a vision of a twin city: exploring the only case of adjacent urban settlements at the...

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A vision of a Twin City:Exploring the only case ofadjacent urban settlements atthe Finnish‐Russian BorderHeikki Eskelinen a & Juna Kotilainen ba Jean Monnet Professor in the Department ofGeography and the Karelian Institute , University ofJoensuu , Joensuu, Finlandb Research Fellow in the Karelian Institute ,University of Joensuu , Joensuu, FinlandPublished online: 21 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Heikki Eskelinen & Juna Kotilainen (2005) A vision of a Twin City:Exploring the only case of adjacent urban settlements at the Finnish‐Russian Border,Journal of Borderlands Studies, 20:2, 31-46, DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2005.9695642

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Journal of Borderlands StudiesVolume 20 • No. 2 • Fall 2005

A Vision of a Twin City: Exploring theOnly Case of Adjacent UrbanSettlements at the Finnish-RussianBorderHeikki Eskelinen and Juha Kotilainen*

Abstract: The article aims to illustrate through a case study the contingencies, complexities andparadoxes which characterize the external borders of the European Union. The study focuses onthe only cross-border urban area along the Finnish-Russian border region, that of Imatra andSvetogorsk. Firstly, the peculiarities of this region are described by comparing it to other coop-erating border communities in the EU. Next, the twin-town initiative by the local governments isanalyzed, the development potential of the cross-border region is evaluated, and the motives forand obstacles to cooperation are examined for assessing the prospects of cooperation in a widerEuropean context. It is concluded that the distinctive features of this highly asymmetric casehave been taken into account by the local actors when they have defined the aim and scope oftheir cooperation strategy. Due to these contextual factors, it is also understandable that theconcrete results of the twin city initiative have remained limited thus far. Although integratedcross-border structures are nearly nonexistent, the local cooperation activities provide an inter-esting laboratory for observing and assessing the objectives and practices of a “Wider Europe”at a local scale.

Introduction

Cooperation across state borders is currently a well-established part of the activi-ties of local and regional organizations in most border regions in Europe. Althoughpolitical and economic support from the European Union is reconfiguring the nature ofborders in its sphere of influence, and creating what can be called a European regimeof cross-border cooperation, the concrete forms and intensity of this activity—and alsoits results—vary to a major degree due to the peculiarities of each case. The case-specific factors derive from issues such as the international political context, historicalexperiences, ethnic relations, socio-economic conditions, and relevant infrastructuresin a particular border region (see e.g. O’Dowd 2002).

*Eskelinen is a Jean Monnet Professor in the Department of Geography and theKarelian Institute at the University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland. Kotilainen is aResearch Fellow in the Karelian Institute at the University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland.

This article is an outgrowth of cooperation between the research projects Reconstitution of Northwest Russia asan Economic, Social and Political Space: The Role of Cross-Border Interaction (No. 208150) and Governance ofRenewable Natural Resources in Northwest Russia (No. 203960), both funded by the Academy of Finland throughits Russia in Flux Programme (see http://www.aka.fi). In addition, the article has benefited from the material col-lected for purposes of the EXLINEA project (Lines of Exclusion as Arenas of Cooperation: Reconfiguring theExternal Boundaries of Europe, Politics, Practices and Perceptions) of the EU’s 5th Framework Programme (see:http://www.exlinea.org).

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32 A Vision of a Twin City

Figure 1. Imatra and Svetogorsk at the Finnish-Russian Border.

Many studies and evaluations concerning cross-border cooperation have a strongnormative flavor, and some of them actually form an established part of the integrationpolicy. Cooperation, and meeting your neighbor, is seen as a putative behavioral char-acteristic of a good European (van Houtum 2000). In addition, emerging cross-bordernetworks are seen as an instrument of EU policy and as an important form of overallregionalization, thus challenging the traditional supremacy of nation-states. However,

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Volume 20 • No. 2 • Fall 2005 Journal of Borderlands Studies 33

the available empirical evidence, especially concerning the external borders of the EU,rather suggests that national orientations prevail at many places, and the relevant con-text of cross-border cooperation includes contradictory elements. Political initiativesfor border-spanning activities are promoted for economic and security motives simul-taneously, but cultural barriers remain. Indeed, they may even lead to more exclusion-ary attitudes towards neighbors (see Jouen 2003).

This article aims to illustrate through one case study contingencies, complexitiesand paradoxes characterizing the external borders of the European Union. The studyfocuses on the region of Imatra and Svetogorsk at the Finnish-Russian border (for thelocation and main characteristics of the case: see Figure 1 and Tables 1 and 2). Theinvestigation describes this region in relation to other cooperating border communitiesin the EU, analyzes the twin-town initiative by the local governments, evaluates thedevelopment potential of the region, and discusses the prospects of cooperation be-tween Imatra and Svetogorsk in a wider European context.

