupan
rakenteesta, sopimusjärjestelmästä ja hallinto-organisaatiosta esimerkkinä
sosialistimaiden ja markkinatalousmaiden talousyhteistyöistä. Tampere: Finnpublishers.
* Susiluoto, I. (1982), The Origins and Development of Systems Thinking in
the Soviet Union: Political and Philosophical Controversies from Bogdanov
and Bukharin to Present-day Re-evaluations. Helsinki: Societas
scientiarum Fennica. (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae. Dissertationes
humanarum litterarum; 30).
* Sutela, P. (1984), Socialism, Planning and Optimality - a Study in
Soviet Economic Thought. Helsinki: Societas scientiarum Fennica. (Commentationes
scientiarum socialium; 25)
* Tolonen, J. (1976), Neuvostoliiton talousjärjestelmä ja sen
oikeudelliset perusteet. Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto, yhteiskuntatieteiden
tutkimuslaitos. (Yhteiskuntatieteiden. tutkimuslaitos, Tampereen yliopisto, A:
Tutkimuksia; 48)
[37] P.O. Box 59, FIN-00114 University of
Helsinki. Tel.: +358-9-19122787; fax: +358-9-19123822, e-mail: markku.kivinen@helsinki.fi
[38] Bank of Finnland, PB 160, 00101
Helsinki
[39] This article is an abbreviated version
of the "Introduction" in: Russia: More Different Than Most,
Markku Kangaspuro (ed.) forthcoming in Kikimora Publications, series B, July
2000
[40] http://www.halvi.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/English/
[41] http://www.rusin.fi
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