Russia under the microscope
Arto Mustajoki has spent almost 40 years studying and teaching the country’s language and literature.
”It’s clear that Russia is a major focus of research in Finland,” Arto Mustajoki says. Mustajoki has spent almost 40 years studying and teaching the country’s language and literature.
”Russia is our neighbour and our two histories are inextricably bound together. Along with German, Russian is one of Europe’s most widely spoken languages,” Mustajoki, who is also head of Helsinki University’s Department of Slavonic and Baltic Languages and Literatures, points out.
For a long time, the geopolitical winds of history ensured that Russian studies were considered somewhat suspect in this country. One of the reasons the Russian language so appealed to the young Mustajoki, whose initial studies were in German, was the guaranteed shock it would give to his parents.
”My father was a Lutheran minister for the small locality of Ilmajoki. In the 1960s, it was supposed that one had to at least be a communist in order to express any interest in studying Russian,” he recalls.
Whatever the initial motives, the language itself soon swept Mustajoki along a new path and he was awarded a professorship in Russian in 1982, at the age of 34. Finns have something of a reputation in Europe for their expertise in matters Russian, and Mustajoki traces this to the collapse of the Soviet Union. While other centres of Russian studies suspended their activities with the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union from the map, the weary Finns maintained their academic vigilance.
”By the mid-1990s, we were at the stage where, whenever the subject of Russia appeared on the EU negotiating table, the collective gaze quickly turned to the small Finnish delegation.”
In order to furnish this expertise, the Aleksanteri Institute was established as a part of Helsinki University.
Mustajoki stresses that Russian studies in Helsinki are carried out in close cooperation with Russian academics. He points to the massive and comprehensive Integrum-database as one of the Finns’ trump cards. The database contains copies of the daily issues of over 3,000 different Russian newspapers, and was given to the Finns in return for the reparations they paid as a result of the 1944 Moscow Armistice.
Everybody interested in accessing the database is welcome to use the Aleksanteri Institute’s Library.
Text : Juha Merimaa
Picture: Veikko Somerpuro
Translation: AAC Noodi Oy
