Markku, Matti and Jussi held the course “Toisen maailmansodan historian politiikkaa: Venäjä, Suomi ja Viro eurooppalaisessa kontekstissa” (History politics of WW II: Russia, Finland and Estonia in the European Context) in January 18 – March 4, 2012 at the University of Helsinki. This was the second time when the course was organized. And again, in light of many students´ active participating and positive response, the course proved to be successful. The course will be organized in winter-spring 2013 as well.
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Markku delivered paper Changing Interpretations of Victory Day in Russia at the seminar “History, Memory and Politics”, HCAS December 1, 2011.
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The Helsinki-team participated in the annual ASEEES Convention in Washington DC 17-20 November 2011 and delivered the following panel:
Victims at War – Mythscapes and Politics of WWII in Russia and its Neighborhood
Chair: Hanna Smith, U of Helsinki (Finland)
Papers: Jussi Lassila, U of Helsinki (Finland): “Russian Civic Activism within the Great Patriotic War”
Matti Jutila, U of Helsinki (Finland): “Western Remembrance of the Victims in the East: Politics of WWII in pan-European Parliamentary Assemblies”
Markku Kangaspuro, U of Helsinki (Finland): “Finnish Victim Narrative on Winter War and Continuation War”
Disc.: Jeremy Smith, U of Eastern Finland (Finland)
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Jussi and Matti made a field trip to St.Petersburg and its outskirts to gather information from museums related to the blockade of Leningrad, November 3-5, 2011
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Jussi delivered paper Witnessing the War, Globalizing the Victory: Representations of World War II on the Website ‘Russia Today’ at the conference “Old Conflicts, New Media: Commemorating the Socialist Experience Online” organized by the Bergen group of the Memory at War project. Solstrand, Os, Norway 31.8-2.9.2011.
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Matti Jutila organized a course: “Politics of Nations in Europe Today” for the Helsinki Summer School in August 2011. Thirty students from around the world participated. The course included Jutila’s lectures on nationalist history politics and an excursion to Tallinn to the Museum of Occupations of Estonia. The course will most likely be organized again in August 2012. For more information click here.
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Matti Jutila defended his PhD thesis titled: “Nationalism Circumscribed: Transnational Governance of Minority Rights in Post-Cold War Europe”. The public examination took place in the University of Helsinki on 18 June 2011. Professor Will Kymlicka served as the opponent in the examination. You can find the abstract of the thesis from here.
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Jussi and Matti made a field trip to St.Petersburg to gather information from museums related to the blockade of Leningrad, May 15-17, 2011.
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Markku delivered a paper in East European Memory Studies Research Group at Cambridge 27 April 2011.
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The Helsinki team will attend the annual BASEES Conference in Cambridge, U.K. in April 2-4.2011 with the presentations directly related to the project. Markku will give a paper “Interpretations of WWII and the Great Patriotic War” in the panel titled “The Second World War”. Matti and Jussi will present their papers in the panel “The Soviet Story”. Matti´s presentation is “Marxist Ethnopolitics in “The Soviet Story”" and Jussi´s is “Reception of the “The Soviet Story” in Russia”
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Jussi defended his doctoral dissertation titled ”Anticipating Ideal Youth in Putin’s Russia: The Web-texts, Communicative Demands, and Symbolic Capital of the Youth Movements ‘Nashi’ and ‘Idushchie Vmeste’” in March 19, 2011 at the University of Jyväskylä. Opponent of the public examination was Dr. Lara Ryazanova-Clarke (University of Edinburgh) and custos was professor Marjatta Vanhala-Aniszewski (University of Jyväskylä).
Abstract of the Dissertation
The study analyses the political communication of two pro-Putin youth movements – Nashi, and its predecessor Idushchie Vmeste – using the movements’ foundational/recruitment documents, texts from their websites and interviews with activists. On the basis of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the fields of cultural production the study understands the movements as anticipating ‘ideal youth’ within the framework of official national identity politics and seeking to mobilise youth within this framework. These twofold communicative demands create the major tension in the movements’ discursive production of ideal youth. This tension, illustrates, on the one hand, the development of the communicative strategies from Idushchie Vmeste to Nashi, and, on the other, Nashi’s continuous attempt to manage this tension by particular symbolic practices. The most well-known activities by the movements – the Exchange of Books by Idushchie Vmeste, and The Bronze Soldier by Nashi – demonstrate how the movements’ position between state-didactics and youth’s distinctive stimulation vented as a form of carnivalism. This results as infelicitous anticipation of ideal youth. The study explores the socially controlled, conventionalized, and adopted communicative practices that are linked to post-Soviet national identity formation with the social and political activity of Russian youth.
The dissertation has not been published. Copies are available on request from Jussi.