Table 1

Distances from Imatra-Svetogorsk

(In Kilometers)

Helsinki St. Petersburg Vyborg Lappeenranta

Imatra-Svetogorsk 250 200 60 35

Table 2

Populations of Imatra and Svetogorsk

1990 2005

Imatra 34,000 30,000

Svetogorsk 16,000 16,000

A distinctive characteristic of the Imatra-Svetogorsk case is the fact that before theEastern Enlargement of the EU in 2004 it was the only region at the EU-Russian borderwhere the boundary separates two adjacent urban settlements from each other. Theurbanized area is located on the banks of the river Vuoksi (Vuoksa in Russian), whichis the outlet of Finland’s largest lake (Saimaa), flowing across the border to Europe’slargest lake (Ladoga). About two-thirds of the urban population lives on the Finnishside (Imatra: 30,000 inhabitants) and one-third on the Russian side (Svetogorsk: 16,000inhabitants). Another distinctive feature of the region is a major asymmetry; for in-stance, the economic disparity at the Finnish-Russian border in terms of GDP per capitais wider than in any other border region along the East/West divide in Europe (Alanenand Eskelinen 2000).

Obviously, this asymmetry is manifested in the patterns of interaction across theborder. The setting comprises relatively wealthy and relatively poor partners. Theypromote their particular interests in the shadow of the complex history of the dividedregion. Mutual trust and well-functioning cooperative relations do not come easily.

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Aim and Scope of the Article

The case of Imatra and Svetogorsk has hardly been discussed in the burgeoninginternational literature on cross-border cooperation and cross-border regions. The bulkof the material is available only in Finnish or Russian (with the exception of Kujala2000a and Heliste, Kosonen and Loikkanen 2004). The published accounts comprisethe proceedings of the twin city seminars, which have been organized annually sincethe year 2000, and reflections by various commentators involved in the initiative(Linjama 2001 and 2004; Virtanen 2003). In addition to this material, the present ar-ticle utilizes official statistics, open and structured interviews of key actors, as well asthe authors’ participatory observations at various cross-border cooperation seminars inthe region since 1999.1

Part two of the article surveys the concept of cross-border cooperation and intro-duces the methodological underpinnings of the study. Part three describes the distinc-tive features of Imatra and Svetogorsk as border towns, and outlines their developmen-tal trends. Part four focuses on their cooperation, especially on their twin city strategy.The fifth part discusses the case in a wider context, reflecting its experiences and pros-pects in relation to geopolitical and geo-economic development at various scales. Theconclusion offers a brief summary.

Cross-Border Cooperation and Cross-Border Regions

The concepts of cross-border cooperation and cross-border region as defined byPerkmann (2003, 156-157) are used in the present investigation for positioning thecase of Imatra and Svetogorsk in a European context. According to Perkmann, theconcept of cross-border cooperation (CBC) refers to “a more or less institutionalizedcollaboration between contiguous subnational authorities across national borders”(Perkmann 2003, 156). In operational terms, this means that regional or local publicauthorities are its central actors, cooperation aims at solving practical problems in vari-ous spheres of life, and it is practized on an institutionalized basis. Deriving from this,a cross-border region (CBR) can be defined as “a bounded territorial unit composed ofthe territories of authorities participating in a CBC” (Perkmann 2003, 157).

The above definitions are neutral in the sense that they do not incorporate assump-tions on border regions sharing specific historical, ethnic, socio-economic or othercommonalities. Neither do they imply that CBC is a normative necessity. Simply, across-border region is an operational environment characterized by CBC. Its existencepresupposes that actors such as neighboring municipalities are able to mobilize or cre-ate some kind of common strategic capacity across the border, by means of which theytry to solve their problems and promote their development. Understandably, this activ-ity is to an important degree regulated by non-local actors who define the scope andinstitutional framework of cooperation and may provide it with resources. In the Finn-ish-Russian case, for instance, the CBC regime is influenced not only by thereconfiguration of the mutual relations of the two countries, but also, among otherthings, by the policies of the EU, regional development policies of the government ofFinland, internal development in the Russian Federation, and turbulent constellationsin the international political scene in general.

