Borders and Territorialities

In my research, I integrate two conceptual frameworks: a processual approach in border studies, which focuses on everyday engagements and interactions, local identities, and lifestyles in the borderlands, and an institutional approach of political science and political geography, which interpret foreign policy discourses as boundary-producing practices developed by the state. Coupling them together allows to open the place for discussing the border memory as both a focal point of transnational diplomacy and local, situational value.

Border studies have been burgeoning since the early 1990s, reflecting the large-scale changes in Europe’s cross-border regimes themselves, which were evolving in an increasingly open and liberalizing direction. The demolition of the Berlin Wall and the removal of one of the most painful Western European borders became both a symbol and a model for the politics of cross-border diplomacy for several decades. The conceptualization of the border in this context also required significant revision. A variety of flexible approaches to the borderlands have developed, building on and expanding Oscar Martinez’s (Reference Martinez and Schofield1994a, Reference Martinez1994b) classical approach to borderlands interaction. These approaches reframe the border as a porous sieve, a bridge, and a see-through window that facilitates communication, exchange, and transparency rather than a wall and fence, recasting the borderland as a shared social and creative space that gives rise to cross-border social groups, distinct lifestyles, and identities (Baud and van Schendel Reference Baud and Van Schendel1997; Brednikova Reference Brednikova2008; Little Reference Little2015; Brambilla Reference Brambilla2015; Pfoser Reference Pfoser2020; Zhurzhenko Reference Zhurzhenko2014; Andersen and Prokkola Reference Andersen, Prokkola, Andersen and Prokkola2022a; Konrad and Szary Reference Konrad and Szary2023).

Following this relational and processual turn in the border studies, Alena Pfoser introduced the term ‘everyday borderwork’, addressing “multiple meanings of borders and ways of making and experiencing them, going beyond the state as the main actor in the making of borders” (Pfoser Reference Pfoser2020: 6). Pfoser interrogates border temporalities and discusses border memories, which can be found not only in media discourses, political speeches, museums, and literature but also in everyday talk, narratives, and commemorative practices (Pfoser Reference Pfoser2020). Being highly beneficial in the study of the borderland, this term enables focusing on the borderland as a social space where the border plays an integral part in shaping daily life and encouraging individuals to rethink and respond to their own identity.

The ‘territoriality’ approach provides an alternative perspective on boundaries. The concept of ‘territorialization’ originates from the discipline of political geography and political sciences and scrutinizes the border as an issue of political negotiations on the global stage, closely intertwined with state security and sovereignty questions. Building on the research of Robert Sack, who has defined ‘territoriality’ as the spatial expression of power (Reference Sack1986), Neil Brenner et al. have defined the concept as the “state’s distinctive form of spatiality, namely, the territorialization of political power” (Brenner Reference Brenner1999; Brenner et al. Reference Brenner, Jessop, Jones, MacLeod, Brenner, Jessop, Jones and McLeod2003; Cox Reference Cox2002; Storey Reference Storey, Paasi, Harrison and Joness2018, Reference Storey and Storey2020), thus claiming for discussion of the border as a central instrument in the production of state sovereignty (Laine et al. Reference Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018; Andersen and Prokkola Reference Andersen, Prokkola, Andersen and Prokkola2022b). Foreign diplomacy and discourses are interpreted under this approach as boundary-producing practices developed by the state (García-Álvarez and Puente-Lozano Reference García-Álvarez and Puente-Lozano2022).

Border studies thus develop in a processual direction, focusing on the borderland as a transnational social space permeated by the interactions and interconnections of people across state boundariesFootnote ¹. The territoriality approach alternatively emphasizes the border itself as an important element of state sovereignty, maintained at the national and international levels (Little Reference Little2015). The two approaches also interpret collective, historical, and cultural memory differently: in the first, it is a cross-border memory that people across borders share, contest, and negotiate, and that becomes the subject of creative work and hybrid identities (Zhurzhenko Reference Zhurzhenko and Wastl-Walter2011; Brednikova Reference Brednikova2008; Brednikova and Voronkov Reference Brednikova and Voronkov1999; Pfoser Reference Pfoser2020). In the second, the past is defined as an object of conflict and confrontation between states, an instrument of soft power, and a vehicle in a struggle for the legitimation of state territoriality. The language used in this case is inspired by the tools of political science and ranges from ‘memory wars’ (Miller Reference Miller2020) to ‘memorial diplomacy’ (McGlynn and Đureinović Reference McGlynn and Đureinović2022; Myklebost Reference Myklebost2023).

In a number of her works, Chiara Brambilla offers a critical approach to contemporary border studies, promoting the concept of ‘borderscape’ to address the ontological, theoretical, and methodological problems of the contemporary conceptualization of bordering processes (Brambilla Reference Brambilla2015; Brambilla and Jones Reference Brambilla and Jones2019). Brambilla emphasizes the historical dynamics and fluidity of borders, as well as the need to address the experiences and representations of borderscape, which require qualitative methods of analysis and an interdisciplinary approach. The appeal for a revision of the ontological foundations of critical border studies, which was made about a decade ago, is now more pertinent than ever. Just as in the early 1990s the fall of the Berlin Wall led to the development of studies inspired by the idea of a borderless Europe, today the strengthening of borders with Russia is leading to a new paradigmatic shift towards the problem of a new territorialization of state borders (Laine et al. Reference Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018). However, as Brambilla wrote back in 2015, “Whilst we are now observing new forms of de-bordering and re-bordering, these processes are not per se new: de- and re-bordering processes that occurred during periods of transition in the past have comparative value for understanding new hybrid scenarios originated from changes in the contemporary world” (Brambilla Reference Brambilla2015, 27).

