"Let us be like the Finns": Finland as the Role Model for Estonia from 1850s to 2000s

"Let us be like Finns":  Finland as the Role Model for Estonia

Presentation by Dr. Kari Alenius, Chair in Finnish Studies, Department of History.

About the Speaker

Since 2014, Dr. Alenius has been the Head of the Department of History, Culture and Communications, and Head of Transcultural Encounters Research Center (TCERC) at University of Oulu. Kari Alenius has taught a wide variety of courses at University of Oulu. In recent years his teaching included such topics as Introduction to the History of Minorities; History of Propaganda; The Societal Development of Germany, 1918–1945; Finland and the Baltic Countries as an Area of Interest of the Great Powers, 1900–1945.

Research Interests

In his doctoral thesis, Kari Alenius studied the Estonian image of Finland and the Finns from the period of national awakening to the end of the Tsarist era (approx. 1850–1917). Ever since, the history of Estonia has been one of the major subjects in his research. His second monograph was on the ethnic relations in Estonia during the interwar period (1920s). He is also the author of a Finnish-language history of the Baltic States. In his fourth monograph, Kari Alenius continued to study ethnic relations. This time the subject was the development of the legal status of national minorities in Germany (Weimar Republic). He then went on to study political narratives and propaganda, focusing on the rhetoric of the Great Powers in the UN Security Council (1946–1956) in his fifth monograph. In other research projects, he has studied, for instance, inter/transcultural relations, national identities and war propaganda.