It should be kept in mind that all regions sharing a permeable border have interac-tion not only in the form of conscious public-purpose cooperation, but also in various

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other forms. The relevant local actors include individual citizens, business firms, andNon-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). In addition, an important share of border-crossings serve non-local purposes. Overall, the distinction between institutionalizedpolitical cooperation and other forms of interaction admits various interpretations.Cooperation is part of interaction, many types of cross-border interaction (for instance,cross-border environmental problems and smuggling) create needs for collaboration,and CBC is often promoted for purposes of facilitating cross-border connections. Forinstance, to pursue language education and infrastructural investments.2

Here, the obvious starting point is that Imatra and Svetogorsk constitute a cross-border region in the sense that Perkmann (2003) uses the concept, albeit they are obvi-ously more separate from each other than most pairs of border regions in Europe. Froma local perspective, the border, which was drawn as a result of the Second World War,can be seen as a historical coincidence which partitioned these two communities forabout half a century. The border locked them in very different developmental trajecto-ries, their driving forces originated from two separate societal and political systems.This implies that irrespective of their joint pre-war history, the two towns are currentlyfar from being a latent regional entity, made visible simply by initiating CBC.

Against this background, the following analysis concerning the Imatra-Svetogorskcross-border region evaluates their characteristics, development potential and pros-pects. The key issue concerns whether these regions are able to create joint dynamicsas a result of the transformation of the border regime, or whether they are continuouslyconditioned by their largely country-specific drivers, and thus locked in their previouspaths of local development.

In strategies of CBC symbols and catchwords are important. They play a key rolein creating borders as markers of identity, and also in attempts to alter their nature andfunctions. Many of these notions, including the twin city, connote ambitious policyaims, which may differ drastically from the prevailing circumstances. Buursink(2002, 7) emphasizes this problem in his attempt to clarify the conceptual chaos ofdiscussions on cities that share a state border. “We want to discard misnomers, mis-leading metaphors and premature names that too often overshadow empirical studiesof paired border cities and, in this way, prevent us from getting a realistic view on whatis going on in such border cities.” This agenda is clearly relevant in the Imatra-Svetogorskcase. On the other hand, this premature vocabulary can also be analyzed in terms of thesocial constructivist approach. Here, the obvious question concerns the extent to whichCBC, irrespective of such binding constraints as prevailing on the Finnish-Russianborder, can be promoted by introducing novel concepts for redefining interpretationsand expectations among the actors, and in local societies at large.

Distant Neighbors

Buursink (2001) defines a border city as a city, which is more or less dependent onthe border for its very existence. Its development has been fostered by a border-cross-ing point, or it has been formed as a counterpart to a settlement on the other side of theboundary. Strictly speaking, Imatra and Svetogorsk do not fulfill this condition, sincethe birth of these towns was not initiated by the pre-existence of the border, althoughthe border has later played a major role in their development. However, they are typicalborder towns in the sense that their potential functional regions have been split by theborder; that is, they have suffered from the so-called half-market problem (Niebuhr

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and Stiller 2004). In terms of the four main functions of a border (O’Dowd 1999), onecan say that the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed Imatra and Svetogorsk to putemphasis on the bridging role of the border, instead of being conditioned merely by itsdividing role. Hence, the neighboring towns started to aim at using the border as aresource, and the twin city initiative rests upon the idea that also its symbolic functionsin identity formation can be redefined.

Following Buursink (2001), the towns located in the immediate proximity of bor-ders can be divided into two main types: duplicated cities and partitioned cities. In thisclassification, Imatra and Svetogorsk clearly belong to the latter group. The aftermathof the Second World War divided the river valley into two parts. All the inhabitants ofthe eastern side fled to Finland, and the new settlers from various parts of the SovietUnion had no previous links to the territory.3

This resulted in the formation of a clear-cut cultural border, strengthening the par-tition of the neighboring industrial communities from each other. Earlier, these com-munities had grown in the river valley as a result of industrialization, which was initi-ated in the second half of the 19th century mainly for the purpose of exploiting forestresources (see Kotilainen 2004). The development of the region was also linked to thegrowth of the then second city of Finland, Vyborg, at the distance of about 60 kilome-ters (see Figure 1).

The new border ran through a narrow strip of rural area between two industrialcommunities. The adjustment to the partition presupposed administrative changes onboth sides. In Finland, the local administrative unit of Imatra was constituted fromparts of three municipalities in 1948. On the Soviet side, Svetogorsk (in Finnish times:Enso) was included in the Vyborg district in 1960, and remained in this position until1996. More recently, cooperation between Imatra and Svetogorsk has exerted influ-ence on attempts to reorganize local governmental structures both in Finland and inRussia (see the two following chapters).