With this important statement in mind, I intend in this paper to broaden the historical context of de-bordering and re-bordering processes in the borderland to connect the two perspectives – institutional and processual – through the lens of border memory and heritage. I define ‘border memory’ in this context as a domain of spatialized narratives, practices, and ideologies that serve as a form of boundary building through recourse to the past. By focusing on the local heritage, I examine the dynamics of valuing and revaluing the material traces of the borderland past. This approach enables the problematization of border issues in the context of changing foreign policy relations and shifting ways of border life. It will take the issue of border memory out of the context of national memorial alliances and confrontations in order to put the borderland at the center of attention as a specific landscape with a particular way of life, interactions, and infrastructure.

The Russian-Finnish borderland emerges as a particularly apt context for deploying the chosen analytical perspective. It has served as a vital research ground for understanding border dynamics, from high-level foreign policy to everyday life experiences. Through a series of projects by researchers from the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland and other Finnish institutions, the Russian-Finnish border has been examined in the context of European Neighborhood Policy (Laine Reference Laine2013; Laine et al. Reference Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018; Liikanen Reference Liikanen, Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018; Eskelinen et al. Reference Eskelinen, Liikanen and Scott2013; Reference Eskelinen, Haapanen, Druzhinin, Eskelinen, Liikanen and Oksa2018), national and regional identity processes (Laine et al. Reference Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018; Andersen and Prokkola Reference Andersen, Prokkola, Andersen and Prokkola2022a), cross-border connections and mobilities (Hannonen Reference Hannonen, Andersen and Prokkola2022; Izotov and Laine Reference Izotov and Laine2012; Kaisto et al. Reference Kaisto, Brednikova and Korjonen-Kuusipuro2022; Davydova-Minguet and Pöllänen Reference Davydova-Minguet, Pöllänen, Hiitola, Turtiainen, Tiilikainen and Gruber2020, Reference Davydova-Minguet, Pöllänen, Helms and Pulkkinen2023), mutual discourses of othering (Raudaskoski and Laine Reference Raudaskoski, Laine, Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018; Kolosov et al. Reference Kolosov, Popov, Zotova, Gritsenko, Sebentsov, Vendina, Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018; Brednikova Reference Brednikova, Ahponen and Jukarainen2000), and memorial politics (Scott Reference Scott2013; Fingerroos Reference Fingerroos2008; Sihvo Reference Sihvo and Branch1999). This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of re-bordering processes in the Russian borderland during a period of fundamental break with previous policies, and the role that memory and heritage play today in transforming the border regime.

Methodology

This study integrates multiple sources and methodologies. To analyze cross-border dynamics at transnational, national, and regional scales, I examine official policy statements, legislative acts, and institutional initiatives to map the evolution of Russian-Finnish border relations and the role of historical memory in border diplomacy. These materials offer a comprehensive framework for understanding the Realpolitik of recent decades, enabling the identification of major political trends during this period.

However, these materials do not capture the nuances of everyday borderwork. To explore the complex and often contradictory borderscape from the perspective of its inhabitants, I turn to ethnographic data collected in Ladoga Karelia. This region, encompassing the Sortavala, Lahdenpohja, Pitkäranta, and Suojärvi districts of the Republic of Karelia, was part of independent Finland before World War II and is frequently referred to as ‘Ceded Karelia’ (Luovutettu Karjala) in Finnish academic and media discourse (Luovutettu Karjala 2023, Lehikoinen Reference Lehikoinen2018). My research comprises observations, interviews, and informal conversations with local inhabitants – post-war migrants from various Soviet regions, their descendants, and those who settled here from the 1950s onward.

Having worked in this region for over a decade, I have observed the emergence and transformation of new projects and initiatives, the involvement of various local groups in their implementation, and their attitudes toward the past. Earlier materials, partially published (Melnikova Reference Melnikova2005, Reference Melnikova2019a,Reference Melnikova, Suutari and Davydova-Minguetb), include an extensive collection of over one hundred biographical and semi-structured interviews as well as field diaries from 2002 to 2021. This corpus serves as my starting point and the foundation for the analysis of contemporary dynamics in cultural processes, collective memory, and cross-border relations.

My most recent observations and conversations, which directly inform this article, were conducted during the summers of 2022 and 2023 – a period when the initial consequences of Russia’s new ideology and the borderland’s changing regime became visible. The research materials comprise 16 semi-structured interviews, supplemented by ethnographic observations carried out in various cultural organizations, centers, city events, and throughout the urban landscape. Most interviews were conducted with individuals with whom I had previously established a high degree of rapport, facilitating frank and open dialogue.

The interviewees, both male and female, ranged in age from 35 to 88 and can be broadly categorized as ‘cultural professionals.’ This group included individuals actively engaged in cultural projects within the region: museum staff, tour guides, leaders of religious communities organizing social and cultural events, and local entrepreneurs involved in the cultural sector. Additionally, I conducted interviews with individuals recommended by my acquaintances, a networking approach that facilitated a foundational level of confidence with potential informants.

Despite the established rapport, discussing the underlying rationale for contemporary changes in Russia remains highly challenging today. Although I obtained consent to use these research materials, I have deliberately refrained from quoting interviews, as I consider it potentially unsafe for my informants. Nevertheless, these interviews remain an essential foundation for my reflections and observations on daily border work and the contemporary territorialization of the borderland.

