Russian Culture Well Represented in Tampere - Brainstorming New Ideas for Cooperation

One of the newest twin cities of Tampere is the Russian City of Nižni Novgorod, with which relations were established in the 1990’s. A group of Nižni Novgorodian councillors visited Tampere in the middle of June at the height of the summer festivities.

In addition to culture, the visitors also got acquainted with health care services, children’s day care and the services for the elderly, and they met some representatives of the Finland-Russia Society.

Three deputies of the Duma city council, which includes 42 members in all, came to visit their twin city, Tampere, as well as Helsinki on their first trip to Finland. The deputies were Yelena Gorbunova, Nadežda Melnikova, Sergei Mihaylin, and also Yelena Malygina, Deputy Manager of the Department of Foreign Economic and Interregional Relations. To the inhabitants of Nižni Novgorod, Tampere is an interesting associate, but rather a “small town” compared to their own city of 1,5 million people.

The deputies of the Nižni Novgorod City Duma were enjoying their visit in Tampere. Here the visitors are getting to know Rauhaniemi public bath house.

Of the Duma’s members, Nadežda Melnikova is the deputy managing director of a metal industry company; Yelena Gorbunova is the dean of the city’s School of Economics, Department of Supplementary Education; and Sergei Mihaylin is the managing director of a commercial association. These three people had the common desire to get to know people from their own field, to enjoy the twin city’s atmosphere, and to participate in brainstorming possible cooperation projects.

Joint Ventures in Culture and Travelling

Russian culture was well represented in Tampere’s summer culture. The visit took place during the same week as the Pispalan Sottiisi Folk Festival and the opening of the goldsmith Fabergé’s exhibition. Also, a soprano from St. Petersburg, Saule Iskakova, gave a performance in conjunction with the inauguration of the exhibition. In addition, one of the performing groups at Pispalan Sottiisi was from Northern Ossetia, Russia.

- Travelling would be an excellent branch of cooperation between our cities, Mihailin suggests. There is a straight railway connection from St. Petersburg to Nižni Novgorod, and the journey lasts for 16 hours. The train journey from Tampere to St. Petersburg, in its turn, takes about six to seven hours.

This year’s Russian visitors performing at Pispalan Sottiisi arrived from Northern Ossetia. The Nižni Novgorodian twin city visitors greeted the group and admired their beautiful national costumes before the group went on stage at the opening ceremony of the festival.

Nižni Novgorod is situated about 400 kilometres east of Moscow, at the connecting point of the Oka and Volga rivers. It is the third biggest city of Russia after Moscow and St. Petersburg.

- Our cultural life is very active. Our city has many high level folk music and singing bands. After all, the language of culture is very international. Exhibition exchange is also worth considering. Our city has, for example, an impressive collection of paintings, Gorbunova explains.

Internationality and Commercial Connections

Gorbunova suggests that Tampere and Nižni Novgorod should found a twin city festival. The festival could be about culture and sports. In addition, Gorbunova suggested that the cities could promote teacher exchange. The student associations could start organising friendship projects, and organise, for example, joint school camps and projects, where English would be used as the language of communication.

- I hope that this is not just talk for the sake of talking. The problem seems to be that each time there are different people involved in the twin city meetings, and thus the plans do not have any continuity, Gorbunova says regretfully. Despite possible changes in the city management, cooperation is worth developing between Tampere and Nižni Novgorod. Joint projects are welcome.

The Nižni Novgorodians think that establishing business-life connections would also be worthwhile.

- I know only one Finnish company that operates in Nižni Novgorod. It is a paint company. But the products of Nokia are also well known in our city. I myself have had three Nokia mobile phones so far, Sergei Mihaylin, managing director of a Nižni Novgorod commercial association, explains.
- Making cooperation more active between business companies would be a very good idea.

Travelling by train is an easy way to get to Russia. The councillors from Nižni Novgorod headed home by Tolstoi, which is the name of a train to Moscow.

Text: Outi Aaltonen

Photos: Outi Aaltonen