From the Second World War until the 1970s, border-crossings between Imatra andSvetogorsk were prohibited. The two neighboring towns grew as industrial localities,but in isolation from each other. The existing pulp and paper mills were taken into usein the border community of Svetogorsk, where even Soviet citizens had only strictlylimited access. Imatra developed on the basis of paper and metallurgical industries; itspopulation reaching 37,000 in the mid-1970s. Since then, it has been an archetypalexample of a declining industrial town in Finland. Its population decreased almost 20per cent, down to slightly less than 30,000 in 2003. Svetogorsk, for its part, has beenundergoing a transition crisis since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, even if itsproduction base is technologically modern in the Russian context. This modernity isdue to the large construction project, which was launched in 1972 as part of bilateralpolitical and economic relations between Finland and the Soviet Union. It was a strictlycontrolled undertaking in the enclave right on the other side of the border, and thus itdid not represent CBC in the sense in which this concept is currently used (Perkmann2003). Nevertheless, this bilateral endeavor meant that interaction and cooperationbetween Imatra and Svetogorsk did not actually start from scratch after the collapse ofthe Soviet Union. For the reconstruction of the Svetogorsk Combine, a temporary bor-der-crossing point was opened, and the modernization actually resulted in the need forcontinuous cross-border contacts. Therefore, the local border-crossing point was usedwith special arrangements even after the construction project was completed in the1980s.

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Buursink (2001) emphasizes that the adjacent location of paired border cities shouldnot be seen only in terms of a short physical distance and continuous location, but alsoin terms of a sense of belonging together. From this perspective, Imatra and Svetogorskhave definitely been distant neighbors, and this holds true even today. They remain faraway from the ideal state of integrated communities referred to as a binational city inresearch concerning border cities. The long period of isolation as well as the socio-economic and cultural differences form an obvious background for prevailing preju-dices and a nationally-minded sense of otherness. According to a recent survey con-cerning 16-17 year old students at educational institutes, a considerable share of re-spondents both in Imatra and Svetogorsk refer to their neighbors as ordinary Russiansor Finns; that is, in terms of national stereotypes (Laine 2004). The views concerningthe two towns are more asymmetrical in the way that most respondents in Imatra seeSvetogorsk in negative terms, describing it as dirty and poor, whereas many of theircounterparts in Svetogorsk see Imatra more positively, as tidy and nice.

Language defines a fundamental constraint to more intensive contacts betweenresidents of Imatra and Svetogorsk. The bulk of the population does not understand thelanguage spoken on the other side of the border. In addition, the lack of an internationalborder-crossing point was a serious problem until 2002 when the above mentionedspecial-purpose checkpoint was finally opened for international traffic (that is, for any-body with proper documents). Moreover, there is no local public transport across theborder.

Overall, the historical, cultural and technical barriers have resulted in many localresidents having never visited the other side. For instance, two-thirds of the abovementioned youngsters living in Imatra had not visited Svetogorsk, and the respectiveshare of non-visitors to the neighboring side was only slightly lower among the respon-dents in Svetogorsk (Laine 2004). All in all, there are only a very limited number ofpeople living in Imatra or Svetogorsk, who could be considered to be bicultural. This isthe challenging societal environment in which the two towns, since the end of the1990s,have attempted to promote collaboration under the twin city (in Russian: dvoinoi gorod)conception, which connotes an identical and like-minded pair.

Twin City Strategy

The concept of Twin City was introduced as a continuation of initiatives that hadtheir origin in the participation of Finnish consultants and researchers in the formationof business strategies for the Svetogorsk pulp and paper combine as early as the periodof Perestroika and Glasnost in the late 1980s (see Lilja, Tainio and Törnqvist 1994). Inthe early 1990s, local level cooperation was set into motion quite spontaneously, whenindividuals and various organizations started to utilize the opportunity to visit the otherside of the border, and launched small-scale joint collaborative activities. The nextimportant step was the “Imsveto” project. It aimed at developing an industrial park inSvetogorsk (Kosonen 1991). This project, prepared by the Imatra Regional Develop-ment Company, was meant to be a pilot phase for a zone of joint entrepreneurship. Itwas based on the then reformed Soviet legislation, which later never materialized in theturbulent circumstances of that time. In any case, after the collapse of the Soviet Union,Imatra and Svetogorsk signed a cooperation agreement, but the actual practices pro-ceeded slowly and remained fragmentary in the early years. A positive sign was thatregular teacher exchanges between schools in the two towns were initiated in 1994.

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Preconditions for CBC improved in the mid-1990s in two important respects. Thefirst important step was Finland’s membership in the EU, which provided local actorswith additional resources, and implied that cooperation between the two towns to amajor degree became influenced by the EU policy regime (Scott 1999). Of its instru-ments, Imatra and Svetogorsk have utilized both INTERREG and Tacis CBC fundingin projects dealing with issues such as improving the waste water treatment system andenergy services in Svetogorsk, quality of water and fish stocks in the Vuoksi river,tourism infrastructure, municipal government, and more recently, health and securityissues.