De-bordering Politics in the Russia-Finland Borderland: from the Boundary to Cross-Border Region

The historical trajectory of Soviet-Finnish relations has been shaped by a number of conflicts and challenges in the 20th century, including the series of Soviet-Finnish border conflicts in 1918-1922, the Winter War (1939-1940) and the Continuation War (1941-1944), during which Finland lost important territories in the Northern Ladoga region, the Karelian Isthmus, Salla, and the Petsamo area (Raudaskoski and Laine Reference Raudaskoski, Laine, Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018; Fingerroos Reference Fingerroos2008; Sihvo Reference Sihvo and Branch1999). However, post-war relations between the Soviet Union and Finland developed within a broader framework of ‘official friendship’ (Laine Reference Laine2013: 188) and ‘functional cooperation’ (Raudaskoski and Laine Reference Raudaskoski, Laine, Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018). Although the border remained largely closed, trade between the two countries, which had nearly ceased after 1917, resumed following the war due to reparations obligations and the establishment of a bilateral clearing agreement. This agreement mandated that Finnish imports to the USSR and exports from the USSR would hold equal value. As Jussi Laine observes, despite the tense relations during the post-World War II period, the Soviet Union remained, until its collapse, Finland’s most significant trading partner (Laine Reference Laine2014: 72). In 1944, coinciding with Finland’s withdrawal from World War II, Finland-Soviet Union Society was founded, and in 1948, the countries signed the Treaty of Friendship, which served as the foundation for a range of subsequent collateral agreements, facilitating further cooperation. In a series of publications on shifting European border politics, Anssi Paasi uses Russian-Finnish relationships in the late twentieth century as a paradigmatic example of de-territorialization and de-bordering, stressing in 1998 that “in spite of the still strict territorial control maintained at the border, the new spatial planning practices established by the Finnish and Russian authorities are producing new regionalisations that span this border” (Paasi Reference Paasi1998, 80).

Following the beginning of perestroika and the liberalization of Soviet foreign policy, Karelia swiftly emerged as a model bridge connecting Finland and Russia and was regarded as a symbol of collaborative efforts that transcend national borders. The various cross-border humanitarian and cultural initiatives that rapidly emerged with the onset of reforms, nostalgia tourism (Izotov and Laine Reference Izotov and Laine2012), and the enhanced paradiplomatic system of “friendship cities” were reinforced by the institutionalization of transborder relations at the international level. The Neighborhood Cooperation Strategy, adopted by the Finnish government in 1993, 1996, 1999, 2000, and 2004, became a practical embodiment of the 1992 Treaty on the “Foundations of Relations,” between Russia and Finland (Kuusisto and Kohvakka Reference Kuusisto and Kohvakka2023). According to Laine, a total of 326 million euros has been allocated for cooperation with Russia from 1990 to 2012 (Laine Reference Laine2013: 192-193). Since the mid-1990s, cross-border cooperation between Finland and Russia has increasingly been channeled through multilateral EU programs (Kuusisto and Kohvakka Reference Kuusisto and Kohvakka2023: 51). The Interreg program, established in 1988 with a particular focus on the cross-border cooperation and development of border regions (Liikanen Reference Liikanen, Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018), supported in the 1990s two individual programs with Russia’s participation, including bilateral “Karelia” (covering regions in Finland and Russia) and multinational “Barents” (Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Russia) (Järviö Reference Järviö2012). Within the framework of the newly established European Neighbourhood Policy (Laine et al. Reference Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018: 23; Liikanen Reference Liikanen, Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018) and in line with the development of the Northern Dimension policy (Kuusisto and Kohvakka Reference Kuusisto and Kohvakka2023: 52-56; Liikanen Reference Liikanen, Laine, Liikanen and Scott2018), Karelia evolved as the most promising territory on the border between the former socialist and capitalist camps, encouraging a reevaluation of the very border in this context.

New forms of political imperatives, which can be described as de-bordering politics, supported and strengthened on both sides of the national border, have been shaped by investing in the development of cross-border cooperation and trade networks but also by blurring the border itself and creating the effect of its invisibility, while at the same time establishing specific economic conditions of the borderland as a transnational region, opening up additional opportunities for development. While border infrastructure improvements such as the narrowing of the border zone, the construction of additional checkpoints, and the easing of customs regulations met the national and transnational goals of building cooperation between countries, they also produced regional effects, creating what Martinez called integrated borderlands that “merge economically, with capital, products, and labour flowing from one side to the other without serious restrictions” (Martinez Reference Martinez and Schofield1994a, 5).

In this new political context, the borderland operated as a well-defined region with its own unique economic and cultural ecology built on daily cross-border mobilities and interactions (Scott Reference Scott2013). Similar developments in the Russian-Norwegian borderland resulted in the establishment in 2012 of the 30-km visa-free zone between Russia and Norway (Lähteenmäki and Colpaert Reference Lähteenmäki and Colpaert2020; Makarychev and Kuznetsova Reference Makarychev and Kuznetsova2020; Mikhailova Reference Mikhailova2018; Järviö and Staalesen Reference Järviö and Staalesen2012). And although such a regime has not yet been implemented on the Russian-Finnish border, it has been proposed and discussed, thus suggesting a promising horizon for future transition (Tanskanen and Mäntymaa Reference Tanskanen and Mäntymaa2013; Bogdanov Reference Bogdanov2013).

