Shifting Borders: Unpredictability and Strategic Distrust at the Finnish-Russian Border

Borders as multidimensional entities that have different symbolic and material forms, functions and locations. They are dynamic in character – both in space and in time, transversally to different socio-cultural, political, aesthetical, economic, legal, and historical settings criss-crossed by negotiations between different actors, and not only the State. This paper sheds light on borders from the Finnish perspective and demonstrates how the recent geopolitical situation surrounding Russia and Ukraine has had a clear impact also on other countries neighboring Russia. It is argues that the border between Finland and the Russian Federation provides an illuminating laboratory in which to study border change – or the lack thereof. With the end of the Cold War the previously stable border concept was transformed in to something broader and more complex. In the Finnish case the change was beefed up by the fact the neighbor that Finns had learned to know, in both good and bad, suddenly disappeared. As a neighbor, the Soviet Union had not been the easiest kind, but at least the risk associated with living next to a sleeping giant could be assessed and managed, and the dangers could be judged. With its follower, the Russian Federation, the rules of the game changed fundamentally. The probabilities became harder to estimate, because there was no longer any clear basis for making such a judgment. The recent events in Ukraine have only fostered this unpredictability, which in turn has changed also the perception of the Finnish-Russian border.