The EU is not the only source of funding in local CBC projects. For instance, themonitoring of air quality in Svetogorsk has been voluntarily linked to the system regu-lated by Finnish law. The initiative for this arrangement originated from contacts be-tween the Environmental Agency of Imatra and the Health Administration in Svetogorsk.Currently, the monitoring service is purchased by the Svetogorsk Mills from Imatramunicipality. Along with teacher exchange programs, the air monitoring system ranksamong the most institutionalized cross-border links between the two towns. Neitherare funded by the EU.

In addition to Finland’s adherence to the EU, the second significant prerequisitefor increasing cooperation between the two towns was the municipal independence ofSvetogorsk from the Vyborg district in 1996. Svetogorsk now has its own administra-tive competence and tax revenues to carry out CBC (see Figure 1). In general, the caseof Svetogorsk can be seen as a variant of a rather common type of institutional transfor-mation in Russia in the 1990s: territorial units with valuable economic resources (inSvetogorsk: the pulp and paper mill) have sought to gain maximum benefits from them.4

From the very beginning, striving for new economic activities has remained as themost prominent aim in cooperation between Imatra and Svetogorsk. It was primarilyfor this purpose, following the advice of consultants, that the two towns adopted thenotion of “Twin Town” or “Twin City” in the late 1990s. In the strategy of 1999, thekey areas of twin city cooperation included industrial policies, social services and re-search and development. More recently, the third sector has been added to this list(Imatra Svetogorsk kaksoiskaupunki 1999, Kaksoiskaupunki Imatra Svetogorsk 2004).Overall, Imatra and Svetogorsk use the twin city as an umbrella concept; it covers theactivities and concerns forming the focal areas of cooperation at each particular pointin time. The steering group of the initiative comprises key members of the administra-tions of the two towns. In addition, the institutional setup includes a commission withrepresentatives from various ministries in Finland and Russia. However, attempts toupgrade the political capital of the twin city initiative have been difficult thus far. Forinstance, the opening of the crossing point for international traffic was not commemo-rated with a visit by the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in 2002 as was planned.

As in the Imsveto-initiative mentioned above, the flagship project of the twin citystrategy is the construction of an industrial park at the border between Finland (EU)and Russia. The importance of the industrial park is stated clearly by a consultant: “It isfundamental for the Key East [i.e. industrial park] vision that it is based on the idea ofa twin city, and it is one industrial park, operating on both sides of the border” (Hack-man and Saari 1998, 13). “If the Key East industrial park conception succeeds, theTwin City idea probably succeeds as well” (Hackman 2001, 32).

So far, the implementation of the industrial park project has been an uphill struggle.According to the interviews of local experts, this is due to several reasons. Firstly, it has

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remained unclear how the conception of an industrial park could be incorporated intothe legislation of the Russian Federation. Secondly, the border location has mainlyattracted companies interested in logistical activities and storing of goods. Consequently,the capacity of the railway across the boundary is currently used for exporting roundwood and scrap metal to Finland, and the resulting traffic jams at the border are notseen as an incentive to investments in industrial activities. Thirdly, paradoxical as itmay sound, an adequate labor force is not easily available in Svetogorsk. The fact thatthe community has been completely dominated by the pulp and paper industry, is alsoreflected in the educational qualifications of the inhabitants, and educated people actu-ally tend to move out to places such as St. Petersburg. Fourthly, the success of theindustrial park vision is strongly influenced by company-specific factors. Especially,the current strategy of International Paper Ltd. does not seem to be in line with the twincity model; the company mainly relies on services provided in-house. According to arepresentative of the company, not more than 25 employees commuted daily to theSvetogorsk Mills from the Finnish side in 2005. The company has also been affectedby the problem of educated employees’ unwillingness to stay in Svetogorsk. Moreover,Ilim Pulp Enterprise, a large Russian-owned forest industrial company operating inother parts of Russia, competes for skilled employees.

According to Ehlers (2001), motives for cross-border cooperation derive from threesources: cooperation is either a mutual necessity, normative choice, or it aims at gain-ing economic benefits. Looking at the spectrum of cooperation between Imatra andSvetogorsk, all these three motives are discernible.