Realpolitik of the 1950–80s, aimed at promoting economic cooperation between countries, made little use of the symbolic resources of the past. Historical conflicts and contradictions were silenced rather than reinterpreted (Prokkola and Ridanpää Reference Prokkola and Ridanpää2022; Paasi Reference Paasi1999). Yet, in the realities of post-Perestroika time, new opportunities for deepening economic cooperation required a significant revision of the border regime itself, re-territorialization of the borderlands, and the soft power of memory diplomacy to engage emotional commitment among the borderlands’ society to the new European values.

In the realm of memorial diplomacy, the de-bordering strategy has manifested itself as a form of cosmopolitan memory (Levy, Sznaider Reference Levy and Sznaider2002) that transcends national and ethnic boundaries rather than supporting and shaping them. Unlike relations with Norway, which developed in much the same way, in the Russian-Finnish case, the former war alliance could not serve as a ground for memorial cooperation as the Soviet Union and Finland were on different sides of the battlefield. Instead, the ‘atonement’ model of collective mourning (Gabowitsch Reference Gabowitsch and Gabowitsch2017) for the dead on both sides of the conflict served as an alternative foundation for de-bordering memory politics. The year 1948, when Finland and the USSR signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, was celebrated in Russian media and diplomacy as the legitimate reference point in the history of interstate relationships. A key outcome of these de-bordering discourses has been the disconnection of a geographical national border from a symbolic line separating collective memories of the past.

The symbolic solidarity of cross-border remembrance was manifested on several levels, including the transnational commemoration of the victims of devastating wars on both sides of the border and the heritagization process of valuing cross-border relics. The Treaty on the “Foundations of Relations,” signed in 1992 as the most important political pact between Russia and Finland in the post-soviet realities, was immediately accompanied by an agreement on the joint commemoration of soldiers who fell during the war on both sides of the border, which laid the groundwork for several projects involving public memory initiatives in Finland and Russia. The Finnish Ministry of Education committed financial resources for the maintenance of military cemeteries as well as the installation of commemorative monuments. Following that, the Association for the Commemoration of the War Dead (Sotavainajien muiston 2013) was founded in Finland in 1998. On the Russian side, the Association for International War Memorial Cooperation ‘War Memorials’, which was established in the early 1990s, was actively involved in these projects. During its two-decade history, the Association for the Commemoration of the War Dead has identified 64 cemeteries related to the 1918 Civil War, the Winter War (1939–1940), and the War-Continuation (1941–1944).

The implementation of this program facilitated the establishment of several dozen monuments throughout Russian Karelia dedicated to the memory of dead citizens of Finnish origin. Monuments with bilingual inscriptions have been erected in regional centers and historical cemeteries where Finnish burials have been found. In Melnikovo (formerly Räisälä), a bilingual monument has been placed on the site of an old cemetery, and in Kurkijoki, on the central square, two monuments commemorating Finnish citizens stand next to a monument to Soviet soldiers (Figure 3). Similar memorial sites have been established in many rural cemeteries in the Russian Karelian border area. The main initiators of the monumental commemoration were often members of the Finnish diaspora, who anchored their connection to the place of the exodus by creating ritual places of mourning. The inscription on the monument in Kurkijoki, erected in 1994, reads: “148 Finnish soldiers were buried in the cemetery on this site in 1939–1944. They died a brave death defending their rights and fatherland. Kurki-Foundation. 1994.”. Also in Harlu, a monument with bilingual inscriptions in Finnish and Russian was erected in 1992 by the former residents of Harlu, represented by the Harlu Society, now located in Finland (Figure 4). Numerous such monuments scattered throughout Ladoga Karelia have evolved into a unique landscape with traces of bilingual and transnational border memory.

Figure 3. Two monuments commemorating Finnish citizens and the Soviet soldiers fallen in the World War II. The main square in Kurkijoki (Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2023. Source: The author.

Figure 4. The bilingual monument in memory of the Finnish inhabitants of Harlu, erected in 1992 at the local cemetery (Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2023. Source: The author.

In the 1990s, a similar monument to the Finns who died in Lahdenpohja was erected near the former Jaakkima church. Serving as an important landmark for the former inhabitants of Lahdenpohja, it was also a sign for new residents, making the local Finns and their distant past visible in the landscape. Although the church was no longer in use, it became a significant site of border remembrance and an important venue for joint Russian-Finnish ritual commemoration (Figure 5).

Figure 5. The memorial site near the Jaakkima church, which includes the old monument to Finnish soldiers, reconstructed in 1992, white wooden crosses erected at the site of the former Finnish cemetery, and a black granite slab installed in 2018 (Lahdenpohja, Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2022. Source: The author.

A new heritagization policy went hand in hand with the commemoration of the victims of former enemies. The first national list of buildings in former Ladoga Karelia related to the history of independent Finland was published only in 1988 and included 33 former banks and residences, mansions, and churches built by Finnish architects in Sortavala in the first half of the 20th century (Postanovlenie 1988). Other Karelian border regions followed Sortavala’s example in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Figure 6), when dozens of Finnish heritage sites were added to the national and regional lists of protected monuments (Postanovlenie 1988; Postanovlenie 1998; Prikaz 2000; Postanovlenie 2001).

Figure 6. The former bank building in Sortavala, designed in 1913 by the Finnish architect Uno Werner Ullberg for the United Nordic Bank. First listed as a historical and cultural heritage site in the USSR in 1988. Source: The author.

