From Iron Curtain to Timber-Belt Territory and Materiality at the Finnish-Russian Border

Abstract

The paper shows the Finnish-Russian border changing from a political periphery into a focus for international ecopolitics, because of how landscapes either side have been treated under different geopolitically informed regimes of government. On the Finnish side landscape was transformed into industrially managed forests, whereas the Russian border zone was left largely unmanaged. Historical social links across the border were reactivated after the end of the Cold War, and young Finnish forests activists in particular have created social links here. Their activities challenge accepted ideas of sovereign territory and beg revisions of the analytical tools for addressing processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization such as those at play in ecopolitics.