The role of envisioned economic benefits as the main driver was emphasized espe-cially in the early stages of the twin city initiative. The first event in the series of annualconferences in 2000 was entitled “Industry and Towns at the Border,” the second one“Entrepreneurship across the Border,” and the third one “The Border is Opening: Tradein Flux” (Kujala 2000b; Linjama 2001; Karkia 2002). The first twin city conferencealso put much emphasis on the fact that both Imatra and Svetogorsk are dominated byforest industries. Economic issues have also been prominent in the attempt to learnfrom experiences in other border cities by inviting a keynote speaker to every confer-ence. The main points of comparison have been Tornio-Haparanda (Finland/Sweden),Narva-Ivangorod (Estonia/Russia), Görlitz-Zgorzelec and Frankfurt (Oder)-Slubice(Germany/Poland), as well as U.S.-Mexican border cities.

However, the existence of the two other motives mentioned by Ehlers (2001) arealso indisputable. The institutionalization of air quality monitoring is one such ex-ample, deriving from the identification of local necessities (e.g. Imatran kaupunki 2002).In addition, education and service provision for disabled persons have been importantissues in cooperation, which indicates that motives for CBC are not limited to mutualnecessities or economic benefits. Overall, the scope of the twin city initiative seems tobe widening, at least when it comes to the main themes of more recent twin city confer-ences. In 2003, the conference dealt with health and well-being, in 2004 the focus wasset on youth issues, and in 2005 on media and communication.

This can also be interpreted as an experience of how CBC evolves as an interactivelearning process. The partners have become acquainted with each other, and may gradu-ally become more able to position themselves in the relevant operational environment,identifying factors which are of importance with respect to the scope and focus of theirjoint strategic action. In Imatra and Svetogorsk, for instance, there seems to be a grow-ing awareness of the necessity to see the twin-city initiative in a wider societal context.

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The problems of local economic development are indisputably serious on both sides,but solutions to them cannot be found by focusing entirely on new business initiatives.

Experiences and Prospects: An Interim Report in 2005

The operational environment of CBC between Imatra and Svetogorsk is under-standably very complex; its several determinants are in a continual flux, or remaingenuinely unclear. The following account discusses the experiences and prospects ofthe case, with a focus on its goal-setting, local development dynamics, and politico-institutional framework.

Goal-Setting: Pragmatic Down-To-Earth Approach

A key tenet in studies on pairs of border communities is that cooperation strategiesand inhabitants’ realities are two different things. When people are allowed or evenencouraged to cross the border, not all of them do so. On the contrary, they may wellbecome more committed to the local community (see e.g. van Houtum 2000). Neitherdo the joint objectives and strategies of the local governments automatically result inchanges in the residents’ perceptions and identities. As already mentioned above, thisalso holds true for Imatra and Svetogorsk.

In general, the concept of Twin City connotes the formation of one integrated andbicultural community on the two sides of the border. Yet it has to be emphasized herethat this vision has not actually been set as a target within the cooperation of Imatra andSvetogorsk. The participating actors seem to be clearly aware of the strict precondi-tions set by the dividing boundary and related historical legacies and socio-economicdisparities. Hence, they aim at more modest targets in their joint work: interaction indifferent fields of life, and especially the utilization of the border as a resource forpromoting economic activities. This can be regarded as a realistic point of departure,which also keeps the ambitions of local-level cooperation within the confines of theexisting political and institutional setting. Against the backdrop of history, it could beregarded as a genuinely significant achievement if Imatra and Svetogorsk would gettheir administrative cooperation running, and they could attract new investments intothe region.

Local Economic Dynamics: Diverging Drivers

The opening up of the Finnish-Russian border for local interaction and coopera-tion has not caused an inflow of new activities and people to the border area since theearly 1990s (see www.economicmonitoring.com; Eskelinen and Niiranen 2003). Actu-ally, most parts of the border region have lost population; the Finnish side has followedits earlier development path as a periphery, and the Russian side has undergone thepainful and overarching transition process. As a result, their positions in national rankingshave declined in terms of several socio-economic indicators. Among the local adminis-trative regions sharing a border, only Lappeenranta in Finland and Vyborg in Russiahave been exceptions to this pattern. They are the largest cities in the area, and both arelocated along, or close to, traffic routes between Helsinki (Finland) and St. Petersburg(Russia) (see Figure 1). In general, socio-economic development trends in the borderregion seem to have been conditioned more by country-specific factors than by cross-

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border cooperation and interaction (for the Finnish side: see also Ottaviano and Pinelli2004.)