Jaakkima Church was one of the sites that underwent changes from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Abandoned after a fire in 1977, it was completely neglected and rapidly deteriorated throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Tall trees and shrubs covered the hilltop, making the church invisible from the road. In 1993, a small monument was erected next to the church to commemorate the citizens of Lahdenpohja who died in the many conflicts in the region during the 20th century. In 2001, however, the church was added to the list of local architectural monuments under state protection, although without significant implications in terms of practical care and preservation.

De-bordering politics has been successfully implemented at transnational and regional levels, supporting cross-border projects in business, culture, and education and fostering local values of the borderland as a region on both sides of the national border with shared memories and heritage. The new ideology of heritage and commemoration was an integral part of this new diplomatic paradigm, creating a common space of a valuable and usable past on both sides of the border and producing new forms of territoriality – the borderland landscape, exceptional precisely because of its unique history linked to the past of both countries (Zhurzhenko Reference Zhurzhenko and Wastl-Walter2011, 70).

De-bordering Imperative in Situational Memory: Reevaluation of the Past

De-bordering politics acknowledged on transnational, national, and regional levels had dramatic effects on the local borderscape and daily life. The general liberalization of the border regime and the development of border infrastructure have generated large flows of mobility, both in tourism, business, and personal careers. Since the late 1990s, root and nostalgia tourism has grown in the region, providing an additional, and often the only, source of income for local people (Scott Reference Scott2013; Böök Reference Böök2004; Izotov and Laine Reference Izotov and Laine2012). However, it was on the basis of these often situational contacts that more stable and long-term collaboration was established. As Alexander Artemiev, one of the first entrepreneurs to organize a joint Russian-Finnish business in Sortavala under the symbolic name of “Friendship” (Druzhba), remembered, the cooperative was founded by Finns who had roots in the region and were forced to leave after World War II.

At the local level, the de-bordering policy received substantial support from local stakeholders – employees of various educational, social, cultural, and religious institutions who embraced the idea of Finnish heritage as an important and valuable asset of the region. Acting as agents of cross-border interaction and authoritative advocates of the new memory ideology in the region, the local cultural elite used border heritage as a valuable symbolic resource for branding the region, (re)inventing local symbols, attracting tourists, and introducing new forms of territorialized identity.

The museum in Sortavala was founded in 1992 as a pioneer of this new re-evaluation of the local past, with the aim of displaying and reconstructing the pre-war history of the Ladoga region, emphasizing its famous people and national revival, as well as the Winter War, which was silenced in the Soviet Union. The museum curators who started their careers at that time see themselves as the discoverers of the golden age of former Finnish Karelia. In their own biographies, the early 1990s are also remembered as a golden age – a time of close collaboration with Finnish colleagues, of literature and visit exchange, of cooperation, and, most importantly, a time when this area received a new, glorious history, filled with bright and illustrious names associated with Finland’s past.

In the early 2010s, it was still typical of regional cultural discourse to attribute the city’s golden era to the period when it was part of independent Finland. The exhibition “City. Faces. Theatre,” which focused on Sortavala’s history in the first half of the twentieth century and launched in the local gallery in 2012, was introduced by the curators as “one of the series of exhibitions dedicated to the reconstruction of the “golden age” of our city.” These new forms of commemoration culminated in Sortavala’s jubilee, coupled with a song festival reconstructing the national Finnish song festivals of the 1930s (Melnikova Reference Melnikova, Suutari and Davydova-Minguet2019b), with dozens of groups from Russia and Finland participating in the celebrations. Transnational heritage, embodied by history and culture that crossed the national border, was shaped by the deep and emotional involvement of local cultural actors and was seen as anticipated and politically privileged.

Another local museum, established in Pitkäranta at the end of the Soviet era, was completely renovated in the early 2000s, with a model of the Cross of Sorrow monument as its centerpiece. The memorial, erected on the outskirts of the city by Finnish and Russian organizations to commemorate war victims on both sides of the front, has become an important symbol of transnational cosmopolitan memory, reinforced by its placement at the center of the museum’s exhibition. Shared grief, shared pain, shared compassion, and shared past have emerged as the main idioms of the new commemorative narrative, addressing at the same time the memory of the military victims of World War II who died on both sides of the front and the memory of the civilians – Finnish and Russian – who were displaced from their homes as a result of the war and border changes.

Religious groups also played a key role in the process of constructing a new regime of border memory and de-territorialization. The Lutheran Church, with the help of Finnish parishes and congregations in the Leningrad region, ensured the re-emergence of churches in Karelia. The new parishioners, mostly Karelians, Finns, and their descendants, as well as some locals who preferred the Lutheran faith to the Orthodox Church, which was gaining ground in the region, became involved in cross-border remembrance, hosting visiting Finns and participating in joint commemoration rituals at local cemeteries.

Lutheran congregations were joined by Pentecostal organizations, which have been expanding in the area since the early 2000s. Yuri Kononov, the leader of Sortavala’s Pentecostal group, actively engaged with members of the Finnish diaspora and, until his death in 2023, was responsible for the preservation of an old Finnish cemetery that had become a prominent landmark in the local environment.

For local elites, participation in joint projects provided access to European funding and an opportunity to assert their authority in local governance and cultural infrastructure. At the same time, the region, which had fallen into a difficult economic situation after Perestroika, was highly dependent on tourism, especially Finnish visitors. All these factors combined to make the new cosmopolitan, cross-border memory both highly popular and profitable for all policy levels in the borderland.

