I was still at school when I first read Dostoevsky’s novels, and it got me interested in studying Russian. On the first language course in what was then Leningrad, I encountered Dostoevsky’s St Petersburg, at once a real and fictional city, both beautiful and daunting, dark and deceptive. This combination of strength and danger is one I have got to know over the decades, on visits both physical and psychological to a city where everything is possible: compelling, disappointing, constantly shifting guises and meanings.

The dual myth about the city, that it is the European epitome of urbane beauty on the one hand and yet equally a doomed has-been town built in the mist on mire, this myth has run through Russian literature from the eighteenth century to the present day. It’s been part of my consciousness for decades, and still exercises me.

Back in 1969 in a general literature (still aesthetics and modern literature back then) I gave a seminar paper on Andrei Bely newly translated novel Petersburg, which had been published in no fewer than five different editions between 1913 and 1922. It is an absolute masterpiece of Russian symbolist prose. The seminar presentation was to later develop into a doctoral thesis. ‘Later’ meaning nearly twenty years. For my own later doctoral supervisees I was a prime example of the dangers of distracting activity for research work.

Owing to Bely, symbolism and St Petersburg, Russian modernism became my main research focus. Along with the St Petersburg myth I duly arrived at Russian postmodernism. The St Petersburg author Andrey Bitov, hailed as the father of Russian postmodernism, has been the other main object of research on Russian writers.

My first project was called ‘Modernism and postmodernism in Russian literature'.

Out of this grew a big international project, which has produced almost twenty doctorates. Many of these relate to the St Petersburg myth. Ever since my time in Russia, contemporary literature has been of great interest to me. In recent years I’d have to admit to having lost touch rather. My interest in new literature over the years spawned a constant stream of newspaper articles, radio programmes, lectures and discussions here and there, in all kinds of venues with a broad spectrum of listeners and readers. The audience has been anything from a handful to several hundred. The encounters and discussions with researchers in my own field as well as Russian authors have been decisive in shaping my research.

For further information, go to

• Venäläinen mosaiikki  (‘Russian mosaic’) introduction to Russian culture web pages)
• Emeritus professor Pekka Pesosen’s  web pages

Additional information about the pictures

Picture 1

In the picture Professor Jefim Etkind is opponent at Jefim Kurganov’s doctoral defence in 1995. Pekka Pesonen is custos, presiding over the occasion. Etkind was given an honorary doctorate by the University’s Faculty of Arts in spring 1999. He died before the conferment ceremony.

“Etkind was a St Petersburg professor, not only a Russian, but also French and German literary specialist. He was dismissed from his post and forced to emigrate in the beginning of the 70s. He had an influence for over 20 years as professor in the Sorbonne, constantly travelling around the world, from the mid-80s a regular visitor to Helsinki too, where he made good use of the Slavic library collection. Etkind was a brilliant lecturer, year after year charming students and more seasoned listeners alike. My contact with him is one of my abiding memories. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union Etkind resumed his stay in Russia, where all his academic achievements were reinstated. The international seminar dedicated to his memory, Etkindovskie tštenija, has been held regularly in St Petersburg since the year 2000.

Picture 2

The picture is of Pekka Pesonen’s karonka, the dinner following the doctoral defence. Those congratulating him are his colleagues. Pesonen is proposing the first toast with the beautiful glass he has just received as a gift. He’s encouraged by his colleagues’ singing to raise a glass and...bottoms up!

Picture 3

The author Andrey Bitov in front of the University of Helsinki’s administration building in 1987. Bitov’s literary output has been one of the main objects of Pekka Pesonen’s research.

Picture 4

The project ”Modernismi ja postmodernismi venäläisessä kirjallisuudessa ja kulttuurissa” (’Modernism and postmodernism in Russian literature and culture’) got started in Joensuu in Eastern Finland. Pekka Pesonen later ran the project with Natalia Baschmakoff and together they organised a small seminar for gifted students with the help of a third director Olga Kušlina from St Petersburg. Of those in the photo, five are now doctors and two of them are professors.

Picture 5

The theme and myth of St Petersburg feature in several of the doctoral theses submitted under Pekka Pesonen’s supervision. In the photo Maija Könönen, who defended her thesis on Joseph Brodsky’s depiction of St Petersburg, is giving her after-dinner speech. She is currently at the University of Eastern Finland, where she is Professor of Russian Cultural Studies.

Picture 6

Christmas Eve, 1971, in a student apartment in Leningrad, Ševtšenko 25, Vasili Island. It was here that Pekka Pesonen spent an academic year studying Bely and learning the language and culture the hard way.

“The photo was taken by Paula Simola (nowadays Pesonen), with whom I spent an unforgettable Christmas in a half-deserted house and a completely bare room, which was ordinarily pretty full of people. The student accommodation ruled out spending the night in mixed company. It was possible in the Hotel  Oktjabrskaja where Paula lived with a group of Finnish tourists. Both in the student digs and the hotel room I got to impress my fiancée with my cockroach-exterminating skills, among others.”