The core purpose of the twin city initiative by Imatra and Svetogorsk has been tochallenge the above outlined overall developmental pattern since the early 1990s. Al-though the results of their efforts are not, at least for the time being, visible in popula-tion trends, theoretical analyses of integration effects in border regions give some groundsto argue that the grand dynamics of their operational environment can change as con-ditions in Russia become more stable (Niebuhr and Stiller 2004). However, the settingis not necessarily symmetrical. In a geographically small country such as Finland, com-panies oriented to the Russian markets may not find it profitable to move their activi-ties to border locations from the largest urban centers that actually provide agglomera-tion benefits relatively close to the border. In contrast, spatial economic dynamics maywell be different in a very vast country such as the Russian Federation. The borderregions close to Finland tend to provide logistical and other benefits to business firmsthat try to get access to EU markets. As an indication of this tendency, an inflow ofinvestments is currently discernible especially in the St. Petersburg metropolitan re-gion and on the coast of the Gulf of Finland.

Of course, the location of the Imatra-Svetogorsk region in a potential economicgrowth zone is not, as such, a sufficient precondition for attracting investments andgenerating growth in the local economy. The key issue concerns the competitiveness ofthe envisaged industrial park with respect to other potential locations in the Vyborgdistrict, and in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, which is located only about 200 kilome-ters away with its nearly five million inhabitants. At least thus far, Svetogorsk at thevery border has not been able to compete with St. Petersburg and surrounding places,such as Vsevolozhsk (see Figure 1).

The strengthening of a local resource base by merging administrative and func-tional regions is a common policy approach for upgrading competitiveness. This strat-egy has actually been attempted on the Finnish side of the border. In 2002, the twotraditionally competing cities, Lappeenranta and Imatra, proposed a plan of a merger(see Figure 1). As one argument, they maintained that their border locations could thusbe economically more efficiently utilized. Although this initiative received unreservedsupport from the central government, it has not been realized due to the lack of suffi-cient local political backing. The main lesson from this exercise is probably that themerger of Imatra and Lappeenranta faces the general problem of paired cities: for theinhabitants of Imatra, Lappeenranta represents otherness, and vice versa.

Institutional Framework: Coping With Several Levels

The key challenge of local actors in the CBC between Imatra and Svetogorsk is tofind a niche and line of action in the jungle of changing political overtones and policystrategies in a multi-level framework. Firstly, as far as the relations between the Euro-pean Union and the Russian Federation are concerned, the obvious starting point is thatRussia will remain as a non-member in the foreseeable future. From the side of the EU,this position has been defined in a somewhat unclear manner, by using concepts suchas Europeaness and neighborhood (European Commission 2003; see also Kramsch etal. 2004). In this context, a neighbor is seen first and foremost as an outsider. Yet theEuropean Union declares its intention to have good and friendly relations with thisoutsider, and CBC can be seen as one important element in developing such relations

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and working practices. Also the Russian perspective on its relations with the EU re-mains ambiguous: “(t)he Russian position oscillates between the two, at first glanceopposed, stances of problematisation of exclusion from the European space and theaffirmative self-exclusion: the dissatisfaction with the present format of EU-Russiancooperation leads to the disillusionment with the very idea of Russia’s greater integra-tion with the EU” (Prozorov 2004, 1). One concrete implication of this soul-searchingseems to be that the Russian Federation does not see itself as an ordinary neighboramong many others, but it prefers bilateral arrangements. This has probably contrib-uted to difficulties in agreeing on the EU’s new neighborhood policy, which is in-tended to combine the instruments of CBC employed on the two sides of the externalborder. Overall, CBC actors at the Finnish-Russian border—including the neighboringborder towns of Imatra and Svetogorsk—have taken a restrained position with regardto this EU-Russia constellation. In particular, they have not tried to launch initiativesthat would challenge the prevailing institutional framework. For instance, the Schengenrules and visa requirements are taken by them as given parameters.

In the years of the prolonged political and economic transition, the asymmetricalnature of EU-Russian relations has been obvious. The European Union can be arguedto have projected its political and economic regulatory power into Russian territory,utilizing, for example, the cooperation programs as instruments. The Imatra-SvetogorskCBC, in which the transfer of Finnish models in various fields of public life to theRussian side has played a central role, has been no exception. However, it is worthemphasizing here that foreign influences and practices in Svetogorsk are not entirely,or even primarily, due to the one-way nature of CBC. They have derived from varioussources: the American company follows its global strategies, private persons and non-governmental organizations carry out voluntary work across the border, and, of course,informal economic activities bear considerable influence.

Obviously, the stabilization of political and economic conditions in Russia willhave influence on the above outlined asymmetrical policy framework. Its interests willprobably establish a better foothold in cooperation programs, and in cross-border in-teraction in general. Yet it is not clear how this tendency will affect cooperation at alocal level, such as in the case of Imatra and Svetogorsk. From the Russian point ofview, its northwestern border has been stable and peaceful, and thus it has been pos-sible to develop CBC without any major problems even during the turbulent years oftransition (Valuev 2002). However, from the point of view of Imatra and Svetogorsk,this policy has been passive in the sense that it has not included any special status orprivileges concerning CBC between adjacent communities.