However, the emergence of a new memory culture in the region was not solely the result of the economic and political concerns of the local elites. After the softening of the border regime, interactions between former and present inhabitants of Ladoga Karelia were mostly shaped by mutual empathy and shared feelings of a common harsh past in the post-war period. Long-term contacts developed into quasi-familial ties as well as cross-border intermarriages, which became a common result of long-standing cross-border relations. Acting as divided families, these groups often collaborated to maintain burial sites and houses that, even in the absence of family ties, they perceived as integral to a shared cultural heritage (Melnikova Reference Melnikova2019a).

Although the government’s policy of de-bordering was expressed only in the form of silences about contradictory events and symbolic gestures of mutual mourning, it ostentatiously privileged cosmopolitan forms of remembrance, creating a new type of local elite that acted as agents of memory within the borderland territory and presenting the local landscape as a borderless space of shared Russian-Finnish memories, pasts, destinies, and traumas. New forms of border remembrance, emotional ties, and symbolic values that were cross-border in nature and rooted in local everyday contacts and economic relations made this new memory regime quite specific to the region and allowed for the shaping of the local landscape as a kind of enclave Finnish heritage (Ashworth and van der Aa Reference Ashworth and van der Aa2002) on the territory of Russia, with Lutheran churches, bilingual monuments, and reconstructed buildings of old Finnish architecture that were easily visible and visitable for tourists.

Re-bordering and New Territorialization of the Borderlands

The language of “good neighborliness” and shared memory persisted in Finnish-Russian political diplomacy even after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and imposed European sanctions. Still in 2016, a memorial plaque to Marshal Mannerheim, a former imperial general who later became the leader of the Finnish army during World War II, was erected in St. Petersburg, and Vladimir Medinsky, the Minister of Culture at the time, wrote an essay in Rossiyskaya Gazeta arguing for the importance of commemorating Mannerheim in Russia (Medinsky Reference Medinsky2016). During his visit to Sochi with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in 2018, Vladimir Putin presented him with Mannerheim-related archival documents purchased at auction in the United States, including letters from Mannerheim’s daughter to her aunt in Sweden (Bolgova Reference Bolgova2018, Hanhinen Reference Hanhinen2018).

The impact of freezing relations after the annexation of Crimea was even less obvious at the local level. On June 9, 2018, representatives of the Finnish Lutheran Church, the Finnish diaspora, the pastor of the Karelian Lutheran Church in Sortavala, and local authorities attended the ceremony to open a granite slab with the names of 337 deceased Finnish residents in front of the Jaakkima church in Lahdenpohja. In his welcoming speech, Ramiz Kazymov, the mayor of Lahdenpohja and a member of the pro-government party United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya), noted that “the history of the town is inseparable from the history of Finland. Finns have lived on the territory of the Republic of Karelia for a long time. Here they built their own lives, raised their families, traded, and defended their homeland in difficult times. Today, together with the communities of Jaakkima, we honor the soldiers who died in various wars and who lived in this area and defended their homes. Despite the geopolitical situation, we must maintain good relations and preserve the memory and history of our region for posterity. Today’s event is a good example of this” (Jaakkiman Sanomat Reference Jaakkiman2018). Although the event was not as widely announced in the local press as similar actions a decade earlier, cross-border relations were still extremely important politically, economically, and culturally in local settings at the time.

While some cross-border stakeholders reported that investment in joint projects aimed at creating a borderless space decreased in the second half of the 2000s, major transnational and European-level programs involving Finland and Russia continued until February 2022Footnote ². For example, the Karelia Cross-border Cooperation (CBC) program, which was an integral part of the EU-Russia Cooperation (INTERREG), continued until March 15, 2022, when it announced to stop funding all joint projects.

As stated clearly by Eeva-Kaisa Prokkola and Juha Ridanpää, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, “a new geopolitics has arisen that has fundamentally changed the meaning of the Finnish-Russian border, reawakening the national consciousness, memories about the wars, and mistrust between neighboring countries” (Prokkola and Ridanpää Reference Prokkola and Ridanpää2022: 2). The escalation of securitization issues and the subsequent strengthening of all forms of border existence, including the building of fences, the erection of additional border barriers, and the introduction of stricter border controls, coupled with the complete abandonment of diplomatic negotiations – all of this shifted political discourse and practice into a re-bordering mode.

At the everyday level of the Russian-Finnish borderland, this new regime implied a comprehensive breakdown of cross-border ties and interaction infrastructures (Kuusisto and Kohvakka Reference Kuusisto and Kohvakka2023: 44). The decline in transnational contacts, already evident during the coronavirus pandemic, was exacerbated when, on September 30, 2022, Schengen C visa holders were denied entry to Finland without special permission (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland 2022). This meant the end of cross-border visits for residents of the border areas. The complete closure of Finland’s land borders in December 2023 only reinforced the already established system of an impenetrable border, making it visible and divisive all over again. Already in 2022, the existing transport routes for crossing the border (the Allegro train between St. Petersburg and Helsinki and the Leo Tolstoy train between Moscow and Helsinki) were closed, as were all projects to directly connect the Finnish and Russian border areas, such as the Sortavala-Joensuu train project, which was still under discussion at the end of 2021 (Serdobol.Space 2021; Ronkainen Reference Ronkainen2021).

