Baltic Rim Economies 4/2021
A special issue on Russia
Published on the 28th of October 2021
Democracy – Russia´s dilemma
“Russia turned its back on democracy, as it had done before in the turmoils of the First World War. Back then, Russia adopted Marxism from the West, but not democracy. In the 20th century, Russia followed a different path from, for example, Japan and India which, in spite of lagging behind in comparison to the Russian starting points, succeeded in transforming themselves into democracies.”
Urpo Kivikari,
Emeritus Professor of International Economics,
Pan-European Institute, University of Turku,
Finland
Neighbouring a World Power – Finland’s relations with a 21st Century Russia
“During my diplomatic career, I have had the privilege to work in Russia and with questions related to Russia for many years. My first posting abroad was in Moscow in the late 1980s. Later, I served as Ambassador to Russia between 2008 and 2012, in a completely different country. In the past three decades, also Finland has changed. In 1995, Finland joined the European Union. This meant that Russia became a neighbour to the EU. Finland has actively participated in developing the union’s Russia policy.”
Matti Anttonen,
Permanent State Secretary,
Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland
U.S.-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue
“Presidents Biden and Putin have agreed that the United States and Russia bear “a unique responsibility” for maintaining strategic stability and preventing dangerous escalation between the world’s two leading nuclear powers. Following their June 2021 Geneva summit, they declared that, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” an echo of the famous Reagan-Gorbachev declaration from 1985.”
Matthew Rojansky,
Director,
The Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute,
United States of America
UK-USSR 1991, the return of the bear
“Ten years ago, the story of British-Russian relations seemed easy to relate. The old tension with the Russian ‘bear’, which had begun in the late eighteenth century, flared during the Crimean War, and endured through the change from Tsarism to communism in the twentieth, appeared a thing of the past. Its last gasp had been the standoff over Kosovo in 1999. Russia complained bitterly about the eastward enlargement of NATO, but seemed to have accepted it. In the early days after 9/11, Russian President Putin was seen as an ally in the war on Islamist extremism.”
Brendan Simms,
Director,
Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge,
UK