Seen from the EU, the Imatra-Svetogorsk cooperation is in terms of its territorialcoverage equivalent to many Euroregions in Central Europe. However, CBC is orga-nized in terms of much wider areas (regional council areas and their constellations) inthe sparsely populated Finnish-Russian border region. Therefore, Imatra and Svetogorskhave to adjust their cooperation within the Interreg region of South-East Finland and itsneighboring territorial units on the Russian side. As far as prospective changes in localadministrative divisions are concerned, the trends look contradictory for the two sidesof the border. In Finland, it is probable that the proposed merger between Imatra and itslong-time local competitor, Lappeenranta, has not been set aside for good, but maywell emerge soon in political discussions on reforms of municipal government. In Rus-sia, respectively, Svetogorsk is supposed to lose its current administrative status as aresult of the proposed reform of local governmental structures. Overall, these institu-

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tional changes can imply additional barriers to the long-term aim of constructing amore integrated cross-border functional region between the neighboring communitiesof Imatra and Svetogorsk.

Conclusions

Analyses of CBC in Europe emphasize that it is primarily a policy-driven process,and as such closely linked to the integration policy (Blatter and Clement 2000). Ingeneral, this holds true to the Finnish-Russian case, but the specificity of the politicalcontext has to be stressed here. In the EU-Russian interplay, CBC provides a test fieldfor which kind of arrangements are acceptable, and to what extent special local solu-tions are possible for facilitating the creation of niches of intensive cooperation andinteraction. The experiences from the Imatra-Svetogorsk case are potentially valuablefor this purpose, even if the scope of CBC is necessarily conditioned by rapidly chang-ing contextual factors. Of these, the eastern enlargement of the EU is of particularimportance by reason of the fact that it has raised new issues and concerns on thepolitical agenda in the Russian Federation. For instance, the experiences from theKaliningrad case bear relevance to CBC in other EU-Russian borders, and it may wellemphasize the incompatibility of interests and priorities between these two actors.

The eastern enlargement of the EU in 2004 has also resulted in the fact that Imatraand Svetogorsk do not any more form a unique case of comprising the only EU-Rus-sian urban area divided by the border, but there are points of comparison and referencealong the EU’s eastern border. Yet the historical legacies of these counterparts as wellas their current circumstances are distinctive in the way which limits possibilities todraw sweeping generalizations on the experiences of CBC, and transplanting its strat-egies to other areas.

Due to the fact that the case of Imatra and Svetogorsk differs drastically from mostborder-crossing towns inside the European Union, the much-discussed issue of whetherthe paired border cities under consideration in a particular study evolve towards onebinational city is a too far-flung yardstick in evaluating the results of their CBC thusfar. Imatra and Svetogorsk are clearly two separate and very different towns, and theborder does separate them in a quite classical sense. Irrespective of this preconditionthey have initiated CBC, and adapted it to local realities. The proponents of coopera-tion seem to be aware of the fact that creating links across the border cannot aim at theremoval of the traditional functions of the border, but it can and it should promoteincreased interaction even if the conditions of exclusion prevail. The creation of oneentity is not foreseeable, but the adjacent communities can contribute to each other’sdevelopment. To a major extent, this depends on the development of EU-Russian rela-tions, and on the competitive position of the Finnish-Russian border region.

Endnotes

1 The 10 open interviews were carried out with representatives of municipal, regional and na-tional governments as well as expert institutions involved in border spanning activities in Imatraand Lappeenranta. The EXLINEA standardized questionnaire material comprises 11 respon-dents in Imatra and 6 in Svetogorsk representing municipal governments, private companies andnon-governmental organizations. All the interview and questionnaire material was collected in2004.

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2 Thus, Perkman’s concept of cross-border cooperation is narrow in comparison to several otherdefinitions which do not draw a distinction between conscious cooperation and other types ofinteraction (see e.g. Anderson 2000; Scott 1999).3 This led to the so-called Karelian Question, that is, the dispute concerning the territories cededby Finland to the Soviet Union as a result of World War II. It has emerged in discussions on thelevel of civil society in Finland, but remained latent in official interstate relations (See Joenniemi1998). Overall, CBC rests upon the premise that the existing borders are here to stay, and thelocal actors involved are prone to assume a pragmatic approach, tending to bypass conflictualissues.4 As a sign of the Svetogorsk Mill’s competitiveness, it was purchased by the Swedish Tetra-Laval in 1994, which sold it in 1998 to International Paper Ltd. (USA), the world’s largestforest-industry corporation at that time.

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