The re-bordering regime has led to the demolition not only of the infrastructure of cross-border mobility but also of the cross-border region itself. In terms of daily interaction, the borderlands have slipped back into the Cold War state of alienated borderlands, which Martinez defined as a situation where “routine crossboundary interchange is practically non-existent owing to extremely unfavorable conditions” (Martinez Reference Martinez and Schofield1994a, 2). At the transnational, national, and regional levels, all joint programs or projects involving any form of transnational cooperation have been terminated. A similar situation can be observed for joint initiatives in the Barents and Baltic Sea regions cross-border areas.

In a world where diplomacy is falling apart and discussions about re-bordering are at an all-time high, the official ideology regarding Russian-Finnish contacts is not clearly articulated and often remains opaque. While the general level of aggressive rhetoric seems quite clear, it does not offer new interpretations of the historical events and processes that were, until recently, interpreted within a cosmopolitan rather than antagonistic framework of border memory, leaving these interpretations at the mercy of local entrepreneurs. For most of the committed participants in intensive cross-border cooperation, the changing political agenda has posed significant challenge. Is it possible to curate an exhibition that focuses on the era of Finnish romantic nationalism as a golden age? Is it still possible, as it was five years ago, to come up with a project to honor the outstanding local personalities when they were all Finns who are now listed in the Finnish national martyrdom? The array of unanswered questions facing local activists could easily continue. In August 2022, one of my informants associated with a Lutheran parish was completely frustrated, not knowing which of his projects could continue and how. All these projects were cross-border and involved Finnish and Russian priests worshipping together, exchanging visiting pastors, and many social initiatives for local children and young peopleFootnote ³.

However, it seems quite obvious that cross-border memory and heritage have lost their economic and political benefits and are no longer objects of funding and regional support, nor resources for the usual forms of cross-border cooperation. These shifts are clearly visible in the changing policies of large-scale tourism enterprises in the region. Commercial recreation sites and areas, which were widely established in the pre-pandemic era and capitalized on the border’s past, have largely realigned themselves with the new border regime discourse.

The cases of the Owl Mountain military historical complex and the Bastion historical park are good examples. The former opened in 2016 near Lahdenpohja, on the site of a once military camp that had been returned to the city and then bought by a private investor. The space includes a large area around a cliff and the rock itself, with a natural cave where the Finnish Command equipped a bunker during World War II (Figure 7). Although the cave museum was not fully operational in 2016, it quickly received state and regional funding as a member of the South Karelia tourism and leisure cluster, and within seven years, the natural area around the rock was transformed into a promenade with military interactives like life-size tanks and shooting ranges, and the museum became a showcase of the region’s military history. Until the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Finnish visitors, along with Russian tourists, had played a vital role in bringing income to the area, which ensured that the museum maintained a neutral and cosmopolitan narrative, addressing visitors from both countries. With the collapse of cross-border cooperation, the decline of foreign tourism to the region, and a change in the overall political agenda, the discourse has shifted to an aggressively antagonistic mode. Most tours are led either by locals or by former military personnel who served in the area during the Soviet period and who now see their mission in showcasing Owl Mountain as an illustration of the extensive history of Russian-Finnish conflict.

Figure 7. The Owl Mountain military historical complex near Lahdenpohja (Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2023. Source: The author.

The Bastion Historical Park in Sortavala (Figure 8), which opened in early 2019 as an interactive open-air museum with several thematic zones dedicated to ancient and medieval Karelia, was the brainchild of Alexander Testov, an experienced dreamer-designer and occasional fantasy writer who had previously built similar but smaller parks on the Karelian Isthmus. The project was designed as a fully commercial enterprise to entertain visiting families with children and featured many of the typical interactive attractions, such as archery, coin searching, and swimming in a stylized ancient boat. Shortly after its establishment, the park opened a new museum, Four Fronts, dedicated to the military conflicts in Karelia and created with the commitment of a former member of the local search movement (Figure 9). In addition, the museum offers a number of interactives, allowing visitors to practice shooting on a range or dressing the wounded. Following the outbreak of the war in 2022, the museum’s narrative sharpened its edge on topical issues, portraying Finland as Russia’s eternal enemy, despite the numerous inconsistencies between this representation and the historical settings of Karelia.

Figure 8. The Bastion Historical Park in Sortavala (Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2022. Source: The author.

Figure 9. The Four Fronts museum, the part of the Bastion Historical Park in Sortavala (Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2022. Source: The author.

Side Effects of Re-bordering: Enclave Heritage

The break with cosmopolitan memory in the Russian-Finnish borderland has led to a significant reorientation of memory discourses and practices. However, when focusing on the more diverse forms of local commemorative initiatives and situational forms of borderwork, the implications of the new political order are less expected, more complex, and often quite ambiguous. Instead of the predictable return to the Soviet-style silencing of Finnish history and the erasure of all traces of Finnish heritage from the landscape, new forms of heritagization are evident.

The case of Jaakkima Church is the best example. Lahdenpohja, where the church is located, is a small, poor town with 5,855 inhabitants. Unlike Sortavala, which has long been a popular tourist destination, Lahdenpohja has never attracted visitors. Although in the early 2000s, during the Finnish heritage renaissance in Karelia, the church became an official heritage site and an important site of shared memory and cross-border commemoration, it remained invisible in the local landscape, coming to life only during ritual ceremonies on memorial days. For the rest of time, it mostly served as a secret playground for local boys who enjoyed climbing its crumbling walls.

However, from 2019 to 2023, the church site underwent a major transformation. The remains were secured, the area was completely cleared of vegetation, and signs inviting tourists to visit the City of Angels Museum in the Old Finnish Church were placed along the entire route leading to the town. After the outbreak of war in 2022 and the complete closure of the borders, the number of Russian tourists visiting Lahdenpohja increased dramatically, and new infrastructure such as cafes and shops, parking lots, and information boards emerged near the church. The City of Angels Museum, which occupies the still roofless church building, displays the works of wood craftsmen who participated in the 2019 festival, the centerpiece of which is a composition of eight wooden sculptures depicting angels, united by the title “Resurrection of the Church.” Among them is the Angel of the Church of the Past, which, according to the curating introduction, symbolizes the church “when it was newly built, young, and beautiful. Angels and people prayed and sang in it. It was loved and adorned.” The Angel of the Church Today symbolizes modern times (Figure 10), when “it is no longer an abandoned ruin. It is loved again; other angels and people come here. And the angel is no longer alone and stands with his head held high. And though there is still a long way to go to complete restoration, a beginning has been made.” Rounding out the composition is the Angel of the Church of the Future, “when the reconstruction is completed and the building is restored to its full splendor.”

Figure 10. The Angel of the Church Today as part of the Museum of Angels opened in the Jaakkima Church (Lahdenpohja, Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2023. Source: The author.

This unusual way of explaining the history of the place in terms of universal religious revival and historic preservation fits within the broader context of Finland’s valuable borderland past. The information board installed in front of the entrance to the church in 2022 tells the story of the place as an important heritage site in need of care: “This is how the area of Jaakkima Church became the last refuge for fallen soldiers and an important historical site. In the 1990s, the Finnish community had the opportunity to restore the sculptural composition of granite blocks in the cemetery, and in 2018, the Finns installed a memorial plaque with the names of the fallen. The cemetery contains graves from 1918, 1939–1940, and 1941–1944, where 337 Finnish soldiers from the Jaakkima settlement are buried. Today, it is a place of remembrance where tourists meet every year to “keep their memory alive”” (Figure 11). In the context of re-boarding processes, including tourists as people who care about remembering Jaakkima’s history no longer means a way for people from different countries to share the memory, heritage, and trauma. Instead, it means that this border history is now part of the locally useful past.

Figure 11. The information board installed in front of the entrance to the Jaakkima Church in 2022 (Lahdenpohja, Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2023. Source: The author.

Lahdenpohja is not a unique example of rethinking the heritage of Finnish borderlands in the context of border territorialization and reconfiguration. On the contrary, the case of the Jaakkima church is one of many manifestations of a new heritage economy that has been visible on a large scale in the region since 2022 and is linked to what Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett refers to as the value-added industry (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Reference Kirshenblatt-Gimblett1995). The development of the Karelian Ladoga region in recent decades has been almost entirely dependent on tourism, and the potential to attract additional flows of visitors has made the branding of the region a critical resource for local businesses, which use the “Finnish” history of the landscape along with its natural attractions as their main symbolic asset. Old Lutheran churches, Scandinavian Art Nouveau architecture, and wooden buildings designed in the old Finnish tradition have become hallmarks of the border region (Figure 12).

Figure 12. House drawn by the Finnish architect Lars Sonck for his cousin in Kurkijoki (Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2023. Source: The author.

In recent years, the commodification of Finnish heritage has been followed by significant investments to reinforce the Finnish brand of a place through additional decorative, culinary, and other landscape elements that increase the visibility of “Finnishness” in the region. Finnish and Karelian dishes, most of which are clearly defined as Finnish, are now on the menus of almost all cafes and restaurants in the local centers. These include Finnish salmon soup, lohikeitto, and open-faced pies with various fillings, karjalanpiirakka, better known in Russia as kalitki, which are now sold everywhere, although three years ago they were rare dishes in a region where the local population has no roots in either Finnish or Karelian culture. A number of new cafés exploit Finnish imagery and language, actively applying it in design, names, and decoration (Figures 13, 14).

Figure 13. A recently restored house that belonged to the family of a wealthy Sortavalian merchant, has been turned into a cafe and shop with Finnish words on the main facade. (Sortavala, Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2023. Source: The author.

Figure 14. A local cafe housed in the old Finnish building. The interior design of the cafe uses the old coat of arms of Sortavala and numerous photos of the pre-war Finnish town. (Sortavala, Republic of Karelia, Russia). 2023. Source: The author.

In addition to old Finnish places, which are now promoted and branded by the heritage and tourism industries, “Finnishness” is actively staged – new hotels and restaurants on the coast of Ladoga Lake are built in the Finnish Art Nouveau style, with names written in Finnish, regardless of the fact that Finns are very rare visitors here today. The economic benefits of the Finnish past in the new conditions are also manifested in the sharp conflicts over property, one of which is the Jaakkima church, for whose right of disposition local businessmen, representatives of the administration, and even the priest are still competing (Dmitriev Reference Dmitriev2020).

A crucial result of this shift has been the conversion of the Finnish past into a regional enclave heritage, which is currently developing into a visitable “Finland” for Russian tourists in place of the actual Finland, which they can no longer access. Such a transition was hardly possible in the period of de-bordering, when the region functioned as a border space valued for the proximity and transparency of the border, which ensured the internationalization of living and working experiences and high mobility. Having acquired new forms of territoriality and become a closed enclave of stylized Finnishness in Northwest Russia, the region became an object of vigorous commodification of the now exotic past. The contours of this territorial image were formed here during the period of active cross-border partnership, as a consequence of post-Soviet processes of cosmopolitanism, but have been reshaped in new spatial categories in the last two years.